Healthy Indiana Plan Nearing Capacity for Childless Adults

One year after the state launched a state-subsidized health care program for the uninsured, many people are in danger of losing access to Indiana health insurance due to an enrollment cap. 

Shari Rudaskvy from the Indianapolis Star says that the Healthy Indiana plan is close to reaching the cap of 34,000 on adults without children that are allowed to enroll. Currently, about half all 42,000 enrollees fall in that category.

Higher unemployment rates will probably lead to even more people applying for the plan, causing it to reach capacity even sooner. Those adults who have access to health insurance from their job (even if it's prohibitively expensive) or who need access to vision or dental care (HIP doesn't cover either) might find that it makes more sense to get health insurance quotes for another plan that could help them. The same goes for people who are underinsured.

UnitedHealth to Guarantee Your Right to Health Insurance

This is pretty strange: Golden Rule, a part of UnitedHealth, is now selling an insurance plan that ensures your future access to health insurance. The Continuity plan guarantees the right to health insurance in case you get laid off or your employer no longer sponsors health insurance coverage. The monthly fee is a percentage of the current health insurance premium. I guess this could be a good idea for someone with pre-existing conditions that might prevent them from buying health insurance on the open market, but is this really that much of a savings on individual health insurance rates over COBRA?

UnitedHealth's Continuity is now available in 25 states, and plans are that it will soon expand to 40.

How to Handle Life Insurance During the Bailouts

Many consumers are worrying about their life insurance policies in the wake of the AIG bailout. Insurance Bureau has some tips:

Q: What do I do with my term life insurance?
A: If you need more term life insurance, buy the additional insurance with a more stable provider as a backup.

Q: What if the value of the cash portion of my universal life insurance or whole life insurance policy has lost value?
A: In that case, financial experts recommend that you either remain with your current life insurance carrier, or look for penalty-free plans to convert universal or whole life insurance policies into term policies.

Q: Why do insurance prices fluctuate so much?
A: While it's very nerve-wracking to see insurance prices swing up and down, it's a factor of insurance company profits and losses from the last year, as well as modifications of their underwriting criteria.

Q: How can I save money on my insurance?
A: The best way to save money on any type of insurance is to compare different providers' insurance quotes on a regular basis. It's easy to do this on the Internet.

A proposal unveiled Wednesday by the health insurance industry would provide universal health coverage and hack away at medical costs through an outside group, and it has seen initial praise from an unlikely source.

The proposal, offered by the America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, trade group, comes on the heels of a universal health care proposal offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., as well as pledges by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D- Mass., to move quickly on the issue in 2009.

The keystone of the AHIP proposal is a goal to reduce growth in health care expenses throughout the U.S. market by 30% - a target Ignagni said would reduce health care costs by more than $500 billion from 2010 to 2014.

AHIP's plan won a positive remarks from Kennedy, who figures to play a large role in the debate next year as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"There's a spirit of optimism about our work to ensure quality, affordable health care for all Americans - and today's announcement adds to that optimism," Kennedy said in a statement. "The insurance industry has advanced serious proposals that deserve serious analysis and consideration."

The proposal represents an opening salvo for insurers, who have by and large agreed that universal coverage is necessary, in the health reform debate. Importantly, their proposal builds on the employer-based health coverage system - an approach favored by President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Baucus.

"We're trying to have early input into what I'm sure will be a process of many elements and compromises," AHIP President Karen Ignagni said Wednesday.
Large insurers in the AHIP trade group include Aetna Inc. (AET), Humana Inc. ( HUM), Wellpoint Inc. (WLP) and Cigna Corp. (CI) and UnitedHealth Group.

The AHIP proposal suggests that Congress set a five-year cost goal and that a "public-private advisory group" would do the work of finding ways to cut spending.

Not surprisingly, the plan doesn't supplant the role of private insurers by including single-payer elements. For those earning less than 400% of the federal poverty level, the plan would offer "refundable, advanceable tax credits" to buy private insurance.

Ignagni said Wednesday that, unlike Baucus' proposal, the insurers' proposal wouldn't require that individuals buy insurance. She cited "the economic disruption in the country and hearing very specifically not only from large businesses but small businesses" as the primary reason for not including such a mandate.

"We didn't think that now was the time to recommend an employer mandate," Ignagni said.
Other elements of the AHIP plan would create an "essential benefits plan" for individuals and small business to purchase high-deductible insurance for wellness and prevention as well as acute care, as well as expansion of the state children's health insurance program, or SCHIP, and a streamlining of Medicaid, the federal government's health-coverage program for people below the federal poverty level.

By Patrick Yoest, Dow Jones Newswires

Half of Individual Policies Cost Less Than $130 Month According to eHealth Report

eHealthInsurance announced the release of a new study on the individual health insurance market. The findings appear in The Cost And Benefits Of Individual And Family Health Insurance Plans, a commissioned evaluation of eHealth Inc.'s data conducted by Forrester Consulting.

The analysis provides facts on actual premiums paid for individual health insurance and the nature of accompanying plan benefits. The research, based on a nationwide sample of over 227,000 individual and family (IFP) major medical policies that were purchased through eHealthInsurance and active in August 2007, revealed the following insights:
-- The average monthly premium for individual policies was $158
-- The average premium for family policies was $366
-- The average deductible for individual policies was $1,972
-- The average deductible for family policies was $2,610
-- The majority of family policies had annual premiums between $3,400 and $4,650
-- Half of all individual policy holders paid less than $130 per month for monthly premiums
-- More than half of all family policy holders paid less than $300 per month for monthly premiums
-- Women paid, on average, 18% more than men did for individual health insurance premiums
-- The average plan lifetime limit was $3.9 million
-- A vast majority of individual and family policyholders had lab x-ray, emergency, prescription and chiropractic coverage

For consumers, health insurance isn't a discretionary item, but rather something they need and can afford through the individual market. This is especially critical for those seeking alternatives to costly COBRA coverage.

The new analysis shows that on average, women are paying 18% more than men for individual health insurance premiums. Among major medical plans sold to individuals, women paid an average of $171 per month, compared to the average monthly premium of $145 paid by men.

The range of average monthly premiums in 2007 for individual plans across the United States was between $83 in North Dakota and $388 for New York residents, representing a monthly disparity of $305, or $3,660 per year. Regionally, the Northeast had the highest average monthly premium for individuals, at $239, while the Midwest had the lowest at $130. In the West, eHealthInsurance members paid on average $150 per month for an individual plan, while those in the South paid an average of $154 per month.(2)

The report found that in 2007, sixty percent of children's plans had monthly premiums of $100 or less, with an average monthly premium of $92 for individual children. Individual health insurance for children is an important and affordable option for families that may be shouldering a larger -- potentially more expensive -- portion of the dependent premium with employer-based health insurance.

New to the evaluation this year is data on eHealthInsurance members that have chosen an HSA-eligible plan. Of the 227,000 plans surveyed, 14 percent were HSA-eligible plans. Of these plans, the average premium for an individual plan was $133 and the average premium for a family plan was $302. The majority of HSA-eligible plan holders were between the ages of 25 and 44 years old.

The 2007 plan data referred to in the The Cost And Benefits Of Individual And Family Health Insurance Plans report is derived from over 227,000 individual and family (IFP) major medical policies purchased through eHealthInsurance that were active in August 2007. The report analyzes monthly premiums paid on individual and family major medical health insurance policies in 2005, 2006, and 2007, along with the benefits associated with those plans.

Insurance Agents View of Obama Health Plan

In the 1990's it was the now-defunct Health Insurers Association of America that led the charge against Hillary Clinton''s health care reform plan, marshalling the entire business community in a revolt that had at least a bit to do with the Republicans'' take-over of Congress in 1994. But as the health insurance community prepares for revived efforts at health care reform under president Obama, it is not the insurers who write the coverage, but the producers who sell it, that seem most alarmed by changes that could be coming.

America''s Health Insurance Plans greeted the Obama victory by declaring its members "support coverage for all Americans, coverage they can afford, and coverage they can keep," and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said Obama''s health care agenda has "in common many of the same stepping stones to health care reform" as the Blues'' own plan.

But agents and brokers have been far less sanguine about what it could mean for them.Though several aspects of Obama''s health plan concern them, the issue that has benefits brokers most concerned is the proposed "National Health Insurance Exchange," a federal pooling mechanism open to all businesses and all individuals. By making the federal government the primary intermediary in the benefits market, and greatly curtailing the degree to which group plans can differ in cost or design, the NHIE, some fear, could effectively displace the agent community nationwide.

