Who could have guessed? Just like who could have guessed those who created the financial mess would get a vast portion of the bailout? It’s almost as if bribes… sorry, I keep doing that… I mean campaign contributions and such were involved. Yeah, I know. Crazy talk!
Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.
The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers — many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies’ premiums.
“It’s a bonanza,” said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive for 20 years who now tracks reform legislation as president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates Inc.
Some insurance company leaders continue to profess concern about the unpredictable course of President Obama’s massive healthcare initiative, and they vigorously oppose elements of his agenda. But Laszewski said the industry’s reaction to early negotiations boiled down to a single word: “Hallelujah!”
The insurers’ success so far can be explained in part by their lobbying efforts in the nation’s capital and the districts of key lawmakers.
#27
So, you’ve resorted to childish name calling. Do you realize how vapid that makes your responses? I respond in the hopes that one day you might return to learned discourse. There was a time when you did. Maybe you have been spending too much time around Fusion.
RE: Insure any individuals will create huge conglomerates.
Actually, that is the case now. Only the massive insurance companies have the resources to open subsidiaries in many different States.
RE: Selling to individuals
Your argument falls flat when you consider auto insurance. The auto insurance companies are able to compete why do you think the health insurance companies would not? BTW, even with the government option, risk assessment will be a crucial element in determining cost. It is not going away.
RE: Corporations
It is double talk to state that the market system works for 80% of the people but could be improved? Who is doing the double talk here? Tearing down the entire system and putting in something that has never been tried in this country during a recession is the height of folly. Where do you this money is going to come from to do this? If you think your system is so great, then implement it your State. Let the individual State’s work out the kinks and then maybe it might make sense to consider a Federal solution.
And bobbo, interstate commerce won’t be used as justification for this type of provision anyway, just as it wasn’t used as justification for the Social Security Act.
The federal government can’t force you to buy insurance, but it can tax your income, and the whole angle of this provision is that they will make you pay more taxes if you don’t play along. In a similar fashion, the House bill wasn’t going to force insurers outright to accept everybody who came looking for insurance, and at one price level, regardless of risk or preexisting condition, either. But to be a member of the established health insurance exchange, they have to follow all of these rules and restrictions. And since people will have to buy insurance from an exchange participating provider, lest they get taxed, the providers will have no choice but to join the exchange.
So it seems that strong-arming people with the few legitimate powers it has makes up pretty well for the fact that it is lacking in others. Like how the feds can’t force states to give standardized tests to students, but it can threaten to take away the money it doles out if they don’t. To which I would give my standard response that the federal government shouldn’t be taxing as much as it does, and the states should be taxing more than they do.
#36
Well said! A common technique in the modern era is for the Federal money to strong arm compliance by withholding money from the States. One change that would fix that problem is prevent the Federal government from collecting tax money from individuals and instead only tax the States themselves (and the States would collect the taxes). In this way, the States might wake up one day and decide that having the Federal government give them their money back isn’t as keen as simply not giving it to them in the first place.
#35 It is double talk to state that the market system works for 80% of the people but could be improved? Who is doing the double talk here? Tearing down the entire system and putting in something that has never been tried in this country during a recession is the height of folly. Where do you this money is going to come from to do this? If you think your system is so great, then implement it your State. Let the individual State’s work out the kinks and then maybe it might make sense to consider a Federal solution.
Your health insurance premiums will continue to go up year after year, because your corporate insurance company must continue to increase its profits to satisfy Wall Street. That’s its job; it’s called Capitalism. The whole reason Obama’s trying to do something is that the current system is near to breaking. Health care costs are spiraling, didn’t you notice?
And BTW, the market system isn’t working for Americans, because we’re locked into whatever health insurance provider our employer chooses. There is no competition, no free market. And that’s just the way the Health Insurance companies like it. They’re paying big bucks for lobbyists pushing to keep the system just the way it is. They’re fighting for their lives, hoping Americans don’t notice how useless they are. What value do insurance companies add to health care in America? They’re glorified clerks looking for imaginative ways to deny your claims to fatten their profits.
#38
> Your health insurance
> premiums will continue
> to go up year after year,
> because your corporate
> insurance company must
> continue to increase its
> profits to satisfy Wall Street.
Why isn’t that true of all products and services? Why aren’t coffee cups $10K? Why isn’t the average auto insurance premium $100K? Competition is what stops this. If one company rapes its customers, another company will pop up to take its place. As long as individuals have the choice to go to a different carrier, the carriers will be forced to keep their prices down.
> Health care costs are
> spiraling, didn’t you notice?
First, the “government option” isn’t about control costs and in fact this is part of the issue. Second, there are three distinct topics at hand: providing health care, health care costs and health care cost coverage. Only the later will be addressed by the government option.
> And BTW, the market system
> isn’t working for Americans, because
> we’re locked into whatever health
> insurance provider our employer chooses
I agree. That is part of what I mean when I say that the current system could be improved. So, let’s correct that problem by finding a way of forcing the carriers to sell to individuals and not employers and finding a way of fostering competition.
As a Brit of 60+ I have grown up used to the state being responsible for my and my families medical needs. I know the British NHS has had a misinformed bashing in the US press recently but most of us are quite attached and proud of our system. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from perfect and despite a couple of decades of trying to change things it is still top heavy with pen pushers and money wasters. However, it’s a great comfort to know that if you your loved ones are ill then the last thing you have to do is worry about can I afford to get treated.
