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Donald L., Palm Coast, FL

Health Care Blog

  • Facts Are Stubborn Things

    Posted by Macon Phillips on August 4, 2009 at 6:55 AM EDT

    UPDATE: The President addressed concerns from Americans who have received letters of policy cancellations or changes from their insurance companies in an interview with NBC News, watch the video or read a transcript. 
    Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."
    Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.
    In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to "eliminate" private coverage, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
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    For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry.
    There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
    Here are the complete videos that Linda refers to. First from the AARP:
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    And then from the President's news conference:
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  • What Health Reform Means for Veterans

    Posted by Macon Phillips on August 3, 2009 at 7:54 PM EDT

    To follow on the President’s speech today marking the launch of the post-9/11 GI Bill, we wanted to offer the following update on what health reform means for veterans.
    The President is committed to ensuring that the Department of Veterans Affairs provides America’s veterans the highest-quality health care possible. His budget requests the largest single-year increase in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs in three decades, and significantly expands coverage, extending care to 500,000 more veterans who were previously excluded.
    Health reform will only build on the President’s commitment to veterans’ health care. The VA Healthcare system will continue to be available for all eligible veterans. Also, veterans and their families will have additional choices for high-quality, affordable health care, with consumer protections that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage or setting a limit on the coverage they will provide.
    The health reform legislation that the House of Representatives is considering would enable those who are covered by VA care, including dependents of certain veterans enrolled in the CHAMPVA program, to meet the individual responsibility mandate; thereby exempting such veterans and dependants from being assessed penalties. If enacted, the President will ensure that this exemption is implemented aggressively. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs would continue to maintain sole authority over the system and for enhancing the quality and access for all eligible veterans.
     

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  • CEA Chair Romer’s Chat on Health Insurance Reform and Small Business

    Posted by Jesse Lee on July 31, 2009 at 12:51 PM EDT

    During the July 25th Weekly Address, the President discussed a report just out from the Council of Economic Advisers detailing the impact health insurance reform would have on small business. The President also asked small business professionals to read the report and come forward with their questions – and thousands of them did, including 1,500 through the LinkedIn network alone. The following Wednesday CEA Chair Christina Romer sat down for a live video chat to address some of those questions as selected by an informal board of LinkedIn small business members. Watch the video of the chat, which is as instructive now as it was live if you are interested or concerned about how small business will fare in this sweeping change:
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    download .mp4 (315.1 MB)

    See a "word cloud" representation of the comments submitted through LinkedIn below:
    Word Cloud of LinkedIn Comments
    (Image created through http://www.wordle.net/)
     

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  • The President Highlights Health Insurance Consumer Protections

    Posted by Katherine Brandon on July 29, 2009 at 5:59 PM EDT

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    download the .mp4 (675.9 MB) | read the transcript

    Speaking to North Carolinians at a town hall in Raleigh, the President made clear why health reform will benefit all Americans: "if you’ve got health insurance, then the reform we’re proposing will also help you because it will provide you more stability and more security. Because the truth is we have a system today that works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn’t work well for you." We all know the horror stories, which is why the health insurance consumer protections that are part of reform are so important.
    At the town hall, the President outlined these core principles:
    Let me be specific. We will stop insurance companies from denying you coverage because of your medical history. (Applause.) I've told this story before – I will never forget watching my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final days, worrying about whether her insurer would claim her illness was a preexisting condition so they could wiggle out of paying for her coverage. How many of you have worried about the same thing? (Applause.) A lot of people have gone through this. Many of you have been denied insurance or heard of someone who was denied insurance because they got – had a preexisting condition. That will no longer be allowed with reform. (Applause.) We won't allow that. (Applause.) We won't allow that.
    With reform, insurance companies will have to abide by a yearly cap on how much you can be charged for your out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because of an illness. (Applause.)
    We will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – (applause) – eye and foot exams for diabetics, so we can avoid chronic illnesses that cost not only lives, but money. (Applause.)
    No longer will insurance companies be allowed to drop or water down coverage for someone who's become seriously ill. That's not right, it's not fair. (Applause.) We will stop insurance companies from placing arbitrary caps on the coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime.(Applause.)
    So my point is, whether or not you have health insurance right now, the reforms we seek will bring stability and security that you don't have today – reforms that will become more urgent and more urgent with each passing year.
    So, in the end, the debate about reform boils down to a choice between two approaches. The first is projected to double your health care costs over the next decade, make millions more Americans uninsured, bankrupt state and federal governments, and allow insurance companies to run roughshod over consumers. That's one option. That's called the status quo. That's what we have right now.
    I want everybody to understand this. If we do nothing, I can almost guarantee you your premiums will double over the next 10 years because that's what they did over the last 10 years. It will go up three times faster than your wages, so a bigger and bigger chunk of your paycheck will be going into health insurance. It will eat into the possibility of you getting a raise on your job because your employer is going to be looking and saying, I can't afford to give you a raise because my health care costs just went up 10, 20, 30 percent. And Medicare, which seniors rely on, is going to become more and more vulnerable. On current projections, Medicare will be in the red in less than 10 years.
    So that's the status quo. When everybody goes around saying, why is Obama taking on health care – that's the answer. That's one option. I don't like that option. You shouldn't either. (Applause.) That plan doesn't sound too good. That's the health care system we have right now.
    You can read more about the President’s eight health insurance consumer protections here, and figure out how reform will directly affect you and your family.
     

