Related: Memory Hole: Why the Nation Doesn't Need Massachusetts Health Care
That is why they don't want to talk.
Also see: Boston Globe Omissions: Hiding Health Care Failure
"Health insurers mum on practices; State regulators’ get few answers about talks with providers" by Kay Lazar, Globe Staff | December 10, 2009
Executives from some of the state’s leading health insurance companies, facing an unusual public grilling from state regulators yesterday, refused to answer key questions about why some hospitals and doctors are paid up to three times as much as others for the same services.
But some of the company officials acknowledged that the affordability of coverage for employers and their workers is not a priority in negotiating contracts with health care providers. Instead, they said, provider payments are based on fierce competition among hospitals and doctors in some areas of the state, as well as employers’ insistence that a particular hospital or physicians’ group be included in their plan.
BUT I have HAD IT with LAME-ASS LOOTER'S EXCUSES and THOSE WORDS from the s***-shilling MSM!
The testimony was part of a monthlong probe by the state Department of Insurance into the reasons for disproportionately high health insurance rates paid by small businesses; but the agency has expanded its investigation to determine what is behind the soaring increases in insurance costs overall, including the large disparities in payments to providers.
Related: The Massachusetts Model: Destroying Small Business
That is the plan, huh?
In at least a half-dozen instances, executives from the state’s second- and third-largest insurers - Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan - declined to answer regulators’ questions.
Why? What do they have to HIDE, huh?
They explained their companies had signed confidentiality agreements with certain hospital or physician groups that prevented them from disclosing the information publicly because doing so would put the insurers at a competitive disadvantage....
PFFFFFFFFFTTT!!
Yeah, CHARGING 3X as much for the SAME SERVICE is a TRADE SECRET -- as if INSURERS were somehow at a "disadvantage" in this s*** system!!
Executives from the state’s largest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, are scheduled to testify when the hearings continue tomorrow. While Tufts and Harvard Pilgrim officials did not name the providers that are getting more generous fees - and declined to identify them when asked later by a reporter - the Globe Spotlight Team reported last year that Partners HealthCare hospitals are often paid more for services than competitors. Some specialty hospitals, or hospitals with little competition in their area, also tend to get higher payments....
Related: The Massachusetts Model: Partners Profit'
Yeah, and they are the FLAGSHIP INSURER of the state, yaaaaaaay!
The sparsely attended hearing, in a drab fifth-floor conference room at the agency’s headquarters, featured mostly dense, bureaucratic answers to pointed questions....
Translation: It wasn't much fun to the reporter. Aww, poor flak!
Small-business owners say they have been clobbered by annual double-digit increases in health insurance costs for the past several years, and that increases for 2010 are the highest they have seen in years.
It's called PRICE-GOUGING for PROFIT and it is WHY you can NOT have SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE!
While the state’s major insurers said in September the 2010 rate increases statewide would range from 7 to 12 percent for all employers, many small-business owners say they are getting hit with increases that are three times that amount.
Little STEEP, ain't it?
“These increases continue to be the worst in recent memory,’’ Retailers Association of Massachusetts president Jon Hurst said yesterday by e-mail. “Everything is in the 20-45 percent range from the feedback we are getting.’’
Hey, SOMEONE has to PAY for INSURANCE INDUSTRY PROFITS!!
During a break in yesterday’s hearing, deputy insurance commissioner Kevin Beagan said they had yet to pinpoint anything from the testimony that would specifically explain the large disparities in insurance prices charged to small employers compared with larger companies.
Beagan said testimony and data expected next week from the insurers about the amount of medical care that large and small companies use may shed light on why insurers charge different prices....
Then he better get to a triple-billing doctor's office right away because HE IS BLIND!
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"Seeds of worry for health overhaul; If Mass. is indicator, cost of care could be concern in US plan" by Robert Weisman and Kay Lazar, Globe Staff | December 25, 2009
Why do you think I am posting this?
To WARN YOU, America!!
I am LIVING IT and YOU DON'T WANT IT!
The aborted appointment illustrates what many who work in the Massachusetts health care industry say is a major flaw in the 2006 state health reform law, widely considered a template for the work now going on in Washington, D.C. The state extended health insurance to 97 percent of residents, but those in the medical and insurance industries here say the legislation did not do enough to make care affordable for everyone. And they worry that the national health bill passed early yesterday by the US Senate similarly fails to tackle rising costs....
I heard someone raise the "question of rationing medical care."
That's your answer!
But no matter what the final version looks like, the federal legislation does not mean everyone will get more funding. In fact, as it now stands, payments to hospitals and doctors who have been treating a disproportionate number of low-income and uninsured patients will be scaled back. Some of that money will instead be used to pay for patients’ health insurance coverage.
Yeah, but we have PLENTY of LOOT for WARS, BANKS, CORPORATIONS, and ISRAEL!!!
Physicians and executives of so-called safety net hospitals in Massachusetts say that same kind of strategy has not worked out under the state overhaul. As a result, the hospitals say, they are absorbing millions of dollars in losses....
Imagine that NATIONWIDE, readers!
You thought it was bad now, America?
