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NYS Health Benefit Exchange Update

 STATE OF NEW YORK

PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH PLANNING COUNCIL

SPECIAL MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE ON HEALTH PLANNING

June 26, 2013  11:00 a.m.

90 Church Street, NYC  4th Floor, Room 4A & 4B

Learn and Comment on the NYS Health Insurance Exchange

Donna Frescatore, Executive Director of the New York Health Benefit Exchange

with a panel discussion

Paul Eisenstat, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield

Paul Macielak, NY Health Plan Association

Pat Wang, Healthfirst

PUBLIC COMMENT ENCOURAGED! SPEAK NOW OR DON’T COMPLAIN LATER!

June 25, 2013 - Posted by | Uncategorized

4 Comments »

  1. The great state of NY should take a play out of the great state of California’s playbook and not allow Blue Cross Blue Shield to sell policies on the exchanges. The California Insurance Commissioner forbids Blue Cross and events its 4-profit arm Anthem from selling policies due to their love affair with high premiums, says the commissioner. Gov Cuomo would be directly hurting his citizens if he allows Blue Cross to sell policies on the exchanges. Plus, NY should not do business with anybody who has purposefully defrauded Medicare in order to get profit. Excellus got caught doing exactly that on purpose
    http://www.fiercehealthpayer.com/story/cms-overpaid-excellus-41m-medicare-advantage-plans/2012-10-16

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    Comment by mdtaber | June 25, 2013 | Reply

  2. To your credit Caryn, you’re always on top of these types of situations. Unfortunately most of us believe that the deal has already been cut! So what’s the point of going to ‘public’ meetings to express our opinions? Blue Cross and anybody else who’s an insider will be sucking the life out of New Yorkers at these ‘Exchanges’, thanks to OBAMACARE! Does anybody actually believe, that the price of insurance is going to go down…………..? That their health care is going to get better…………..? I rest my case.

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    Comment by Charli Marlin | June 26, 2013 | Reply

  3. To set the record straight to Charil and Caryn. I was on the GOP side of the US Senate HELP Committee writing healthcare policy for the physicians on the committee when the ACA and her two sisters (signed laws hat revise and repeal provisions of the ACA) were being drafted. Healthcare costs will actually go down as my committee and the finance committee added taxes on to premiums. Any insurance company that can prove to CMS that they have reduced their premiums will see these taxes be taken away. The taxes on the premiums are designed to go up every year. If the insurance companies are smart (which they are truly not), they will reduce their premiums and not subject themselves to the taxes. I would assume that their shareholders would want them to do everything they can to reduce their premiums so they can avoid the taxes.

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    Comment by mdtaber | June 26, 2013 | Reply

    • We can only just hope. The word is that many companies would rather pay the fines than buy the insurance, so what will insurance companies do to make the premiums affordable. Just going down may still not be enough to be considered affordable to many small businesses. Talking about the past, I was on the founding committees for several national and local organizations for Single Payer. Nothing has been done to change my mind that these incremental solutions can work.

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      Comment by GetHealthHelp | June 27, 2013 | Reply


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