by nyceve
Dave Jones, the Insurance Commissioner of California is ready for a fight and so are the people. Keep your eye on Dave as the battle for single payer in California unfolds.
The for profit health insurance industry is destroying lives in pay or die California. You don’t believe me? Look at this.
Working families are being gouged to the point of having to drop their already woefully inadequate coverage. Coverage so bad and so bare bones that it usually carries a deductible of $5000-$10,000. For Blue Shield customers who buy their own insurance, the likely rate hikes will be the third since October, amounting to up to 59 percent in some cases.
In a particularly naked attempt to tamp down criticism of its egregious gouging, Blue Shield is hiding behind an actuary who will not even speak to the press to explain his findings. The Blue Cross actuary who’s in hiding is none other than David Axene.
Mr. Axene, is the actuary who last year found errors in the BC/BS rate hike application. One would assume BC/BS figured by enlisting Axene as an “independent” arbiter of price gouging, it could slam through yet another rate hike. But Axene has gone to ground, and isn’t talking.
Note on David Axene’s web site, he is deflecting all inquires to the BC/BS PR hacks. Here’s a copy of Axene’s full report.
The for profit insurance industry earned 12 billion in profits in 2010. Insurers are so flush that if you want to make money in the stock market, investors are being urged to buy funds that include health insurance companies.
Seems that skyrocketing profits go hand-in-hand with skyrocketing premiums. The greed of the insurance industry knows no bounds. And it is greed, a particularly deadly sin, which will bring them crashing to the ground
The good news is that grassroots groups, including California OneCare (where I serve on the all-volunteer board) are coalescing around plans to bring universal single payer healthcare to everyone in this beleaguered state.
Take a look at this report which was on the PBS Newshour a day or so ago. Pay attention to Dave Jones, the recently elected California Insurance Commissioner.
Dave Jones is their biggest nightmare, and we’re (that means all of us) , going to help him rid the state of this parasitic industry.
Dave Jones has been fighting this industry for years, he knows what he’s up against.
As an assemblyman, Dave Jones was a fierce champion of the people and an advocate of single payer health care.
Listen to Jones at 2:30 describe the medical loss ratio.
“Every cent of every premium dollar that is spent on healthcare is actually viewed by these companies as a loss, which is not available to cover administrative expense, executive salaries and profits. The very term medical loss ratios which is used to assess the relative share of the premium dollar that goes to healthcare, is itself an extraordinarily sad commentary that it is being treated by an industry as a loss.”
The fight for single payer in California belongs to all of us. It is the camel’s nose under the tent, and the insurance industry is going to do whatever it takes, to defeat us. If we are successful in California (and Vermont), we have begun the long slog of ridding our nation of the evil scourge of the insurance industry.
We will win and they will lose. This is not a threat, it’s a guarantee. What is going on in California is unsustainable. President Obama handed us a gift the other day, by supporting an accelerated state opt out from 2017 to 2014.
Does everyone know that in Canada, single payer began at the provincial level in Saskatchewan and then eventually , as more provinces embraced universal health care, the federal government got on board. This is how it will happen in the United States, but it will take all of us.
Please note, I am on the Board of California OneCare
Originally posted at the DailyKos.