A phony report from a phony consumer group, a misleading OpEd by a left-wing legislator and a dose of extreme demagoguery from a BDN columnist have created a well-orchestrated perfect storm of propaganda. But no one should be buying it.
This onslaught of misinformation is meant to discredit the recent health insurance reform passed by the Republican-led 125th Legislature. Although rate hikes under the new Public Law 90 for most Mainers are the smallest in years (many are even seeing reductions), this trio and their comrades are hellbent on sending a different message.
Their goal is to go back to the days of Dirigo Health, extreme health care and health insurance regulations and more Mainers on medical welfare.
The tempest-in-a-teapot started with a “report” from the well-funded, pro-government-health-care lobbying group, “Consumers for Affordable Healthcare.” Their “report” — although few could seriously call it that — cherry-picked numbers, ignored positive new trends and is basically spin.
It failed to take into account the recent rate increases by Anthem and Harvard-Pilgrim that are the lowest ever, and this, according to the Bureau of Insurance, is because of PL 90, the law so maligned by “Consumers” for Affordable Health Care.
The report described higher taxes but didn’t mention that they are only half of the infamous Dirigo Tax, which is now being phased out.
The report cites “worsened product choices,” but the fact is that there are many new products available. Anthem has announced a new product that covers maternity care, combines out-of-pocket costs and is compatible with tax-advantaged health savings accounts. This product is a direct result of PL 90.
The report also failed to look at past rate increases. According to the Maine Bureau of Insurance, Maine’s average yearly rate of increase in the small-group market over the past 10 years has been around 19 percent. In the individual market, the average increase has been 13 percent.
This is a result of decades of Hail Mary liberal experiments, all of which were cheered on by Consumers for Affordable Health Care. Their brainstorms included community rating, which prevented insurance companies from charging young people less than old people. They instituted mandates that forced expensive policies for coverage many people simply didn’t want to pay for. They championed Dirigo Health, which failed to come close to any of its goals, ate up hundreds of millions in tax dollars and delayed real health insurance reform. Maine’s gigantic medical welfare program, MaineCare, has also had an adverse effect on health insurance rates.
There were more experiments, too numerous to mention, that ultimately forced prices up. We never saw a “report” from “Consumers” for Affordable Health Care when all of them failed, when our premiums suffered hyper-increases, when all insurance companies but two left Maine because of our onerous regulatory environment, and when our medical welfare population, percentagewise, became the largest in the country.
Rep. Adam Goode’s misleading and inaccurate OpEd (Sept. 4) is more of the same. While cherry-picking a few rate increases, it completely ignores the facts about the reforms of PL 90 and the positive results. This kind of hyperbole sells well to the Maine People’s Alliance crowd, but working Mainers see through this nonsense.
Columnist David Farmer’s piece (Sept. 5) is an over-the-top, partisan hit job. Its purpose is not to enlighten readers with facts but to destroy with demagoguery. The basis of his piece is the phony report. He exaggerates the results, denigrates Republicans and insinuates malevolence that is unfounded, unfair and insulting. It is meant to frighten. It’s all he has. His side has failed and failed again.
PL 90 is slowly providing relief to Maine’s petri-dish insurance market. The reforms in the new law, which are in complete compliance with ObamaCare, have been well-tested across the country and will bring Maine’s insurance market closer to normalcy.
Among other things, it changes community rating rules, allowing young people to benefit from their low risk. It provides a reinsurance pool so the least healthy can get coverage at reasonable rates. Moreover, it permits more businesses to band together and self-insure. It likewise allows out-of-state purchase of insurance for individuals in 2014.
Maine people have suffered for years as guinea pigs for all of the latest left-wing health care experiments. Correcting this injustice won’t happen overnight. While PL 90 has only been in effect for a few months and has not been fully implemented, good news is coming in already. You’d never know it, however, if you were in the path of this perfect storm of propaganda.
State Rep. Jonathan McKane, R-Newcastle, serves on the Insurance and Financial Services Committee. He is in his fourth term in the Legislature.
Do you represent your district or just everyone but those awful and nasty left-wing individuals? If Farmer’s piece is a “over-the-top, partisan hit job”, then what do you consider yours to be?
