URGENT: Sign letter of protest over IOM’s skimpy health plan prescription

FOR ACTION TODAY

A recent Quote of the Day message expressed alarm at the fact that the Institute of Medicine is recommending a grossly inadequate, skimpy, spartan standard for the package of benefits to be offered by health plans in the state insurance exchanges being established under the Affordable Care Act:

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/october/ioms-disturbing-report-on-essential-health-benefits

Following is a letter asking the Obama administration to reject this recommendation. Though only selected names will be used in publicizing this letter, we encourage everyone who concurs with the views expressed to sign it, using this link:

http://www.pnhp.org/iom-letter/index.php


President Obama: Reject the Institute of Medicine’s skimpy health plan prescription

We protest the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) recommendation that cost rather than medical need be the basis for defining the “essential benefits” that insurance policies must cover when the federal health reform law takes effect in 2014. If adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, this recommendation will sacrifice many lives and cause much suffering. We call on Secretary Sebelius and President Obama to reject them.

The IOM proposal would base the required coverage on the benefits typical of plans currently offered by small businesses – enshrining these skimpy plans as the new standard. These bare-bones policies come with a long list of uncovered services and saddle enrollees with unaffordable co-payments and deductibles.

Already, millions of underinsured Americans forgo essential care: adults with heart attacks delay seeking emergency care; children forgo needed primary and specialty care; patients fail to fill prescriptions for lifesaving medications; and serious illness often leads to financial catastrophe.

The inadequate coverage the IOM recommends would shift costs from corporate and government payers onto families already burdened by illness. Yet this strategy will not lower costs. Delaying care frequently creates even higher costs. Steadily rising co-payments and deductibles over the past two decades have failed to stem skyrocketing medical inflation. And nations that assure comprehensive coverage – with out-of-pocket costs a fraction of those in the United States – have experienced both slower cost growth and greater health gains than our country.

Our patients urgently need what people in these other nations already enjoy: universal and comprehensive coverage in a nonprofit system that prioritizes human need over corporate profit.

The IOM committee was riddled with conflicts of interest, many members having amassed personal wealth and career success through their involvement with health insurers and other for-profit health care firms. Its recommendations were lauded by insurance industry leaders who have sought to undermine real health reform at every turn. As the Lancet noted on its Dec. 5, 2009, cover: “Corporate influence renders the U.S. government incapable of making policy on the basis of evidence and the public interest.”

Sadly, the committee’s damaging recommendations suggest that this corporate bug has also infected the IOM.