No Pre-existing Coverage Exclusions for Children. Prohibits health insurers from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for children. Effective six months after enactment, applies to all employer plans and new plans in the individual market.

But the Democrats have already said that is not quite correct.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

The new health care law will make it more expensive for companies to offer prescription drug coverage for retirees because companies will receive smaller tax deductions for those benefits in the future.
As many as 1.5 million to 2 million retirees could lose the prescription drug benefits their former employers provide because of the tax changes.

They only re-distribute the money that comes to them from employers, or private citizens, or the US Government itself which gets it from the same sources.

So if there is a new benefit or a relaxing or dismantling of some requirement that everyone hates, then someone will still have to pay for it, and it will not be the insurance companies.

The arguments against and the bad mouthing against the insurance companies are just Political Theater.

-The mandate forcing people without coverage to buy insurance. Coupled with the subsidies for other moderate income working people not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, the result is a gift worth hundreds of billions of dollars to reward the very insurance industry that created the present crisis through price gohttp://www.counterpunch.com/demoro03252010.htmluging, care denials, and other abuses.

-Inadequate healthcare cost controls for individuals and families. 1. Insurance premiums will continue to climb. Proponents touted a "robust" public option to keep the insurers "honest," but that proposal was scuttled. After Anthem Blue Cross of California announced 39 percent premium hikes, the administration promised to crack down with a federal rate insurance authority, an idea also dropped from the bill. 2. There is no standard benefits package, only a circumspect reference that benefits should be "comparable to" current employer provided plans. 3. An illusory limit on out-of-pocket medical expenses. But even in the regulated state exchanges, insurers remain in control of what they offer and what will be a covered service. Insurers are likely to design plans to attract healthier customers, and many enrollees will likely find the federal guarantees do not protect them for medical treatments they actually need.

-No meaningful restrictions on claims denials insurers don't want to pay for. Proponents cite a review process on denials, but the "internal review process" remains in the hands of the insurers, and the "external" review will be up to the states, many of which have systems now in place that are dominated by the insurance industry with little enforcement mechanism.

-Significant loopholes in the much touted insurance reforms: 1. Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions. 2. Permitting insurers to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will likely set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states. 3. Allowing insurers to charge three times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees. 4. Insurers may continue to rescind policies, drop coverage, for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" - the main pretext insurance companies now use.

--Taxing health benefits for the first time. Though modified, the tax on benefits remains, a 40 percent tax on plans whose value exceeds $10,200 for individuals or $27,500 for families. With no real checks on premium hikes, many plans will reach that amount by the start date, 2018, rapidly. The result will be more cost shifting from employers to workers and more people switching to skeletal plans that leave them vulnerable to financial ruin.

--Erosion of women's reproductive rights, with a new executive order from the President enshrining a deal to get the votes of anti-abortion Democrats and a burdensome segregation of funds, that in practice will likely mean few insurers will cover abortion and perhaps other reproductive medical services.

--A windfall for pharmaceutical giants. Through a deal with the White House, the administration blocked provisions to give the government more power to negotiate drug prices and gave the name brand drug makers 12 years of marketing monopoly against competition from generic competition on biologic drugs, including cancer treatments.

A proposal has been put forth at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that would not only reinstate commercial whaling around the world, it would legitimize Japan's "scientific" slaughter in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Nearly 25 years of protection for the whales could be tossed out the window if this proposal passes at the next IWC meeting in June 2010.

Shockingly, the Obama administration's representatives at the IWC actually support the deal to reinstate commercial whaling and are urging other nations to do the same. The delegates say that their directive comes directly from President Obama himself.

http://www.distantocean.com/2010/03/theres-an-ahab-in-the-white-house.html

Greenpeace supported Obama largely on the promise of his support for the whaling moratorium. Oops.

Obama seems to have a real vicious streak to him. What on earth did Greenpeace do to deserve this treatment? It's not like they agitated for a public option in HCR or anything. Or should we ask, what shiny object are the Japanese dangling in front of Obama to get him to swing their way and turn his back on yet another campaign promise?