Start your week right by enjoying the gate crashing call to action pasted below. An email from a progressive group, it clearly shows how calls for health care transparency are being used as Trojan horses--without more government control we'll never know what is going on--and why those interested in advancing market oriented health care reform should avoid them. It also shows once again that anything with FAIR in its name is anything but.

The email content suggests that the leftist campaign to control health care is solidifying around name-calling, demonization (in this case of insurance companies now that physicians and pharmaceutical companies have been dispatched), and claims that reformers are brave revolutionaries standing up for the oppressed masses. The legislation that the left is rallying to support would impose certain price and regulatory controls in the name of insurance transparency and will likely show up soon in a state near you.

If the Fair and Accountable Insurance Act passes, Colorado’s Insurance Commissioner could retroactively deny rate increases that he finds unjust, unfair, inequitable, discriminatory, excessive, inadequate, or incomplete. Insurance companies would have to make their pricing algorithms public. They would be safe from retaliatory rulings only if they adopted punitive minimum loss ratio standards that have, so far, often been associated with companies that provide crummy service.

Does the legislation define these terms? Of course not! Why include definitions that might limit the state officials’ power to act in the public’s best interest? You just know that the Democrat legislators introducing this abomination feel in their hearts that all public officials are honest, caring, experts who will do their best for the public, especially when it helps stock their freezers with $90,000 in cold cash, brings them fabulous deals on valuable real estate, gives them the inside track on various financial offerings, and provides the Rolls-Royces and yachts so necessary to helping them endure the stress of public service.

You want a lower health insurance premium because you are a young healthy non-smoker with a low risk of disease who watches his weight and takes care of himself? If the insurance commissioner thinks that "discrimination" includes letting people pay different prices for the same policy regardless of the risk of loss, you are going to pay the same rates as a 60-year old suffering from overweight, a disintegrating frame, and the dicey liver brought on by a lifetime of dissipation.

Enjoy!

From: Bobby Clark - ProgressNowAction [mailto:bobby@progressnowaction.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 9:25 PM
To: address deleted by editor
Subject: URGENT: Help us respond to the health insurance lobbyists