More than half of the people in the United States get their health insurance coverage
from their employer and most of them aren't happy with that coverage.
A new study came out that helps explain why your coverage from your employer is so awful
and I have Farron Cousins from Trial Lawyer Magazine with me now to tell us about it.
Farron, this story, it was really, it's still under the radar.
ProPublica did a story on it.
NPR did an investigation on it and right now people are complaining that this new, this
new shift, the new Obamacare shift, the new coverage issues, they feel like they're getting
a lot less and they're blaming it on the legislation to some degree.
But really when you look at this story, it's really about the same old thing.
The people at the top trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of the American
consumer.
And what they do, what this investigations found is that a lot of companies out there,
their HR departments hire these insurance brokers.
They're not with the health insurance company.
They're not with the company buying the insurance.
It's essentially this group of, of middlemen and what they do is they work with the health
insurance company and say, all right, you let us know what plans you have.
We'll go sell them to the employer.
But what we didn't know until now is that the insurance companies and these brokers
had worked out deals.
These brokers in many cases get a percentage of the plans they sell and they get that as
long as the employer goes with them.
Let's back up.
First of all, we would expect the American, you know we, we expect that salespeople get
commissions.
We expect all that.
This is different though It is.
This is where you have you, you, you go to the HR Department or whoever it is that's
making the decision.
You say, look, we have two options for you.
Option A and option B and they don't tell him about options C because option C might
give the best coverage.
It might do away with, it might do away with a lot of the problems that A and B have, but
the broker who, who really has a conflict of interest here.
Clear conflict of interest says, you know what we think you ought to go with, with program
A because program A, the broker is making a lot of money that he's not disclosing why
he doesn't talk about C. He talks about A, because that's where he makes the most money.
That's where he gets his trips around the world is, you know, his voyages to Europe.
This is something that there, there's no regulation here.
We have brokers that are out there operating and people working in companies don't even
know why their insurance coverage has gone from bad to worse.
Well, and it's interesting too that you brought up these incentives they get, not just the
commission.
You understand if somebody sells and they get a commission, whatever, but, but they're
also offering these bonuses.
Sometimes for a group of brokers, you can get a $150,000 bonus, but it's not the health
insurance company that's paying that.
Those bonuses, these trips, you know, they had one offer go play baseball with a major
league Hall of Famer.
That's actually built into the price of those insurance plans.
So the employer and the employees who buy the plans, they're the ones paying for the
bonuses.
It's not coming out of the health insurance company's pocket, not coming out of the broker's
pocket.
We, the people who have that insurance paid that as an addition to a premium.
The problem is so bad in the United States that they've actually had to come, there are
actually organizations that have been put together where they're saying it's, it's called
Health Rosetta.
Health Rosetta is an organization that says, look, there are about a hundred thousand brokers
in the country and all those 100,000 brokers should be required to disclose to the HR or
to the company.
We have these other plans and they're better for your employees, but I don't make as much
money.
So this organization, Health Rosetta is saying, I mean the numbers are staggering.
I think there's only a hundred, maybe 110, 111 organizations that, that follow this Rosetta
plan.
And that's out of 100,000 brokers in the country.
Why?
Because there simply is no transparency.
There's no regulation to demand transparency.
And because of that, the problem for the average person, the employee is the coverage is getting
much less.
And the, the, the costs just to have the coverage is increasing.
Right, and this Rosetta group, what they do is they've said, listen, we don't take percentages,
we don't take commissions.
It's a flat fee.
We do our job for you.
We're going to do the best we can for you.
Nobody is giving us additional money.
And that's what makes the difference.
And with these plans that we currently have now, the up sells.
What they'll do in a lot of cases too, is charge for a more expensive plan that covers
things that there's no way anybody in your company could ever possibly need.
Okay.
But they sell it as, well just in case you know what, if you have an employee and this
happens, then your whole plan gets blown up.
So by this one with this extra covering.
Okay, so here's what we tell people.
Here's what's important.
We know Health Net of California is doing this.
We know emblem of EmblemHealth in New York is doing this.
We know that blue cross, blue, blue, blue cross blue shield is doing this, the blues
are doing this.
If you, if you have a human source HR department, I think the thing to do is to go to them and
say, look, is this taking place?
