Juan Cole dismisses the idea that Romney has effectively killed people by closing down their companies (and relieving them of their health care benefits), but lists ways in which his policies would literally result in more deaths:

Now, all presidents get people killed. They fight wars, authorize covert actions, and pursue wrong-headed policies. It isn’t useful in my view to engage in a Utilitarian argument about which presidents kill more people and which less. These things are hard to quantify, anyway. The real question to my mind is how many people you kill as president out of cynical calculation about your personal interests and perhaps those of your backers. The thing I most object to in Romney is that he is willing to kill people to get elected, even though he knows better. He believes in Obamacare, obviously, but says he will repeal it. He knows the score on climate change, but is going to deliver us into the scalding clutches of Big Oil. He is a walking billboard for the message that religious people aren’t always ethical people. I sometimes wonder, in fact, whether religiosity doesn’t enable unethical behavior, reassuring the believer of his or her goodness and salvation and so damaging their ethics bullcrap meter.

I agree with Juan’s thesis here – what seem like relatively small policy decisions actually translate into massive effects on the ground. Romney’s policies on health care aren’t hugely different from Obama’s (and if you compare his policies in Massachusetts a few years back, their almost identical), but they mean the difference between several million Americans getting insured and several million Americans not getting insured. Both men have catered their policies to benefit the insurance industry above all else, but Obama’s have far better outcomes.

I do think there is a need to be careful about language though – accusing Romney of being a ‘killer’ and a ‘murderer’ are strong terms, and this could be applied to anyone making policy decisions with bad outcomes. I don’t think that Romney is literally a murderer, but his actions will no doubt result in unnecessary and preventable deaths. I’m not sure what that does make him, but it isn’t good.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

With a huge amount of disinformation about President Obama’s healthcare plan swirling around the country, it is no wonder Americans are unsure about ‘Obamacare’ and what it means for them.  As Bob Cesca wrote in a column earlier this week, even Republicans love Obamacare, they just don’t know it.

So what does the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the major tenants of Obama’s healthcare plan (and the much derided individual mandate) actually mean for real people? Jeffrey Young at the Huffington Post spells out the major components:

The Supreme Court’s decision allows the Obama administration to go forward with a law that will extend health coverage to as many as 30 million Americans through private health insurance and Medicaid starting in 2014. The law also prohibits health insurance company practices that were previously legal, including refusing to sell plans to children and adults with pre-existing medical conditions, setting lifetime limits on medical coverage that cut people off when their expenses get too high, and charging higher premiums to women…..

Under the law, people who earn 133 percent of the federal poverty level or less will qualify for Medicaid coverage. Those whose income is between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level will be eligible for tax credits to defray the cost of health insurance. Companies with at least 50 employees will have to provide health benefits to workers or pay a penalty to the government, and some smaller companies will receive tax credits for employee health insurance. And nearly every American will be required to obtain some form of health care coverage or face a penalty under the individual mandate.

So the beneficiaries of ‘Obamacare’ are basically pretty much everyone. It is not a perfect solution to the nation’s problems – far from it. It is a deeply flawed plan that at the end of the day, still leaves health care in the hands of private insurance companies. But there are major benefits that outweigh the costs, primarily that is is the largest expansion of coverage in 45 years.

Josh Marshall at TPM outlines the two major ramifications of the ruling:

A lot of people tonight and in the future will sleep a lot better for this result. Young people, people with pre-existing conditions and mainly people who through the chaos of the health care market simply find themselves with no coverage.

That’s the big deal.

What also matters is: we may learn that President Obama sacrificed his presidency to push through this piece of legislation — the Dems already lost Congress over it. But presidencies are for doing important things not just for getting elected to second terms in office. And I strongly suspect that even if Mitt Romney wins and gets a Republican Congress, they still won’t be able to get rid of this law.

That counts. That matters.

