Remember the case of the baby that was denied because he was "too fat" for insurance according to this insurance company, Rocky Mountain Health Plans? His family were shopping around for coverage because their other insurer had raised rates up 40%, and they found Rocky Mountain Health Plans. Well, the good news is that Rocky Mountain Health Plans, in realizing the backlash this would have on their insurance company, finally insured this cute little baby. That's wonderful news for that family. There are many problems with the individual market, and there are even bigger problems for the self-insured market and group market under the Baucus bill.
None of the regulations in the Senate Finance Committee bill would apply to the self-insured market---ever, as Senator Rockefeller has pointed out several times. The self-insured market is about 47% of the entire insured population, about 70 million Americans or so.
Rockefeller had offered an amendment to address this, but withdrew it. That amendment would not just have applied to the self-insured market, but to the group market as well, for which the regulations are delayed until 2017 in the Baucus bill, and the phase-in for the regulations would begin in 2018. That means eight years of waiting for regulations if you have group insurance through your employer that bans pre-existing conditions, denials of coverage, lifetime caps and annual caps, and same benefits as other employees. This is just one of the many reasons why the Baucus bill is so bad, and still leaves out millions of Americans from the protections of regulations and a strong public option to keep private insurers honest.
Nyceve is looking for insurance horror stories for Public Option Please (POP!), much like what happened to the family with the cute little baby, and if you have yours or a friend's particular insurance story, please share your story with us, and we'll keep it confidential. We're going to be working on reversing recent insurance denials as ridiculous and completely out of bounds as what happened to that family. We want to prevent another Natalie Sarkisyan from happening, and Nyceve has told me that she'll move heaven and earth if she could to prevent these millions of stories from happening.
Please Share Your Insurance Horror Story With Us
It's not just the insurance stories we're looking for, we're also looking for beautiful campaign art from you guys for the POP! Art Contest. I'd submit a campaign art poster myself, but I can't draw worth a damn, and I'd love to see what you guys submit instead! :-)
While you're helping us find insurance horror stories, and submitting art to the POP! Art Contest, please don't stop on making these phone calls to your Progressive Member of Congress to tell them to keep to the line in the sand for the public option!
It's why we need our progressives in Congress to continue to stay strong on their insistence that the final conference bill NOT have a triggered public option, but a public option that is competitive nationwide. We're going to be hearing a lot of drum-beating about the Snowe trigger in the days ahead, so please don't let up on those phone calls to our progressives with these talking points below!
Hi [Representative's Name]. I want to thank you for supporting the public option, but I don't want you to support a trigger or the state opt-in proposal for the public option! A trigger on the public option would be a surrender to the private insurance companies. Please don't let the insurance lobbyists win by allowing a trigger on the public option, or by allowing states to opt-in to the public option. I want a national public option that's available in all states immediately without an opt-out, an opt-in, or a trigger. I also don't support co-operatives as an alternative to the public option since the CBO have said they will do nothing to lower costs of private insurance premiums. If the bill doesn't have a public option to control premium costs, please vote against that bill!
We'll keep on fighting for what is right, and please help support our work (since we do literally work for you guys) by donating to our fund at Firedoglake! Your donations go to our living stipends, expenses, and travel costs, including awesome tools like these. You also can follow me on Twitter @slinkerwink.