Out of Context on Health Care

Looks right on point to me too. This deregulation McCain speak of will help the insurance companies not us.
He's basically saying States will have NO SAY in how insurance is regulated. Not a very conservative stance to take stripping away State's rights. Health insurance will be like your credit card - incorporated in whatever State has the most forgiving laws in their favor.

Looks right on point to me too. This deregulation McCain speak of will help the insurance companies not us.
He's basically saying States will have NO SAY in how insurance is regulated. Not a very conservative stance to take stripping away State's rights. Health insurance will be like your credit card - incorporated in whatever State has the most forgiving laws in their favor.

Obama's add is right on point. The insurance bureau of each state does more than ensure that policies are offered, underwritten, and managed fairly to policy holders. It ensures that the balance sheets of each company possess sufficient assets to respond to claims payment. If you lose the ability of a state regulatory agency to enforce minimum risk based capital and balance sheet requirements, you jeopardize not only insureds, who may have paid for care, but then can't receive it, but also you jeopardize the physicians who have provided care and cannot get paid. These are not only our hospitals in the inner cities, that already provide uncompensated care in high percentage, but small rural health clinics as well, where even small interruptions in compensation can be fateful. Allowing an insurance company to cross state lines bypassing state regulatory requirements would also mean the demise of small regional and state health plans and insurance companies, in favor of large faceless corporate bureaucracies that are publicly traded and profit based.

jjrjnn

Isn't it interesting how the republican party that claims to be the party of states rights wants to get rid of states rights to regulate health insurance? It is very hypocritical for the republicans to limit states' rights, but I guess insurance companies rights is more important to the republicans than state's rights.

Wrong. McCain is advocating deregulation on several fronts in this quote. State insurance commissions are needed to rein in the kind of competition where actuarial costs are understated by unscrupulous or incompetent insurers and administrators to compete with low ball premiums. This guarantees that users and doctors will not have enough money or benefits to deliver appropriate or quality care. This competition is exactly the result of lax regulation, a similar ill that has happened to the banking industryindustry

I agree with the other posters. Factcheck, you need to recheck your facts. Health Affairs just published an analysis of both campaign's healthcare plans and this is what they say about the "deregulation" aspect of McCain's plan:

"The main effect of establishing a national market would be to undo state laws designed to establish minimum levels of coverage and protect consumers. In a national market where state licenses are not required, insurers will charter in places where regulations are scarce???much like credit card companies do today. As a result, people guaranteed basic benefits today would find those benefits eliminated under the McCain plan. People in most states would lose access to procedural protections, such as requirements that disputed decisions by managed care plans be subject to external review. People also would lose access to many benefit protections. For example, forty-seven states now require mental health parity, forty-nine states require coverage of breast cancer reconstructive surgery, and twenty-nine require coverage of cervical cancer screening. All of these requirements ???as well as regulations in several states that limit the rates that can be
charged to higher-cost consumers and that limit who can be excluded from a health plan???would be eliminated under the McCain plan.Without legal requirements in place, plans would no longer offer these benefits at all in many markets, even if many consumers want them." [Health Affairs 27, no. 6 (2008): w472???w481 (published online 16 September 2008; 10.1377/hlthaff.27.6.w472)]

I agree with the other posters. Factcheck, you need to recheck your facts. Health Affairs just published an analysis of both campaign's healthcare plans and this is what they say about the "deregulation" aspect of McCain's plan:

"The main effect of establishing a national market would be to undo state laws designed to establish minimum levels of coverage and protect consumers. In a national market where state licenses are not required, insurers will charter in places where regulations are scarce???much like credit card companies do today. As a result, people guaranteed basic benefits today would find those benefits eliminated under the McCain plan. People in most states would lose access to procedural protections, such as requirements that disputed decisions by managed care plans be subject to external review. People also would lose access to many benefit protections. For example, forty-seven states now require mental health parity, forty-nine states require coverage of breast cancer reconstructive surgery, and twenty-nine require coverage of cervical cancer screening. All of these requirements ???as well as regulations in several states that limit the rates that can be
charged to higher-cost consumers and that limit who can be excluded from a health plan???would be eliminated under the McCain plan.Without legal requirements in place, plans would no longer offer these benefits at all in many markets, even if many consumers want them." [Health Affairs 27, no. 6 (2008): w472???w481 (published online 16 September 2008; 10.1377/hlthaff.27.6.w472)]

