McConnell Dishonest About Insurance on 'This Week'

McConnell

Congressman Mitch McConnell, like a lot of his fellow Republicans,  has a problem with his employer. He doesn’t seem to think the government, of which he is a part and which provides him with the best health insurance our money can buy him,  has any business providing the rest of us with health care.  He’s not willing to give his taxpayer-funded health insurance up, though.  (No Republicans are.)

Here is part of the transcript of ABC’s This Week where the discussion was, as usual, health care reform.  (Do we talk about anything else?)

“STEPHANOPOULOS: So much of this is centered right now, so much of the debate is centered right now on this issue of the public option. The latest iteration that Senator Reid is working on is that he would set up a national program, but states would have the ability to opt out of the program, and it comes as the New York Times is reporting this morning that small businesses are going to face an increase in their health insurance premiums of 15 percent next year, 15 percent on average for small businesses. Given that, doesn’t it make sense that there be a public health insurance option to compete with the private insurers?

MCCONNELL: No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. In fact, I think 100 percent of Republicans have indicated they don’t think having the government in the insurance business is a good idea.

What we do know about this bill, though, George, aside from whether or not there’s a government insurance company in it or not, we do know it’s half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts. We know it’s $400 billion in tax increases on individuals and businesses. And we know the CBO says that insurance premiums for everybody will go up, that’s 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance.

So, wholly aside from the debate over whether the government gets into the insurance business, the core of the proposal is a bill that the American public clearly does not like.”

McConnell is misleading us, and he knows it.  The federal government has been in the “insurance business” for a long time. First of all, there is Medicare and Medicaid, something no one wants to see go away (other than a few ultra-partisan entertainers) because it’s so necessary.  Then there is flood insurance, or NFIP, the national flood insurance program.  Gee, that’s run by the federal government and it’s funded by Americans.  The government made getting flood insurance mandatory for some people in flood zones, and in order to make that easier for some people, they sell insurance to those people.  Did the GOP scream “Soshilizm!” then?  Nope.  They realized the need for the government to be involved in flood insurance.  This is from wikipedia, something McConnell should be aware that we are aware of.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created by the Congress of the United States in 1968 through the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (P.L. 90-448).

Created under a Republican president (Nixon) — Socialized flood insurance!

It enables property owners in participating communities to purchase insurance protection from the government against losses from flooding. This insurance is designed to provide an insurance alternative to disaster assistance to meet the escalating costs of repairing damage to buildings and their contents caused by floods.  [Where is that in the constitution?]

The NFIP goals are two-fold:

• To provide flood insurance for structures and contents in communities that adopt and enforce an ordinance outlining minimal floodplain management standards
• To identify areas of high and low flood hazard and establish flood insurance rates for structures inside each flood hazard area.^[2]

Participation in the NFIP is based on an agreement between local communities and the federal government which states that if a community will adopt and enforce a floodplain management ordinance to reduce future flood risks to new construction in Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA), the federal government will make flood insurance available within the community as a financial protection against flood losses. The SFHAs and other risk premium zones applicable to each participating community are depicted on Flood Insurance Rate Maps. The Mitigation Division within the Federal Emergency Management Agency manages the NFIP and oversees the floodplain management and mapping components of the Program.

The intent was to reduce future flood damage through community floodplain management ordinances and provide protection for property owners against potential losses through an insurance mechanism that requires a premium to be paid for the protection. The NFIP is meant to be self-supporting, though in 2004 Congress found that repetitive-loss properties cost the taxpayer about $200 million annually. Congress originally intended that operating expenses and flood insurance claims be paid for through the premiums collected for flood insurance policies. NFIP borrows from the U.S. Treasury for times when losses are heavy, and these loans are paid back with interest.

The program was first amended by the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973, [under a Republican president, again] which made the purchase of flood insurance mandatory for the protection of property within SFHAs. In 1982, [another Republican president, Reagan] the Act was amended by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA). The CBRA enacted a set of maps depicting the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS) in which federal flood insurance is unavailable for new or significantly improved structures. The program was further amended by the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004, [another Republican president -- Bush!]  with the goal of reducing “losses to properties for which repetitive flood insurance claim payments have been made.”

The NFIP insures approximately 4,400,000 policyholders, and these repetitive-loss properties cost the taxpayer about $200 million annually.

Hmmm.  I don’t live on a flood plain. Why should I have to pay for other people’s flood damage???

Wikipedia

Is Mitch McConnell unaware of the government’s role in flood insurance?  It seems to have been created and modified several times, all under Republican guidance.  Imagine, socialism approved of and directed by the Republicans.   Think about it — if flood insurance is good enough for them, then the equally-necessary health care reform public option should be good enough for them too.  But they’d rather that we didn’t think about it, because then we’d demand what Mitch McConnell has.  The reason Republicans like the government running flood insurance is that it protects the insurance companies.  Ahhhhh….

“. . . . the Senators who hate the idea of a public option for health insurance sure didn’t have any problem voting for a public option to protect the profits of insurance companies against too many flood claims.”

As Keith Olbermann pointed out in early October.