"None have been successful in lowering costs," Abadie said. "However, repeated failures have not dissuaded lawmakers."And it isn''t just life/health specialists who are paying attention. Agents and brokers that traditionally have been engaged primarily in commercial property/casualty increasingly have been relying on the profitable growth of health benefits as a hedge against the waning and waxing of the insurance pricing cycle."Employee benefits, for independent agents, is the fastest part of their book of business," said Robert Rusbuldt, president of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. "For a medium-size agency, employee benefits is now constituting a meaningful size of their book of business, and it''s the most profitable part of their book of business, because there''s no soft market."While many in the health insurance community were just as concerned about aspects of Sen. John McCain''s health plan – particularly its suggestion of capping the deductibility of employer-provided benefits – Joel Wood, senior vice president of government affairs with the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, noted there also had been an understanding that McCain would have been unlikely to ever get his plans through a Democratic-controlled Congress. Obama will have other problems with his plan, including finding the money to pay for it, but congressional support will not be one of them. "To the extent that anybody''s going to pay for it, beyond those individuals making more than $250,000, who will pay for everything under the Obama plan, there has been this nebulous conversation about ''meaningful contributions'' from employers," Wood said. "We think that that could have the perverse effect of driving more people into the federal system, doing the Massachusetts-style thing, where you just pay your penalty up-front for not covering your own folks and then you wind up with a dysfunctional governmental system."

Voters back referendum on single-payer health care

Early results showed Cape Codders supported a nonbinding referendum stating that health care should be a universal human right and should be administered under a single-payer health insurance system available to all citizens of the state.

As of 1 a.m, 62 percent of voters in 18 Cape and Islands towns and Gosnold had voted in favor of the ballot initiative. Early results showed Cape Codders supported a nonbinding referendum stating that health care should be a universal human right and should be administered under a single-payer health insurance system available to all citizens of the state.

The question also appeared on ballots in other Massachusetts communities. Supporters said the current health-care system is too fragmented and expensive to work effectively. Detractors were concerned about government taking over health care.

The towns of Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs and Nantucket all passed the no-binding referendum, as did the four precincts in Falmouth where it was on the ballot. Results were not in for Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Yarmouth, Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Tisbury and West Tisbury.

Under a single-payer system, a Medicare-type program or a nonprofit trust fund would provide insurance.

How Children Fare in the Health Care Debate

A report has detailed how children are treated in the health care plans of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. The report identifies both opportunities and concerns with the policy changes outlined by both candidates, with an eye toward whether the plans would ensure access to comprehensive and affordable health care insurance for every American child.

The report takes into consideration the unique health care needs of children when analyzing the impacts of tax credits, purchasing private insurance across state lines, covering children through a mandate, and how public programs interact with private sector coverage.

The report concludes the following regarding Senator McCain's plan:

-- The McCain tax credit will weaken families' ability to afford coverage for children, as it is insufficient to make coverage affordable and does not keep pace with growth in the cost of health care premiums. Specifically, the tax credit fails to adjust for family size and the added cost when children are born or adopted. Therefore, the credit provides assistance for a significantly smaller share of health care costs for families with children than for childless households.
-- The 19 million children with special health care needs currently insured though employer coverage may be barred from insurance due to pre-existing conditions. Children who need insurance most, those who are sick today, could be charged much more for insurance, if they are
offered insurance coverage at all.
-- By allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, millions of children will lose the protection of having guaranteed benefits. In fact, it is estimated that up to 55 million children could lose the
protection for mandated coverage for well care visits, 18 million could lose autism care, and 16 million children could lose lead poisoning treatment.
-- Funding for public insurance programs for low-income children could be reduced, through McCain's proposed reductions in Medicaid spending.


The report also concludes the following with regard to Senator Obama's plan:
-- The plan seeks to ensure that all of the more than 8 million children currently without health insurance will become insured throughcombination of public and private coverage options and by requiring parents to enroll their children in coverage.
-- Successful public programs will be expanded and strengthened to provide coverage to more children. The Obama plan would continue and expand Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), critical programs that act as safety-net coverage for children.
-- Tens of millions of children will benefit from improved consumer protections in the private health insurance market.

The report can be viewed at http://www.firstfocus.net/pages/3519/.

Health Care Cost Expected to Rise

The average employee's health care costs, including premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, will increase 8.9% in 2009. That's well above the rate of inflation and average salary increases.

For that reason, it's more important than ever to scrutinize your employer's health care options during open enrollment season. Don't assume the plan you used last year is still the best choice, because the terms may have changed.

Unfortunately, some health insurance plans are quite complicated. Here are some ways to save money:

•Understand the difference between co-insurance and co-payments. Many employees are accustomed to making co-payments of $5 to $25 for everything from prescription drugs to doctor's visits. More employers are replacing co-payments with co-insurance in an effort to control costs

•Sign up for mail-order prescriptions. Most plans offer mail-order delivery of prescription drugs, and these programs can save you a lot of money. You'll receive a larger supply — typically 90 days — you'll save money on co-payments and may get discount.

•Contribute to a health care flexible spending account or health savings account. Most employers offer flex accounts, which let you use pretax dollars to pay out-of-pocket medical and dental costs. These accounts can help reduce the cost of co-payments, co-insurance and deductibles.

Hopefully these three tips will help you weather the storm of the next health insurance rate increase.

Health Care Propsal Consumer Feedback

Neither presidential candidate has provided a health-care position that is resonating strongly with Americans -- unless they are uninsured or fear they soon could be.

Beyond a few overlapping ideas on preventive care and health-information technology, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have different views on how to fix what ails the nation's health-care system.

Yet when it comes to how Americans think the candidates' plans would affect them personally, four in 10 registered voters said they don't believe one would be better than the other, according to a new poll of 935 voters from Harris Interactive and researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. Within that group, 13% said they didn't know if there would be a difference.
A third of voters say Obama's plan would work better for them, while 27% favor McCain's plan.

The individual health insurance blueprints laid out by both candidates would maintain a significant role for private health insurers.

In the voter poll, the biggest gap appeared to be on the issue of securing health insurance, where Obama carved out a lead: 45% of uninsured people said Obama's proposal would be more likely to provide them with coverage compared with just 14% for McCain, according to the survey.
What's more, 31% of currently insured people said they'd more likely be protected from losing their insurance under Obama's plan versus 19% who said the same about McCain's proposal.
Running the numbers McCain's plan would have little effect on the number of uninsured in the beginning, but over time the number of uninsured people is likely to grow as the value of his proposed tax credit erodes relative to rising health-care costs, according to a report published in the Sept. 16 online edition of the journal Health Affairs. His plan likely would result in less-generous policies than the ones people have now, the study found.

Despite fears that all employers would drop their coverage as a result of the tax changes, it doesn't appear that would be the case, though many small employers may cease offering insurance, said Sherry Glied, co-author of the report and a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The tax changes would lead to about 20 million people initially losing employer coverage and 21 million people enrolling in individual coverage, including some who are currently uninsured and others who would lose job-based group coverage, the study found.

McCain's proposal tries to account for the people with pre-existing conditions who would be left out of the individual market due to prohibitively high costs or denials of coverage by creating what he calls Guaranteed Access Plans, or high-risk pools for the sick. Thirty-four states now sponsor such pools, but they cover fewer than 200,000 consumers, and it would take far more than the $7 billion to $10 billion that McCain has proposed to subsidize affordable coverage for the people who would need it, the Health Affairs report found.

Another of his ideas, deregulating state insurance rules so people could buy coverage across state lines, may result in loss of protections such as minimum benefits standards, limits on who can be excluded from health plans and access to appeals processes for denied claims.

Obama's plan, despite significantly broadening coverage, would leave about 6% of the working-age population uninsured compared with 17% of the non-elderly who are uninsured today, according to an analysis from the Urban Institute.


Employers want a greater focus on health-care quality and cost and warn that a change in the tax treatment of employee health coverage would compel them to reduce the level of benefits they offer, according to a survey from law firm Miller & Chevalier and the American Benefits Council, which represents 280 major employers.

About three out of four employers said a repeal of the employee tax exclusion for job-based health coverage, the centerpiece of McCain's plan, would have a strong negative impact on their work force, according to the poll of 187 large employers whose health plans cover 10,000 to 50,000 individuals.

If workers would be taxed on the cost of health insurance above a certain threshold, 32% of companies said they'd reduce the level of coverage available either immediately or gradually, while 59% would offer a new plan option with less-generous benefits.

Changing the tax treatment would affect employees differently depending on where they live since local health-care markets vary widely in costs, said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council.

When it comes to forcing employers to offer coverage or pay a financial penalty, a concept known as pay or play that's featured in Obama's proposal as well as in Massachusetts' current health-reform system, 46% said the move would have a strong negative impact on their work force.

Attitudes toward the expansion of public health programs appear mixed, with 21% of employers saying it would have a strong positive impact on workers compared with 29% who said the opposite.

Health Care Plan Details

John McCain would end the tax-free status of employer-paid health insurance premiums, replacing it with a tax credit to offset the cost of insurance -- making it easier to buy individual health plans, even for people who get insurance through their job. He would help states establish high-risk pools to subsidize insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. And he proposes a number of measures to reduce health-care costs while improving treatment.

Rival Barack Obama would make reasonably priced, comprehensive, government-sponsored health insurance available to every American. Obama would cultivate insurance industry reform through a National Health Insurance Exchange, where individuals could buy coverage, including the government plan, that meets generous standards. Obama would target subsidies to low-income people buying insurance through the exchange. Small businesses would get a tax credit to offset premium costs, while bigger companies that do not provide health insurance would face new taxes to help underwrite the government program. Parents would be required to insure their children. Like McCain, Obama would undertake to lower the cost of and improve care, and also supports a number of other health initiatives.


