Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2009 21:05:01 GMT -6
Margaret Carlson has really nailed it in this excellent article about the Obama health care "plan," and how Obama's waffling on the public option will turn the health care reform plan into the "Health Insurers' Protection Plan."
The Health Insurance industry is drooling all over itself about a mandate to force 50 million more Americans to buy health insurance. The potential profit increase for the industry would rival anything ever seen in human history.
But the Health Insurance Industry will do anything in its power to prevent competition from a low-cost competitor--a public health care option who's cost would be based solely on what medical care actually costs--and not include the administrative costs and phenomenal profit margins that private insurers now enjoy.
Here's the story from Bloomberg:
Obama May Be Best Friend Insurers Ever Had:
by Margaret Carlson
July 23, 2009
"Point a camera and he will come.
That’s President Barack Obama’s attitude since returning from a world tour to find his plan to overhaul the U.S. health- care system in need of resuscitation....
Part of the trouble is of the president’s own making. While he was in Moscow, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel smelled the fear of Democrats on the Hill at bucking the insurance industry and said the White House wasn’t wedded to the idea of setting up a government-run plan to compete with the companies. That was the one previously essential element of Obama’s proposal.
The president walked that back, but the toothpaste didn’t go back in the tube. Republicans smelled compromise. Insurers, who would rather set fire to the Capitol than face government competition, felt giddy. The rest of us should be worried.
The problem with being open to another “path,” as Emanuel put it, is that there isn’t one. Here’s the good news about the gaggle of proposals to fix health care: Every last one is better than what we have now....Any plan they hit would be a big step up from the status quo.
Public Option Critical
There’s a catch: If Congress enacts and Obama signs into law a bill that includes a mandate that everyone have insurance -- the provision common to every major proposal -- but leaves out a public option, we are toast.
The public option means you wouldn’t have to be very old or very poor to get insurance from the government, as you do now. It would give the previously uninsured and those for whom it is a financial burden a place to go. We’d keep the basic system we have but add an option for the middle class to get coverage through the government.
Because the government administers health care for far less than do private companies, a public option would almost certainly mean instant price relief that insurers would fail to match at their peril.
It’s easy to see why the insurers are opposed, and hard to see why anyone else would be. Yet the industry may have the votes to kill the public option without resorting to arson....
Such a bill would do exactly what the Congressional Budget Office says it will, bankrupt the country....
Passing only an individual mandate is health-care reform that drops the part about reform and embraces the part about insurers getting a virtual monopoly on health care. Let’s call it the Insurance Company Protection Act.
No wonder Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, has called off Harry and Louise, that whining couple who fretted over Hillarycare in a multimillion- dollar ad campaign 15 years ago. Insurers, along with hospitals and drugmakers, are thrilled by the prospect of 50 million new customers forced into their arms by the government.
Eagerly Making Concessions
The industry is so anxious to have the government require coverage that it’s ready to give up some beloved quirks in its business model, like insuring mostly those unlikely to make a claim. With the prospect of a risk pool full of the young and healthy, they’ll agree to cover those with pre-existing conditions without charging them prohibitively more. They’ll also agree to end higher premiums for women, previously justified by their indulgent practice of preferring to have babies in a costly hospital setting....
it’s not health-care reform. It’s an insurance bonanza and, of course, they’ll make a few changes to get it.
The only thing troubling the insurance lobbyists is the prospect of a public option. Its devious purpose, say insurers, is to put them out of business.
They argue there is already competition. There isn’t. Many cities are dominated by a single insurer. Hundreds of companies have merged over the last decade. And with little pricing pressure, premiums are rising faster than incomes....
AHIP argues that the public option would be unfair competition -- but hardly if the insured are as happy as the association says they are now. AHIP cites polls showing most Americans are delighted with their coverage. If so, what would there be to fear from a public option?
Plenty, if you read a New York Times/CBS News poll last month, which found that 72% of Americans favor the creation of a public plan, which they think will do a better job than private insurers.
A Washington Post poll found the majority who described their health care positively used it the least. There’s no telling how low that figure could go once someone’s gone into the phone tree hell of the claims-denial department.
Without a public option, there won’t be a way to negotiate lower prices. Insurers are sanguine about leaving the sicker, older population to Medicare. But please don’t take away the young and healthy.
The president has made a mistake that no press conference or town-hall meeting can cure. Like Bill Clinton before him, he doesn’t have control of a process that’s gotten too complicated. Bill gave it to Hillary. Obama gave it to Congress. He’s now faced with solving the crisis in insurance, not the one in health care. It’s enough to make you sick."
