Another successful healthcare conference for CaHPSA

CaHPSA put on a great healthcare conference at CSU, Long Beach on Saturday, October 15. More than 115 students from across southern California attended the all day event where they learned about the need for health reform and how implementing a single-payer system in California would cover everyone while saving money. PNHP members and other distinguished speakers from CSULB, CNA, CTA and other organizations presented about the importance of continued activism as the Affordable Care Act is implemented. Break- out sessions on utilizing social media and framing equipped attendees to be more powerful advocates for our patients.

The 2011 CaHPSA Southern California Healthcare Conference was a great opportunity for the CaHPSA officers to build leadership skills. Volunteers, led by Conference Coordinator, Cindy de la Cruz, put in countless hours of planning and preparation to make sure every aspect of the conference went smoothly. Chris Brown, the Southern California President spoke about the need for students to get involved in the movement for single-payer and opportunities to do so in the coming months.

The CaHPSA team now turns it focus to our signature annual event, Lobby Day. Students will converge on Sacramento this coming January 8 for a full day of education and training to prepare attendees for the following day of action. The morning of January 9 will begin with a march through downtown Sacramento to the steps of the capitol building where we will join partner organizations and community members at a rally in support of SB 810. Student groups will then go inside to meet with our elected officials in legislative groups.

The CaHPSA team looks forward to sending a powerful message to Sacramento this January and plans to make this year, the largest Lobby Day yet!

-Joey Foy, Shearer Fellow

We'd like to know about those trade secrets!

Now there's no argument that health insurance companies still make truckloads of money even during the recession (see Huge profits for health insurers as Americans put off care - NYTimes, Executives at health insurance giants cash in as firms plan fee hikes - LA Times). Funny thing is, they still think they're vulnerable to competition, even though all the mergers of the health insurance industry in the past 20 years have left the market with on average just a couple of large insurers for any geographic area.

Well now these companies are ostensibly worried about the New York State Department of Financial Services' releasing their memos justifying steep premium increases, in the name of preserving competition. Apparently they each have "trade secrets" that they want to keep from other snooping insurance companies. That must mean they each think that their own trade secrets are better than the next insurance company's trade secrets.

Obviously, I don't think that's the case. They're much more worried about public outrage at their institutionalized practices of denying coverage and refusing to pay for care while hiking up already-exorbitant premiums again and again. “These documents, often speaking of concepts such as morbidity and anti-selection, could cause not only confusion, but also unnecessary alarm to the layman policyholder.” That's right, because the average person simply cannot understand why it's absolutely necessary for prices to be so high and coverage to be so low (and rightly so, I may add).

We have the freedom to be outraged and the right to know what these companies are doing with our money, what calculations they're making on our lives. Let's get angry, people.

Health insurers ask to keep rate increase data secret - NYTimes