Private Insurance

WASHINGTON -- Investigators from the General Accounting Office have told Congress that they had found numerous abuses in the sale of private insurance intended to cover the high costs of nursing home care for elderly people.The testimony laid a foundation for congressional efforts to set minimum standards for such insurance, perhaps as early as this year, even though insurance executives insisted there was no need for federal regulation.The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, Richard P. Kusserow, seemed to lend support to the call for minimum federal standards.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. For Marylanders, that means a health care system that is stronger than it was three years ago, and a future that looks even brighter. Marylanders who have health insurance now have more security, thanks to new insurance market reforms and consumer protections put into place by the law. Preventive services like mammograms and flu shots are newly available for free to 1.5 million people with private insurance plans. About 48,950 Maryland Medicare beneficiaries with the highest prescription drug costs have saved an average of $768 on their medications.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS in Annapolis have developed an alternative to Gov. Parris N. Glendening's plan to extend government health care to uninsured pregnant women and children. Their proposal makes far more sense. It relies on graduated tax credits to help families afford private insurance, rather than committing taxpayers to the cost of insuring children in perpetuity.The governor wants to extend Medicaid to families with incomes up to 200 percent of poverty -- $32,000 for families of four -- even if they have access to employer-provided insurance.

Federal deficits are too large, and mounting national debt threatens future generations. But as Democrats and Republicans squabble over the mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration that went into effect Friday night, they are failing to face the facts of our budget situation or acknowledge the lessons of history. Since 2007, annual federal spending is up $1 trillion, and deficits jumped from $161 billion to $1.2 trillion over five years. Higher taxes on the wealthy and Obamacare levies will pull down the gap in 2014, but then it will rise again.

A Maryland group led by Howard County health officer Peter Beilenson has received a $65 million loan under federal health reform to start the state's first insurance co-op, a consumer-owned nonprofit that will compete against private insurers to sell health policies. Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. hopes to begin operations by next October, when consumers will begin buying insurance on the state's new health exchange. The exchange is the market where those not covered by employee insurance can buy health policies under the federal reform law. The company also will sell insurance outside of the exchange.

Peter Beilenson — doctor and public health visionary, Baltimore health commissioner, Howard County health officer, quick-study scholar and decoder of federal regulations — remains one of our most interesting men. A person whose leadership has certainly improved the lives of thousands of Marylanders over the last 20 years, from Baltimore heroin addicts to young families in Columbia, Beilenson is now trying to establish a nonprofit health insurance...

With the Supreme Court reviewing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is no shortage of legal analysis to handicap the decision. But unfortunately, not enough attention has been paid to the real value this law provides to millions of American families and businesses. As governor, I have heard from families unable to purchase coverage at any price because of pre-existing illness, from seniors forced to choose between medications and energy bills and from businesses required to drop employee coverage to stay afloat.

Maryland secured $123 million of federal funding to launch its health insurance exchange, the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's health care reform, state officials announced Thursday. The money will help build the marketplace, now formally called the Maryland Health Connection, where hundreds of thousands of uninsured Marylanders will buy coverage. It is expected to open by October 2013, and insurance coverage would begin the following January. "From the moment the president signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Maryland has moved forward aggressively to build our exchange in order to expand access to affordable health care options," said Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, who has spearheaded the state's efforts to implement the legislation.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. For Marylanders, that means a health care system that is stronger than it was three years ago, and a future that looks even brighter. Marylanders who have health insurance now have more security, thanks to new insurance market reforms and consumer protections put into place by the law. Preventive services like mammograms and flu shots are newly available for free to 1.5 million people with private insurance plans. About 48,950 Maryland Medicare beneficiaries with the highest prescription drug costs have saved an average of $768 on their medications.

THE HOUSE VERSION of a bill to give children from low- and moderate-income families health insurance costs about the same as Gov. Parris N. Glendening's sweeping plan to extend Medicaid.But philosophically, it is quite different in important and advantageous ways.The governor's plan, which has passed the Senate, would create a new entitlement -- free health care for children and pregnant women in families making up to 200 percent of poverty, or about $32,000 for a family of four.The entitlement would extend to those with access to private insurance, which they could drop and then sign up for the free plan after 90 days.

Peter Beilenson — doctor and public health visionary, Baltimore health commissioner, Howard County health officer, quick-study scholar and decoder of federal regulations — remains one of our most interesting men. A person whose leadership has certainly improved the lives of thousands of Marylanders over the last 20 years, from Baltimore heroin addicts to young families in Columbia, Beilenson is now trying to establish a nonprofit health insurance...