Of course there are some that abuse the system and waste time with minor ailments that need no doctors intervention, similarly some very high end resources like unproven super expensive cancer treatments are not always available. Everyone has a right to a high level of treatment for free but here as in any society there is a finite limit on resources and someone – not NHS death squads as I believe they were described – has to take responsibility for how best to spend the available resources. My aging parents receive NMR, Surgery, Cancer treatments etc promptly and sympathetically so I have no complaints.
I know from US friends and colleagues that this is seen as a bit lefty (communist) but believe me I have no leaning in that direction. Anyone who had occasion to visit pre-glasnost Eastern Europe couldn’t fail to realise that Capitalism is much the lesser of the two evils and is generally better for all levels of society. That said, neither extreme should be considered acceptable in a modern society and the frequently disgusting self interest and influence exhibited by some elements of “big business” should not be tolerated. Politicians susceptible to “lobbying” should be ostracised or forced to make a career choice – business or public service. A good level of health care and education like taxation are “the price of civilisation “to paraphrase a great American. Of course you then have to control the spongers and time wasters who left to their own devices will abuse the system but better this than throwing the baby out with the bath water.
BTW, just to put a piece of US Press misinformation right, Professor Stephen Hawking is British and has been supported all thro his long and expensive life by the NHS and he is on recent record as having NO COMPLAINTS! I suspect he was seriously pissed off as most Brits were by the half witted ill educated moron who made the comment.
Keith (UK)
I haven’t read the comments on this post, but… well this is what happens when you drop the public health option. Force people to have insurance but don’t offer them an alternative? It’s like herding sheep to the meat grinder. And the costs will only skyrocket, because there’s no one to check the insurance companies anymore.
We’ll definitely be needing our spare Change for this.
Fact 1) We have no clue how we are going to Pay for the social safety network we have in place now: S.S., Medicare, Medicaid. Unless something changes they are going under. There is no way we can come up with enough cash to cover these unfunded liabilities. If you were counting on them; get over it. The money’s gone. We don’t have any way to pay for them.
They just added two trillion on to the national dept. They miscalculated.
Then you have congress going on a truly wild spending spree of which this government run program, universal health care, is the crown jewel.
My best guess is that by the time most of you get around to retiring you can’t. When you stop working you’ll die because nothing much is going to be left expect a nation with no credit drowning in an ocean of dept suffering from massive unemployment.
Medicare may still provide aspirin, and free health care might cover talking to a nurse after standing in line all day.
Medicaid? formula?
Social Security might by enough to purchase enough of the cheapest food to keep you alive if you live with someone else or can make it living in a cardboard box.
The bleep of it is I’m not sure that picture is going to change much even if Congress critters started to act in a reasonable and prudent manner and I think the odds against that are 100%.
One of our fromer Presidents once said you should judge a President by asking the question, “Are you (and your family) better off?”
My Answer is NO! and I’m getting worse off fast.
Obama and the dems are planning to do a major transfer from health care for seniors. If all the spending doesn’t cause run away inflation which will wipe out my savings and devalue my pension to nothing, I’ll be shocked. They are blowing away all hope for a decent old age.
As for their foreign policy. I’d suggest you start studying the Koran and pick a sect to join. These guys don’t have what it takes. Western civilization is going under. If you are an atheist. You better learn to fake it real good.
#39 Thomas, I agree with you in principle, but how can individuals make an informed choice about something as complex as healthcare? If you need a heart bypass, do you know the right questions to ask the different doctors you can choose to do it? It’s not like picking out the better green beans in the marketplace.
I’d rather have expert regulators review the competitors and give them grades.
#43
I completely agree that the current coverage is a jungle. The government offering its own plan won’t help. Look at the tax code. I have personally written two insurance rating engines and I can definitely attest to the ridiculously complex insurance plans. One way that CA helped mitigate that problem for small businesses (2-50 employees) is that they forced small business carriers to post their insurance rates to a Dept of Insurance and mandated that premiums could not deviate more than +-10% above the normal for risk factors. I.e., they put regulations in place that made it possible for consumers to compare plans and plan benefits and put caps on the amount the carriers can charge for riskier customers. If the Federal government did something like that and ensured that carriers from any State could insure any individual anywhere in the country it would go along way towards improving the system.
The insurance industry definitely needs to be streamlined for greater competition and better regulated. The problem is that insurance law is more arcane than the tax code and that have just as many lawyers.
#3 bobboo
So, you think that rather than collect some money up front and lose some to corruption and greed that we should take the money from the future where we will lose some to corruption and greed.
What, exactly, is going to curb the corruption and greed of the government? I mean what would be your plan to do that?
#40 Stephen Hawking has ‘no complaints’? Oh, that settles it. I think the Brits missed the part about the argument being over freedom of choice versus forced compliance. Aren’t you guys the ones who are about to replace your pint glasses with plastic? Do you not see that as force? But don’t worry, the left will be trying it here soon too.
#45–gooddebate==yes, there is corruption everywhere, therefore to make this criticism is hardly a complaint==just chaff, sand in the argument.
I am for balanced budgets. Deficits are worse than higher taxes. Both are bad.
So, the original question remains: how can the most American’s get the best healthcare and best afford it given the fraud and all? And the answer remains: single payer with the fraud inherent there as well.
Anything other answer is composed mostly by fraud, intellectual or monetarily motivated, but fraud nontheless.
How?
This country will be bankrupt in 2 years.
Retitle article
“In pretend future where people have money and government isn’t broke, insurance companies would make a bundle off Obamacare except that no one will have money.”
The drug companies are spending $150 million to support Obama’s health care reform. Anyone think they are going to lose money?