Washington Update

The Washington Update is a brief summary highlighting Coventry's position on health care reform. 

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October 5, 2009

  

Health Care Reform

Coventry Health Care is an active participant in our national trade association, AHIP.  Over three years ago, in collaboration with the health plan community and our national trade, we offered a comprehensive health care reform proposal, including a complete overhaul of market rules.  In 2008, we proposed health insurance reforms including the removal of pre-existing condition limitations followed by the removal of health status rating.

It was with the hope of helping to create a more constructive climate that the health plan community set out to develop a set of reform proposals linked by common themes – to build on the strengths of the current system, provide all Americans with health security, ensure that no one falls through the cracks, and put the entire health care system on a financially sustainable path.

We have been committed to bipartisan health care reform that makes care more affordable, improves quality, and covers all Americans.  Unfortunately, there has been a political campaign launched to demonize health plans and the men and women who work hard every day in their communities to provide health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans.  The same old Washington politics of ‘find an enemy and go to war’ is a major step backward, not a step forward toward reform.  We will take actions to set the record straight about our community’s contribution to reform.

Policymakers are embracing health insurance reform – the concept we as an industry proposed in 2008.  Health plans were the first of the stakeholders to come to the table with a comprehensive proposal to reform our own sector. Our proposal brings everyone into the system, guarantees coverage for all Americans, does away with pre-existing condition limitations, and ends rating based on health status and gender.

We have worked in good faith to bring constructive solutions to policymakers, but for months, we have explained why we believe a government-run plan would dismantle employer-based coverage, bankrupt local hospitals, and break the promise that if you like your present coverage, you can keep it.

A government-run plan would inevitably rely on its price-setting ability to offer artificially low premiums – effectively subsidized by the private sector through cost shifting.  This would force employers to drop their coverage, creating a death spiral for private insurance and financial catastrophe for many hospitals and doctors.  Physicians, hospitals, employers, and concerned citizens have joined us in voicing these concerns. As the American people have learned the facts, support for a government-run plan has plummeted. 

Policymakers and stakeholders should focus on the unprecedented consensus that exists on bringing everyone into the system, guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions, providing a helping hand for working families, strengthening the health care safety net, and bending the health care cost curve.   

There are a few facts that we believe all Americans should know about the health plan community:

      1.  Health plans have proposed comprehensive health care reform to cover
            all Americans, make care more affordable, and improve quality.

      2.  Health plans proposed health insurance reform last year.

      3.  Health plans have proposed far-reaching initiatives to bend the health cost
           curve and make care more affordable for individuals, families, and
           employers.

      4.  Health plans are advocating and advertising in support of bipartisan
           reform.

Details on the health plan community proposal are available at www.americanhealthsolution.org under “Reform Resources.”  Here you will also find links to relevant studies, testimonies and other information. The latest up-to-date information is available at www.americanhealthsolution.org under the “Blog” tab.