2012 Calendar: Many Opportunities for Policymakers and Voters to Improve Our Health System
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By Anthony Wright
Health Access
The new year of 2012 will be a major year for health care, as policymakers and voters are set to make key decisions on health policy throughout the year.
Policymakers and voters have the opportunity in 2012 to greatly improve the health care system that we all rely on. Californians will have an opportunity to demand a balanced solution to our budget crisis that brings in the revenues needed to sustain health, education, and other vital services. California will also continue to implement and improve upon the federal health law that has already provided new options and benefits to millions of Californians, and get ready for reform in 2014.
We in California made significant advances toward the promise of health reform in 2011, but as this calendar of highlights from 2012 shows, there's a lot more work to do in 2012. As we approach the end-of-year deadline, we hope you can contribute to Health Access Foundation to continue the progress. Through our joint efforts in 2012, from expansions of coverage to essential benefits to the Exchange, Californians can get closer to the core goal of the law: to have confidence that our coverage and care will be there for us when we need it.
For the first half of 2012, here's a few dates to plan around on health issues in California:
1/1/2012: Over 35 counties are launching their Low-Income Health Programs (LIHPs), joining 10 counties already up and running with 225,000 Californians covered. This "bridge to health reform" is bringing new federal dollars into California and our struggling health system, and getting people the care they need, as a ramp-up to 2014 and the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Most of the remaining counties are slated to launch sometime in the first half of 2012.
1/10/2012: On or around this date, Governor Jerry Brown will unveil his proposed 2012-13 California state budget, which will likely include more cuts, on top of those already made (elimination of dental and other benefits, provider rate reductions, etc.) in past years. Part of the budget will be dependent on the passage of revenues through a ballot measure this November. If those revenues don't pass, then Californians can expect even more cuts to health, education, and other vital services they depend on.
2/24/2012: Deadline for legislation to be introduced. It is likely that there will be several bills to implement and improve upon the federal health law. Among the goals of such legislation will be to maxmize enrollment in federally-funded health coverage expansions on the first day of 2014, and to put in place the insurance market reforms and consumer protections, so that in 2014 and beyond, individuals are no longer denied or discriminated against because of their health status.
3/23/2012: This will be the 2nd anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, a time to acknowledge the new options, benefits, and consumer protections that millions of Californians now have as a result of the new federal law. This will also provide the context for oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act, scheduled for March 26-28. Opponents of the law have seen many appeals court judges, including noted conservatives, uphold the law, including the requirement on individuals to get coverage. The work will continue, both at the federal level with new regulations and consumer protections rolling out, and at the state level.
4/20/2012: This is the deadline for signature petitions to be turned in on ballot initiatives, starting the certification process to see what will be on the November 2012 ballot. The ballot is likely to include revenues to prevent further state budget cuts, and may include health-related measures on everything from rate regulation to hospital accountability. And of course, the November election will greatly impact the continued progress on health reform, by the outcome of the Presidential and Congressional races.
5/2012: Legislative action heats up: Bills need to pass the first house of the legislature by the end of May. In addition, the Governor will release his May Revision of the budget, and the Legislature will go into daily hearings and negotiations toward the goal of passing a budget by the late June deadlines.
6/2012: The new California Health Benefits Exchange, our health insurance marketplace of the future, plans this month to submit a major grant application to the federal government to fund its operation through its first year of full operation in 2014. In preparation for this, the Board will be making several foundational decisions on its goals, capacity, infrastructure, and business model for getting Californians covered on day one and beyond.
7/1/2012: While some of the health laws passed in 2011 go into effect on January, like the state enforcement of the medical loss ratio, some notable benefit mandates come into place on July 1. This includes maternity coverage, which will on this date be required to be included in individual and small group policies--reversing a disturbing trend in the last decade that left many pregnant mothers and infants without this crucial, life-changing care. Federal guidance that came out in late 2011 allow states some flexibility in setting "essential health benefits" in 2014 and beyond, so that will be another significant topic for policymakers in 2012.
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Anthony Wright is Executive Director of Health Access California, a statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition of over 200 groups.
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For all those that truly care about fixing our abysmal, for profit (off death) health care system, help pass State Senator Mark Leno's SB 810 - and create a Medicare for All system in California. And, in addition, we need to pass AB 52 (Feuer), which would at least regulate skyrocketing premiums (which have increased 131% from 1999 to 2009 - nearly five times the rate of inflation).
Today, 8.2 million state residents have no health insurance. Businesses are finding it difficult to pay for these rate hikes, and pass the increased costs on to workers, or opt for less expensive – and less comprehensive – coverage plans.