Mitt Romney joked yesterday that the President wouldn’t be “Sleeping real well in the White House” in anticipation of the ruling. Maybe he didn’t, but it will be Romney not sleeping so well tonight.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

By Ben Cohen: Yesterday, I went on Abby Martin’s new show on the RT network to talk about the failure of austerity economics in Europe, and why the US must not follow the same route. Check it out below:

I discuss Paul Ryan’s plan for the economy in the segment, and I urge everyone to go and check it out. It’s extremely dangerous and if enacted, would cause untold damage to the US economy. Firstly, the numbers don’t actually add up, but even if they did, it would create a decade of recession and economic stagnation. We’re watching it play out in Europe, and the US could go the same way if Ryan’s plan sees the light of day. The main aim behind the plan is, of course, to severely cut government spending across the board. Writes Ryan:

Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different [to the President's]. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.

Scarily, Ryan has also built in a mechanism to subsidize the health insurance industry even further with funds from Medicare – another step towards the complete dissolution of government run health insurance:

This budget’s reforms will protect health and retirement security. This starts with saving Medicare. The open-ended, blank-check nature of the Medicare subsidy threatens the solvency of this critical program and creates inexcusable levels of waste. This budget takes action where others have ducked. But because government should not force people to reorganize their lives, its reforms will not affect those in or near retirement in any way.

Starting in 2022, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose a plan that works best for them from a list of guaranteed coverage options. This is not a voucher program but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.

Anyone who reads the Ryan’s ‘Path to Prosperity’ plan should be extremely alarmed. Just as George W. Bush’s ‘Clean Skies’ initiative actively damaged the skies, Paul Ryan’s ‘Path to Prosperity’ actively damages prosperity. Romney has signed his name to it and should he win in November, you can bet it will be the centerpiece of his plan for the American economy. It’s a bleak vision for the future and one that cannot be allowed to win.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

The US supreme court confronted what one justice characterised as a choice between a “wrecking operation” and a “salvage job” as it considered the future of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms if a key component is found to be unconstitutional.

In a third and final day of an unusually long hearing Wednesday on the politically charged legislation, the court heard from its opponents that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be struck down if, as looks possible, the justices find a requirement for almost all Americans to buy medical insurance to be unconstitutional.

Paul Clement, acting for 26 US states that oppose the legislation, said that the requirement for mandatory insurance is designed to fund many of the law’s other reforms. He said that without the funding, they are unworkable.

“If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, then the rest of the act cannot stand,” said Clement.

The government acknowledged that the loss of the insurance requirement will make some other parts of the legislation unworkable. It said that the loss of funds from about 40 million more people paying insurance would cause the collapse of some new requirements, such as a bar on insurance companies turning away people with pre-existing conditions. But it argued that most of the hundreds of other provisions of the act could remain.

Read more at the Guardian…

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The White House today released a new report highlighting the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The report discusses how the Affordable Care Act has improved the health care system for millions of Americans and includes stories of Americans who have been helped by the law.

“Today, two years after we passed health care reform, more young adults have insurance, more seniors are saving money on their prescription drugs, and more Americans can rest easy knowing they won’t be dropped from their insurance plans if they get sick,” said President Obama.  “The law has made a difference for millions of Americans, and over time, it will help give even more working and middle-class families the security they deserve.”

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act:

• 2.5 million more young adults have health insurance on their parent’s plan.
• 5.1 million people with Medicare saved an average of $635 on the cost of their prescription drugs. And everyone on Medicare can get preventive services like mammograms for free.
• Insurance companies must spend at least 80 percent of your premium dollars on health care and not overhead and cannot raise your premiums by 10 percent or more with no accountability.
• It is illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition. And in 2014, discriminating against anyone with a pre-existing condition will be illegal.

Read more at whitehouse.gov

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Image via Wikipedia

By Cora Currier (ProPublica): A class-action lawsuit in Florida that moved forward this week highlights a little-appreciated aspect of the housing market — the cozy relationship between banks and insurance companies that often results in overpriced home insurance for already struggling borrowers.

As American Banker reported, a federal judge in Miami on Tuesday opened the door to a class action against Wells Fargo. More than 20,000 Florida homeowners can now sue Wells Fargo and an insurance company, QBE, for allegedly overcharging for insurance. More than $50 million in insurance premiums are at issue, according to American Banker.

