[GPSCC-chat] Fw: Regarding Prop 45

[Caroline Yacoub]

On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:19 PM, Gerald Hunt <gwhunt97 at comcast.net> wrote:
 


Enclosed is a LA Times commentary from Michael Hiltzik about the Board Members of Covered California which forms the basis of some of my comments in the email below.
 
Gerry
From:Gerald Hunt [mailto:gwhunt97 at comcast.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 4:29 PM
To: 'boardcomments at covered.ca.gov'
Subject: Regarding Prop 45
 
I am very surprised and troubled by the position taken by three Board members objecting to Insurance Commissioner Jones’ Prop 45.  I am a retired CPA and I have been taking insulin since I passed my CPA license 42 years ago.  I had enormous problems getting health insurance, but I am a Vietnam Veteran so my fallback position has been to get accepted as a qualified patient in the VA healthcare system.  After 42 years I am not experiencing any side effects of the diabetic condition, but I am experiencing great anger at the positions of Ms. Kennedy, Ms. Dooley, and Ms. Belshe in opposition to private health insurance premium rate review by the state Insurance Commissioner.
 
I have spent 42 years managing my diabetic healthcare without any assistance from private health insurers who denied me care because of my pre-existing condition.  I have worked in corporate finance, with a specialty of cost and process analysis for over 20 years, and installed or modified employee health benefit plans at three companies.  I worked in Europe, England, Scotland, Portugal, and Germany for six years, and received superb medical care during those years  My involvement with the private health insurance industry since my graduation from University (as a Price Waterhouse auditor) has proven over and over again that their primary business model is capitalizing deception.  
 
The industry has the overwhelming resources to influence regulators and legislators with deceptive scenarios that are deceptively simple but are seldom factually successful.  The public has been paying the price for this deception since the Teddy Roosevelt administration.  I have traced historical documents that far back. Being a finance guy with 40 years in the trenches I know how easy it is to manipulate financial reports to show the picture that is favorable rather than factual.  That is specifically why the public needs very close oversight and scrutiny of any financial background supporting requests for increases in premium rates and especially at the cost reports segregating medical losses, selling, marketing, electronic data, and administrative costs.  I review that NAIC website routinely to see how closely the Insurance Commissioners are monitoring the industry’s reporting.  The legislation creating the structure of the health insurance
 exchange does not provide for any of that oversight, and to the best of my knowledge the three Board Members have not to date suggested any changes that would provide such oversight.  There is considerable documentation of Commissioner Jones’ effort to reach a compromise on responsibility for oversight without success.
 
The three ladies have been appointed to positions with a responsibility to provide the public with professional, skillful oversight, but the public documentation shows these three members are more interested in being insurance company shills than in their public oversight responsibility.  It is exceedingly shameful!  
 
I have been involved with Health Care for All-California for the past 20 years, 18 of those years as state Treasurer.
 
Gerald W. Hunt
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