MCCAIN PLAN DETAIL
McCain promises to "provide access to health care for every American," by "restor[ing] control to the patients themselves."

Restructuring insurance: The central strategy of the presumptive Republican nominee's plan is to break the government-sanctioned monopoly for employer-sponsored health insurance: he would end the exclusion that protects company-paid insurance premiums from being taxed as employee income. Instead, everyone would get a refundable tax credit -- $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families -- to reimburse the cost of insurance. Those happy with the insurance available from their job could keep it. Dissatisfied employees, or those without insurance, could buy the coverage they prefer, from any insurer anywhere in the country. (Employers, too, could purchase insurance across state lines.) If insurance premiums were cheaper than the credit, the difference would be deposited in a Health Savings Account with expanded benefits.

Eventually, as more people bought their own insurance tailored to their needs, premium costs in the individual marketplace would presumably fall. Those with pre-existing conditions who remain shut out of that market could find coverage in a state-sponsored high-risk pool called a "Guaranteed Access Plan," with "reasonable limits" on premiums and subsidies for low-income Americans.

Lowering costs and improving patient care: Meanwhile, McCain proposes several initiatives to reduce medical costs, including:
Cutting Medicaid and Medicare costs
Permitting the import of safe prescription drugs and faster introduction of new generics
Emphasizing healthy habits, prevention, early intervention, and smoking cessation programs to lower the costs of chronic disease. McCain supports more federal research dollars to study chronic disease care and cure
Promoting coordinated care
Encouraging states to experiment with alternative forms of access, innovative Medicaid arrangements and insurance policies, and new licensing schemes for providers
Promoting rapid deployment of information systems and technology that allows doctors to practice across state lines
Making medicine more transparent by publicizing information on treatment options and physician and provider records, particularly about medical outcomes, quality of care, costs and prices
Tort reform to protect from lawsuits doctors who follow clinical guidelines and adhere to safety protocols.
Other health initiatives: McCain backs state experiments, particularly those based on patient choice, that provide long-term care to seniors. McCain would "advance" federal research into autism, and supports assistance for children who have it.

The McCain Record: It's "variable," says Dr. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, which lobbies for universal coverage and a robust public health infrastructure, among other priorities. Last year, McCain voted with the organization 67 percent of the time; in 2005, it was 20 percent. Most recently, the Arizona senator opposed the SCHIP bill that some say would've expanded the children's health program. But, Benjamin cautions, the scorecard "doesn't give any credit for committee work, doesn't give any credit for behind the scenes work." On a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco, for example, "We worked very productively with Sen. McCain's office." And, he adds, "he's been supportive of health research."


OBAMA AGENDA, IN DETAIL
Democrat Barack Obama's proposal is as at least as sweeping as his opponent's, but in a different way. It is certainly much more elaborate, detailed in a 15-page position paper. Obama pledges to "tackle the root causes of health disparities" in ways big and small.

Restructuring insurance: Obama would create a national health plan available to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses. The plan would feature comprehensive benefits, similar to those offered to federal employees (including members of Congress), and would guarantee eligibility. The insurance would be portable and affordable. Participating insurance companies in the new public program would be required to demonstrate that they meet standards for quality, health information technology, and administration.

Additionally, Obama would develop a National Health Insurance Exchange, a venue for individuals to purchase insurance, including the new public plan. The exchange would offer transparency, as well as rules and standards for participating private insurers. (Exchange plans, for example, could not deny coverage or base premiums on health status, and would have to be at least as generous as the public plan.) Meanwhile, all insurers, even those not part of the exchange, would have to dedicate a "reasonable share" of premium revenue to patient care rather than administrative costs or profit, and disclose that share. The exchange, in conjunction with the new public plan and other federal insurance programs, would also exert pressure on the medical industry by "aligning incentives for excellence" -- that is, it will reward providers for "achieving performance thresholds on outcome measures," rather than paying them for the amount of services performed.

Small firms would get a refundable Small Business Health Tax Credit of up to 50 percent against premiums they pay on behalf of their employees. Larger companies that "do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage" would have to pay a percentage of their payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Obama would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold, if the savings lower the cost of workers' premiums.

Obama would mandate health care coverage for all children, and expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs. Those who cannot afford coverage for themselves or their children but do not qualify for these government programs would get subsidies to buy insurance through the exchange.

Finally, individual states could continue to experiment with reform on their own, provided they meet the federal plan's minimum standards.
Lowering costs and improving care: Obama proposes a number of initiatives to improve medicine while lowering costs:
Reducing Medicare costs by allowing the government to negotiate drug prices in bulk, increasing generics, and slashing excessive subsidies under the Medicare Advantage program
Permitting the import of safe prescription drugs and faster introduction of new generics
Promoting prevention and wellness with assistance to schools, rewards for employers, and additional funding for public health training; supporting disease management programs to treat chronic conditions
Investing $50 billion over five years to deploy health information technology systems (including electronic medical records) and requiring a gradual implementation, while protecting patient privacy
Making medicine more transparent by publicizing information on treatment options and physician and provider records, particularly about medical outcomes, quality of care (including preventable errors), costs and prices
Establishing an independent institute to direct investigation into comparative effectiveness, and promoting "new models for addressing errors that improve patient safety, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and reduce the need for malpractice suits"
Strengthening antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance.

Other health initiatives:
Increase funding for biomedical research, and improve coordination both within government and with outside partners
Fight AIDS worldwide
Strengthen and improve enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and make Medicaid and Medicare more accessible to the disabled
Support parity for mental health coverage
Reduce mercury contamination in waterways, and require lead-safe child care facilities within five years
Fund at least $1 billion in autism research and increase funding for the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act
The Obama Record: Obama has voted consistently to strengthen and increase access to government public health initiatives -- he voted with the APHA 100 percent in 2006 and 2007. "He's been very good on prevention and public health, on the state level as well as nationally," says the APHA's Benjamin. But, he adds, Obama isn't perfect: on the organization's 2005 scorecard, "he got an 80."


WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE MCCAIN AND OBAMA PLANS:
While the Tax Policy Center calls both candidates' plans for insurance reform "highly progressive," it also concludes that both plans would be very expensive, and neither could come near to providing universal coverage -- though Obama's would come much closer.
In what it calls "a very preliminary analysis," limited by a lack of specifics from the candidates, the Tax Policy Center finds that Obama's plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, but would insure an additional 34 million people in 2018. However, another 34 million people will still lack coverage. (The Center projects that without reform the ranks of the uninsured will rise to 67 million by 2018.) By contrast, McCain's plan to replace the income exclusion with tax credits would cost $1.3 trillion over 1 years, yet access to insurance would peak five years into the program, with only about 5 million people getting new coverage. That's because the Center assumes that McCain's credits will be tied to the Consumer Price Index, which does not rise as quickly as health-care costs. (This is just a guess; McCain's campaign hasn't said how -- or if -- its credits would be indexed. But President Bush proposed replacing the income exclusion for insurance with a tax deduction indexed to the CPI.) As the credits fall behind insurance costs, people would drop out -- after 10 years, the increase in the insured would be just 2 million. Meanwhile, the total number of uninsured would rise to nearly 65 million. If McCain's credits were indexed to medical prices, they would cover more people, but the plan would cost more, too.

The Tax Policy Center projects that this "modest" increase will mask a large shift in the way people buy insurance. "Many small- and medium-sized employers would choose to drop coverage if their employees could obtain substantial tax credits for nongroup coverage," according to the center. "Also, the decline over time in value of the credit relative to premiums would reduce employers' incentives to offer insurance."
The conventional wisdom among health-care analysts is that individual and group insurance markets cannot stand equally side-by-side -- young and healthy people will leave group plans for cheaper individual policies, making the rump group left behind more expensive to insure -- and this could account for part of the disparity in outcomes between the two proposals. "The main problem with the McCain plan is that if you're going to use the individual market, you've got to regulate it," says Jonathan Oberlander, a health-care policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "You have to replace the employer market with some sort of pooling, and the individual market doesn't do that. A lot of people who are sick are not going to be able to get insurance." Oberlander notes that 34 states already have high-risk pools similar to what McCain would establish, and "they have a very mixed record. Even with the subsidies, the insurance is still expensive. There are benefit limits and there are pre-existing conditions limits." (The Tax Policy Center says that McCain's high-risk pools "could either turn out to be ineffective or very expensive.")

Theoretically, the same sort of cherry-picking, as it's called, could occur in Obama's National Health Insurance Exchange. But it's less likely, says Oberlander, because the additional regulation will effectively lead to something closer to community rating, where people pay average prices and the risks are spread across a large group of people. "They are trying to reform the individual market to make it like group health insurance." Still, he says, it will be hard to know how many people will actually get insurance under Obama's proposals without knowing the size of the subsidies and the terms of the new plans -- which the campaign has not released (or perhaps even determined).

