Health Insurance Industry’s $300 Billion Victory Over the Public Option

[t0dd]

When Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and the entire Republican Senate caucus stepped up to kill the public option in the Senate, it is important to remember that the health insurance industry won a victory—a victory worth $300 billion. As Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) now try to crush attempts to revive the public option inside a reconciliation measure, they are battling to protect that extra $300 billion that will flow to AHIP as a result. The public option was never just a “sliver” as Obama tried to claim. It was about a fundamental moral right and the role of government. But what it was also about was a huge amount of money.

The CBO projects that the relatively weak public option–the one limited just to the exchange in the House health care bill–would secure roughly one-fifth of that market, equal to around 6 million people (PDF). The CBO concluded that, as a result of those 6 million customers, the public option will take in $298 billion (PDF) in direct premiums, exchange subsidies, and risk adjustment payments from 2013-2019. However, with the public option removed, but the individual mandate remaining, that $300 billion will instead go straight to the private insurance corporations’ books. If, like I personally suspect, the CBO slightly underestimated the popularity of the public option, and it manages to secure instead roughly a third of the customers on the exchange, that would be roughly $500 billion that the public option would take from the private insurance companies.

...

It is important to remember the sheer scope of the private insurance companies victory if they stop health care reform from having even a relatively weak public option. It will be a victory that will provide them with an extra $300 billion of our money. No doubt some of that same money will be used in the future to fight efforts to enact real health care reform.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/03/health-insurance-industrys-300-billion-victory-over-the-public-option/

[bvar22]

1. NOW that Obama has given the Health Insurance Industry...

..EVERY FUCKING THING they want...
NOW, Obama suddenly supports reconciliation.
.
.
.
.
Bait & Switch Scam Man.

[rhett o rick]

2. Where does the figure 300 billion come from? nt

[Foo Fighter]

3. Only $300 billion?

Damn. Wall Street got $700 billion. Expect the health insurance industry to demand a $400 billion bailout next year. After all, it's only fair. At least, that's how they see it anyway.

Of course, the other kicker is that with the public option, at least people would have had a chance of getting actual coverage for health care. But with the money going to line the pockets of health insurance execs instead, all they will get is denied claims and a pile of medical bills.