Labor & Employment Law

Alliance, IUPAT Members Ask Obama About Health Care Reform

By Mike Hall

Barbara Franklin was worried that under the new health care reform law, seniors who receive their Medicare coverage from the privately-run Medicare Advantage program would see their coverage and benefits reduced because the law eliminates some government subsidies the private insurers receive.

So she called President Obama.

Franklin, the president of Illinois chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans, was one of several callers and in-person questioners who took part in last week’s tele-town hall meeting exploring the new law’s impact on seniors and Medicare. The Alliance hosted more than two dozen watch parties for the tele-town hall.

President Obama reassured Franklin that the law’s new rules for Medicare Advantage will protect seniors and ensure that Medicare Advantage is “not just a big giveaway to the insurance companies.”

Medicare Advantage was designed as a pilot program to privatize Medicare during the Bush administration. It allows seniors to receive their benefits through private insurers who, in turn, are reimbursed by the federal government. But currently, the government pays private insurance companies 14 percent more (about $1,000 a year per person) for providing coverage to Medicare Advantage clients than it would pay for the same care under traditional Medicare. That extra money, said Obama,

was supposed to be providing additional benefits and better services for this $1,000.  But a lot of it ended up going to their profits and CEO bonuses and their bottom lines.

Also, much of the extra cost of Medicare Advantage was passed along in the form of higher premiums for the 77 percent of seniors on regular Medicare. Some insurance companies are threatening cut benefits because of the reduced subsides.

So here’s what we did under the law.  What we said was, you can maintain Medicare Advantage, but we are going to say to the insurance companies that you can’t use this just to pad your profits or to pay higher CEO bonuses.  Eighty-five percent of what you spend has to actually be for health services.  We’re going to review the rates that are applied.  We’re going to set a rate that is fair and appropriate so that Medicare Advantage isn’t costing people who aren’t in Medicare Advantage.

Also getting a chance to question Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was Dennis Yurkis, a Painter and Allied Trades (IUPAT) retiree. He viewed the tele-town hall at watch party hosted by IUPAT District 15 in Las Vegas

Yurkis is too young to qualify for Medicare and receives health coverage through COBRA after his last employer laid him off.  The economic recovery act provides subsidies to help jobless workers maintain their health care coverage through COBRA. But Congress let those subsidies expire. The AFL-CIO has urged that a COBRA extension be included in a jobs bill now in the Senate. Said Obama:

Dennis, the answer is what we need is to make sure that Congress follows through on its commitment to go ahead and maintain COBRA until people are working at a higher rate again.

Obama also explained that starting in 2013, the new health care reform law will provide several options including signing up “to be part of a pool where they get the best, lowest rates possible. ”

If you still couldn’t afford it–and there’s some people who, they’re making minimum wage, they’re not making a lot of money–they still couldn’t afford the premium even though it’s a much better deal than what they could get on their own, then we’re going to provide tax credits, provide subsidies, to help people pay for their insurance.

After the meeting, Yurkis said it “changed my mind about health care reform.”

You hear so many conflicting stories about what the new law means for the country that it was good to get an explanation directly from the president.

IUPAT President James Williams said the town hall meeting settled a lot of fears some union members had about the new law.

The details of the new law are complex and when you couple that with emotion that comes with such a landmark change in the way we do things, fear can sometimes overrule rational discussion. President Obama settled many of those fears by directly answering some very heartfelt questions.

Click here for a full transcript of the meeting and here for a full video.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 15, 2010 (boomark / email).