The Tax Policy Center calculated that if the growth in premium cost were to slow by 1 percent a year, the cost of the plans would fall to $1.2 trillion for McCain and $1.4 trillion for Obama. But the center did not attempt to estimate the effect of the candidates' health initiatives on the cost of care, and Oberlander doubts that the initiatives offered by the candidates will do much either to lower costs or improve care, at the least in the beginning. "These things are all worth doing," he says. "But I don't think they'll save much money in a president's first term, and only modest amounts in a second term -- if they save anything at all." On the question of efficacy, "all of these things are really unproven. Electronic medical records might improve health, but it depends on how it's implemented. Disease management has a mixed record. It's no magic bullet. It's aspirational."
The National Federation of Independent Business, which has lobbied for 20 years for health-care legislation amenable to small business, will not endorse either candidate's agenda. However, the principles for reform enumerated at its dedicated health-care site, FixedForAmerica.com, as well as the organization's earlier positions on legislation, more neatly align with John McCain's proposals than Barack Obama's.

Massachusetts Health Plan Model

Here are the main points of the Massachusetts Health Plan. Senator Obamas plan is thought to mirror the approach described below.

Legislators say by that by providing every Massachusetts resident with health insurance, the costs of health care are actually lowered. For instance, the way the system works now, employers who offer insurance also have to pick up part of the tab for the cost of care for the uninsured at hospitals. By having more employers provide insurance, and having fewer uninsured people, these costs to employers go down. Analysts also say that adding more healthy people -- who use less care -- into the insurance system keeps deductibles and premiums down for all.

A look at how the bill would affect employers and individuals:

All individuals must have coverage.
-- Those below 300 percent of the federal poverty level (about $38,500 for a family of three), but not eligible for Medicaid, will have their private insurance plans subsidized at a sliding-scale rate. -- Children whose families earn below 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) will be given free coverage through Medicaid.
-- Individuals with incomes below the FPL ($9,600) will have premiums waived on private insurance. (Currently most childless adults are not eligible for coverage under the state's Medicaid plan.) -- Those who can afford insurance will be increasingly penalized for not buying coverage. In the first year, they'll lose their state personal income tax exemption.
-- Family coverage will be extended to cover young adults up to the age of 25.
-- Allows the use of "health savings accounts" with cheaper high-deductible "catastrophic" coverage plans. HSAs allow consumers to invest money and withdraw it "tax free" to cover health-care costs. BusinessesAll employers who have more than 10 employees must contribute to employee health-care costs.
-- Employers who don't provide insurance will pay an annual fee of $295 per full-time employee.
-- Encourages private insurers to offer more low-cost options.
-- Creates a "health insurance connector" to help individuals and businesses find affordable private coverage.

McCain Health Plan And Tax Credit

John McCain's fix for health-care reform is based the logical Republican remedy: competition in the marketplace.

"John McCain is putting the American family in charge," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's chief policy adviser, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a member of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

"The basic template is to control the cost and growth of health care and to control the outcomes," he said. "It's about competition in the marketplace Let's have them compete on the right grounds -- quality of care."

The foundation of McCain's health-care strategy is his proposal to provide a tax credit of $2,500 for individuals ($5,000 for families) to buy health insurance. His campaign estimates the plan could remove 25 million to 30 million people from the rolls of the uninsured; critics contend the number would be far fewer.

At the same time, McCain proposes removing the favorable tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance, a move that some people think will cause employers to drop health-care coverage for employees, pushing them into the private market.

"The goal of the McCain plan is to transform health care to center on Americans' choices, while providing access to quality and affordable health care for all Americans," the campaign says. "Families -- not government bureaucrats or insurance companies -- will make the decisions that best reflect their family needs."

Other provisions of the McCain plan would make coverage portable, allow insurance to be purchased across state lines, and permit reimportation of drugs.

McCain's plan is vague about cost savings.
Holtz-Eakin from McCain's campaign said the average out-of-pocket cost for an individual health plan is $5,100. For those who are turned down for insurance, coverage would be available through a fallback "guaranteed-access plan."

McCain would use "the biggest lever available" by reforming Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly that sets the standard, in terms of cost and service, for private health-care plans, Holz-Eakin said.

If new standards for Medicare are enacted, all health-care providers, as McCain sees it, would have to become more conscious of the quality of care to compete in a retooled health-care system that pays a single price for a cardiac bypass surgery, not the tidal wave of bills that now deluge patients after such a procedure.

Holtz-Eagin said: "Providers would have an incentive to get their act together, to share records cheaply and quickly, and even to prevent the person from having the bypass if possible. There's no incentive to do anything now.

"This is something that has to happen. We have to get something done in America on health care. None of this should be done overnight. This isn't the kind of thing where you pass a bill and you're done."

Jay Khosla, a McCain health-policy adviser who worked for then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., emphasizes the competition aspect. "We need to ensure that drug companies, insurance companies, hospitals and every other aspect of the health-care system compete vigorously.

McCain Obama Health Care Debate

A major beef between John McCain and Barack Obama is their differing health care plans. Both sides say that the other candidates plan leads employers to drop coverage for their employees. Employer sponsored health insurance covers over 170 million American workers.

McCain argues that since Obama would give people the chance to sign up for insurance through a government-run exchange, employers would channel their workers into the exchange. That would mean more Americans subject to government regulations.

Obama meanwhile, argues that the McCain plan would lead employers to drop coverage because he changes the tax treatment of health benefits. No longer would workers be required to get insurance on the job in order to qualify for a tax subsidy.

McCain’s economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin argues that many would stay in employer coverage, partly because of a key policy decision the McCain camp made in designing its plan. In trade for the new, generous tax credit, McCain would subject the value of health benefits to the income tax, meaning workers would have to pay taxes on the value of whatever health insurance employers provide. But neither employers nor workers would have to pay Social Security taxes on those benefits. That’s a change from a very similar plan offered by President Bush last year.
But that decision is not without consequences either. Because McCain would create a new tax break and not completely get rid of the existing tax breaks, his plan would cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

By contrast, Obama’s plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years but eventually get insurance to an additional 34 million people.

Illinois Student Health Insurance

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently used his executive power to raise the cutoff age for insuring employees’ children to 26. Student health insurance will not be necessary for many young adults.

Starwalt, a Sherman resident and state employee is happy that her daughter, Bridgette, a 20-year-old sophomore at Millikin University, won’t be cut off from Starwalt’s state health plan at age 23 — the current age limit.

Tracy Starwalt said her daughter now won’t have to interrupt her pursuit of a master’s degree in nursing to get a job with health benefits. “It is one more thing not to have to worry about,” Tracy Starwalt said.

Illinois previously had no law requiring dependent health coverage. Many employers offer insurance to dependents through their early or mid-20s, and then only if they are full-time students.

But barring a legal challenge, on June 1, 2009, Illinois will join 20 other states in requiring dependent coverage.

Most of those states passed laws to do this in the past three years, and most of them, like Illinois, require the coverage to be offered regardless of whether a dependent is a student.
Fueling the trend is the fact that young adults are the fastest-growing group of uninsured people in the United States.

These generally healthy “young immortals,” as they are called in the insurance industry, often decide not to buy private insurance after they “age out” of their parents’ insurance plans.
After college, however, recent graduates — and young workers in general — may find that health insurance is not offered at entry-level jobs or may be unaffordable.

Blagojevich set the new mandate in motion when he expanded the scope of House Bill 5285 through an amendatory veto in August. The Illinois House and Senate accepted the governor’s changes later in the month.

Jay Shattuck, executive director of the Illinois Chamber’s Employment Law Council, said the new requirement, which the chamber might challenge in court, is one of many state insurance provisions that are driving up the cost of health insurance for employers. The expansion might prompt employers to charge more for dependent coverage or drop it altogether, he said.
“We believe this will actually reduce coverage because of the cost,” Shattuck said. “Employers should not be obligated to provide insurance coverage to young adults.”

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois estimates that the law will result in its rates for employee groups rising an average of 1 percent.

But because young adults are relatively cheap to insure, state insurance regulator Michael McRaith estimates the requirement will add only 0.3 percent to the cost of an employer’s health plan.

It’s unclear whether similar mandates have led to significant cost increases in other states.
Governmental and business leaders in New Jersey and Utah, where dependent-coverage requirements have existed for several years, said they haven’t noticed a negative impact on employers.

In New Jersey, a 2005 directive that employers offer dependent coverage through age 29 resulted in 10,000 to 15,000 young adults getting coverage, according to Marshall McKnight, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance.

Health Care: To Tax or Not To Tax

Forget the economy, forget Russia, forget even Fannie and Freddie. If you're looking for your first full-time job, or you're between employers, or if you work now for a small company that offers no health plan, your main concern might be how to get health insurance.

Would you prefer a $5,000 tax credit toward buying a family health insurance policy and more competition among insurance providers (McCain), or a national public health care plan and additional regulation of insurance markets (Obama)? Do these plans raise or lower your taxes?
To the extent that voters decide on issues as well as party and personality, how Americans react to these two proposals could affect who wins the election.

Senator McCain's plan would cost less than Senator Obama's and would raise fewer taxes. Yet it is Mr. McCain's plan that is being demonized as a tax increase. In speeches last week in Pennsylvania, Senator Biden, Mr. Obama's choice for vice president, repeatedly said that Mr. McCain's health care plan would amount to a tax increase — without mentioning the new tax credit.