Writer did not use term “nasty left wing individuals. That was you.
Obviously. That’s why I didn’t put quotes around that remark. Quit trolling.
So your tactic is to put words in peoples mouths without them actually writing them.
Quit trolling. I didn’t put words in anybody’s mouth.
Excellent op-ed, Rep. McKane. Thank you for your service to the great State of Maine, and for your diligence in keeping the media and their Dem friends honest, or at least less dishonest.
Bravo, Representative McKane.
Naturally, you’ll be attacked by the same people who cheer on President Obama’s disastrous past four years and yet can’t somehow conjure up the patience to let the good effects of PL90 come to fruition.
Now they ask for more time and for patience for the free market to “work itself out”…where were these words during the debate of LD 1333? The BoI wasn’t even allowed to testify on the bill when it was railroaded through the Legislature. The proponents of this law said that rates would be reduced for all Mainers and small buisnesses b/c of all the young people joining the market? Where are the young people? You going to raise your magic wand to magically create them? Did you forget to tell ALEC this legislation wouldn’t work in the oldest state in the US?
What was missing, and ‘Gee, I wonder how that happened’, is the fact that the past rate increase’s were obtained thru negotiations and frequently court-ordered oversight and legislative restriction’s. With the more than ‘suggested resignation’ of the past Insurance Commissioner, and the just passed insurance rate bill that McKane is so proud of, Mainer’s now have a health insurance industry that is free to loot their wallet’s and checkbook’s very year, free of oversight or court supervision, as long as the health insurance rate’s increase’s are kept to under 10 %. Now does anyone really believe that the insurance company’s, once they find a way to get around this 10 % condition, are gonna’ be satisfied with it ? If so, please, take a nice long walk of the Rockland pier’s and enjoy the scenery to Ireland. Just make sure you leave your wallet and your insurance card where the next of kin can find them.
You are wrong. All rates are still reviewed and with the same standards. Look it up. To say otherwise is either misinformed or lying. The difference is file and use vs file and wait a year. The former benefits all.
Rates are reviewed only by, but not subject to the approval of, the State Insurance Commissioner’s Office. The under 10% provision was inserted into legislation that was passed right after Paulie and Company came in and everybody in Augusta was in a lather ‘to do something’ about the then routine double digit increase’s in health care insurance rate’s. Well we did and look where it’s got us. Now, as long as those yearly increases are kept to under 10 % the State Commissioner can not, by law, do a dammed thing and the insurance companies know it. And it’s only a matter of time before the public start reading their yearly premium bill and start’s using a calculator. Of course by then Paulie will be off to Florida to his real home and not even bother with the damage he’s done here. Like it or not, this little insurance rate scam is going to keep pushing Maine to be the 1st State to go Public Option, by whatever name you want to call it, real soon. And every time that this comes up, Maine gets pushed just ‘that much closer’ to being the one by the insurance company’s. It’s coming and the insurance industry knows it. Why do you think that they spend so much on lobbying every year in the State Capitol’s ?
Mike – You are wrong. All rate hikes must be reviewed whether they are under the 10% loss ratio or not. The difference is that they can file and begin use immediately. They will be reviewed, under the same set of standards, and the Superintendent may still take action. If you are not under the 10% loss ratio, you have to file and then wait untill approved which may take a year. Stop lying.
Fine, wait and see how fast those 10 % rate increase’s start and just never, ever seem to end. And watch how fast the Insurance Commissioner rubber stamp’s these same rate hike’s at record speed. Any type of Program or Regulatory Review under LePage is nothing more than a joke, as was under Baldacci. And since it’s now going to be seen faster, and more visibly with the premium’s going up so fast and frequently, it’s now going to be seen as a voing issue in Maine in 2016. Please, do all you can to keep this in front of the voter’s who are getting bent over the sawhorse on a monthly basis, or every time they go to the doctor, so that they can see just who is responsible for their ever increasing health care bill’s. The public’s gonna love you, not to mention the insurer’s that are gonna have to start answering question’s in January when both a new Legislature is gonna be there and are gonna be a whole lot less forgiving than the last one. LePage as Governor or not, it’s going to be a nasty session once the issue of health care comes up and this 10% nonsense idea is revisited. McKane might as well figure he’s gonna be the one tossed since he’s the one that started this. And you can bet the farm that this 10% automatic rate increase is gonna go the way of the dodo, Party be dammed. Money is money and the public has more than the insurance companies do. And once that fact is realized, and turned into a voter issue, the result’s are gonna be immediate and very telling when the media gets ahold of it…..
