Reply #10: Since you asked: [View All]

[quiet.american]

Kucinich quote: There is no process for control of premiums.

You know it's easy enough to make a pat statement like that if you don't plan to back it up with a specific discussion yourself of why the controls that are in the bill don't work for you (with "you" meaning Kucinich). I heard Kucinich make a similar claim on Countdown that insurance companies can just keep raising premiums by double-digits and there's nothing to stop them - when this bill is signed, by law, insurance companies will not be able to charge you over a certain percentage of your income in annual premiums -and for most of us, that percentage is pretty low - a range of from 2.0%-9.5%, for income ranges of $22,000 - $88,000/yr. And if you think those percentages are still too high, gov't subsidies kick in to defray the cost.

Another cost control is that insurance companies will not be able to place a coverage limit on your insurance. That, coupled with annual caps on out-of-pocket expenses also goes a long way towards cost-control.

Further, in the words of the president's proposal:
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One essential policy is “rate review” meaning that health insurers must submit their proposed premium increases to the State authority or Secretary for review. The President’s Proposal strengthens this policy by ensuring that, if a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified, health insurers must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable. A new Health Insurance Rate Authority will be created to provide needed oversight at the Federal level and help States determine how rate review will be enforced and monitor insurance market behavior.

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And did anyone notice that outside of the bill, the House took the first step in smashing insurance company monopolies by repealing their anti-trust exemption?

Plus, if there are no cost controls, how is it that CBO projects this bill will reduce the deficit by $132 billion in the first decade and in the decade after that by $1 trillion?

On Countdown, Kucinich also cited Jacob Hacker, "father of the public option" to support his own position of being against HCR. But what he did not say, is that Hacker STILL supports the Senate bill and in an article, made a series of suggestions to bring the Senate bill closer to what he'd wanted the public option to accomplish, many of which, if not all, Obama has included in his proposal:

Jacob Hacker, Why I Still Believe in This Bill
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/why-i-still-believe-bill

At this point to keep insisting "There is no process for control of premiums" is wrong. And Kucinich is smart enough to know he's wrong. So, I can only conclude that he's lying.