Not even a public option here, despite from 2000 to 2007, profits at the 10 largest publicly-traded health insurance companies went up 428 percent. CEOs at these companies made an average of $11.9 million in 2007. In the past nine years, health insurance premiums have more than doubled — a rate three times faster than wage increases. Health care firms boosted their lobbying efforts in the second quarter of this year by $133 million, becoming the largest industry spender on lobbying. And Karen Ignagni, the chief lobbyist for the health insurance trade association, made $1.65 million in 2007. (MoJo The Democrats’ Split Personality Disorder)
Click to Enlarge.
Reform without a public option can still remedy a lot of these ills, as long as there’s enough regulation. But it’s not clear there will be, which is why Rockefeller is speaking out – and why he should be.
What Rockefeller Understands Johnathan Cohn.
Bad Congressmen. They are like dogs. If you feed them, and obviously the insurance industry is feeding them, they obey. The insurance industry big shots are sitting down to their — not on the healthy diet list, French chef served — dinners this evening, sighing with relief, and doing a impertinent yet malicious fist bump. “We did it again, phew that was close, a bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam, if you please waiter”.
Addendum: I found this blog saying something which may end up true. Showing that the insurance companies are the only ones laughing this quote says it all.
I actually think we are going to get a reform that is both worse than the status quo and worse than a pure single payer system.
Kudos to our Congress!
As I understand it, insurance companies will not be able to refuse to cover some one, nor will they be able to charge high risk people a premium that reflects their risk. The price won’t be uniform, but the maximum variation will be well below what it would take to correctly price the variation in risks.
As I noted before, this will make premiums for healthy people extra high. And as the WSJ pointed out yesterday, at least on the margin, it will make healthy people want to hold off from getting any insurance until they are actually sick.
Problem solved, you say?
Ahh, but now it appears that the third leg of the trinity will be rule that it will be illegal to not have insurance!
So young healthy people will be forced to buy way overpriced (relative to their risk) insurance. Plus if said young healthy people make good money, they can look forward to paying more taxes to subsidize the purchase of said insurance by others.
Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating, Individual Mandate. They sound so reasonable and innocuous, but they are freakin’ lethal.
Other Chain Yankers:
Love that some film critic is questioning the ethics of the DA in the Polanski case, and only 1 WAPO columnist out of 3 not defending him. Thank you Eugene.
While were on ethics, I don’t care if the Polanski case is politically motivated. It doesn’t make Polanski any less guilty, nor does his age, or his films. His genius means nothing to me. I could have lived without his films. We gain nothing by them, at least not more than we lose by letting someone who raped, and drugged, a 13 year old go free, because genius, celebrity, entitlement, and the support of various film industry persona, makes some think he should.
Peace