Because the HR department, most of them don't even understand how this works.
The, I mean you know they have training in HR but they don't have training to understand
this scam.
And the scam if, if you, look, it's impossible for me to believe that if you tell a broker,
if you sell this, this, this item that is substandard by all, by all means it's substandard.
If you sell this, we're going to give you, you can make as much as $150,000. these bonuses
run up to where the, the entity is paying out $150,000 in kind of extra bonuses for
selling this kind of stuff.
And so it, it, it, it's impossible for me to believe Farron that in that, in that environment
that you don't have brokers that are taking advantage of this and the HR department really
doesn't even know about it.
A federal judge has approved historic plans to change the way the police department in
Chicago interacts with the public.
The new policies aimed to reform a police department that's long been accused of violating
civil rights, using deadly force in violating the constitution most of the time when they
use that deadly force.
RT correspondent Brigida Santos joins me now with all the details.
First of all, Brigida, let's talk about the federal judge, he's approved these plans.
What, what are the plans that we're looking at?
What are the big changes that this judge is willing to approve?
First of all, the changes have been proposed since 2014 after a dash cam recording showed
Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, shooting teenager, Laquan McDonald 16 times resulting
in his death.
The officer was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to over six years in
prison, but that case spawned massive protests across the city and earned a response from
the Justice Department calling for comprehensive policy reforms within the Chicago Police Department.
So now after more than a year and a half of negotiations, city and state officials have
finally reached an agreement.
Now, as for what's in the agreement, there are hundreds of changes outlined in the court
ordered agreement, some of the most significant include new guidelines for how and when officers
can or cannot deploy firearms and tasers.
It also commits the city to ensuring that police officers fully comply with the constitution
of the United States and Illinois state.
It also prescribes community policing and youth engagement initiatives to build trust
between officers and the communities they serve and it says that it will determine the
overall effectiveness of the department based on crime reduction rates rather than by the
number of arrests, stops or citations that are made.
The judge who approved this plan is now in the process of choosing a leader to monitor
all the parties involved to make sure that they comply with the new rules and they're
going to be looking at that over the coming years.
Now, that decision is expected by March first, and once a leader is chosen, the new rules
are expected to go into effect.
What I like about this is when Chicago pays attention to this and they actually implement
plans, it may have a really big effect on so many other large cities, police department.
But it's almost as if we're not seeing as many, you know, we went through a rash there
where it was like every week there was some type of shooting or killing that was arguably
a mistake or an intentional attack on a victim that was being arrested.
We would see those, we would see those stories constantly.
I'm not seeing as many.
Maybe there's something already taken place as far as the public putting pressure on the
various police departments.
Look, Attorney General Jeff sessions previously called the plan a colossal mistake.
Why?
Why would he say that?
Why is this plan a colossal mistake?
Before he stepped down as US attorney general, Jeff Sessions denounced the plan, calling
it undemocratic and an insult to Chicago police officers, stating that would impose unjustified
restrictions on police officers.
Well, I mean, the unjustified restrictions, of course, we're talking about Jeff Sessions
here.
So let's, let's start from square one.
So Jeff sessions thinks that it's, that it's a little really overreaching when we train
officers better.
When we give them more insight into how they can avoid unnecessarily killing people Sessions,
if you read between the lines, and this is not new for Sessions and you'd go all the
way back to his time in Alabama, it was always, what is it Mr. Sessions that gives you such
pause where it comes to saying the police department, you know, we can do better?
We can build.
How difficult do you think it will be for the department to roll out these reforms,
Brigida?
It's obviously going to be a very tough road ahead because old habits die hard, but they
have to start somewhere.
They'd been ordered to start somewhere and hopefully these changes are going to result
in fewer police killings and building better relationships with police and the communities
in Chicago that they represent.
And as you said, maybe setting an example nationally.
Well that's my hope.
My hope is that this A, it works.
B, you start seeing a really big, big downturn in unnecessarily killings or just kind of
brutal arrest.
Hopefully we start seeing that, but you know, you gotta give it, you got to give it to them
in Chicago.
They're making a, they're making an attempt to do it.
When other large cities just want to put their head in the sand and act like this whole problem
is just going to go away.
Thank you for joining me Brigida.