Here's what the two plans would do.
Mr. McCain would give Americans refundable tax credits of $2,500 per individual, $5,000 per family, to buy health insurance. He would pay for this by changing the current tax status of employer-provided insurance, and including employer-paid health premiums in workers' taxable income. The proposed tax credit would wipe out the new tax liability for nearly every worker.

Workers in the 25% tax bracket pay an extra $5,000 in tax on an additional $20,000 of income. So a $5,000 credit would offset the federal tax on employer-paid premiums up to $20,000 — and an average plan only costs $12,000 per year, according to the bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care.

The tax credit would also be available for individuals — employed, self-employed, unemployed — who buy health coverage independently, although not to seniors on Medicare. People with pre-existing conditions who could not get health insurance would be insured through new state Guaranteed Access Plans.

With the tax advantage shifting to individuals from employers, people would not have to worry about losing their insurance when they change jobs — just as they aren't concerned about losing their auto or home insurance.

The tax credit would be "refundable," meaning that it would go to people who don't owe tax. If it exceeded the cost of a plan, the individual would get the difference credited to a Health Savings Account, whose balances could be used to pay for insurance premiums and other health care costs.

The McCain plan would knock down state-line barriers to private health insurance plans and expand Health Savings Accounts. The combination of tax credits, nationwide insurance, and savings accounts would lead to increased competition among insurance companies, potentially driving down premiums.

Some people in upper income tax brackets with generous employer health plans would find that the new tax credit does not offset the tax liability — the extra tax they owe from including employer-paid premiums in their income.

But this would be a relatively small group. Under Senator McCain's plan, families whose marginal tax rate is 40% or less would see a tax decrease. Since the top federal rate is 35%, families would pay 40% only because of state taxes.

Senator Obama would set up a new health insurance plan, similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. It would be open to all, with "affordable" premiums and co-payments.
In addition, he proposes a new National Health Insurance Exchange to regulate private insurance underwriters by "creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible." Those who could not meet the standards would close.

Private insurance plans would have to offer coverage as generous as the public plans, including "preventative, maternity, and mental health care."

In a third Obama provision, some employers who offer health insurance now would have to pay higher premiums in order to raise benefits to the level of the new public plan. Those employers who don't offer health insurance would be required to pay into the new plan. These obligatory payments can be described in one word — taxes.

Mr. Obama estimates the cost of his plan at between $50 billion and $60 billion, including prospective cost-saving ideas, which he plans to pay for through higher income taxes on those making more than $250,000.

This estimate is clearly unrealistic. The insurance program for federal employees is of a higher quality and more costly than typical private-sector coverage. Extending it to allow 300 million Americans to participate would likely cost far more than $60 billion and need additional sources of revenue.

Americans know that health insurance needs to change to be easily accessible and portable, like auto and home insurance. Do we get there through higher taxes and regulation, or by tax incentives and individual choice?


Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Humana Completes Acquisition

Humana has completed the $14 million purchase of MetCare Health Plans a subsidiary of Metropolitan Health Networks, based in West Plam Beach Florida.

Metropolitan is a growing health care organization in Florida, providing comprehensive health care services for Medicare Advantage members and other Florida health insurance customers.

Metcare's AdvantageCare provides Medicare beneficiaries in South and Central Florida with access to comprehensive health care coverage.

The acquisition increases Humana's Medicare Advantage membership by more than 7,000 members.

iCan Benefits Group now offers Major Medical

iCan Benefit Group is now offering major medical health plans from Avalon Healthcare, Inc.. iCan is working with Avalon Healthcare to offer consumer directed health plans for individuals in Florida.

Avalon Healthcare is a Florida based health insurance company founded by executives from Oxford Health Plans.

Avalon provides affordable major medical health coverage for both individuals and employers. They offer an extensive selection of PPO Plan options with large open access physician and hospital networks. Avalon's "IFOCUS" for individuals are high deductible PPO health plans combined with Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

iCan and Avalon are working together to provide consumers with high-quality, value based healthcare options.

iCan's previous portfolio of health plans were simply discount plans that technically were not health insurance. They are touted as being low-cost, but in reality provide little value to uninsured individuals, and provide very high profit margins for iCan.

Florida Insurance Rates and Allstate

According to CBS4, Florida homeowners insured by Allstate Corp. will get an additional 5.6% rate cut, and will now pay nearly 20% less since June 1, 2007

Allstate also agreed to forgive a $175 million loan to its Florida subsidiaries, pay a $5 million fine and insure 100,000 more Florida homeowners.

Allstate currently has 2 million Florida car insurance customers in Florida, including 250,000 with homeowner policies, however only those with homeowner policies will get the new rate cut.

eHealthinsurance Report on Rates

A 2007 research study from eHealthInsurance found that individual health insurance premiums ranged from a low of $98 (in Iowa) to as high as $338 (in New York) - the national average was $148.

The disparity health insurance rates can be partly explained by state regulations that differ from state-to-sate which makes health insurance coverage in some states much more expensive fore health insurance companies.

It’s time Americans were allowed to buy health insurance from carriers across state lines. For instance an Ohio resident would be able to buy an health insurance plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina if they happened to have a individual health insurance plan that was a good match for their health care needs and budget.

Without state mandates, individual health insurance would become much more affordable and consumers would have more choices.

Utah Low Income Health Insurance Program

According to the Daily Herald, a nonprofit health care advocacy group is protesting proposed changes to Utah's public health insurance programs that could limit health insurance coverage choices for low-income families.

The first change would allow people eligible for Utah's Premium Partnership for Health Insurance, a program that offers subsidies to low-income workers to help them purchase their employer's private insurance, to apply new subsidies to individual health plans if their job doesn't offer one.

The second change the Health Department is seeking would exclude children from the Utah Children's Health Insurance Plan -- a state-sponsored insurance program for kids in low-income families -- if their parents qualify for UPP.

The objective of the proposed change is to force families into private Utah health insurance plans if they can afford it.

The final change would extend the waiting period between when a person drops their private health insurance plan and when they are eligible for UPP help (from 90 days to six months).

New York Auto Insurance Rates

High gas prices may ultimately mean lower New York auto insurance rates. The state insurance department is requiring auto insurance companies to justify their insurance rate increases in light of reduced travel because of rising gas prices.

GEICO has agreed to put a cap on its auto insurance rates and many other insurance companies are expected to follow suit.

Auto insurance rates in New York state are the third highest in the country.

Children's Health Reform

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than 9 million children are uninsured in the United States. Six and a half million of these children live in families with household incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level and are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, but are not enrolled.

Typically, a child's health care needs center around simple preventative care such as immunizations and regular check-ups to ensure proper growth and development. Research shows early intervention makes a measurable improvement in the future health of these children.

Most if not all states have state funded programs to assist low income families to insure their children and give them the best shot to live healthy lives.

Children's Health Insurance Programs

Ohio Auto Insurance

Ohio is forecasting modest increases in Ohio auto insurance rates through the end of 2008 and even larger increases in homeowners premiums.

State insurance director Mary Jo Hudson revealed the prediction Monday while announcing that average insurance rates charged by Ohio's top ten auto insurance companies fell 2.6% in 2007. Rates for homeowners insurance went up an average 1.5%.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says Ohio's car insurance rates were the 13th lowest in the country last year and the state ranked 6th among those with the least expensive homeowners policies.

Arizona Health Insurance

The state of Arizona has eliminated the short term health insurance program to save about $8.35 million as AZ tries to reduce a $2 billion budget deficit.

The program, which ended July 15, provided short term health coverage for Arizona residents who are ineligible for Medicare because they must wait two years after receiving a disability determination before enrolling in Medicare.

About 1,300 people in Arizona with disabilities had no health coverage because of the rule, so the program was created two years ago to allow them to pay a premium to gain coverage through AHCCCS until they were eligible for Medicare.

Florida Homeowners Insurance Rate Hike

State Farm, Florida's second-biggest property insurance company, said that it will need to raise homeowner insurance rates for Florida residents by almost 70% in some parts of Palm Beach County, and an overall average increase of 47% across the entire state of Florida. State Farm did not mention plans to raise their Florida auto insurance rates

Big Brother Progressive

Progressive gets to monitor your driving.Starting next month, Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. will let New Jersey drivers lop as much as 60% off the nation's highest car insurance bills...If you let them monitor your driving.

The Program is called MyRate, Progressive's Pay-as-you-drive system.

The system is simple. The company gives a driver a small device that plugs into the data port built into all cars made since 1996.

That device tracks all the parameters of travel, including speed, time, mileage and distance, as well as how frequently the brakes are used and how quickly the car stops.

The device then wirelessly transmits the data back to the company, which adjusts your auto insurance rates based on how you drive.

While the company said some drivers could see auto insurance rates increase by 9%, Progressive said most drivers would expect to see 10 - 15% savings. There is no penalty for not participating in the program.

Georgia Auto Insurance Rates

GMAC Insurance announced it is reducing its
auto insurance rates in Georgia,effective immediately.
Drivers in Georgia will save an average of 7% when
purchasing GMAC Auto Insurance coverage.

The GMAC auto insurance rate reduction is a statewide
average that will affect individual customers differently. 
Overall premium changes for individual motorists will vary
depending on factors such as the coverages they carry, the
discounts for which they qualify, where they live, the kind of vehicle
insured, who drives it and how much it is driven.