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  • Full Videos: The Health Care Stakeholder Discussions

    Posted by Jesse Lee on July 29, 2009 at 5:24 PM EDT

    Following the initial White House Forum on Health Reform, and then the regional forums across the country, we began holding what we called Health Care Stakeholder Discussions here at the White House. Keeping with the President’s dedication to transparency in the health reform process, we streamed these meetings live here at WhiteHouse.gov.
    It took quite a bit of processing, but we’re pleased to post the video of eight of these meetings below on a wide variety of subjects. All of them were very interesting conversations, and once we got the technology up and running we even found ways to include feedback from our online chats in the meetings.
    Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle
    April 8, 2009, 10:00 am
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    Small Business Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle and Larry Summers
    April 24, 2009, 11:00 am
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    Rural Communities Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle, HRSA Administrator Dr. Mary Wakefield, and Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR)
    May 4, 2009, 10:00 am
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    Physician Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle
    May 27, 2009, 1:00 pm
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    Women’s Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Tina Tchen, and Melody Barnes
    June 5, 2009, 11:00 am
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    Health Disparities Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Tina Tchen, and Secretary Sebelius
    June 9, 2009, 12:00 pm
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    Physician Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Mike Hash
    June 18, 2009, 2:30 pm
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    Primary Care Health Care Stakeholder Discussion with Nancy-Ann DeParle
    July 2, 2009, 2:00 pm
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    For the sake of transparency, it is worth noting that the first of these meetings was held on March 26, 2009, and while it was open press we were not able to stream it in part due to the online town hall that was streamed on the same day.
     

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  • Your Feedback on the Eight Health Insurance Consumer Protections

    Posted by Macon Phillips on July 29, 2009 at 4:00 PM EDT

    We’re getting a lot of feedback through our social networks concerning President’s eight health insurance consumer protections.
    Take Twitter, for example. For those of you not familiar with that network, the usernames are preceded with an "@" (for example, ours is @whitehouse) and a unique code (#hcip) is often used to categorize a message.
    Here’s what some folks are saying:
    @travelerbill – I've hd 2 heart ops in 2 yrs-the h/c prots will allow me 2 no longer fear my lifetime coverage maxing out before I do! #hicp
    @DJonRoberts – #hicp means my self-employed parents have more money to spend paying back my student loans.
    @monkcat – These will encourage providers to keep us healthy, thus reducing costs, but protection will always be there if/when needed #hicp
    @billstrong – As the father of a terminally ill child, approaching our lifetime private insurance cap knowing we are uninsurable is frightening. #hicp
    @completelydark – "Abide by yearly caps on how much [ins] can charge for out-of-pocket expenses." Yes! My mom stopped meds due to cost. She died 5/24/08 #hicp
    @nbboston – Protections mean I don't have to choose between increasingly high co-pays for preventative care and groceries #hicp
    @TXSolutionaries – together these 8 rules create a unified strategy to reduce costs and improve care, instead of piecemeal and scattered changes #hicp
    @weishin – As a doctor, I won't have to worry about patients not getting screening tests because it's not covered by insurance.
    These eight core principles of health insurance consumer protections demonstrate how health reform legislation will benefit you and your family directly.
    You can read more responses, and react through social networks like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook.
     

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