Informed Consumer Choice

Floor Speech

Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, as we work to ensure every American has access to affordable choices of public or private health care coverage, we must also give them the tools to make informed choices about that coverage, to make sure that we will truly provide adequate protection in case they ever get sick.

We have all heard stories, sometimes tragic stories, about Americans who thought their health care coverage was comprehensive, only to realize that it had huge gaps once they actually got sick. Take the story of Jim Stacey, from Fayetteville, North Carolina. In 2000, Mr. Stacey and his wife bought a plan with a lifetime maximum payout of up to $1 million per person. Then he learned he had prostate cancer. But the policy paid only $1,480 of the more than $17,000 in treatment costs.

The simple fact is that right now, what you see is not what you get as a customer trying to decide on a health care plan. According to one recent study from Georgetown University, health insurance plans that look similar up front with similar copays, deductibles and so-called ``out-of-pocket limits'' can actually result in drastically different out-of-pocket expenses at the end of the day. And yet because that information is buried in legalese, or simply left out altogether, the consumer cannot tell the difference before it is too late.

Mr. Speaker, when we buy cars, computers, even cereal, we know what we are getting and how much it will cost. And yet when it comes to purchasing health care coverage today, families are too often kept in the dark about what kind of care their plan covers or what out-of-pocket costs they may face in the case of a serious illness.

Health insurance is one of the most expensive products Americans buy. Consumers and employers pay on average over $12,000 for it every single year. And yet we still expect them to make critical decisions about their health and well-being without all the information they need. You or I would never buy a car without first looking at its crash test ratings or knowing what kind of safety features it had. It is all laid out right on the sticker. Yet when it comes to health insurance, the most important information is simply not there.

And in a system where costs continue to skyrocket, the consequences have been devastating. Bad coverage and hidden exclusions can bankrupt people. Sixty-one percent of working age adults who had problems paying medical bills or were paying off medical debt in 2007 actually had health insurance at the time the care was provided.

That is why I plan to introduce the Informed Consumer Choices in Health Care Act to promote transparency in coverage and to provide crucial data to consumers and health care providers.

The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Association, Families USA, and the Campaign For America's Future endorse this legislation to promote consistent information standards, provide long-overdue data and resources for consumers and create a new Office of Health Insurance Oversight within the Department of Health and Human Services to administer accountability and transparency initiatives in coordination with State insurance regulators.

It is a simple idea that better information makes better consumers, and in the end, healthier families as well. That is what the Informed Consumer Choices in Health Care Act is all about. I hope you will join me in empowering consumers to make the right choices for themselves and their families to make sure that they can truly count on their health care coverage.

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