McCain is hamstrung by the same approach to healthcare that has made the United States a laughing stock. We are the only developed country that does not have national healthcare available to all of its citizens without question. Being rejected by an insurer for pre-existing conditions is the product of for-profit healthcare. Free-market, unfettered, economic principles to provide care for the sick is exactly why we have 47 million people in this country without any healthcare coverage whatsoever. We already have a working model for universal healthcare, it is called Medicare and it does work. We need to expand it to cover everyone. Instead of pouring hundreds of billions into the pockets of the Halliburtons, Lockheed Martins, and Blackwaters of this world, which we do without flinching, we need to make sure that no citizen will ever be denied the medical care they need whether or not they unemployed, whether or not they can afford health insurance, whether or not they have cancer or heart disease or asthma. It is a fundamental human right. Bare-knuckle, for-profit, free-market, bottom-line driven healthcare has failed us miserably. For-profit insurance companies care only about their shareholders, not about patients. McCain has his head stuck in the past.

Factcheck, your diagnositcs are incorrect. Health insurance regulations depend on state controls. If the federal government allows interstate insurance, that essentially destroys state regulations.

Yet, the central claim of the McCain camp is that making health care more like banking will reduce costs--and this at the heart of the Wall Street deregulations: that increasing competition will always decrease costs. But of course banking deregulation has NOT reduced the cost of banking for the end consumer. As a matter of fact, consumers have seen a dramatic increase in banking costs, particularly through rising fees that were largely enabled by banking regulation.

You said it much better than I, Mike in Sac.

Bottom line in: I'm trying to see the money trail for McCain and the good ol' boys by deregulating health insurance, the way he is proposing. I'm over 100% sure that there IS a money trail as always with this guy, but can anyone elaborate?

Maybe Obama's words are being twisted by factcheck--as he is saying that McCain would also deregulate, as a very potentially negative move, health insurance just as his stand on banking and investments is lacking in competancy? Lol, there is something wrong here.

Maybe Obama's words are being twisted by factcheck--as he is saying that McCain would also deregulate, as a very potentially negative move, health insurance just as his stand on banking and investments is lacking in competancy? Lol, there is something wrong here.

My main point, if my inarticulate earlier response was not clear, is that if you take away State regulation you won't have any regulation. This would demolish State regulation.

By breaking down the barrier between State you basically make null and void those State protections. One State with no protective regulations can outbid any other State's insurers as they can keep their costs down by offering and selling you insurance, but never paying up on the benefits because that State didn't pass those protective regulations.

This plan by McCain would be a huge mistake and, while it might sounds good, it would open up this industry to the unscrupulous types of have reaped huge rewards in the deregulated banking industry.

Obama is right is essence and in what this would do. Factcheck you need to talk to some regulators about the consequences of policy before you go out with this type of article.

O my god! Being self employed,, the prospect of a more dizzying array of complicated, confuscating policy choices with the objective of extracting more from premiums than is paid out is a nightmare! If McCain is elected, invest in health ins companies and hold your breath. No, do yoga and eat vegis and pray that you don't need more than catastrophic insurance which is still $3,500 or more per month.

O my god! As a self employed person purchasing insurance, seeing a dizzying array of profit motivated policies is more of a nightmare! The insane, confusing complexity will multiply with the main aim of extracting more from premiums than is paid for services. Insurance companies will make millions! Invest in health ins. if McCain wins and hold your breath - no, do yoga and eat vegis because you will pray you never need more than catastrophic health ins.

Pardon me, but isn't this opening up to more de-regulation than just allowing purchasing across state lines? This would make null and void important State regulation that protect consumers from unscrupulous companies. Yes, this is different than the banking industry, but it is a huge amount of de-regulation. In California we have had scandal after scandal from insurers trying to offer insurance, but not pay the benefits. Now that is going to go away?!?

For all intents and purposes Obama is correct if not word perfect. This amount of de-regulation puts us all at risk as States regulate health care and not the feds. Meaning all regulation would practically be null and void. Setting regulation and fair practices back decades.

No way is this good for anybody but the companies being de-regulated.