Talk:J. Patrick Rooney/Archives/2017

NPOV
Rooney was a conservative Republican who financed conservative politicians and controversial causes like medical savings accounts. This article is written predominantly from sources favorable to Rooney, some of them published by Rooney himself. It's written like an advertisement, and in a style that violates WP:NPOV. If you believe that Rooney's free-market policies are effective in getting people the health care you need, then he's a great humanitarian. If you believe that his policies are harmful to health care, then he's not so great. Even if you agree with him, you have to admit that he's an avowed partisan Republican, and that should be handled objectively too.

Here are some articles that would add balance to the article:

http://harpers.org/archive/2015/07/wrong-prescription/ Wrong Prescription? The failed promise of the Affordable Care Act By Trudy Lieberman Harper’s Magazine July 2015

The A.C.A.’s greatest legacy may finally be the fulfillment of a conservative vision laid out three decades ago, which sought to transform American health care into a market-driven system. The idea was to turn patients into shoppers, who would naturally look for the best deal on care — while shifting much of the cost onto those very consumers. In large part, this scheme was the brainchild of J. Patrick Rooney, whose Indianapolis-based Golden Rule Insurance Company specialized in selling policies to only the healthiest customers.

Rooney, a vegetarian who wore plastic rather than leather shoes to avoid killing animals, pioneered the marketing of high-deductible catastrophic insurance policies, which could be coupled with tax-advantaged saving accounts to pay for non-catastrophic health-care costs. These medical savings accounts (M.S.A.’s) made perfect sense to a free-market ideologue like Rooney, even if they were initially regarded as a screwball invention that ran contrary to the basic concept of comprehensive employer-based insurance. Rooney channeled millions of dollars from his company’s political action committees to the campaigns of G.O.P. legislators. He walked the halls of the U.S. Capitol himself, sometimes making as many as ten thirty-minute visits a day to congressional offices.

Rooney also reached out to the media and the general public, funding groups like the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (N.C.P.A.), a right-wing think tank whose hundreds of studies, backgrounders, and presentations provided intellectual ammunition for M.S.A.’s. In time, these efforts propelled Rooney’s ideas into the mainstream policy conversation. In the early 1990s, M.S.A.’s were a “marketing failure but an intellectual triumph,” recalled Greg Scandlen, who promoted them on behalf of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, also founded by Rooney. ... In other words, Rooney and his G.O.P. allies (with, it should be said, Democratic acquiescence) moved American health insurance in a direction contrary to that taken by most every other nation in the developed world. It is also contrary to the needs of those unlucky enough to get sick. Whereas insurers once asked policyholders to pay a nominal $25 or $50 for a doctor’s visit or a CT scan, they now require them to foot as much as 25 or even 50 percent of the bill. What looks like a reasonably priced policy, at least in terms of premiums, can bring on sky-high bills and serious debt in no time.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/01/medikill MediKill Golden Rule Insurance has lavished campaign funds on Gingrich and the GOP in order to promote its medical savings account scheme--and destroy Medicare. —By Robert Dreyfuss and Peter H. Stone. January/February 1996 Issue Feature Story: A close look at Golden Rule's Medical Savings Account scheme. Doing Unto Others. Golden Rule CEO J. Patrick Rooney: more like Jesus Christ--as he claims--or Mr. Scrooge? He Who Has The Gold Rules. See where Golden Rule has been dropping its bullion. Roll Over and Die. Why the GOP's "reform" plan will create a "death spiral," killing Medicare

As the GOP's plan to dismantle Medicare has moved forward, no other corporation has lobbied as effectively, nor positioned itself as well to reap big dividends from the Republican legislation, as Golden Rule. While doctors, hospitals, drugmakers, and other, larger insurers are going to garner pieces of the Medicare carcass, the relatively obscure Midwestern company--thanks to its unique alliance with the Republican leadership and a network of far-right think tanks and industry groups--is poised to gain a disproportionate chunk.

Golden Rule is an intensely political company, from its patriarchal chairman, J. Patrick Rooney, down to its most junior employee. Behind the fresh-scrubbed, Midwestern faces of Golden Rule's workers lies a hard-edged, ideological fervor whose tone is set by Rooney's own libertarian, free-market views. For years, the company has been known for its unusually aggressive underwriting policies and its battles against regulators and insurance reform legislation in states across the country.

Since the start of the decade, Golden Rule has funneled a staggering amount of cash into the GOP's campaign coffers--including nearly $1 million in the last election cycle alone--to win hearts and minds for Rooney's pet project, Medical Savings Accounts, a kind of medical IRA that heavily benefits the healthy and affluent. Rooney himself has led Golden Rule's political and free-market jihad in Washington, jetting to the capital almost weekly for meetings with key members of Congress--including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the top recipient of Golden Rule's largesse. ... Essentially, an MSA is a form of "anti-insurance." Under an MSA system, instead of buying a traditional insurance policy with a low deductible (say, $250), an individual purchases a "catastrophic," high-deductible insurance policy that pays only for costs in excess of perhaps $3,000. To pay for health care costs below that amount, the individual sets up a tax-free MSA account. (Employers can also offer an MSA health care plan to their employees. In this case, the employer funds the employee's MSA and pays for the catastrophic policy.)

But here is the trick: The MSA would probably contain an amount much smaller than the catastrophic policy's deductible, perhaps $1,500, making MSAs a kind of gamble on good health. If policyholders stay healthy, whatever they do not spend on health care during the year, they get to keep. But if they become sick, they rapidly use up their MSA funds and are stuck facing a large amount in uncovered medical costs until the catastrophic insurance policy kicks in.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/14/us/gop-plan-would-profit-insurer-with-ties-to-party.html G.O.P. Plan Would Profit Insurer With Ties to Party By ROBERT PEAR April 14, 1996

WASHINGTON, April 13— A health insurance company with close political and financial ties to Republican leaders stands to benefit substantially from a proposal that conservative Republicans want to add to a major health insurance bill scheduled for debate next week on the Senate floor.

Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, Democrat of Georgia, asked on the House floor: "Why medical savings accounts? Just follow the money. The Golden Rule Insurance Company has given more than $1.4 million to the G.O.P., and, coincidentally, Golden Rule just happens to be the premier company peddling medical savings accounts."

Mr. Rooney offered slightly different numbers. In an interview, he said that he and Golden Rule employees had given $1.1 million to the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates for Congress since January 1993. Common Cause, the public affairs lobby, said that Mr. Rooney and John M. Whelan, Golden Rule's president, had given more than $117,000 to Gopac, the political action committee that helped Mr. Gingrich take control of the House. --Nbauman (talk) 02:10, 7 November 2015 (UTC)


 * You make a good point, and we should include more.
 * BTW I notice that Medical savings account (United States) does not mention JPR. - Rod57 (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Which Fairness Foundation
The External link to www.fairnessfoundation.org seems to be to an asian website (about 'moving'?) - nothing to do with JPR ? The Fairness_Foundation link in the first line seems to be for an entirely unrelated German organisation. - Rod57 (talk) 13:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I've replaced the Asian External link fairnessfoundation.org with (which seems to have the dubious Asian URL). It also could be the Fairness Foundation Inc listed at Fairness Foundation Inc - Rod57 (talk) 14:12, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I've changed Fairness Foundation to Fairness Foundation (Indiana) - Rod57 (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)