The suit itself, filed last year, is sealed, but the judge, Robert Scola, laid out the allegations against Wells Fargo. The judge didn’t rule on the case but allowed it to go forward as a class action. In his decision, the judge cited the plaintiffs’ claims that Wells Fargo and QBE “colluded in a scheme to artificially inflate the premiums charged to homeowners.”

The judge also said Wells Fargo has actually threatened to retaliate against homeowners who join the suit.

A spokesman for Wells Fargo said in an emailed statement that “the judge’s recent ruling only addresses the certification of the class in this case and not any of the underlying claims. We disagree with a number of the representations made by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.”

The bank also disputed the judge’s claim that it threatened retaliation for the suit, saying “we made our argument in a purely procedural context in connection with the class certification motion. Wells Fargo has no intention of taking the actions referenced with regard to our customers.”

QBE did not respond to our requests for comment.

The case sheds light on the world of force-placed insurance, an industry that has grown in the years since the housing crisis. Among all the suits and scandals related to the crisis, troubles with force-placed insurance have flown largely under the radar. Here’s some background on the lawsuit and why there might be more of suits to come.

What force-placed insurance is and why it’s controversial

Force-placed insurance is just what it sounds like — insurance you are forced to buy.

This insurance is meant to protect mortgage lenders against damage to homes. If the homeowner doesn’t have insurance on a house, or has let it lapse, most mortgage contracts allow the lender to buy the insurance and pass on the cost to the borrower.

Some homeowners, though, have complained of sudden and excessive penalties, as well as policies that seem to be added unnecessarily — and sometimes retroactively — to their bills. What’s more, the cost of force-placed insurance can be 10 times that of a regular policy, adding to the homeowner’s burden and increasing the chance of default, which is bad for both homeowners and investors in the mortgage market.

Lenders, of course, need to make sure that the asset behind a loan is safe. Force-placed insurance is expensive, the industry argues, because it is high-risk — if you’re the kind of homeowner who doesn’t have any insurance on your property, you’re probably also likelier to default. And because force-placed insurance often replaces lapsed insurance, insurers take on more risk because it has to happen quickly.

But as American Banker started reporting in 2010, problems can arise when banks also make big money off these insurance policies. Bank of America, until recently, owned the company that provided its force-placed insurance. Other banks, including Wells Fargo, contract with insurance companies and get a commission from the policies placed on homes underlying their mortgages.

In some cases, American Banker reported, an insurance company appears to be paying a bank to do nothing except pass along customers. The bank, in turn, has an incentive to force insurance onto its borrowers.

The charges against Wells Fargo

The suit alleges that Wells Fargo and insurer QBE inflated the costs of force-placed insurance policies and that QBE paid commissions to Wells Fargo — commissions the plaintiffs say amounted to kickbacks.

In his approval of the class-action suit, the judge summarized the plaintiffs’ allegations:

American Banker reported that internal Wells Fargo email messages seem to show that some bank employees were uncomfortable with QBE’s high premiums. In court proceedings, Wells Fargo said the pricey policies were justified because of Florida’s vulnerability to hurricanes.

Wells Fargo also argued that borrowers could have avoided the need for force-placed insurance and thus shouldn’t be able to complain about the expensive premiums.

To that, U.S. District Court Judge Scola responded: “That’s like a defense for usury … you are going to have a defense that they live a bad lifestyle which leads them to be more in a position to be taken advantage of …? That makes no sense.”

The case materials were originally public before Wells Fargo got them sealed, citing business confidentiality concerns. American Banker’s review of the case is based on materials that it reviewed before the case was sealed, while the rest is gleaned from Scola’s opinion on the class-action designation.

Fighting a class-action suit

Wells Fargo and QBE didn’t want a class-action designation because they said individual borrowers’ claims would vary too much, an argument that didn’t win over the court.

The judge also wrote that Wells Fargo actually threatened to escalate foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who joined the class-action suit. The bank’s arguments against the class action, he said, “unabashedly set out its threats to retaliate against any homeowner seeking to avoid the alleged excessive and inflated force-placed insurance premiums through this litigation.”

The judge based his conclusion on certain types of borrowers that Wells wanted excluded from a class action, including those who were in default. Scola claimed that for people in default on their mortgages:

Wells Fargo, as we mentioned above, denies that it planned to take these actions.

