You and Your Health Care Lobbyist
Posted November 3rd, 2009 at 3:24pm in Health Care 
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As critics have repeatedly point out, once Congress starts specifying minimum mandated coverage requirements for health insurance there will be no end to the lobbying to maximize the “minimum” that you will have to pay for in your health plan.
Well, it turns out Congress is already behaving exactly as predicted — and they haven’t even passed a bill yet!
The earlier House “Tri-Committee Bill” (H.R. 3200) lists in Section 122(b) the “Minimum Services to be Covered.” The new “Pelosi Bill” (H.R. 3962) includes the same language, only this time it appears as Section 222(b), and — ta-da! — it includes more required benefits!
Whereas the earlier bill had ten enumerated subsections — hospitalization, physician services, prescription drugs, etc. — the new bill adds an eleventh subsection requiring coverage for, “durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and related supplies.”
Also, subsection seven, which originally required coverage for “mental health and substance use disorder services,” has been expanded by adding the clause, “including behavior health treatments.”
As previously noted, these are just the “top-level” required benefits. It will be left to HHS to define in detail — in thousands of pages of regulation — the type, scope, frequency, and duration of the specific services that must be covered, along with the rules for which providers must be paid for providing which services, and the criteria under which specific patients qualify for different, specific services.
Of course, insurance companies and the HR departments of any employers still providing worker health benefits will be required to comply with all of these, constantly evolving and expanding, “minimum” benefit requirements.
Also, predictable is that anyone dissatisfied with some future ruling by the new health care czar or the HHS Secretary on some aspect of the detailed minimum benefit rules will go lobby Congress to get their own preference written into law.
It seems that in the new Pelosi-Reid health system, your most important contact won’t be your personal physician. It will be your personal lobbyist.
You do have a personal lobbyist, don’t you?
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3 Responses to “You and Your Health Care Lobbyist”
Leon, Durango, CO on November 3rd, 2009 at 3:24pm said:
This donkey shoe drops timely into my lap. I told you so, this is bankrupt the whole country with medical costs. “That ought to bankrupt America,” says Obama off microphone, “and lead to Single Payer. So now, you Christians, technically, as if by treaty, it is legal to round you all up because of your ‘insane’ belief in God, and you pagans, you are next because you believe in Spirit. This crazy new thing “Behavioral Health Treatments” ought to scare the bejezzus out of you dissidents. Government paid behavioral modification. LUCKY YOU, it’s all free! Wheeee!
John Lloyd Scharf, Salem, Oregon on November 3rd, 2009 at 3:24pm said:
USPS/IRS Health Care
If health care is the problem, insurance is not the cause and government is not the answer.
Of those “50 million,” that lack insurance there were 45,000 who died without health care. With health care, 98,000 died FROM health care because of malpractice.
The question is do we want to trust that largest corporation in the world, the U.S. Government.
Do not expect house calls anytime soon.
We have seen how well the government delivers on its promises and its bureaucracies pursue the money without giving us benefits on so many levels. Imagine another organ of the government that only ultimately must listen to the Secretary of the Treasury – another “service” of which is the IRS.
http://theprogressivecapitalist.blogspot.com/2009/10/affordable-health-care-for-america-act.html
That blog of mine above has several .pdf connections (HR. 3962 and two summaries, a few videos, and page references for new taxes and other mandates). If you cannot use the link, google “Progressive Capitalist H.R. 3962.”
If you believe the promises of this bill, you have to deal with the lie that it fosters competition with a government option called the “Public Option” and establishes the government as a monopoly making its own rules.
Don’t worry. You’ll run out of “rich” soon enough. We have at least a$12 trillion economy of which at least $1.8 trillion is spent on health care. If you read the bill, there are plenty of opportunities to soak the middle class, if you do not mind the 1.6 million made jobless.
Health Care on November 3rd, 2009 at 3:24pm said:
The question is do we want to trust that largest corporation in the world, the U.S. Government.
Do not expect house calls anytime soon