Word: reformator
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...striking that the Reform Party, founded by Perot to keep his crusade alive, has virtually no appeal to the Tea Party crowd. There is a lesson in that. Grass-roots uprisings come and go, and protest candidates rise and fall. In the flush of righteous battle, people focus on the beliefs they share and tolerate points of difference. Eventually, though, the battle ends, the smoke clears, and even when the movement has some success, its troops tend to go their separate ways. After Perot retired from politics, his movement fell to pieces; Patrick Buchanan carried the Reform Party's banner...
...with extensive knowledge of the individual health insurance market, in which the company operates. The best that Anthem Blue Cross customers in California can probably hope for, say these experts, is that the rate hikes will be less dramatic than what the company first proposed. (See "What Health Care Reform Really Means...
...approval. The state can later act to rein in rates or revoke an insurer's license, but this rarely happens. Most states, on the other hand, are "prior approval states," in which insurers need state permission to increase rates in the market. (See the top 10 jarring health care reform...
Regardless of what actually happens with Anthem Blue Cross's rate increases, the news has served as a useful tool for an Administration now making perhaps its hardest and last push for federal health care reform. After the Los Angeles Times broke the Anthem Blue Cross story, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lambasted the company. First she publicly asked it to justify the increases, and when the company offered a five-page explanation, she responded by saying, "It remains difficult to understand how a company that made $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone can justify...
...political ramifications of the Anthem Blue Cross story don't end at the Beltway. Steve Poizner, the California insurance commissioner who has been aggressively pursuing Anthem, is running for governor, though he is trailing far behind fellow GOP candidate (and former eBay CEO) Meg Whitman. Poizner says he supports reform of the U.S. health care system but generally opposes the Democratic House and Senate bills. Dave Jones, a Democratic state assemblyman, is running to replace Poizner in the commissioner's office on a platform of changing California law to require health insurers to get state approval before increasing rates...