Last year, Blue Shield, a California non-profit insurer lavished its CEO with a $4.6 million salary and then proposed premium rate hikes as high as 59% for certain individual policies. The company retracted this proposal in the wake of a storm of public outrage. In April 2011, Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest health insurer, raised rates on 120,000 California customers by 16%, despite a finding by state regulators that the increase was unreasonable.
SB 810 (Leno) insures health care for all Californians. The private insurance system is collapsing. Skyrocketing premiums are a crushing burden for employers. More and more businesses are shifting costs to workers, or simply eliminating coverage. Forty seven million Americans are uninsured—most live in a household with a working adult.
Health care is a right, not a privilege—and every Californian deserves access to high quality, affordable health coverage. Forcing the uninsured to pay unaffordable insurance premiums with high deductibles for inadequate health coverage isn’t the answer. Individual mandates and Health Savings Accounts would force more Californians to pay most of their actual health care bills from their own pockets, rather than by their insurance coverage.
Health care should be guaranteed and insured by government. SB 810 would provide every California resident medical, dental, vision, hospitalization and prescription drug benefits. Putting an emphasis on prevention and primary health care, SB 810 invests in modern technologies and infrastructure that help improve care and reduce costs.
The plan also reduces administrative waste and utilizes California’s purchasing power to realize savings on prescriptions and medical equipment.
Here's why we need it: Even as thousands die, millions go bankrupt, and millions more suffer needlessly as a result of our for profit, private insurance system, the debate usually gets stuck on a laundry list of insane, demonstrably false straw men that the GOP and the health-industrial-complex dust off EVERY TIME health care reform is attempted.
Worse, the debate in the corporate media always expertly avoids the criminal role of the insurance industry in our country, and how comparatively efficient and affordable health care is in other countries (as with our own Medicare).
The story is really a quite simple one: If you put a god damn dollar sign on peoples health, corporations that are legally required to only be concerned with maximizing profit for their shareholders (and Wall Street holds a lot of sway on this issue too), will, by definition, always seek to DENY sick and poor people health insurance. And for those that have it, they will seek to DENY them coverage when they do get sick. Why would any one ever base a health care system on the premise that sick people need to be denied coverage???
Its called maximizing profit...doesn't matter if it costs lives or not...why is this so hard for people, or the media, to understand? Answer: Because OUR REAL RELIGION in this country is a Market Fundamentalism that is constantly reinforced through our media, advertisements, and so on...
How can a "pro-life" party be against the good health of Americans? How can "pro lifers" defend a system (and offer proposals that would actually make it worse) that puts profit before people? A for profit system that allows ONE health insurance company CEO to make $1.6 billion in one year...largely from denying sick and poor people coverage. Here's a couple more factoids about our system that people that ACTUALLY value life find offensive:
75 percent of Americans who have been pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.
45,000 people will die every year because they can't afford health insurance.
30% of all money spent on health care will go to corporate, administrative waste (i.e. CEO salaries, advertising, finding ways to kick people off their rolls, denying coverage to people who are sick or have been in the past, etc.)
50 million people are now uninsured next year.
62% of all bankruptcies are due to health care costs.
I would call anyone that does the bidding for such a system, ANTI-LIFE, PRO-SUFFERING, IMMORAL, and GREEDY.
Here's some great clips on the need for a single payer health care system from the great Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders...one we're VERY close to getting in California, and which Vermont HAS just achieved:
Our health care system is disintegrating. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home...
In the midst of this horrendous lack of coverage, the U.S. spends far more per capita on health care than any other nation - and health care costs continue to soar. At $2.4 trillion dollars, and 18 percent of our GDP, the skyrocketing cost of health care in this country is unsustainable both from a personal and macro-economic perspective.
....From a business perspective, General Motors spends more on health care per automobile than on steel while small business owners are forced to divert hard-earned profits into health coverage for their employees - rather than new business investments. And, because of rising costs, many businesses are cutting back drastically on their level of health care coverage or are doing away with it entirely.
SNIP
In recent years, while we have experienced an acute shortage of primary health care doctors as well as nurses and dentists, we are paying for a huge increase in health care bureaucrats and bill collectors. Over the last three decades, the number of administrative personnel has grown by 25 times the numbers of physicians. Not surprisingly, while health care costs are soaring, so are the profits of private health insurance companies.
From 2003 to 2007, the combined profits of the nation's major health insurance companies increased by 170 percent. And, while more and more Americans are losing their jobs and health insurance, the top executives in the industry are receiving lavish compensation packages. It's not just William McGuire, the former head of United Health, who several years ago accumulated stock options worth an estimated $1.6 billion or Cigna CEO Edward Hanway who made more than $120 million in the last five years. The reality is that CEO compensation for the top seven health insurance companies now averages $14.2 million."
This year, let's pass SB 810 and AB 52...the time has come to join the rest of the democratic world and make health care a right, not a privilege.