Price is wrong.

May 23

How Republicans might “solve” the pre-existing conditions issue.

Now here’s an idea.

“Guaranteed Issue” - no one excluded based on pre-existing conditions.

“Community rated” premiums - all insureds pay the same.

Variable Actuarial Value Benefits - insurers adjust co-pays, deductibles, co-insurance, annual caps, and lifetime caps based on pre-existing conditions.

Republican P.R. problem solved - now anyone can get affordable coverage!

Available, affordable, and almost complete useless to the people who will need it most. Plus, it’s a near complete solution to the “problem” that health insurance disproportionately benefits the sick at expense of the healthy.

Watch for “Guaranteed Issue, Community-Rated, Variable Benefit Health Insurance”, coming soon to a Republican policy shop near you!

How to tell the merely inadequate parts of Price-care from the horrible parts.

Good news. The Republicans have decided against enacting Pricecare.

Bad news. They will act piecemeal, putting into place only the worst parts of Pricecare: allowing insurance purchases across state lines and restricting malpractice litigation. The race to the bottom among states effectively deregulates health insurance on a national level. “Tort reform” effectively removes judicial oversight of medical practice leaving enforcement of the standard of care to policing by doctors themselves or state regulatory boards already largely captured by the medical profession.

May 11

GOP shies away from offering healthcare reform alternative - The Hill's Healthwatch (link)

Even House Republicans won’t support Tom Price’s bill. Even Phil Gingrey, a co-sponsor of Tom Price’s bill, won’t support Tom Price’s bill. Even Tom Price’s support for Tom Price’s bill seems a bit lukewarm.

May 2

Price is wrong. Part 218.

This may be all the data you need to assess the seriousness of U.S. Rep. Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) signature legislation, the so-called Empowering Patients First Act. The bill summary posted by Price himself when the Act was first proposed in 2009 explained that its principal benefit - a refundable tax credit of $5000 for a low income family of four - was tied to a national average individual market premium claimed to be $5,799, and then adjusted for inflation.

The figure of $5,799 was, Price said, based on premiums found in a broad national survey. But the survey he cited was two years of medical cost inflation old by the time Price used it to set the $5000 subsidy.

After two more years of medical cost inflation, Price reintroduced a near-identical bill in 2011 with no change at all to the subsidy to adjust for inflation

Now, more than five years after the survey, Price is still pitching a $5000 subsidy.

Maybe Tom Price, M.D., over those five years never heard about those premium increases in the individual market upwards of ten and even twenty percent in a single year. Maybe, Tom Price’s bill is not really addressed to giving help to low income citizens. Maybe Tom Price’s bill is just a political show horse whose primary purpose is to beat down meaningful health care reform.

Why The GOP Lacks A Plan To Replace ‘Obamacare’ | TPMDC

Sahil Kapur May 1, 2012, 1:42 PM Talking Points Memorandum DC

“Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the No. 5 House Republican, says he opposes one of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions — a ban on the insurance company practice of discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions.

‘It’s a terrible idea,’ he told Politico.

…

A Price aide told TPM in an email that ‘we can achieve coverage through broader pooling mechanisms, even for those with pre-existing conditions…’”

*******************

There she is again, the Broader Pooling Mechanisms Fairy*. The one who repeals an iron law of health insurance by sprinkling fairy dust on the brains of private health insurance company risk managers. The dust makes them forget that there is profit to be made from excluding patients for whom a large volume of claims can be predicted from a brief medical history.

In any case, it heartening to see that Talking Points Memo DC was on-hand for the Washington breakout of our Georgia-grown nonsense.

* FYI, the Broader Pooling Mechanisms Fairy is a first cousin of the Confidence Fairy, often mentioned by Paul Krugman.

Title; “Congressman Price Offers a Positive Solution to the Future of Health Care (by RepTomPrice)”

How smoothly calculated it all is. E.g., use of the Wingfield column quotes - planted a few weeks ago with an obscure, friendly, local and dreadfully conservative columnist. Just so they could be excerpted for the video. Then, he tells Politico, “Interview me. I’ve got a video.”

Best feature: at the end it says go to webpage for more information. tom.house.gov/hr3000. Does the page say anything about preexisting conditions? No. It refers to two other documents. One is a summary of the bill. Does it mention pre-existing conditions. Nope. The other is the section by section - the one that’s now five years out of date on the premium amount. But at least it still has the still-useless high risk pools!

And still, there’s Tom’s voice, promising to “solve() the problems of portability and pre-existing”. Never mind that he could have re-quoted himself from the Wingfield column to the effect that high risk pools are unworkable.

Wow. He’s got a video. Must be a great plan!

“The plan that’s likely to get the closest look from Republicans is sponsored by Price, an orthopedic surgeon and one of the House’s leading voices on health care. He released a video on Wednesday touting the plan, which he originally introduced in 2009.”

Apr 30

First Responder to the current HR3000 offensive

AJC declined to publish the following paragraph as a letter to the editor in reply to a Kyle Wingfield editorial in mid-April. The Wingfield piece was a first step in a new offensive push for HR3000.

“Tom Price’s (R) signature piece of legislation, as written, relies on high risk pools as a safety net for individuals with pre-existing conditions. A chorus of experts rejected that approach. Now, in a Kyle Wingfield interview in the AJC, Price admits that high risk pools won’t work. Still, Price has not changed a word of his legislation. Instead, he waves his hands and imagines that the creation of large risk pools comprising persons not covered by employer insurance will, because of sheer size, not turn away people with chronic health problems. But it will always be in an insurer’s interest to “clean the pool” of high risks. The only known way to overcome this iron law of insurance is to ban discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, a step Republicans refuse to take. Price is wrong. Still.”

On cue, after about 10 days, the AJC ran a front page story on GOP health law alternatives featuring the Tom Price Plan. Ted Miller and I re-purposed, updated, and slightly Georgia-fied our 2010 Des Moines Register op-ed for a proposed op-ed for the AJC. Still waitin’.