Ganske
Grab-Bag Promises Higher Costs, More Uninsured
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 11, 1999
CONTACT: Richard Coorsh
(202) 824-1787
email: rcoorsh@hiaa.org
The following statement was released today by Chip Kahn,
President of the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA):
There are serious problems that exist in the way our nation finances
health care, none more serious than the need to provide affordable
coverage to the 43.5 million Americans who lack it. Unfortunately, many of
our elected officials would rather regulate the health insurance industry,
and in the process, raise consumers' costs and increase the number of
uninsured.
A bill announced today by Rep. Greg Ganske (R-IA) would do just that.
Dr. Ganske's bill is a grab-bag assortment of expensive mandates,
guaranteed to raise health insurance premiums and to divert money away
from consumer care into the coffers of providers and trial attorneys.
Under Dr. Ganske's bill, government bureaucrats, not consumers, would
determine the appropriate number of doctors and specialists in a health
plan. Government bureaucrats would enforce prohibitions against so-called
gag clauses in health plans, even though the government's General
Accounting Office already has found that no such clauses exist. And, under
Dr. Ganske's bill, health plan premium payers still would be exposed to
the vicissitudes of rate hikes brought about by expensive lawsuits against
health plans.
None of these regulations - nor others in Dr. Ganske's bill - would
provide coverage to the millions of Americans who need it; all of the
regulations, collectively, would raise the number of uninsured Americans.
Dr. Ganske and Members of Congress would best serve the American public by
heeding President Clinton's health care quality commission, which
pointedly refused to back so-called patient protection legislation. Health
plans responding to the marketplace - not bureaucrats and trial attorneys
- are best able to provide the services and safeguards that consumers
want.
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