CAHI's PRINCIPLES?

If you search for health insurance news, be prepared to be frustrated. With Obama as President elect, the insurance industry is scrambling to protect itself. Two powerhouse advocates FOR THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY are duking it out over whether the "new" insurance environment should FINE people for failing to have health insurance (the AHIP view) or whether the "free-market" should be allowed to compete (the CAHI view). BOTH WILL BE DISASTROUS FOR CONSUMERS as will Obama's plan to provide access to affordable coverage using either approach without legislative mandates, LAWS that regulate the health insurance industry.

How many savings have been passed onto consumers? Over DECADES we as consumers have been sold preventive care (often replacing coverage of actual medical expenses), higher deductibles, higher copayments and less coverage as a means of "COST CONTAINMENT", yet, after DECADES of higher and higher premium rates for less and less coverage which only created a market for SUPPLEMENTAL INSURANCE PLANS, pay to try to fill in the gaps with ANOTHER insurance policy, we're still being told to SACRIFICE MORE PRIVACY (via technology, specifically Personal Health Records and Reporting requirements imposed on doctors by insurance companies) and to sacrifice MORE COVERAGE (promoting use of health savings accounts that don't even allow for enough money to cover premiums for most families, let alone the higher deductibles that go along with these plans) for the ever-increasing costs of medical care which INCLUDES charging consumers for doctors practicing defensive medicine in the form of every test under the sun to cover their butts and keep their own insurance rates lower. UNTIL THERE IS A REQUIREMENT, BY LAW THAT MAKES EVERY SAVINGS JUSTIFIED SACRIFICED RIGHT OF PRIVACY AND/OR COVERAGE A SAVINGS THAT MUST BE PASSED ONTO CONSUMERS IN THE FORM OF A PERCENTAGE OFF THE CURRENT YEAR'S RATES, THE CONSUMER WILL CONTINUE TO FINANCE THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY AND THE MEDICAL INSURANCE INDUSTRY WITH EVER DECREASING PROTECTION.

CAHI, AHIP and the AMA are NOT Consumer Advocates: It seems obvious that allowing an industry to make its own rules will empower that industry to exploit the rule of law for their own benefit. While some die-hard educationally challenged individuals might still WANT to believe that the insurance industry wants to see you receive the best health care available and that doctors want to "heal", ignoring the mammoth expenditures on lobbying protecting their own income flow while squeezing the consumer for every last cent shows that when doctors and insurers get to be lawmakers, they protect their own wallets first.
Consumers cannot continue to afford industries that continue raising their own salaries and expenses without addressing the waste, fraud, and bad investments of the money they've squeezed out of consumers without a LEGAL REQUIREMENT that these companies start managing their costs and passing those savings onto consumers. LEGISLATION is required because it was legislation that created these legalized forms of theft. Consumers who are anti big government, those same individuals who had nothing to say when law after law was passed as a result of billions of dollars spent on influencing such laws, should wake up or remain silent now.

Civilian Government Employee Health Benefits Packages MUST be suspended: We hear about people touting the benefits of personal responsibility and about having skin in the game, which like all finger-pointing moralists is usually another way of saying, it's your problem to the people you've screwed. Health insurers have NO SKIN IN THE GAME, not even for the lousy investments they made after raping the American public, bailout dollars are being made available for that. Part of the problem is that there are still people with comparably FABULOUS benefits packages...those people are governmental civilian employees at every level of government. Websites for local, state and federal benefits packages are available for your perusal. After you look ask yourself, what is their incentive in working towards reform?

So while you listen to the blah blah blah of two different insurance groups arguing over the best way to get the most money from you, start arguing on behalf of the consumer!