Ohio Health Care

Americans pay far more for health care than any other advanced nation in the world. Are we getting our money's worth? Plenty of evidence says no.

Americans have shorter life spans and die at faster rates because of major diseases than the averages for 30 democracies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The mortality rate for infants is especially chilling: The United States came in third worst, ahead of only Mexico and Turkey.

But that dismal showing by the nation doesn't necessarily say anything about the cost and quality of health care in Ohio.

How does Ohio measure up to its Canadian Neighbors?

Not very well:

• At birth, the difference in life expectancy is greater for Ontario residents — 76 years for Ohioans, compared to nearly 81 years in Ontario.

• In Ohio, nearly eight of 1,000 newborns die each year In Ontario, the infant mortality rate is 5.5

• Ontario also has lower mortality rates for each of the top six causes of death: heart disease, cancer, stroke, emphysema and other chronic lower respiratory diseases, diabetes and accidents.

Overall, the gap in these key health-care yardsticks was wider between Ohio and Ontario than between the two nations as a whole in all but two categories: strokes and accidents.

That difference was striking because the state and the province are so similar demographically.

Hawaii Auto Insurance Rates

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the No. 2 auto insurance company in Hawaii, said it had lowered rates in Hawaii for the sixth time in seven years.

The average premium was reduced 5.4% on July 14

The lower auto insurance premiums were driven by a decrease in personal injury protection coverage, while collision coverage also declined. Individual premium changes will vary depending on drivers, cars and miles driven.

Private Health Insurance

The individual health insurance market is growing with the proliferation of micro-businesses, entrepreneurs, and companies no longer offering health coverage to their employees.

These days, the same people who traded company pension plans for self-managed 401(k)s are now being asked to take on another chore that used to be handled by human resources: shopping, selecting and purchasing private health insurance.

If you're purchasing your own health coverage, there are three big issues.

With group policies, health insurance companies have to cover anyone the company hires. But with individual health plans, carriers have the freedom to cherry-pick customers.

And sometimes the exclusions or limitations don't even concern a current condition. If you're a woman of child-bearing age, you could face a large deductible on anything related to maternity coverage. In addition, Consumers buying their own coverage face another challenge that didn't exist when they were under the group umbrella -- being dropped.

Under a group policy, the insurance carrier has to cover everyone in the group. It can raise the rates on the group, but it can't just drop someone. With individual insurance, the carrier can do both.

And then there is rescission. Some consumers report that after making claims during or after an illness, their carriers reviewed their applications, falsely accused them of lying about health issues, and rescinded coverage, says Flanagan. Not only are the consumers suddenly without insurance, but carriers sometimes send them a bill for any claims that have already been paid.

If you're shopping, you need to know who's selling. Go to your state insurance department Web site for a list of licensed health insurance companies and brokers who sell health insurance in your area. The state site will also have information about complaints (including complaint ratios), that paint a picture of which companies are giving the best service.

Democrats Gear Up New Push for Universal Health Care

By Perry Bacon Jr.

Democrats are launching an aggressive push for universal health care, fourteen years after a failed attempt on the issue resulted in political disaster.

A coalition of liberal groups that includes major labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union and the activist group MoveOn.org announced today it will spend $40 million to make health insurance a major issue in the campaign, with Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, as the one of the group's main spokespersons. The group, which has dubbed itself "Health Care for America Now!" plans to spend its money running ads in battleground states, canvassing 45 states to get people to sign petitions supporting the initiative and trying to get every member of Congress to sign a pledge to expand health insurance to all Americans.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Democratic staffers are trying to set up a structure for getting a bill through Congress next year.

The staffs of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who heads the Senate's Health, Education Pensions and Labor Committee, are already meeting with key health care experts, including some from Massachusetts, which passed a landmark health care law two years ago.

In a series of meetings over the next month, Senate aides plan to meet with doctors' groups, insurance companies, business associations and other key players in reforming health care. Their goal is to have the outlines of a health care proposal by the end of this year that can be introduced in the opening days of the next president's administration.

"We want to create a mandate," said Richard Kirsch, one of the leaders of the health care organization of the liberal groups, many of whom worked together to oppose President Bush's 2005 Social Security plan.

Barack Obama has already pledged to make passing health care reform a centerpiece of his first term, and his campaign has recently added a group of advisers who specialize in the subject, including Elizabeth Edwards, Sarah Bianchi, a former Clinton White House aide and Neera Tanden, Hillary Clinton's policy director during the primaries. Tanden is working as a domestic policy adviser, while Bianchi and Edwards are participating in campaign conference calls on health care with other experts.

"It's important for this to be one of the first things that's considered," Edwards said in an interview, referring to the priorities of a new administration. "I'd like to see it on the agenda in 2009."

The coalition of liberal groups is hoping to make sure health care is a priority even if John McCain is elected and to make sure the majority of Congress backs the goal as well.
McCain has also said he would make health care a major issue if he wins the presidency, but Democrats and labor groups oppose many of his proposals, as the Arizona senator is trying to transform the health care system into one in which individuals buy their own health care in a less-regulated market, which means they could have lower costs but also would assume more risk.

The new coalition, while not outlining a specific health care plan, has goals that resembled what Obama and the Democratic candidates proposed in the primaries, offering subsidies to people so health insurance is affordable to the 47 million Americans who currently don't have it, creating new regulations that would prevent insurance companies from charging high prices or not offering insurance to people who already have chronic illnesses and allowing people to either buy insurance from a private company like Kaiser or enroll in a government-managed health care plan that would be run like but separate from Medicare.

But, even if Obama were elected, there's no broad agreement on exactly how a universal health care bill would work, which is the problem Democrats faced in 1993 when the Clintons pushed the issue. Insurance companies, who drove much of the opposition in 1993, have signaled they would not support an approach like Obama's, which add regulations for them but does not require all people to purchase health insurance. Democratic Senate aides are pointing to the legislation passed in Massachusetts in 2006 as a model. That legislation included increased subsidies for low-income people but also a mandate that all people in the state purchase insurance, something Obama has railed against on the campaign trail.

A bipartisan coalition that now includes more than a dozen senators is pushing a more radical health care reform in which people would buy coverage directly from insurance companies instead of getting it through their employers, with people getting tax credits to buy insurance in a more-tightly regulated system. Obama advisers had earlier largely ruled out that idea as too much of a drastic change for the vast majority of Americans who currently get their insurance through their employer.

While Obama has suggested ending tax cuts for people who make more than $250,000 a year to fund the health care subsidies, few Republicans will back what is effectively a tax increase, and some members of the GOP would likely need to support an agreement so it could pass in the Senate.

"It's much easier to oppose something than get something passed," Kirsch admitted.

McCain's Proposed Health Plan and effect on Employer Sponsored Coverage

Adapted From AP Article

The unkown about Sen. John McCain's health plan is how many employers will react, and more speifically, how many would drop health insurance coverage for their workers because of the tax policy changes?

The Republican presidential candidate has proposed that all Americans buying health insurance get a refundable tax credit, $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. At the same time, he would treat employer contributions toward health insurance like income, meaning workers would have to pay income, but not payroll, taxes on it.

Most health analysts say McCain's approach would strengthen the individual health insurance and small-group insurance market. And by strengthening that market, it will pull in workers now covered through their jobs.

Employers began offering health insurance as a benefit during World War II, when a labor shortage increased competition for workers. Wage controls limited employers' ability to offer higher salaries, so they offered benefits like health insurance. Health benefits were not a major expense initially, but they have become a significant part of payroll as health care costs have spiraled upward.

A poll of employer-insured voters conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly two-thirds thought it would be harder to find a health insurance plan that matches their needs and handle administrative issues if they were buying health insurance on their own. Eight in 10 said they thought it would be harder to get a good price for health insurance or get coverage if they were sick.

Arbella Expands To Conn., N.H.

The CEO of the Arbella Insurance Group of Quincy says recent regulatory approval in Connecticut and New Hampshire for the company to sell commercial policies in those states will help offset a decrease in business caused by Massachusetts’ “managed competition” system for auto insurers.

Expanding into New Hampshire and Connecticut doubles the number of New England states in which Arbella operates.

The company will offer commercial auto, property, liability, workers compensation and other commercial lines in New Hampshire and Connecticut. Arbella is the third-largest personal auto insurer in the state and the fourth-largest commercial auto insurer.
The company also sells insurance in Rhode Island and already sells personal auto insurance in Connecticut.


High-Tech, Lowball
According to John Donohue, Arbella president and CEO, the company waited until now to begin business outside of Massachusetts and Rhode Island because it didn’t have the technology to do so.

With the technology in place, Donohue said the time to make the move came when the state enacted its “managed competition” system for auto insurance rates. The system allows insurance companies to set prices for policies under the watchful eye of the state Division of Insurance.

“The deregulation of the Massachusetts auto insurance industry is a potential impact,” he said. “There may not be as much business in the state.

Connecticut Health Plan

Andrea Bryant became the first person in the state to apply for Connecticut's new, affordable health care plan.

Bryant filled out an application Monday morning for Connecticut health insurance coverage under the Charter Oak Health Plan. The plan is open to those who don't qualify for existing state programs and aren't insured through an employer. Individual health insurance premiums will range from $75 a month to as high as $259 a month.

