By Mark Leno
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
As outraged families and small businesses react to the latest health insurance premium increases, Californians are forced to face the fact that insurance companies are not in business to provide health care to people who need it. Premium increases are just part of the concerns – pre-existing condition denials, overturned doctors’ decisions, coverage rescissions and other insurance industry abuses are sadly commonplace.
It is impossible to make a profit serving customers who are likely to cost the insurer more than the premiums they pay. This means that if any one of us gets seriously sick or injured, we become an undesirable customer to health insurers. That’s the message Anthem Blue Cross sent to millions of Californians when it increased premiums by up to 39 percent. The insurer clearly doesn’t care if it loses these customers.
Health insurance companies are defending the rate increases by blaming rising health care costs – but health care costs have increased about 6 percent a year on top of similar increases last year – not 39 percent.
It is outrageous that insurance companies blame their rate increases on consumers who are dropping coverage because they can no longer afford it. In this economy, another increase in health premiums will be the last straw for many Californians. We know health insurance companies increase premiums each year because they can. They do it because it is in their best financial interests to do so, even when some increases stifle economic growth and threaten our middle-class standard of living. Everything we buy or use has health care costs embedded in it – from the food we eat to the dry cleaning service we select. Our current health insurance system is failing us. The California Universal Health Care Act, a single-payer reform plan that I introduced last year, provides every Californian with comprehensive health care and is fully funded with money that California already spends on health care.
Senate Bill 810 builds on our current system of privately delivered health care but is funded by a single, comprehensive health insurance plan that cuts out the private insurance middle man in order to simplify administration. It puts doctors and hospitals back in charge of our health care system.
SB810 works by creating a trust fund to pool money that government, employers and individuals spend on health care each year. Instead of paying premiums to private insurers, Californians would pay into the fund, which would guarantee coverage to all Californians. Patients would be free to choose their private doctors and hospitals.
SB810 would provide relief to consumers and to California businesses, which are struggling to pay rising employee health benefits.
Americans already pay per capita for health care twice what residents of other industrialized countries pay. The United States ranks 37th among nations in health care outcomes, according to the World Health Organization.
Californians want and deserve the state-of-the-art, single-payer health-care system envisioned by SB810. Visit CaliforniaOneCare.org to learn more.
Democrat Mark Leno represents Marin and parts of San Francisco and Sonoma counties in the state Senate.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/16/EDLL1C0UA9.DTL
This article appeared on page A – 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle