A new healthcare coalition has appeared on the scene in Virginia that claims to represent the interests of “thousands of Virginians with chronic diseases, small business owners, and older adults” to protect patients with pre-existing conditions and to “strengthen” the health insurance marketplace.
The Healthy Market VA Coalition is endorsing SB 404, which would limit the sale of “inadequate” Short-Term Limited Duration Plans, and Governor Ralph Northam’s proposal to convert Virginia’s federally facilitated medical insurance exchange to a state-run model. I have not evaluated either piece of legislation, so I cannot comment positively or negatively on them.
My purpose in this post is to call attention to the fact that the coalition does not consist of actual healthcare consumers but nonprofit organizations that have their own agendas. Typically, nonprofit organizations are predisposed to government or philanthropic solutions to society’s problems. Thus the focus of this group is on pre-existing conditions and health exchanges for lower-income Virginians — worthy topics of consideration, to be sure — but not, for example, the consolidation and cartelization of Virginia’s healthcare industry, the excess profits of “nonprofit” hospitals, the trade unionization of the medical occupations, or the ever-growing list of mandated benefits that make insurance policies increasingly unaffordable.
— JAB