I see former governor and columnist Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is back doing what he's been doing best for his entire career: Whining, finger-pointing and laying blame everywhere except where it belongs - on himself and his Republican puppet-masters ("Injecting Obamacare into economy will hurt - a lot," Dec. 30). Yes, Obamacare is indeed a pork-laden, convoluted mess, thanks to the Republicans. That's what you get when you try to reach "compromise" with people who are wacko. No, we didn't want Obamacare: We wanted universal, government-run health care like they have in every other industrialized country in the world.

We are accustomed to the opprobrium columnist Thomas Schaller heaps on all things Republican. However, his most recent rant on who's to blame for the fiscal cliff deserves further reflection ("Crisis they created catches up with Republicans," Dec. 12). Although Mr. Schaller admits that spending as a percentage of GDP is unprecedentedly high under President Barack Obama, he has been consistent in blaming it on the president's predecessor. Even the progressives' oft referred to arbiter of truth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, has forecast that we are on track to push the national debt to nearly 200 percent of GDP in 2037.

The op-ed by Drs. Joshua M. Sharfstein and Laura Herrera and Charles Milligan ("Caring about costs, too," Sept. 27) offers a compelling set of recommendations to improve the quality of health care while reducing costs. Unfortunately, they neglected to describe the best single evidence-based practice - eliminating private health insurance. Private health insurance adds only costs, but no value, to the delivery of health services. A Cambridge Medical Care Foundation study found that 31 percent of health care spending in the U.S. - equal to more than $600 billion annually - pays for administration, marketing, and the profits of private insurance.

A Maryland group led by Howard County health officer Peter Beilenson has received a $65 million loan under federal health reform to start the state's first insurance co-op, a consumer-owned nonprofit that will compete against private insurers to sell health policies. Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. hopes to begin operations by next October, when consumers will begin buying insurance on the state's new health exchange. The exchange is the market where those not covered by employee insurance can buy health policies under the federal reform law. The company also will sell insurance outside of the exchange.

With the exciting news that Maryland has received a new federal grant of $123 million to support the establishment of its health benefit exchange - a critical component of President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - we must continue to use smart strategies to guarantee that as many uninsured Marylanders as possible get the health security the law is designed to provide. And because we know that women make about 80 percent of the health care decisions for their families and are more likely to care for ailing family members, we at the Maryland Women's Coalition for Health Care Reform are urging state and community leaders to engage women in this effort as health care consumers, advocates and educators.

FOR CENTURIES, the first rule of medicine has been to "do no harm," but Congress has just seriously harmed a program that has provided America's seniors with a lifeline for nearly 40 years. I have long supported providing seniors with a prescription drug benefit within Medicare, but the newly passed Medicare bill will cause more harm than good. Under the pretext of offering "choice" to seniors and encouraging free-market competition, this bill gives an unfair advantage to private health plans, an advantage that over time will weaken the guarantee of Medicare as we know it. This bill grants private insurers billions in federal subsidies to encourage them to re-enter the senior market.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government is losing as much as $500 million a year by paying thousands of medical bills for the elderly that private insurance companies should be paying, a Senate subcommittee was told yesterday.And there is a backlog of more than $1 billion paid out by Medicare that the government should try to recover from the private insurers, witnesses said."We're not talking about chicken feed," Sen. William V. Roth Jr., a Delaware Republican, commented.Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulation and Government Information of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said, "There is no magic bullet" for eliminating erroneous payments, "but there is a serious problem."

Maryland secured $123 million of federal funding to launch its health insurance exchange, the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's health care reform, state officials announced Thursday. The money will help build the marketplace, now formally called the Maryland Health Connection, where hundreds of thousands of uninsured Marylanders will buy coverage. It is expected to open by October 2013, and insurance coverage would begin the following January. "From the moment the president signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Maryland has moved forward aggressively to build our exchange in order to expand access to affordable health care options," said Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, who has spearheaded the state's efforts to implement the legislation.

With his surprising selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, Republican Mitt Romney is asking Americans to choose between competing narratives of our past, interpretations of present realities and visions of our future. According to the historical narrative embraced by Messrs. Romney and Ryan and their tea party supporters, the U.S. is a unique nation, anointed by God not merely to dominate a continent but to shape the destiny of the world. In their view, America's wealth and might are primarily due to the accomplishments of enterprising individuals whose initiative, imagination and risk-taking created great fortunes.