Who could have predicted?
Anthem Blue Cross customer Alison Heath, 56, of San Francisco will get hit with a 19.7 percent increase effective May 1 - her third increase since October 2010, making for a total increase of 66 percent.
It's not that we were completely powerless to prevent this.
California could have passed AB 52, allowing the State Insurance Commissioner to regulate health insurance rates, but the legislature did not. Because insurers are pulling the strings in Sacramento.
California could have passed SB 810, bringing single-payer health care to the Golden State and excising corporate cancers on society like Anthem, but it did not. Because insurers have enough Democrats in their pocket to guarantee a majority against sanity, and Republicans are by definition insane.
And so we are left with
More than a million California small-business owners and individual policyholders face a wave of health insurance premium increases in the coming months that range from single digits to as high as 20 percent.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that no one seems to give a Flying F*** any more. Perhaps its despair after the enormous effort that went in to passing an unpopular and what may well turn out to be an unconstitutional set of health reforms.
Big progressive organizations like MoveOn and the Courage Campaign are out there pushing for a millionaires' tax in California, but the only group even attempting to get some kind of health insurance reform on the ballot this November is Consumer Watchdog, a small organization which is pushing for an initiative similar to AB 52. (There is no one pushing for anything to happen with single-payer health care in California in the immediate future that I'm aware of.)
But continued increases in health care costs matter far more than the details of a tax plan!
One of the key objections to Jerry Brown's original tax hike plan was that it relied too heavily on taxing ordinary folks. The compromise is better in that regard (it halves the proposed increase in the sales tax). But the fact of the matter is if health insurance costs go up by 10% instead of 3% (the approximate inflation rate), and families pay $10,000 per year for premiums, that's A $700 'tax increase' per annum that would be substantially avoidable if our legislators represented our interests, not the insurance companies. Even if the average family purchased $20,000 in items subject to sales tax (which seems absurdly high), the reduction in increase from 1/2% to 1/4% would 'save' just $50.
There's nothing you can do to influence Antonin Scalia and the other four horsemen of the health apocalypse. There's probably little or nothing you can do to remove the stranglehold insurance companies have on key legislators in Sacramento. But there is something you can do -- thanks to Hiram Johnson and progressives back in 1911 who pushed through constitutional amendments allowing ballot initiatives, referenda and recalls.
In other words, if you live in California, you can help put Consumer Watchdog's proposal for health insurance rate regulation on the ballot. I received this email yesterday from them:
Today, on Cesar Chavez's birthday, we say "Si, Se Puede--Yes We Can." We can collect the 600,000 signatures we need in 6 weeks to qualify our health insurance rate reform initiative for the ballot.
We can do it. We can beat the health insurance companies and lower premiums for Californians. But we cannot do it without you.
We have 200,000 signatures now.
200,000 signatures is no mean feat (do not try this at home!). But it's not nearly enough. Fortunately, they still have six weeks to get the rest.
You don't even have to leave the comfort of your computer chair. You can download a petition (or have them mail you a copy), sign it, and mail it back. You could even get a few and have a spouse, soulmate, some friends and acquaintainces sign (or trick a few Republicans into signing!).
Even if you don't live in California you could help. You could send them a donation to help them gather signatures.
If we all sit on our asses and do nothing but read diaries like this one then we will be deserving of what we get: our livelihoods sacrificed to the engorging greed of the health care industry machine, foretold, fittingly enough, on the steps of UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza some forty-seven years ago.
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious -- makes you so sick at heart -- that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.
I know it's not much, it's just a baby step, but you can help
make it stop.