Charter Oak enrollments open today, and the state expects to serve a projected 19,200 adults during the first year, rising to 47,200 in its third year. The state is contracting with three private insurers — Aetna Better Health, AmeriChoice of Connecticut and Community Health Network of Connecticut — to coordinate benefits and medical providers.

Arbella Decreases Auto Insurance Rates

The Arbella Insurance Group announced that they will decrease auto insurance rates effective July 1. New private passenger auto insurance rates will result in an overall average annual rate decrease of 8.7% from last year. Arbella estimates that this will add another $4.5 million to the discounts it has already provided to its customers, saving its customers a total of over $30 million.

Arbella is the third largest auto insurance company in Massachusetts. Earlier this year they lowered rates by an average 7.7 % following the state's adoption of "managed competition."

Among the conditions that allow Arbella to trim auto insurance rates further is the decision to no longer use the driving experience of "deferred drivers" to determine the rates of the main policyholder. (A deferred driver is a household member listed as a potential driver on a customer's policy)

Arbella will continue to offer an industry-leading 20% discount for those customers who have both auto and homeowner's policies with Arbella. They will receive a 20 percent discount off of homeowners and 5 percent off auto policies.

Easing The Pain Of Expensive Health Care

Roughly 63% of all uninsured workers are either self-employed or work for firms with fewer than 100 employees, and only 47% of businesses with fewer than 500 employees offer health insurance, down from 58% in 1997. How can entrepreneurs ease the pain for themselves and their employees?

Mountain View, Calif.-based eHealth (nasdaq: EHTH - news - people ), an online health insurance brokerage, is trying to offer at least a smidge of relief with something called BusinessHSA. The new Web-based system lets employers set aside pre-tax contributions to employees' health savings accounts (HSAs), thus helping to defray costs while not offering a full-scale health benefits program. The service also gives employers a chance to help educate employees befuddled by the tortuously complicated health care market.

How Technology Can Help Trim Auto Insurance

By M.P. MCQUEENJune 26, 2008; Page D1


For years, drivers paid less for auto insurance if they reported low mileage. Now, insurers are using high-tech devices to track customers' habits, and offering deep discounts to those who not only drive less, but also cautiously.

In the U.S., Progressive Corp. and GMAC Insurance, a unit of GMAC Financial Services, are the first and the largest companies to roll out this type of plan. At least two smaller companies, including Unigard Insurance Co. of Bellevue, Wash., a unit of QBE Insurance Group of Australia, also are poised to start similar ones soon. Companies in Canada and Italy also have programs, and Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. is testing the same technology in Connecticut.
Drivers who participate in these plans have devices installed in their cars that, depending on the technology used, can track the number of miles driven, the speed at which cars are driven and even how often and how hard the brakes are used. By allowing their habits behind the wheel to be monitored, drivers get lower insurance rates -- or pay higher premiums if they're lead-footed road hogs.

Usage-based insurance pricing would mean an estimated two-thirds of households would pay less in premiums than they do now, according to a report by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. Researchers Jason Bordoff and Pascal Noel calculated average savings at about $270 per car, per year. Some analysts and insurers believe that after a slow start, usage-based insurance could take off now that higher gas prices are forcing consumers to drive less anyway.

Proponents of these plans say they also have the potential to help ease traffic tie-ups and reduce carbon emissions by rewarding customers for driving less. Fewer miles on the road also means fewer accidents -- and fewer claims for insurers. With pay-as-you-drive insurance, drivers in the U.S. would reduce their mileage by about 8%, with $51.5 billion in social benefits mostly from reduced congestion and accidents, according to the Hamilton Project.

Later this month, Progressive says it will re-launch and expand its program, formerly known as "TripSense." Currently available only in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, TripSense subscribers get a special device that plugs into their car's diagnostic port -- the place mechanics plug into when troubleshooting. The Progressive device, however, keeps track of when, how far, and at what speed the car is driven. Every six months, drivers must remove the device and upload stored information to a computer and send it to the company.

When Progressive's new usage-based program, known as "MyRate," is launched, the technology will require less driver effort. This program uses a telematic device, which gathers driver data and wirelessly transmits it over a cellphone network. Progressive says it will also track how often and how hard drivers brake and use the braking information when calculating rates. This system doesn't include a global positioning system, so it won't track a driver's whereabouts. Drivers get back a periodic report that tells them how many miles they've logged and other feedback about their driving habits. Based on the data, they'll receive discounts ranging as high as 60%, depending on the state.


Bad-Driving Surcharge
But the device could raise rates for some drivers. In some states where it's permitted by law, drivers would be assessed a 9% surcharge for logging excessive miles or driving at high speeds with hard braking, said Richard Hutchinson, a general manager for Progressive.
Progressive, which has 7.1 million auto policies in force nationally, says 34% of its customers in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon who signed up via telephone or Internet (instead of their agent) have been choosing the usage-based programs since 2004. The new plan is expected to be available in six more states by the end of this year and will also be sold by independent agents, the company said.

Brandon Biniecki, a 23-year-old information-technology support technician in Monroe, Mich., says he signed up for Progressive's usage-based program in 2006 for his Chevy Cobalt, a compact car. He drives less than 18,000 miles a year and currently receives a 5% or 10% discount from the company every six months, he says. Mr. Biniecki says he doesn't mind being monitored in return for saving money, but admits he might not have signed up if a global positioning system, or GPS, was involved.

"That would be an invasion of privacy, with someone being able to know where I am at any given point in time," he says.


OnStar
GM's OnStar technology, shown here, is used to gather driving data.
Other insurers include GPS in their monitoring devices. GMAC Insurance's Low-Mileage Discount Program with OnStar, which expanded to a total of 34 states last year, grants discounts to users of vehicles equipped with GM's GPS and communication systems. The company says that enrollments have increased 200% since last year, and that customer retention rates are higher for those using the device.

In order to receive a discount, the driver must subscribe to OnStar, which is generally free for the first 12 months to buyers of new GM cars, and costs $199 to $299 annually after that. New customers who agree to have odometer readings sent directly to GMAC Insurance will earn a 26% discount if they drive less than 15,000 miles annually. (Existing drivers earn discounts based on their actual mileage.) Even heavy drivers can still earn a 5% to 8% "safe driver" discount just for subscribing to the service. Low-mileage discounts increase in tiers as fewer miles are logged. For instance, someone who drives less than 2,500 miles a year can qualify for a 54% discount.

'I Didn't Believe It'
Don West, 74, a real-estate broker in Gresham, Ore., says he reluctantly switched his coverage to GMAC Insurance, leaving his longtime agent, a personal friend. Because he and his wife drove less than a combined 15,000 miles a year, their rate plummeted. Says Mr. West: "I was paying $2,000 a year in premiums for the Cadillac and the Hummer, and it dropped the premium the first year I was on GMAC to $886 dollars. I didn't believe it at first."
About 20,000 drivers currently participate in the GMAC low-mileage program with OnStar, says John O'Donnell, vice president of business development at GMAC Insurance, out of five million OnStar clients.

At this point, OnStar only relays odometer readings to GMAC Insurance, Mr. O'Donnell said. OnStar doesn't continuously track drivers' location and only pinpoints a car's whereabouts at certain times -- when the device is activated by a crash or the police receive a stolen-vehicle report, for example. "There is an opportunity to get other information, and as we do we will be able to correlate risk to actual driving behavior itself rather than more predictive factors," Mr. O'Donnell says.

Uninsured % Lowest in New England States

The New England states have the highest rate of health insurance coverage in the United States, while the Southwestern part of the country has the lowest rate of coverage, according to a recent study.

Only 11% of adults and 4% of children in New England are uninsured, compared with 30% of adults and 18% of children in the Southwest.

Nationally, about 17 % of Americans under age 65 were uninsured when the survey of 106,000 families was conducted from 2004- 2006.

Health Insurance Mandates Unhealthy

Health insurance costs are rising faster than Massachusetts businesses can afford and still, MA policymakers are considering measures that would push them even higher.

The House will consider a bill that would mandate unlimited coverage of mental health services, even though Massachusetts’ current mandate is among the most generous of any state in the nation.

Already, Massachusetts ranks among the states with the most mandated health benefits. While a case can be made for any one mandate, together they add significantly to the cost of health care.

When health insurance costs go up, employers bear the bulk of the increase, which leaves less money for companies to grow their businesses and create new jobs. This is particularly true for small businesses.

With health-care costs continuing to rise at double-digit rates, solutions need to focus on controlling those costs, not piling up more costs on employers.

Auto Insurance Fraud

From KPSP Local 2 News

California's Insurance Commissioner is warning drivers to be on alert for scam artists who stage auto collisions. It's a costly and potentially form of auto insurance fraud. One such scam, nicknamed the swoop and squat happens when two or three vehicles work as a team, to set up an "accident." The lead car cuts the victim off, and another car pulls up alongside the victim, so he/she has no choice but to rear-end the scam artist.