Huh? Do you remember Dirigo Health? Community rating? MaineCare expansion? The infamous healthcare “bill or rights?” The mandates to cover treatments that people don’t need and don’t want to pay for? Young people being charged as much as old? That is what the left brought us. It won’t be turned around over night.
But answer one thing – Why did/do the Democrats want to protect Anthem’s monopoly so badly?
Thank you Mr. McKane. Keep up the good fight.
Does McKane actually think that we’re going to swallow this load of bunk? Does he have any shame?
We know you screwed us over with your “reforms,” McKane. We aren’t stupid, and we don’t appreciate being lied to right to our faces.
Lowest average rate increases in years you call getting screwed?
Nonsense. My company’s insurance quote went up 0ver 30%, as a direct consequence of “insurance reforms”. Yes, there are other products in the market that could reduce our premiums signifantly, by shifting the risk burden to the employees through reduced coverage.
Average increases are the smallest in years. Many saw decreases – first ever. Check out some of the past 10 years at the BOI website – one year, the individual market had an average increase of 30%. Where was the outcry then?
You and McKane seem to be the only ones plugging this puff piece.
McKane, you lie.
Where are the lies?
Do your own fact-checking.
I have. McKane is right. You just called him a liar because you have no real factual response. You are in fact the liar.
I called him a liar because he is one and I don’t owe you an explanation for it.
An intelligent and thoughtful response.
Buzz off troll.
I hope Lincoln County has had enough of Mr. McKane. Time to send someone else to Augusta. I’m a working Mainer who believes the Republicans are serving the insurance companys rather than Maine people.
Note that the LePage administration is suing the Federal government in order to deprive 30,000 Maine people of health insurance.
Time to send more “scientists” to Augusta to continue the grand healthcare experiments? I don’t think so. You”believe” Republicans are serving insurance companies but – you are wrong. Republicans get nothing from insurance companies but we give them something they don’t want – comnpetitition. You watch.
“Depriving” 30,000 still puts us way above the national average. We can’t afford, Mr. “working Mainer.”
You can spin what ever you like, but I got a rebate check for the overpayment of premiums that otherwise would have gone to the CEO of Anthem!
Thank You Obama!
Republican Healthcare Reform!
What a JOKE!
Take away regulations and let the insurance companys run the show!
Why not enact Jail Reform?
Take away the gaurds , bars and cells and let the Free Market decide!
Does this McKane think that All of us are as niave as his blind followers?
Just like Farmer, hyperbole and ridicule are all you have. Your liberal experiments have brought us to this point. PL90 falls completely into the ObamaCare guidelines.
Well, at least McCane shows no signs whatever of being partisan. You can’t help admire that. It’s mighty rare that you see a politician willing to take a truly objective look at a situation that impinges on his philosophy. And you also have to admire his unwillingness to sink to name-calling or slanderous implications. And truth–there’s something else for which we must admire Mr. McCane. Everything he’s said is, without a doubt, true. We would be foolish not to accept his assertions, even those without evidence. Surely Mr. McCane has the evidence for everything he’s said. We should trust him without asking questions. He is a prince.
LOL
Speaking of cherry-picked numbers and spin. The BDN should be ashamed for publishing this. My Harvard Pilgrim rate increase notice came last week – 24% increase. Smallest in years? This guy has his head in the sand… I agree with the last poster – I hope Lincoln County working people show Mr. McKane the exit.
If a Republican says it, you’d better do a careful exegesis and fact check. Neo-Republicans are as mendacious as the old Urban Machine Democrats.
Interesting…the writer of the right wing propaganda piece talks about the rate increase of Harvard Pilgrim, etc. that is the lowest increase ever. The way he writes about it, you would think he was talking about the lowest rates ever…This is no comfort when your bill goes up while your pay doesn’t.