[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 28 (Wednesday, February 27, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H664-H665]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    INSURANCE PREMIUM PRICE CHANGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise to talk about the health 
insurance industry and its role in our greatest national achievement: 
full implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
  In the last few weeks, insurance companies, companies that reported 
$12.7 billion in profits, had been running a scare campaign arguing 
that premiums will increase later in the year. They tell us that when 
they roll out their 2014 health care coverage plans, they will increase 
premiums unless we weaken the Affordable Care Act's key consumer 
protections.
  The insurance companies didn't get 100 percent of what they wanted, 
but they got a lot. They blocked the public option, secured an 
individual mandate guaranteeing that 30 million Americans soon will be 
customers. That's one

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of the most successful lobbying experiments I've ever seen.
  But now that we are just a few months away from full implementation 
of the Affordable Care Act, the health industry is launching what The 
Washington Post calls ``an all-out, last-ditch effort to shield 
themselves from the blame'' for the rate increases that they will 
impose. Unless they are allowed to charge significantly more money, 
they tell us, the whole system will collapse.
  Now, this is perplexing. We made every effort to address the concerns 
of the industry when we developed this landmark legislation. It's also 
deeply troubling that the industry that will gain so much from health 
reform is now engaging in a misleading PR campaign against it. Despite 
unprecedented profits and surplus cash reserves, it is deliberately 
undermining the law. It already succeeded in shaping its benefits.
  So let's take a careful look at their claims. For years, companies 
have offered healthy young adults junk health insurance at cut-rate 
prices: plans with sky-high deductibles and lifetime limits that didn't 
cover much. For $100 a month, you could get a plan that offered 
practically no useful coverage.
  Meanwhile, older people with escalating health care costs were stuck 
with crippling bills or locked out of the market altogether. Across the 
board, plans dropped consumers, coverage changed without warning, and 
people of all ages went without care. ObamaCare will finally put a stop 
to these abuses.
  With better plans with real benefits costs, more than the meager 
plans marketed by the industry to young people, the stability and 
affordability will win out in the long run. There are no more games. 
Instead of avoiding risk, the industry will have to manage it.
  ObamaCare will financially help the large majority of healthy young 
consumers. In fact, 90 percent of the currently uninsured adults under 
30 will be eligible for subsidized coverage. Additionally, increased 
transparency and competition will force rates to drop further, along 
with the growing pool of young participants who are cheaper to cover. 
We did all this in my home State of Washington years ago, so I know it 
can be done.
  For the first time, average Americans not insured through a job will 
get health insurance without having insurance that won't drop you when 
you're sick, insurance that won't discriminate against women, insurance 
that won't waste your money on excessive marketing, and will actually 
cover needed care. These are the crucial consumer protections we fought 
and got.
  Which is the heavier price: an extra $20 a month for a young person 
with a healthy income to have reliable insurance or bankrupting an 
uninsured family? Meeting the needs of the Nation and preserving the 
well-being of our population is healthiest for all.
  So I'm calling on the health insurance industry to be team players 
and to be good corporate citizens. They have a lot riding on this roll-
out, at least as much as the Obama administration and the Congress. We 
need to work together, not against each other. We have to make this 
advance work.
  We don't need to have a scare campaign on television telling people 
that if ObamaCare goes in, your premiums are going to go up, and it's 
his fault. They're the ones with the profits, they're the ones with the 
reserves, they're the ones that are raising the prices.
  They have to be faced with that, Madam Speaker, because otherwise the 
public is going to be confused. They tried to confuse people all 
through the establishment of the Affordable Care Act. They didn't 
succeed. And, in fact, when they used it in the campaign, the people 
said, do you know what, we like Obama, we like what he did, we want it 
to happen. So the insurance companies had to go back to the trenches 
and figure out a way to confuse the American people. Stop it, insurance 
industry.

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