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9TUbTPPpdhg
The Health Insurance industry is drooling all over itself about a mandate to force 50 million more Americans to buy health insurance. The potential profit increase for the industry would rival anything ever seen in human history.
But the Health Insurance Industry will do anything in its power to prevent competition from a low-cost competitor--a public health care option who's cost would be based solely on what medical care actually costs--and not include the administrative costs and phenomenal profit margins that private insurers now enjoy.
Here's the story from Bloomberg:
Obama May Be Best Friend Insurers Ever Had:
by Margaret Carlson
July 23, 2009
"Point a camera and he will come.
That’s President Barack Obama’s attitude since returning from a world tour to find his plan to overhaul the U.S. health- care system in need of resuscitation....
Part of the trouble is of the president’s own making. While he was in Moscow, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel smelled the fear of Democrats on the Hill at bucking the insurance industry and said the White House wasn’t wedded to the idea of setting up a government-run plan to compete with the companies. That was the one previously essential element of Obama’s proposal.
The president walked that back, but the toothpaste didn’t go back in the tube. Republicans smelled compromise. Insurers, who would rather set fire to the Capitol than face government competition, felt giddy. The rest of us should be worried.
The problem with being open to another “path,” as Emanuel put it, is that there isn’t one. Here’s the good news about the gaggle of proposals to fix health care: Every last one is better than what we have now....Any plan they hit would be a big step up from the status quo.
Public Option Critical
There’s a catch: If Congress enacts and Obama signs into law a bill that includes a mandate that everyone have insurance -- the provision common to every major proposal -- but leaves out a public option, we are toast.
The public option means you wouldn’t have to be very old or very poor to get insurance from the government, as you do now. It would give the previously uninsured and those for whom it is a financial burden a place to go. We’d keep the basic system we have but add an option for the middle class to get coverage through the government.
Because the government administers health care for far less than do private companies, a public option would almost certainly mean instant price relief that insurers would fail to match at their peril.
It’s easy to see why the insurers are opposed, and hard to see why anyone else would be. Yet the industry may have the votes to kill the public option without resorting to arson....
Such a bill would do exactly what the Congressional Budget Office says it will, bankrupt the country....
Passing only an individual mandate is health-care reform that drops the part about reform and embraces the part about insurers getting a virtual monopoly on health care. Let’s call it the Insurance Company Protection Act.
No wonder Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, has called off Harry and Louise, that whining couple who fretted over Hillarycare in a multimillion- dollar ad campaign 15 years ago. Insurers, along with hospitals and drugmakers, are thrilled by the prospect of 50 million new customers forced into their arms by the government.
Eagerly Making Concessions
The industry is so anxious to have the government require coverage that it’s ready to give up some beloved quirks in its business model, like insuring mostly those unlikely to make a claim. With the prospect of a risk pool full of the young and healthy, they’ll agree to cover those with pre-existing conditions without charging them prohibitively more. They’ll also agree to end higher premiums for women, previously justified by their indulgent practice of preferring to have babies in a costly hospital setting....
it’s not health-care reform. It’s an insurance bonanza and, of course, they’ll make a few changes to get it.
The only thing troubling the insurance lobbyists is the prospect of a public option. Its devious purpose, say insurers, is to put them out of business.
They argue there is already competition. There isn’t. Many cities are dominated by a single insurer. Hundreds of companies have merged over the last decade. And with little pricing pressure, premiums are rising faster than incomes....
AHIP argues that the public option would be unfair competition -- but hardly if the insured are as happy as the association says they are now. AHIP cites polls showing most Americans are delighted with their coverage. If so, what would there be to fear from a public option?
Plenty, if you read a New York Times/CBS News poll last month, which found that 72% of Americans favor the creation of a public plan, which they think will do a better job than private insurers.
A Washington Post poll found the majority who described their health care positively used it the least. There’s no telling how low that figure could go once someone’s gone into the phone tree hell of the claims-denial department.
Without a public option, there won’t be a way to negotiate lower prices. Insurers are sanguine about leaving the sicker, older population to Medicare. But please don’t take away the young and healthy.
The president has made a mistake that no press conference or town-hall meeting can cure. Like Bill Clinton before him, he doesn’t have control of a process that’s gotten too complicated. Bill gave it to Hillary. Obama gave it to Congress. He’s now faced with solving the crisis in insurance, not the one in health care. It’s enough to make you sick."
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9TUbTPPpdhg