Secretary of Health & Human Services suggests that state departments of insurance may be able to protect citizens by checking insurance company Wellpoint’s math when it asks for rate increases. The reason is that, in California, the insurance giant asked for a 39% premium increase in California which was turned down when it’s submission attempting to justify the rate increase was found to have substantial errors.
“In light of this recent finding, I urge that, to the extent you have authority to do so, you re-examine any WellPoint rate increases in your state to determine whether any mistaken assumptions similar to those made in California were made in your state,” Sebelius wrote to the governors. “Even small errors can mean unaffordable premiums for policyholders.”
Here in Indiana, the Daniels administration seems to be taking the somewhat childish stance that it is not inclined to do so because the request is coming from the Obama administration, with whom Gov. Daniels has a political disagreement about health care:
Gov. Daniels does not plan on responding to the letter, according to Jane Jankowski, a spokeswoman.
“When we feel the need for advice about health-care costs, we won’t start with the people who just passed this disastrously expensive and backward federal legislation,” Daniels said in a statement e-mailed by Jankowski.
BrianK at Blue Indiana points out that this response is coming from the person whose math on the cost of the Iraq War, as President Bush’s director of the Office of Management & Budget, was so staggeringly wrong. (Not even mentioning the consistently wrong budget projections here locally.)
It’s a bad idea to let politics trump math. Eventually the math is always going to win.
If politics didn’t trump math, we wouldn’t have ‘stimulus’ packages or deficit spending, nor printing money faster than Jay Gould or Jim Fisk’s wet dream. Alas.
Come to think of it, if math trumped politics, we wouldn’t have a whole lot of government. Alas and aleck.
mitch is a tiny little man, in both spirit and stature. And I would not be surprised to find his hand in the “error” made by wellpoint in their negotiations with the state that resulted in such huge increases under his administration, at the same time cutting services.
Wellpoint has been protected by too many politicals. Perhaps check their portfolios for Wellpoint stock. We can not survive
health insurance companies that are stock market driven and not patient driven
Mine disaster in West Virginia. Does Daniels have any opinion about whether Indiana coal mines are safe? No.
BP oil spill in Gulf. Any comment by Daniels about IDEM’s “monitoring” of BP’s Indiana facilities? No.
Anthem’s rate increases: Daniels ducks any criticism of Anthem.
Goldman Sachs: Daniels is silent, no matter how much Goldman Sachs ripped off the financial markets.
He consistently avoids criticizing any manufacturing or large business
regardless of how rotten that they may be. Yet he declares “Ride your Motorcycle Safely” and working class folks naively think he’s cool.