Your HEALTH CARE SYSTEM will COMPLETELY COLLAPSE!!!
In Massachusetts, medical costs are rising by about 10 percent a year....
And that is WITH REFORMS!
A state-appointed special commission in July recommended slowing that upward trend by paying doctors and other providers a lump sum for each patient....
See: The Massachusetts Model: Doctors' Diet
And IF SOMETHING HAPPENS to you?
Andrew Dreyfus, executive vice president of Blue Cross, added that if insurers are taxed more - as the current version of the national health plans calls for - those added costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers. “There is some concern there,’’ he said.
But this is ALL FOR YOU, American consumers!!
I thought you were a PATIENT when it came to HEALTH?
Silly me! Better get that checked at the doctor!
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Related:
- The Massachusetts Model: Working Or Not?
- The Massachusetts Model: Going Out of Business
- The Massachusetts Model: Crazy Coverage
- The Massachusetts Model: Immigrant Insult
- The Massachusetts Model: Profit and the Paycheck
- The Massachusetts Model: By the Numbers
- The Massachusetts Model: Treasurer's Assessment
- The Massachusetts Model: Care-Keeping Costs
- The Massachusetts Model: Mass. Hospitality
- The Massachusetts Model: Lessons Learned
- The Massachusetts Model: Non-Compliant Complacency
- The Massachusetts Model: Office Visit
- The Massachusetts Model: Student Shakedown
- The Massachusetts Model: Medicaid Mess
- The Massachusetts Model: Upset Stomach
- The Massachusetts Model: Poor Hospitals Shortchanged By State
Either way, YOU are STUCK, Massachusetts!
"Health bill will keep Mass. overhaul intact; Also would mean extra $500m for state, Kerry says" by Kay Lazar, Globe Staff | December 23, 2009
The health care bill that the Senate is expected to pass on Christmas Eve has protections that ensure Massachusetts’ pioneering health insurance overhaul will remain intact, and it also includes $500 million in extra money for the state, Senator John F. Kerry said yesterday during a quick visit to Boston between votes on the measure.
Related: Kerry Doesn't Care About Carbon Footprint
Obviously not! The guy is JETTING AROUND all over the place!
The legislation also contains an additional $200 million for Massachusetts hospitals that say they have not been adequately reimbursed by the state for treating a large share of the poor.
Thanks, U.S. taxpayers, for the loot to prop up corporate insurance profits.
“Massachusetts has secured an enormous victory,’’ Kerry said. “None of the reforms we enacted in 2006 will be undone or damaged by the legislation.’’
The Senate’s bill is largely based on the Massachusetts plan and adopts some of its hallmark provisions, including a requirement that nearly everyone obtain health insurance coverage or pay a tax penalty, and subsidies to help low- and middle-income residents afford coverage.
Yeah, and that is ALL YOU ARE GETTING, America!
Yeah, government is going to subsidize care you can't afford, right.
You aren't really believing that, are you?
Yet in some respects, the Senate’s plan is more expansive than the program in Massachusetts because it will allow many more people with higher incomes to qualify for subsidized health insurance coverage. The Senate version will provide subsidies to individuals and families with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level - $43,320 for individuals and $88,200 for families of four.
The Massachusetts plan covers only those making up to 300 percent of the poverty level, or $32,490 for individuals and $66,150 for families of four, though for those eligible, the subsidies in the Massachusetts plan are larger than they are in Senate bill. There have been concerns that Massachusetts would, in effect, be penalized because its landmark overhaul used significant state resources to extend benefits to many more residents than is required under current federal Medicaid rules.
States that had not expanded health insurance coverage are now in line to receive federal money to do so under the pending Senate legislation, but Kerry said he worked to make sure that Massachusetts would be rewarded for its pathbreaking program by receiving an additional $500 million. That money will be awarded over the first three years of the national plan, starting in 2014. That Senate version must still be reconciled with a competing plan in the House after the New Year.
Other key provisions of the Senate plan include a tax credit for small businesses, including nonprofits, that have fewer than 25 employees and offer health insurance. Many small business owners in Massachusetts have complained that health insurance has become largely unaffordable because their costs have soared, yet most are required under the state’s program to offer coverage to their employees....
**************************
Kerry acknowledged that passage in the Senate is just the beginning.
The Senate bill preserves the Health Connector, created under the Massachusetts overhaul, to be the exclusive marketplace for consumers who are not covered under their employers’ plan to shop for health insurance, in much the same way they purchase airline tickets. The Massachusetts program also includes a Connector Authority board, which regulates the exchange and much of the state’s plan.
Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at MIT and a member of the Connector Authority board, said the Senate plan contains less harsh penalties than the Massachusetts program for most residents who fail to obtain insurance coverage. Under the Senate plan, the top penalty would be 2 percent of an individual’s annual income or no more than $750. But in Massachusetts, the maximum penalty is calculated on the price of insurance and this year was $1,068....
Why must WE PAY a PENALTY at all for an UNCONSTITUTIONAL MEASURE?!!
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Also see: MSM Xmas Gifts: Boston's Hospitals
