What reasons spurred them on to take this first time action?

The Consumers Union survey of 1,002 adults from Sept. 17 to 20 found that among the ways people have tried to cut back on health care costs:

• 28 percent put off doctors' visits.
• 25 percent have been unable to afford medical bills or medication.
• 22 percent put off medical procedures.
• 20 percent declined medical tests.
• 20 percent skipped filling prescriptions.
• 15 percent took expired medication.
• 15 percent skipped scheduled dosages of prescriptions.

The problems were more prevalent among households with incomes of less than $50,000 , in which about two-thirds said they'd cut back on health care because of costs. Even where income topped $100,000 , however, about one-third made similar decisions.

Meanwhile, unwittingly making the arguments for the Public Option for us, the anti-consumer union of AHIP defies all logic when it comes to the real goals of reform and the public interest:

On the eve of the Senate Finance Committee vote on the Baucus Debacle, scheduled for tomorrow, AHIP (the helpful folks that represent the private insurers) released a memo and report yesterday to "Member Plan Presidents and CEOs" detailing just how much they're going to have to raise rates if the Baucus bill passes. Because they weren't going to raise rates regardless of reform passing? From the memo:

The report makes clear that several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system. The report finds that the proposal "will increase premiums above what they would increase under the current system for both individual and family coverage in all four market segments for every year from 2010-2019."

For example, the analysis shows that the cost of the average family policy is approximately $12,300 today and will rise to:

• $15,500 in 2013 under current law and to $17,200 if these provisions are implemented.
• $18,400 in 2016 under current law and to $21,300 if these provisions are implemented.
• $21,900 in 2019 under current law and to $25,900 if these provisions are implemented.

In fact, between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.

(Just as a point of comparison, insurance rates under the status quo have risen 119 percent in the last decade, and are projected to double again in the next decade, if the status quo remains. Under the status quo, by 2020 the Commonwealth Fund projects an average family policy to increase to $23,842. So when they pretend they're looking out for you, don't buy it.)

The report, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, (as Ezra points out, the same group that the tobacco industry turned to in the 90s to create reports on the economic devastation which would result from taxing tobacco), is long on dire predictions, short on comprehensive analsyis. Ezra highlights a few problems in it: the analysis "assumes no behavioral changes in response to new policies" in response to the increased taxes on high value plans, assuming  or that individuals and employers won't demand cheaper plans that control their costs; they also assume "full cost-shifting of cuts to public programs," as if healthcare spending would remain constant and that "every dollar that a public program cuts from its payments to hospitals is a dollar the private health-care industry has to add to its reimbursements to hospitals," which is insane--this is about cutting costs, not keeping the level of money flowing throughout the system level because we're spending way too much. Jonathon Cohn has another glaring deficiency in the report: it doesn't take into account the subsidies the bill creates to help people purchase insurance.

Yep! They are going to raise rates if that bill passes. We can be certain that they would raise rates no matter which bill is passed unless they are forced to compete with a non-profit plan with teeth. And if nothing passes? Look forward to the costs doubling again in another decade. They almost seem to be making an argument for even bolder reform.

If they are going to raise prices no matter what we may as well turn up the road to single payer.

As Ezra Klein notes, AHIP is turning to the same old tricks and tricksters we have seen in the past. For an in-depth look at parallels between the healthcare battle now and the earlier tobacco wars that defied all logic when it came to protecting consumers health, check the first installment of an ePluribus Media collaboration effort between deltadoc and TheFatLadySings written back in August:

Tobaccoup Road

In 1999, speaking to physicians, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a Reagan appointee, decried the hold of Big Tobacco on health care legislation.

He called tobacco "the sleaziest, slimiest, most devious industry in the world," whose members "also are the smartest and the richest," and then added. "...that's a bad combination."*

Koop remarked:

The biggest scandal in Washington was the Republican Senate selling out to the tobacco industry.

Always prescient, Koop was drawing attention to a coup d'etat: a bloodless takeover of government by big business...one that would drastically effect us for over a decade and is still derailing healthcare reform efforts today.

Koop warned, "We have lost control of medicine to the business world."

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