“From the California Nurses Assoc., the largest nurses union in the country: ‘Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return.’ From the AARP: The AHIP report is not ‘worth the paper it’s written on.'”
Wow, who saw this coming? The insurance industry turns against health care reform — even the middling Senate Finance Committee version put forth by Max Baucus — by publishing an obviously bogus report that prophesies of impending rate-increase doomsday should reform pass. Hmm, well. I’m just gonna throw this out here, but I think it can be reasonably assumed from the start that any industry making money hand-over-fist from a broken system would eventually turn against meaningful reform of that system. So, maybe next time we shouldn’t give away the store to keep these swine at the negotiating table? Just a thought.
Anyway, the insurance industry isnt the only strange bedfellow (inadvertently) making the case for the public option of late. Both Bill O’Reilly and FOX’s Shepard Smith have made impassioned pleas for the public option recently. And — though they’ve been backpedaling like mad ever since — both Bill Frist and Bob Dole have called out their party for desperate and heedless obstructionism in recent days. So, even though we’ve taken the long way to get here for no particularly good reason, I feel confident right now that the public option is very much back in play.
By “insurance industry” do you mean “insurance non-profits, who exist for the stated goal of providing health care through risk sharing among patients?” Because the vast majority of insurance “companies” that everyone loves to hate are actually non-profits run for the public good. Perhaps government workers — working for the public good — could do better, but maybe not.
Well, unfortunately a lot of the insurance “non-profits” you mention tend to act like for-profit companies with tax exemptions, particularly when it comes to things like overhead and executive pay. And, in any case, non-profits tend to suffer the same problems as for-profits in terms of reducing costs to the consumer, so their existence is no argument against health care reform.
Non-profit hospitals tended to fare better, back in the day, before HCA went around devouring them in the 80’s and 90’s. Not coincidentally, HCA CEO Richard Scott is leading the charge against health insurance reform this time too.