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner says even if no one gets hurt, insurance fraud hurts the consumer, in the form of higher auto insurance rates. He says, "Insurance fraud is like a $500 tax on every man, woman and child in California." Poizner says auto insurance fraud is a major part of the problem. The California Department of Insurance investigated 14,565 suspected automobile insurance fraud cases in 2006 and 2007.

Homeowners Insurance Rates in Texas

Texas has the highest home insurance rates in the nation, but rates can vary widely for different carriers. Comparing policies for a $100,000 home found that homeowners insurance premiums ranged from $500 to $1,200.

Despite the fact that Texas has had good weather since Hurricane Rita hit its coast three years ago, the state has not been able to draw enough companies to make the market more competitive.

State Farm, Allstate and Farmers Insurance control about 60% of the market, and if USAA and Travelers are added to the list, that's about 71 percent of the market share.

Insurance costs have either gone down or remained the same since the Legislature approved an insurance reform bill in 2003.

Individual Health Insurance in California

Individual health insurance rates for some California residents are going up 10 or 11 percent next year.

Jeff Aran has bought his own HMO policy from Kaiser Permanente since the mid-1980s. The last few years he's noticed his premiums are consistently 2 percent or 3 percent above the health insurance rates that the California Public Employees' Retirement System gets from the same Oakland-based health maintenance organization (Kaiser Permanente).

Aran and the 2.5 million Californians like him who buy individual health insurance may one day look back on 10% rate hikes as the good old days.

Individual & family policyholders have enjoyed slower premium increases from recent trends that have tamed medical costs a bit.

Baby boomers are generally healthier than previous generations and lower-cost generic drugs have flooded the market. The wave of health insurance company mergers that swept the industry a few years ago has abated. Negative press has also put some pressure on health insurers to hold down premiums.

Individual health plan policy owners will be hardest hit. Health care insurers don't make much money on individual plans, which cost more to administer, he said. As a result, the insurers are more likely to significantly raise those premiums when times get tight.

New York Auto Insurance Rates

If you live in New York, your auto insurance rates could be following gas prices north.

Auto insurance companies in New York, which already charge the second-highest auto insurance rates in the nation, would be able to hike monthly premiums by as much as 5% a year without the state's okay under a bill quietly introduced last week.

A law allowing auto insurance companies to hike or cut rates by 10% lapsed years ago, and the Insurance Department has had to sign off on all rate changes since then.

Consumer advocates fear the new bill, which sponsors are pushing to pass before the legislative session ends this week, will ultimately drive up costs at a faster rate.

For years, under a different insurance committee chairman, the Assembly refused the attempts by Senate Republicans to go back to a flex rating system.

The New York Insurance Superintendent has indicated in the past he supports allowing New York Auto insurers to raise or lower rates without permission up to a certain point.

John McCain Health Care Reform

A "Call to Action"
John McCain believes we can and must provide access to health care for every American. He has proposed a comprehensive vision for achieving that. For too long, our nation's leaders have talked about reforming health care. Now is the time to act.

Americans Are Worried About Health Care Costs. The problems with health care are well known: it is too expensive and 47 million people living in the United States lack health insurance.

John McCain's Vision for Health Care Reform
John McCain Believes The Key To Health Care Reform Is To Restore Control To The Patients Themselves. We want a system of health care in which everyone can afford and acquire the treatment and preventative care they need. Health care should be available to all and not limited by where you work or how much you make. Families should be in charge of their health care dollars and have more control over care.

Making Health Insurance Innovative, Portable and AffordableJohn McCain Will Reform Health Care Making It Easier For Individuals And Families To Obtain Insurance. An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people's needs, lower prices, and portability. Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines.

John McCain Will Reform The Tax Code To Offer More Choices Beyond Employer-Based Health Insurance Coverage. While still having the option of employer-based coverage, every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit - effectively cash - of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Families will be able to choose the insurance provider that suits them best and the money would be sent directly to the insurance provider. Those obtaining innovative insurance that costs less than the credit can deposit the remainder in expanded Health Savings Accounts.

John McCain Proposes Making Insurance More Portable. Americans need insurance that follows them from job to job. They want insurance that is still there if they retire early and does not change if they take a few years off to raise the kids.John McCain Will Encourage And Expand The Benefits Of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) For Families. When families are informed about medical choices, they are more capable of making their own decisions and often decide against unnecessary options. Health Savings Accounts take an important step in the direction of putting families in charge of what they pay for.A Specific Plan of Action: Ensuring Care for Higher Risk Patients John McCain's Plan Cares For The Traditionally Uninsurable. John McCain understands that those without prior group coverage and those with pre-existing conditions have the most difficulty on the individual market, and we need to make sure they get the high-quality coverage they need.

John McCain Will Work With States To Establish A Guaranteed Access Plan. As President, John McCain will work with governors to develop a best practice model that states can follow - a Guaranteed Access Plan or GAP - that would reflect the best experience of the states to ensure these patients have access to health coverage. One approach would establish a nonprofit corporation that would contract with insurers to cover patients who have been denied insurance and could join with other state plans to enlarge pools and lower overhead costs. There would be reasonable limits on premiums, and assistance would be available for Americans below a certain income level.John McCain Will Promote Proper Incentives. John McCain will work with Congress, the governors, and industry to make sure this approach is funded adequately and has the right incentives to reduce costs such as disease management, individual case management, and health and wellness programs.

A Specific Plan of Action: Lowering Health Care CostsJohn McCain Proposes A Number Of Initiatives That Can Lower Health Care Costs. If we act today, we can lower health care costs for families through common-sense initiatives. Within a decade, health spending will comprise twenty percent of our economy. This is taking an increasing toll on America's families and small businesses. Even Senators Clinton and Obama recognize the pressure skyrocketing health costs place on small business when they exempt small businesses from their employer mandate plans.

CHEAPER DRUGS: Lowering Drug Prices. John McCain will look to bring greater competition to our drug markets through safe re-importation of drugs and faster introduction of generic drugs.

CHRONIC DISEASE: Providing Quality, Cheaper Care For Chronic Disease. Chronic conditions account for three-quarters of the nation's annual health care bill. By emphasizing prevention, early intervention, healthy habits, new treatment models, new public health infrastructure and the use of information technology, we can reduce health care costs. We should dedicate more federal research to caring and curing chronic disease.

COORDINATED CARE: Promoting Coordinated Care. Coordinated care - with providers collaborating to produce the best health care - offers better outcomes at lower cost. We should pay a single bill for high-quality disease care which will make every single provider accountable and responsive to the patients' needs.

GREATER ACCESS AND CONVENIENCE: Expanding Access To Health Care. Families place a high value on quickly getting simple care. Government should promote greater access through walk-in clinics in retail outlets.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: Greater Use Of Information Technology To Reduce Costs. We should promote the rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology that allows doctors to practice across state lines.

MEDICAID AND MEDICARE: Reforming The Payment System To Cut Costs. We must reform the payment systems in Medicaid and Medicare to compensate providers for diagnosis, prevention and care coordination. Medicaid and Medicare should not pay for preventable medical errors or mismanagement.

SMOKING: Promoting The Availability Of Smoking Cessation Programs. Most smokers would love to quit but find it hard to do so. Working with business and insurance companies to promote availability, we can improve lives and reduce chronic disease through smoking cessation programs.

STATE FLEXIBILITY: Encouraging States To Lower Costs. States should have the flexibility to experiment with alternative forms of access, coordinated payments per episode covered under Medicaid, use of private insurance in Medicaid, alternative insurance policies and different licensing schemes for providers.

TORT REFORM: Passing Medical Liability Reform. We must pass medical liability reform that eliminates lawsuits directed at doctors who follow clinical guidelines and adhere to safety protocols. Every patient should have access to legal remedies in cases of bad medical practice but that should not be an invitation to endless, frivolous lawsuits.

TRANSPARENCY: Bringing Transparency To Health Care Costs. We must make public more information on treatment options and doctor records, and require transparency regarding medical outcomes, quality of care, costs and prices. We must also facilitate the development of national standards for measuring and recording treatments and outcomes.Confronting the Long-Term Challenge John McCain Will Develop A Strategy For Meeting The Challenge Of A Population Needing Greater Long-Term Care. There have been a variety of state-based experiments such as Cash and Counseling or The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) that are pioneering approaches for delivering care to people in a home setting. Seniors are given a monthly stipend which they can use to hire workers and purchase care-related services and goods. They can get help managing their care by designating representatives, such as relatives or friends, to help make decisions. It also offers counseling and bookkeeping services to assist consumers in handling their programmatic responsibilities.Setting the Record Straight: Covering Those With Pre-Existing ConditionsMYTH: Some Claim That Under John McCain's Plan, Those With Pre-Existing Conditions Would Be Denied Insurance.FACT: John McCain Supported The Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act In 1996 That Took The Important Step Of Providing Some Protection Against Exclusion Of Pre-Existing Conditions. FACT: Nothing In John McCain's Plan Changes The Fact That If You Are Employed And Insured You Will Build Protection Against The Cost Of Any Pre-Existing Condition.

FACT: As President, John McCain Would Work With Governors To Find The Solutions Necessary To Ensure Those With Pre-Existing Conditions Are Able To Easily Access Care.Combating Autism in America John McCain is very concerned about the rising incidence of autism among America's children and has continually supported research into its causes and treatment.