Tag Archives: insurance

Is it Possible to Insure Everyone in a For-Profit Health Insurance Market?

Posted on by
Reply

By Bikna Huang

Over the past two days, we have been examining the Affordable Care Act in light of the impending Supreme Court decision on the individual mandate provision.  Overall, the issue at hand is how to maintain a for-profit private health insurance system while requiring insurers to essentially return to the community rating system that they had basically abandoned by the 1960s. Earlier this month, President Obama stressed that there were only two ways to fix the health care system, by implementing the individual mandate or a single payer system. The single payer system would be another solution presented by President Obama and the Democrats.

“One way is a single payer plan. Everybody is under a single system like Medicare. The other way is to set up the system in which you don’t have people who are healthy but don’t bother to get health insurance and then we all have to pay for them in the emergency room. That doesn’t work, and so as a consequence we’ve got to make sure that those folks are taking the responsibility seriously – which is what the individual mandate does.” – President Obama

Another solution is Representative Paul Ryan’s plan.  Ryan’s proposal, transforms Medicare and creates a premium support plan. This plan will essentially give premium support for senior citizens to choose from varies providers for their Medicare coverage. The goal of this plan is to reform the Medicare system and “to create—a market so robust we can finally begin to control costs.” Under Ryan’s plan, those who do not purchase health insurance will not be penalized.

We have looked at different aspects of Obamacare through this series, focusing primarily on the individual manadate.  However, in the broader context, the fate of the individual mandate is simply one piece of a problem that needs to be addressed. The United States is ranked as one of the top nations in the world in terms of its GDP and standards of living; however, this is surprising when the health care system in the United States is ranked thirty-seven. When President Obama took office in 2008, the prospect of health care reform seemed closer than ever and the compromise plan that emerged, the Affordable Care Act, seemed like the solution. But in order to maintain the private system, the individual mandate, proposed in the 1980s by the Heritage Foundation seemed to be the most practical way.  There is much to be known about the Affordable Care Act, and the constitutionality of the act is still being decided. What do you think about the individual mandate? Will Obamacare be a push in the right direction for health care reform?

Bikna Huang is an intern with TheFactFile.com who studies at CalPoly in San Luis Obispo, California.

Fact Checking the Fact Checkers Redux:  The Case of A singular Woman vs. The Road We’ve Traveled

Posted on by
Reply

 

The recent release of the Tom Hanks-narrated documentary about President Obama, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” has led to a reopening of the controversy that began with the publication of “A Singular Woman”—Janny Scott’s biography of President Obama’s mother, Stanley Anne Dunham.  At issue is whether President Obama’s recollection of the last year of his mother’s life or Ms. Scott’s account is correct.

In President Obama’s recollection, his mother “died of cancer while fighting with her insurance company at the end of her life.” In contrast, Ms. Scott writes that the dispute was not with a health insurer, but rather with Cigna over disability insurance.   The Washington Post’s Fact Checker accepted Ms. Scott’s account without question and gave President Obama and the documentary “Three Pinocchios.”  This is not something we would have done at TheFactFile.com, especially given some of what we have read about Ms. Scott’s other reporting and given that even in Ms. Scott’s account, Ms. Dunham was indeed “fighting with her insurance company at the end of her life.”
Nevertheless, the context in the documentary itself seems to indicate that Ms. Dunham was battling with a health insurer.  In an effort to shed some light on the issue, we decided to do the research and digging that The Washington Post did not do in their fact checking.  We reviewed the statements on both sides of the issue made last summer when the book was first published.  (For a sample check here and here.) We also reviewed the book itself.  The most troubling aspect we noted was a lack of the source for the letters Ms. Scott quotes.  In a variety of interviews both recorded and in print, Ms. Scott has had various responses about the source of the letters she relied upon.  We found these conflicting accounts confusing and tried, unsuccessfully we might add, finding the source, or a more accurate statement on the source of the letters.  We also tried to contact Ms. Scott, and like others, were unsuccessful.   Ms. Scott’s employer, The New York Times, stated that she had not returned to work.  Finally, we contacted her publisher, Penguin, which failed to respond, although we waited more than 72 hours before going to press  with this post.
Overall, we at TheFactFile.com take the approach that when dealing with facts, some due diligence is required.  We cannot see where there are clear facts to support the conclusion that either President Obama and “The Road We’ve Traveled” or Ms. Scott and A Singular Woman deserve any Pinnochios.  All we know is that the person who lived through the last year of Ms. Dunham’s life with her, President Obama, has a different recollection than the person who wrote a story about it.