Video: You Don’t Think They’ll Just Give Up, Do You?

After today’s announcement from Harry Reid, adding a public option to the Senate health care bill, some might think that a great victory has been achieved. And it’s a significant accomplishment to this point. But we’re at the beginning of the end, not the end. And now that this public option, with a state opt-out, represents the lower bound of health care reform, you can bet that the insurance industry will redouble their efforts to kill the bill and retain the status quo. In fact, they’ve already started. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina has begun to lobby their customers to work against the bill, asking them to contact Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC). Not a front group, or some ad hoc organization funded by BC/BS. No, just the company itself.

(The mailer) reads:

Public option?
Government Cooperatives?
Community plan?
Single payer?
No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it’s a slippery slope to a single payer system.

Who wants that?

The enclosed postcard to Hagan reads:

Senator Hagan,
Please oppose government-run health insurance. We can meet our health care challenges without the government unfairly competing with the private sector. Tell Senate leaders that North Carolina doesn’t need government-run insurance.

They’ve also deployed lobbyists and shills to Capitol Hill to make completely dubious arguments. At a hearing about the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption, this amazing exchange occurred:

University of Arkansas business professor Lawrence Powell, who testified on behalf of the medical malpractice insurance industry.

“The best possible outcome from repealing McCarran is continuation of the status quo,” he said. “However, it is also likely that repealing McCarran would have negative consequences for consumers, by decreasing competition and accuracy in insurance pricing.”

Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out that the professor was relying on outdated information.

“You cite for the proposition that insurance markets are highly competitive an article by Paul Joskow. Do I have the date of that article correct, it’s 1973?” he asked Powell. “I believe so,” came the answer.

And, they’ve started to push their message out to media, getting an AP reporter to buy the canard that poor, henpecked insurance companies just don’t make a lot of money.

WASHINGTON – Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry.

The missing ingredient here is scale. Tupperware is more profitable than health insurance on a percentage basis, but 1/6 of the US economy doesn’t go through Tupperware. In real dollars, the insurance industry makes a mint. And remember, “profit” doesn’t count salaries, not even what’s given to CEOs.

The truth is that, even with this public option, insurers will do just fine in the health care bill. They get millions of new customers, with competition that is limited (not everyone can get the public plan, under even the most expansive version). But it’s just not good enough for them. The notion that they might have to offer coverage with actual benefits, and not cherry-pick the healthy to pay their premiums, which would cut into those profits, is just distasteful to them. So they will fight. And we will be ready.

texasconservative

I was pretty much in agreement with this article until the last paragraph. Private insurers will, NOT DO FINE, if a "public option" or this ridiculous health care bill gets passed.
Insurance reform is badly needed but, it has to be done in a logical, common-sense manner.
Saddling this country with another $Trillion dollar boondoggle that will raise taxes on an already over-taxed population, and cost 10 times more than the government is saying it will, is quite franky, STUPID!!

refoundit

since your choice is between evil lying corporate executives and evil lying politicians, how do you choose one side or the other?

Tara Downer

Years ago, I watched insurance companies buy up newly-built, large commercial properties that were running in the red in order to "convert" their profits into losses. Eventually, they owned the huge assets, but their profit and loss statements were always loaded down with losses for two reasons. First, they needed to be able to go before the state each year and prove that they needed rate increases, and second, they needed to hold down their own corporate taxes. Consumers are well-aware that insurance companies advertise constantly. They may not know what an actuarial table is, but they understand the principles behind it. They have cheated me one too many times. Thank the U.S. government for S.S.D.I.!

Paul Burke

While we continue to slowly pull the healthcare bill away from the death grip the insurance companies have on it - Olympia Snowe - who cares - the fact remains the insurance companies have been living off of blood money and ripping us off for decades.

We're pissed and the party is over - even their ultra hush, hush anti-trust exemption from 1945 is finally being talked about.

They are scum (that's not hyperbole)and do not care about the economy as a whole or the damage and pain and suffering they have caused regular people. They don't care - too bad you made a typo - have fun dying. We're not sorry YOU got sick - thanks for the policy payments! That's whats going on people and they are finally being called out on their bizarre behavior. They gilded the lilly for so long pushed the premiums up too high. Those of us who have been saying WTF for decades are finally seeing some action on the HILL not because its the right thing to do but because its a huge drag on the economy - freakin' geniuses no duh.