I gave Robert Zirkelbach, AHIP's director of Strategic Communications, a call to talk through the proposal his organization released today and get more specifics on their stance towards community rating, public plans, and affordability questions. Our chat is transcribed below. For my earlier posts on the AHIP proposal, see here and here. Ezra: What compelled you to release this statement? AHIP: This summer, we launched our "campaign for the American solution, which is a national grassroots and educational initiative to build support for healthcare reform. We travelled the country hosting round-table discussions with Americans from all walks of life to hear their healthcare stories, to hear their priorities for healthcare reform, and receive feedback on the proposals that we put forth. And, one of the things that we heard everywhere we went was that individuals are concerned about lack of coverage due to preexisting conditions; concern that if they lost their job, they wouldn't be able to get coverage. And so our board of directors responded by coming out with the proposal that we announced yesterday, which is too guarantee that health plans provide coverage for preexisting conditions in conjunction with mandate that individuals keep and maintain healthcare coverage. So, this was done in response to what we heard from the American people when we travelled the country throughout the summer. Ezra: And let me make sure I understand this proposal, as currently formed. So somebody could come onto the individual market, and they could say, "listen, I lost my job recently; I lost my health insurance; about four years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer; it's in remission." This proposal, as far as I understand, does not have anything saying that the care would be affordable, just that it couldn't be straight-forwardly denied. Right? AHIP: Well, affordability has to be a top priority. I mean, we need to ensure that there are adequate tax credits for moderate-income folks. There needs to be a strong safety net for the lower-income individuals. And, we have to tackle the cost-drivers that are driving up the cost coverage. We need to find a way to make sure that healthcare coverage is affordable for everybody. Ezra: But, so without something more concrete about that in this proposal, I guess my question is, what are we actually looking at here? Because it seems to me that the question that you related from the folks you spoke to in the Campaign for an American Solution -- what they were saying is, "I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to access healthcare coverage, not just that I won't be able to have insurance sold to me at some price, but that price will be something I can't afford." And we have to solve that. AHIP: Well, the affordability issue is up there with ... you know we heard questions, concerns about affordability just as much as we heard concerns about preexisting conditions. Both of those issues have to be a priority. And we have been ... all of this is in the context of what we've been doing for two years and what we've said about affordability, and how to bring down costs. And, we're gonna have more to say, and as you well know, there's a lot of specific policy issues that need to be worked out with policy makers and stakeholders to find out how best to do this. But when we came out yesterday, we said, "the best way to get everybody into the healthcare system is to have a guarantee issue coupled with an individual mandate." And that is a big step forward from where we had been previously.
