Why Health Care Reform Will Survive (Newsweek)

[ProfessionalLeftist]

Conservatives who voted for congressional candidates because they pledged to repeal and replace the health-care-reform law are in for a rude awakening. Once those newly elected members of Congress have a little talk with the insurance industry’s lobbyists and executives, they will back off from that pledge. They will go through the motions, of course. They’ll hold hearings and take to the floor of both Houses to rail against the new law, and they’ll probably even introduce a bill to repeal it with much fanfare—but it will all be for show. That’s because health insurers, one of Republican candidates’ biggest and most reliable benefactors—the industry contributed three times as much money to Republicans as to Democrats since January—can’t survive without it.

...

Despite their public statements to the contrary, insurance companies really liked much of what was in both House and Senate versions of the bill—big chunks of which they actually wrote behind the scenes—especially the requirement that all Americans buy insurance if they’re not eligible for an existing public program like Medic-aid or Medicare.

...

The real reason insurers want the GOP leading Congress again is not to repeal “Obamacare,” but to try to gut some of the provisions of the law that protect consumers from the abuses of the industry, such as refusing to cover kids with preexisting conditions, canceling policyholders’ coverage when they get sick, and setting annual and lifetime limits on how much they’ll pay for medical care. Insurers also hate the provision that requires them to spend at least 80 percent of premium revenues on medical care, as well as the one that calls for eliminating the billions of dollars that the government has been overpaying them for years to participate in private Medicare plans. (Be on the lookout for a death panel–like fearmongering campaign to scare people into thinking, erroneously, that Granny and Pawpaw will lose their government health care if Congress doesn’t restore those “cuts” to Medicare.)

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/05/why-healthcare-reform-will-survive.html

[gratuitous]

1. Golly!

Is it possible that any of this could have been asked of the Repeal Obamacare nitwits while they were campaigning? Or didn't any of this occur to Newsweek during the campaign?

[Zoeisright]

2. What an excellent point.

The lame stream media strikes again.

[proud patriot]

4. +1

[Skittles]

3. yup; the few good parts will be knocked down

Insurers will be MIGHTY PLEASED with what is left

[applegrove]

5. You put my heart at ease. I really hope this newsweek story is true.

[ibegurpard]

7. you didn't read the article very carefully...

[applegrove]

8. I didn't read the whole article. Yes it seems frustrating. But I was fully expecting

the gop to want to repeal the whole thing. And since it doesn't..well I feel a little bit better that Obama will be able to hold them off.

[ibegurpard]

6. yup

I said a long time ago that the mandates will go nowhere...insurance corps got their guaranteed customers and now are betting on the other teams to get rid of any pesky regulations.

[Ken Burch]

9. Is it WORTH keeping HCR in existence if the anti-abuse sections are removed?

Without the pre-existing condition language, the anti-cancellation provisions, and the anti-lifetime limits stuff, is there anything that would be left that would be WORTH keeping?

[ibegurpard]

10. of course not...why do you think the industry is backing the pukes now?

they won't let them touch the mandates though...the whole basis of the thing.

[celitall]

11. ObamaCare

I find the Republican view on Health Care quite comical. They claim ObamaCare is a failure but they never say why. The Republicans were the One's who butchered the original plan. If the Obama Administration would have been able to cap the cost of the Services being charge by the Medical Industry, it would have been a success. Instead, the Republican's blocked an fought to prevent that from happening.
Now, they are using the Health Care platform as a means to abolish it. I do not understand why any American would not want the opportunity to be able to have access to medical care. Go figure?

[TheWebHead]

12. It's probably not popular w/ anyone to say

but removing the lifetime caps is probably something that should be reversed. Basically what it does is allow infinite money to pay for the healthcare of 1 person while pricing out 1000s of others to pay for it. Say someone with a chronic disease can now get round the clock top of the line healthcare w/o fear of ever hitting a cap, costing perhaps $10 million or more in their lifetime. To pay for that, and with innovation in healthcare more and more people can be treated for more and more illness requiring more and more insurance premiums for everyone else to pay for, you're in effect breaking the system. If one guy in 1,000 people insured would get some extraordinary care at a cost of $1 million/yr to live an optimal life, to pay for it, the other 999 would have to pay over $1,000 more in insurance per year. It's a moral dilemma also born out in the care of seniors, where you have instances of spending $100s of thousands to keep people alive a few weeks longer in the final weeks of their life, which may be fine but should it be paid for by the government, or spending huge amounts on extraordinary care like organ transplants on seniors again paid for by the government. Death panel, no, but at some point before the system of healthcare or entitlements collapse upon its own debt obligations, some tough choices have to be made at what degree the government will pay for it.