The High Cost of Allowing Health Insurers To Continue Keeping Us In The Dark

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http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/01/11262/high-cost-allowing-health-insurers-continue-keeping-us-dark

n his State of the Union address, President Obama said very little about health care reform, but what he did say was a reminder of how tight a grip the insurance industry has on the U.S. health care system -- and will continue to have if the Affordable Care Act is not implemented as Congress intended. And it is largely up to the President to make sure that it is.

“I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny your coverage or charge women more than men,” he said.

That comment drew applause, although certainly not from the insurance industry’s friends in Congress, who continue to call for gutting the law. That’s because when and if it’s fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will make many of the most egregious practices of insurers a thing of the past. Weakening or stripping out the consumer protections in the law that insurance companies despise would make executives and shareholders of those companies very happy, not to mention much richer in the years to come.

So while it was good to hear the President say that going back to the way things used to be is out of the question, he will have an opportunity within the next few days to demonstrate that he really means it, that he is willing to walk the talk.

One of the most important and popular provisions of the law is the one that requires insurers and employers to provide us with information about health plan benefits and costs in a standard format and in language that we can actually understand -- and do it before, not just after, we sign up and start paying premiums. A poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found in November that the requirement that insurers and employers provide easy-to-understand summaries of health plan benefits and costs is the most popular provision of the entire law.