What’s so interesting about insurance rate regulation, and why is it worth reporting on? The topic has everything to do with the ultimate fate of the national health reform law and the media’s unfortunately diminishing role as a watchdog over state government. Campaign Desk has kept an eye on rate coverage in hot spots like Maine, California, and Connecticut, where insurance companies have won important battles. Now, in Pennsylvania, they have triumphed once again.
A few days ago, lawmakers in Harrisburg okayed legislation touted as a way to fix a gap in Pennsylvania’s health insurance laws. The bill extends rate regulation to policies that all companies sell to small employers, a step Pennsylvania needed to take in order to bring the state in compliance with the health reform law. Before passage, the insurance commissioner could not review the rates of policies that for-profit carriers like Aetna and Cigna sold to these employers. So a law that brings them under the regulatory umbrella is a good thing, right? The feds think so, and even the industry likes the change. A spokeswoman for Independence Blue Cross told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “We support the legislation. These bills create the ‘effective rate-review process’ in Pennsylvania that is envisioned with the federal reform law.”
But wait, there’s more to tell. Lawmakers weakened the regulatory process itself by eliminating the insurance commissioner’s authority to approve rate increases. Under the old law, a company wanting to raise rates more than ten percent had to obtain the commissioner’s approval or disapproval, which he or she was required to give. Rate increases of less than ten percent had to be filed and reviewed, but did not need the commissioner’s approval or rejection. Review is a less forceful regulatory tool than approval.
In the new regulatory scheme, however, rate increases greater than ten percent would be reviewed, but the commissioner will not be required to approve them before a company can start using them. The commissioner can either approve the increases or deny them, at his or her discretion. If the commissioner takes no action after forty-five days, the increases will automatically take effect. Rate increases of less than ten percent do not even need the review that they had under the old law. A company can simply begin to use the rates after it files them with the state. In practical terms, that means companies can pile on a series of increases—each totaling no more than 9.9 percent—with little state scrutiny.
What can the public—or, in this case, small business owners—say about this? Not much, it turns out. The new law provides no way for the public to ask for a hearing on a rate increase. The old one didn’t, either, and consumer advocacy groups around the country, including the PA HealthAccess Network, have made this a fighting issue. “The new law says that the only party that can ask for a public hearing is the insurance company. Small business owners who pay the rates cannot do that,” says Athena Ford, a spokeswoman for the Network. The new law requires that any rate request greater than ten percent be posted on the Insurance Department’s website, so at least the media and the public can find out what companies are up to.
The press paid scant attention to this legislation before it passed and afterward. An AP story after the bill passed was brief and perfunctory, and didn’t get the gist of what had happened. The writer did not understand the difference between rate review and rate approval, and what each means for policyholders. Stories published before final passage in the Inquirer and the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader were misleading. Why the poor press showing? Rate regulation is tricky stuff, and often boring, and covering it doesn’t pack the same professional punch as, say, covering a new drug to cure cancer. To get press notice, health reform stories often need obvious victims and villains to produce some drama.
I'm interested in hearing more about how rate increases compare or contrast with tax increases. Rates for health insurance have steadily increased, mostly with ease, but during that same period of time, taxes have declined and tax increases, especially on the wealthy, are difficult to enact. So I'm interested in understanding how insurance rates are similar or different from tax rates because most nations with universal health care use the tax system to finance care. If rate increases can be casual, but tax increases are tougher, than it suggests that ordinary people and employers could have greater protections within the tax system from capricious increase in rates for health coverage. So I'm interested in knowing how that works or doesn't work, advantages vs disadvantages.
#1 Posted by MB, CJR on Thu 22 Dec 2011 at 03:05 PM
There are a few things the screwy leftists will either never understand or never admit:
1. There is no such thing as free health care. Better health care costs more money. PERIOD. Conversely, cutting costs makes crappier health care. PERIOD.
2. Putting the government into the equation always, always, always makes products more expensive and delivery of them less efficient. PERIOD. Taking the government out of the picture always, always, always makes things cheaper and more efficient. PERIOD. Think JetBlue... Think FedEx.
3. Any time you make regulations, you make loopholes, and these loopholes will always, always, always be exploited by people to make money. PERIOD.
4. There is nothing wrong with making money using legal means, including by exploiting loopholes. PERIOD. The problem IS the regulation, not the person who bypasses it.
The world would be a much better place if we could get the liberals to acknowledge these little factoids.
I can respect an Old School Commie argument along the lines of "It's not fair that some people can afford good health care and other people can't, so we're gonna screw with the markets and guarantee crappy health care for everybody". Disagree with it? Sure. But I can respect this emotional basis for redistribution of wealth and forced labor.
These new screwy leftists (who can no longer be called "commies" under Pravda's.. er, I mean CJR's new comment censorship policy) are differently delusional, however... They actually think the Gubmint can run things BETTER than the private sector can... MORE efficiently.. They actually think that the Gubmint can manage a health care system wherein patients end up paying less money to receive better care..
These same daft leftists who openly state the arrogant belief that the average American is far, far too stupid to be entrusted with buying a used car for himself, or to be permitted to refinance his own mortgage without Gubmint oversight, would have us believe that, in aggregate, these same hapless idiots can en masse manage entire industries more efficiently that than the private sector can.
It is THIS patently ridiculous leftist commie stupidity against which I rail.
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 01:31 PM
"1. There is no such thing as free health care. Better health care costs more money. PERIOD."
Nobody argues that. What is argued is whether the cost of health care is a result of resources being efficiently allocated or not. And it isn't, in case you were interested.
"Conversely, cutting costs makes crappier health care. PERIOD."
Only if you are pretending that there are no inefficiencies that can be eliminated. The reality is that much of the growth in health care costs have to do with demands for shareholder returns in line with the past performance. Insurers have benefited from near monopolies in their respective markets for decades. What should be introduced are market alternatives to compete for insurance premium dollars, but because health insurance is a tricky market to underwrite, the players avoid injecting themselves into markets where they would disrupt the monopoly based prices.
What would be useful is a public option, but that option was sacrificed for universal coverage. Because we can't have both you know... unless you want to be like godless Canada.
"2. Putting the government into the equation always, always, always makes products more expensive and delivery of them less efficient. PERIOD. Taking the government out of the picture always, always, always makes things cheaper and more efficient. PERIOD. Think JetBlue... Think FedEx."
FedEx? Don't go there. Nevermind that FedEx operates in a market where their "premiums" are restrained by a public option, but the public option is forced to use FedEx's services due to a 2001 deal (for which FedEx overcharges) and FedEx uses the public option to carry its goods (because they can't beat the USPS price to handle its traffic internally.
"3. Any time you make regulations, you make loopholes, and these loopholes will always, always, always be exploited by people to make money. PERIOD."
So therefore there should be no laws. Woldn't that make life hard for the lawyer industry, nevermind the public that rely on law and regulation to protect them?
"4. There is nothing wrong with making money using legal means, including by exploiting loopholes. PERIOD."
That depends on the societal harm created by the activity making the money. I could make a lot of money taking the prints of the upcoming avengers movie and selling bootleg DVD's. And I'm not stealing anyone's physical property.
Do you think there shod be law and regulation to arrest that kind of activity? And why, when a crafty guy like me can find loopholes to any kind of legal framework to restrict my money making craftiness?
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 04:26 PM
Putting the Gubmint into the equation will only augment and exacerbate any inefficiencies...
The government can't do ANYTHING more efficiently than the free market can. NOTHING.
This is not just Adam Smith.. It's Karl Marx.... It's Vladimir Lenin... It's Paul Krugman.... It's ECON 101.
Yes the government should run some things... But NOT to make them more efficient - instead to keep order. But even the things the government should do (like print money, issue patents, or run the mail) it simply can't do for less money than the private sector could do the same job.
Inefficiency is inherent in government operations - it is this REALITY that you leftists would do well to comprehend.
Hell, just the government-acknowledged fraud and abuse in Medicare amounts to many times the combined profit of all of the private health insurance companies in America.
The Founders went through the School of Hard Knocks for 15 years before they assembled a convention of the smartest people from each of the 13 colonies to make a list of the things the Gubmint should be allowed to do. And for the most part, these guys got it right.
#4 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 06:20 PM
Padikiller,
I spend a fair amount of time in France which has a single-payer system. Everyone who is a resident has access to decent health care. Period. No insurance company regulations, general bullsh*t, policy recissions, networks, etc.
Other European countries have a single-payer system as well, yet, each one is set up a bit differently. The documentary by T.R. Reid - Sick Around the World - covers the plans in Germany, Japan, Thailand and, perhaps, another country - it's been a few years since I watched it. Doctors, patients, hospital managers, etc. are interviewed, they all say that their system does run into problems but compared to America, these problems are worth tweaking.
Under these systems, care is delivered privately. It is not gov't run.
One of my cousins who is English says that the health care system in America is barbaric. Excellent word. Canadians I've spoken with who work at the pharmacies that help seniors obtain their RX when the donut hole is reached and also help unisured Americans say they pity us and wouldn't give up their health care system for anything.
My French friends - mid to older age - have no problems with their health care system, and when I tell them what goes on here and that 50 million are uninsured and more than that are underinsured AND the cost of a doctor visit for an uninsured person, they are aghast. A cab driver who took me to the airport when my friend's car broke down on the autoroute told me that when he hears an occasional complaint, he tells that person to go live in America, and then they'll shut up.
#5 Posted by dianne, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 07:41 PM
dianne wrote: "I spend a fair amount of time in France which has a single-payer system."
padikiller responds: Bullshit. France does not have a single-payer system. This is one reason why its health care system isn't as crappy as other Euro socialized medicine systems.
France also (rightly) denies health care payments to its illegal immigrants and spends more than 10% of its GDP on health care - even more if you figure in the cost of the free medical education it provides its doctors and nurses.
You need to get your facts straight.
#6 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 08:13 PM
"The government can't do ANYTHING more efficiently than the free market can. NOTHING."
Wrong. There are things that government can do more efficiently and there are things that it can't. It depends on the nature of the activity.
The government is no more or less inefficient than a free market that tolerates monopolies and industry collusion. Now a market that doesn't tolerate that might be different, but that would involve regulation and regulators and we CAN'T STAAAAND regulations, can we.
PS. You can often tell an idiot by how often they use absolute statements in place of proof.
"Hell, just the government-acknowledged fraud and abuse in Medicare amounts to many times the combined profit of all of the private health insurance companies in America."
We've gone over this in the past. You're not comparing fraud to fraud (which would be a valid comparison) nor similar systems with similar constraints. The private system did not have the same mandate to accept every person (including the unprofitably sick) for coverage and does not cover the elderly. They got to pocket profits from the healthy premium payers while foisting the sick onto the government. Therefore the costs and claims traffic are much higher in the medicare system.
What the medicare system does do better than the private system is constrain overhead costs, which are ten times the average private cost. The tradeoff is that they are less able to police fraud wile provisioning services. They should police the fraud better, but how much should you raise the premiums to cover that cost, and how long should treatments be delayed in order to verify the validity of each expense?
"padikiller responds: Bullshit. France does not have a single-payer system. This is one reason why its health care system isn't as crappy as other Euro socialized medicine systems."
As a favor, could you not use of over the top language against claims that are largely true?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France
"The French health care system is one of universal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "best overall health care" in the world. In 2005, France spent 11.2% of GDP on health care, or US$3,926 per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the US. Approximately 77% of health expenditures are covered by government funded agencies."
And yeah, with the free universities you don't have health care inflation as a result of education inflation (and the need to pay off student debt) and with the largely single payer system you have the market power to negotiate down health care salaries and treatments to between half and a third of equivalent American costs.
And the evidence is quite plain, despite having an older society and having universal coverage which only increases with the onset of disease, the French pay 5% less of its GDP on its #1 healthcare than America with its #37. And the french utilize their healthcare twice as much in doctors' visits, hospital stays, etc..
So yeah, bs? Getting your facts straight? Physician, heal thyself.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 10:15 PM
Thimbles...
Talk about getting your facts straight!
How can you claim that the French pay 5% of GDP on health care when the article you just cited plainly states that they pay 11.6 of GDP on health care?
????????????????????????
Also, a tidbit you conveniently omitted from the Wikipedia article you cited: "It [the French health care system] is a universal health care system, but is not a single-payer system"
Of course, it is also not really a 'universal health care system" because it does not cover immigrants or visitors.
The main reason the French system worked as well as it did, for as long as it did, is that it requires out-of-pocket spending by patients. Every time you go to the doctor, you pay and wait for a (partial) reimbursement.
I'm all for this type of reform. Requiring patients to shell out money at the doctor's office would go a long way toward reducing wasteful spending.
Alas, it's not enough to prove your case, Thimbles. Your Wikidata is dated.
Here's a more recent dish of Reality:
"When Laure Cuccarolo went into early labor on a recent Sunday night in a village in southern France, her only choice was to ask the local fire brigade to whisk her to a hospital 30 miles away. A closer one had been shuttered by cost cuts in France's universal health system. Ms. Cuccarolo's little girl was born in a firetruck."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html
Another little tidbit of Reality: "French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and patients get treatment even if they can't pay for it. France spends 11% of national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.
The problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget."
So yeah... France spends less (percentage-wise) of its GDP on health care than we do... But they do it by going in the hole to the tune of 10% of its budget for 20 years running, by closing hospitals, by raising co-pays, and by delivering babies in fire trucks.
Repeat after me, lefties! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE STUFF.
Good health care costs money. PERIOD.
And throwing the government into the equation ALWAYS makes it cost more, not less!
#8 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Tue 27 Dec 2011 at 09:22 AM
"How can you claim that the French pay 5% of GDP on health care when the article you just cited plainly states that they pay 11.6 of GDP on health care?"
If you're not willing to read:
"the French pay 5% less of its GDP on its #1 healthcare than America"
then I'm not willing to respond.
And yeah, no one says it's free, but if you're paying twice as much per capita as France, usin he system half as much, and getting #37 quality healthcare, then improving the system would not cost more than what you currently pay. In fact, the cost would more likely be negative.
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 27 Dec 2011 at 01:47 PM
Pardon the error, Thimbles..
Your selective quotation of the Wikipedia article threw me off..
I guess "quality health care" means having your baby delivered in a fire truck because the Gubmint-sponsored insurance plan closed the local hospital to save money...
Oh.. and your co-pay is doubling and you'll need to get referrals to specialists now in order to ration health care services...
Oh, and the whole system has been running in the red for more than 20 years and the crap is getting ready to really hit the fan now and nobody has the slightest idea how to pay for it...
Yep... If that's what "quality care" means.... Then I suppose you get what you pay for, right?
See... Americans don't want to deliver babies in fire trucks because there isn't a hospital around. And Americans don't want the Gubmint telling them how and when they see a specialist.. And Americans don't want to pay taxes to educate their medical professionals.
If an illegal immigrant or a visiting tourist collapses on a street in Boston, what happens? He is stabilized at taxpayer expense, that's what. What happens in France? So much for "universal coverage".
If it weren't for the government boondoggles like Medicare, Medicaid and the ridiculously expensive and wasteful Veterans Affairs medical care - our health care spending, as a percentage of GDP would rival France's.
Let's boldly toll that Reality Bell once more... Medicare alone loses MANY TIMES more money (according to the Gubmint's own estimates) than ALL of the private insurance companies make in profits! PERIOD.
That's just the undeniable Real Deal, dude.
Kinda shoots your premise in the foot. DOA.
The reason that the French system has operated more cheaply than our system is that that it has been running in the red for more than 20 years and the cost of medical education isn't figured into the equation as it should be.
Now there are definitely good things in the French system - mainly that patients have to pay out of pocket at the time of service for treatment. I have a plan whereby I do the same thing - I go to a GP for routine matters and pay $60 and submit the bill to my insurance company.
Requiring people to actually part with money for service greatly increases the efficiency of the system.
And the lower educational standards for GP's make for cheaper doctors (though this cost-reducing trend is happening here as PA's and nurse practitioners take on more of the burden from physicians).
But the lefties don't really want the French system, because it is mostly a private health care system - they want socialized, single-payer Gubmint-run medicine.
Thankfully, the lefties are a minority and the American people have consistently demonstrated their displeasure with the Gubmint screwing with health care.
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Tue 27 Dec 2011 at 02:44 PM
"See... Americans don't want to deliver babies in fire trucks because there isn't a hospital around."
You're not describing a situation unique to France padi..
Yes, every society is experiencing a a demographic shift as the post war, 6 member family generations age. There's a glut of old people we have to get through and everybody's health and pension budgets are struggling with it.
That doesn't mean that all countries are struggling equally well. America is doing especially bad. FACT.
And lets face the facts, if you really cared about how the system cares about its newborns, you'd be switching to something closer to France, Canada, or even Cuba.
http://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_imrt_in&idim=country:CAN&dl=en&hl=en&q=infant+mortality#ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_imrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:CAN:USA:FRA:CUB&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en
"If an illegal immigrant or a visiting tourist collapses on a street in Boston, what happens? He is stabilized at taxpayer expense,"
Bullshit. He is stabilized and then presented with a bill that can start at $50,000 and easily reach into the hundreds of thousands. I know Canadians who have been caught on this without adequate traveller's insurance and it's killed them financially.
"Let's boldly toll that Reality Bell once more... Medicare alone loses MANY TIMES more money (according to the Gubmint's own estimates) than ALL of the private insurance companies make in profits! PERIOD. That's just the undeniable Real Deal, dude."
That's not a "real deal". That's a dumb comparison. Show me the fraud rates paid by private companies dealing in similar traffic to the Medicare system (which covers the lemons in the healthcare insurance market) and you might have a valid point.
This is just dumb.
Cheers,
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 28 Dec 2011 at 01:25 AM
padikiller wrote: "If an illegal immigrant or a visiting tourist collapses on a street in Boston, what happens? He is stabilized at taxpayer expense,"
Thimbles responded: Bullshit. He is stabilized and then presented with a bill that can start at $50,000 and easily reach into the hundreds of thousands.
padikiller dishes the Reality: And if he doesn't pay the bill... Then the taxpayers foot it. Like I said.
I don't see anything in your article about babies being delivered in American fire trucks because entire hospitals have closed.
In America, a lot of ER's have closed due to the proliferation of acute care facilities. This is the market at work making things cheaper and better.
Of course, Trudy has to be all for this closing of ER's. When last she posited upon the matter, she was decrying the ER's for "luring" too many people from the highways for medical care - noting that doing so, while best for the patients, was bad for the "system".
In Lieberman Liberal La La Land, crappy care is good thing, as long as everybody gets it on the Gubmint's dime.
#12 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 28 Dec 2011 at 08:38 AM
Since the physical health of a country is mostly a function of culture (what kind of food you eat, etc.) and engineering (the quality of your water infrastructure, etc.), rather than of how medical insurance is paid for, I find these cross-border comparisons of little use.
A country like France has an advantage over the US in this area, since the US is fantastically more diverse than France in terms of containing many sub-cultures with varying habits regarding diet, exercise, hygiene, and so forth. Part of the reason the French are so worked up about illegal immigration is that the addition of cultural 'alien' populations is not why their historical dirigiste/paternal state functions were created.
Beyond that, countries like France and (especially) Canada glom off the 'barbarian' United States when it comes to little things like innovation and productivity in medical technology and pharmaceuticals. Canada is a rich country with an intelligent population, but it hasn't contributed anything to the science of public health since Banting synthesized insulin. Single-payer systems gut their future-oriented R & D sectors in favor of present consumption - mostly to get people from age 75 to age 85, as is the case with the US health care dollar. Those international rankings tend to omit some important features in which the US outruns most other countries, for instance access to antibiotics.
Some conception of the idea of trade-offs in these debates would be helpful. Trudy and other believers seem to think that in Canada and western Europe, it's all beer and skittles. TR Ried, same story - well do I remember his gushing on NPR at the introduction of the Euro as the continental currency there, and his refusal to mention Europe's looming demographic problems. Some people I've spoken to are so Europhile they even defend European racism on the grounds that it is an excusable attempt to maintain authentic national identities - European contempt for the US, at root, can be traced to their long-held notion that the US is an 'inauthentic' society. The sad thing is that there is a certain type of American who shares that belief - and doesn't seem aware that they are really saying something about themselves.
#13 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 28 Dec 2011 at 12:56 PM
"padikiller dishes the Reality: And if he doesn't pay the bill... Then the taxpayers foot it. Like I said."
Which will only occur if the person goes underground or declares bankruptcy. Illegals can go underground, but they won't get any follow up care. Tourists can declare bankruptcy, but they will be sacrificing assets to their creditors and ruining their credit rating by doing so.
The same tourists will get emergency treatment at an affordable cost at a Canadian or Japanese hospital.
"I don't see anything in your article about babies being delivered in American fire trucks because entire hospitals have closed.
In America, a lot of ER's have closed due to the proliferation of acute care facilities. This is the market at work making things cheaper and better."
Do acute care facilities accept the uninsured at taxpayer or hospital expense?
"Of course, Trudy has to be all for this closing of ER's."
Ugh. That story was about ER's being marketed as general practices, inflating costs on the government's dime. This story is supposed to be about the regulation of insurance rates. Does everything with you have to evolve into an off topic "commie" rant?
"Since the physical health of a country is mostly a function of culture (what kind of food you eat, etc.) and engineering (the quality of your water infrastructure, etc.), rather than of how medical insurance is paid for, I find these cross-border comparisons of little use."
Yes and no. The French diet, which is egg yolk saturated, isn't much better than the American diet and the Canadian diet even less so. Diseases that affect both countries are similar. When you start to examine the various factors which determine the different outcomes, one stands out: the amount of universal access available to the public. The reasons being are that:
a) diseases can be contained more easily when the whole society can seek treatment, not allowing pockets of neglected population to incubate disease.
B) physical access to quality facilities are more wide spread and aren't restricted to just profitable areas.
C) because the qualifying clientele are richer, the fees charged for products and services can be affordably higher. As costs inflate with the incomes of the qualifying population, access to treatment becomes more difficult for those without income inflation, nevermind employer sponsored health care.
"Beyond that, countries like France and (especially) Canada glom off the 'barbarian' United States"
There are two errors in what you said:
1) a study of the level of national discovery and innovation has to factor in the size of the country. A country that holds ten times the population and mulitiples of GDP will predictably support more research. Japan, who has half the population and a sizable GDP, is no slouch in the research and development area despite their single payer system.
2) a country with a sizable GDP can afford to import professionals. Therefore any study of national research and innovation has to take into account the skill source of the professionals making those discoveries on behalf of their American companies or universities.
"Trudy and other believers seem to think that in Canada and western Europe, it's all beer and skittles... Some people I've spoken to are so Europhile they even defend European racism."
I don't have a naive notion about life in other countries, I've lived in several. When I say "you could learn from francapan's system" I'm not saying we should all don berets, eat sushi, and be xenophobes. I suspect Trudy is similar in that fashion.
Cheers.
#14 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 28 Dec 2011 at 02:32 PM
Padikiller,
My facts are straight - straight out of the mouths of French friends who reside in France, French people I meet when out for walks when I'm in France and the cab driver I mentioned.
Further more, universal coverage means coverage of the citizens of the country. Therefore, it doesn't include non residents which would be undocumented aliens as well as visitors/tourists.
Guess me and all these French people are biased, know-nothing liberals, eh?
Since you think the free market works so well and that must also mean you think the health care system in America is fine and dandy, what are your suggestions for the millions of Americans who can't afford health insurance as well as those whose policies are rescinded b/c their care will adversely affect the insurer's bottomline? Those are just two major problems for starters.
#15 Posted by dianne, CJR on Thu 29 Dec 2011 at 09:31 PM