Group protests ‘criminal practices’ of health insurance industry

Despite Tuesday afternoon's rain, the Tennessee Health Care Campaign held a rally to bring attention to the insurance industry’s “criminal practices” and “pushback” against health care reform plans that would make health insurance more affordable for more Americans.

“Insurance companies are still rescinding people’s policies…they’re still denying people coverage because of preexisting conditions,” said THCC executive director Tony Garr. “We want to bring the public’s attention to (the fact that) these practices in health care reform must stop.”

The event, held for a time outside the Nashville office of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, 3200 West End Ave., featured several speakers, including BlueCross customers, who have experienced unaffordable or dropped coverage and medical debt.

Garr hoped the rally would help convince BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee President and CEO Vicky Gregg to “do what’s best for the American people” and stop supporting the Max Baucus health care reform bill, which he said is the worst among proposed reform legislation.

The bill creates a 4:1 ratio for pricing insurance premiums based on age, meaning older people could be charged four times more for coverage than younger Americans, he added.

BlueCross BlueShield spokesman Scott Wilson commented Tuesday morning in an e-mail to The City Paper.

"BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is for thoughtful, sustainable health care reform that gets the uninsured and underinsured affordable coverage and quality care,” the statement read. “We’re encouraged that people are engaged in this process and hope that any conversation in the public sphere about health care reform is productive.”

Gregg is on the board of directors for American Health Insurance Plans, the national insurance plan industry association that supports the Baucus bill, and preferred the bill’s original 5:1 ratio.

“The insurance industry is pushing for a rating of five to one, and that’s what we have a serious problem with,” Garr said. “It’s the bill that’s least affordable.”

Wilson said in the e-mail that it is “not completely accurate” to say that AHIP or BlueCross supports the entire bill, only parts of it. The age banding for determining the variance of insurance rates is one area of contention, he said.

“A flat age band would charge a 21 year old the same as a 65 year old, which would set a rate that might be much higher than the 21 year old can afford to pay,” Wilson wrote.

Several other reform bills call for a 2:1 scale.

Wilson added that BlueCross supports the elimination of pre-existing conditions as long as the provision is accompanied by a coverage requirement.