Not the only ones

It’s not just Wells Fargo that could face litigation. The plaintiffs’ attorneys have said they plan to file similar suits beyond Florida. The New York State Department of Financial Services subpoenaed 31 banks in October, including Wells Fargo, to look into what a spokesman called the “sometimes problematic overlap between banking and insurance.”

Last summer, a class-action suit in Minneapolis won more than $9 million from Chase Home Finance for 40,000 homeowners who claimed Chase forced them to buy unnecessary flood insurance.

There may be new regulations in the works clamping down on force-placed insurance, but so far nothing has been implemented.

In an op-ed published earlier this month, Richard Cordray, director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, promised “new consumer protections” that would require banks to allow borrowers to purchase their own insurance. This month’s big mortgage settlement, to which Wells Fargo is a party, also promises restrictions and regulations to reduce premiums and force banks to communicate more clearly with homeowners. But it is unclear exactly how the deal’s rules will be enforced or how they fit into the CFPB’s promised regulations. The CFPB did not immediately respond to our requests for comment.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Image via Wikipedia

It’s not often that you hear the leader of a Fortune 100 company publicly acknowledge the imminent demise of his venerable, profitable business model.

Yet, speaking at the HIMSS12 Conference in Las Vegas, Aetna CEO, Chairman and President Mark Bertolini, said a reckoning for the traditional health insurance model was at hand. “The system doesn’t work, it’s broke today” Bertolini told attendees. “The end of insurance companies, the way we’ve run the business in the past, is here.”

Bertolini said an amalgamation of regulatory, demographic and economic factors were driving this change. The Affordable Care Act in particular, with its ban on medical underwriting, has made the traditional health insurance business model untenable in the long term, he said.  Nonetheless, he offered measured praise for the law, even citing the controversial medical loss ratio rules as having a smoothing effect on premium swings. “We got pulled through the crucible against our will and have been reshaped because of it,” he said. “For most of what has already been implemented, it has been a pretty good thing.” Read more…

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

James Kwak of the BaselineScenario does an interesting analysis of his quest to purchase long term care insurance on the private market, and concludes the only way to prevent its exorbitant costs and inability to comprehensively cover the elderly is to have the federal government get involved:

In short, the private market doesn’t provide good long-term care insurance—because it can’t. The insurance you can buy is really just a way of reducing the amount you’ll have to pay for long-term care; it’s a financial planning tool that tightens the distribution of your expected long-term net worth. My spreadsheet says it’s worth it on that basis, so I’m planning to buy it (although I’m not accounting for counterparty risk or the risk of future premium increases). But it isn’t insurance against extreme outcomes.

If we want real long-term care insurance, there’s only one place where we could get it: the federal government. The government can offer unlimited coverage and real inflation protection (benefits based on actual costs at the time you incur them) because it has the ability to absorb long-term financial risks. It can mandate universal coverage, eliminating adverse selection. Because it can raise premiums (or other taxes), it will not go out of business. (Those potential premium increases, however, do mean that it can’t offer a lifetime premium guarantee.)

Of course the Republicans would block anything resembling more interference in the health care market meaning Americans should look forward to higher costs, more risks and less coverage.

The Democrat's consistent backing down to Republican demands means the 'free market solves everything' doctrine remains the modus operandi in Washington. I'm not sure that debating these issues does much good any more – it's time for serious grassroots action to ensure everyone's wellbeing later on in life. If we continue to allow the private insurance industry to price us out of health care, life is not going to be much fun for most people in their old age. If that doesn't inspire serious action, I don't know what will.

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below:

Image via Wikipedia

Paul Krugman slams Joe Lieberman's proposals for Medicare eligibility:

Joe Lieberman is proposing that we raise the Medicare eligibility age. That’s a truly cruel idea; as it happens, I know several people who are hanging on, postponing needed medical care, hoping that they can make it to 65 before something terrible happens…..

Lieberman is proposing that we move a substantial number of older Americans into a worse, more expensive health care system. Why would you want to do such a thing, as opposed to raising enough additional revenue to keep them on Medicare?

Subscribe

Ben Cohen's feed

Enter email below: