How many times do they have to prove it? These health insurance companies are just no good. You can’t negotiate with them. They have to get everything they want, or they’ll take their marbles and go home. After all, they’re the princes of the earth. They’re entitled!
Today, the health insurance companies, through AHIP, released a study by Price Waterhouse Coopers that they had commissioned. The study asserted that if the Baucus bill passed in its current form, insurance prices would rise by 40% between now and 2013, 73% between now and 2016, and 111% between now and 2019. In contrast, if no bill at all were passed, prices would increase by “only” 26%, 50% and 79% during these three periods. The report tries to place the blame for the variance in these estimates on the provisions of the bill that specify a mandate with weak penalties that young, healthy people will be more easily able to ignore than they would a stronger mandate.
But the report entirely ignores the fact that under the bill, there are no cost controls or competitive arrangements that would prevent those prices from rising, and also that the insurance companies themselves are the only agents in the system who can decide whether or not to raise prices. So, these companies are not inanimate machines forced by the Baucus bill to raise prices to these levels. They are telling us that they will choose to raise prices by the amount they have indicated if there is no health care reform bill, or alternatively, if the present Baucus bill is enacted. And so they are saying to us, there are two alternatives: either you’ll pass the Baucus bill and sustain the prices we’ve indicated; or you can pass no bill at all and have lesser, but still outrageous price increases.
If our Democratic Senators were really representing the people of the United States, the reply of the Senate to them would and should be:
“Sorry, but there are many more than two alternatives. Here’s another. First, we’re going to pass a bill that prohibits all political activity of any sort by corporations that are exempt from the anti-trust laws, effective immediately. Then you won’t have to worry about any more “Harry and Louise” campaigns, or “tea bagger movements” or any campaigns that will oppose the rest of our program. Second, we’re going to use “the nuclear option” to remove the filibuster from all Senate deliberations. Third, we’re going to vote down the Baucus bill entirely, so you won’t have to worry about its accelerating insurance prices. Fourth, we’re going to amend the Senate Help bill to substitute S 703, Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, for it. Fifth, we’re going to pass a bill prohibiting you from denying insurance to people based on preexisting conditions, or from rescinding policies already in force based on discovery of preexisting conditions, or failure by consumers to report those to you. Sixth, we’re going to freeze all insurance prices effective immediately, until S 703 or an Amended enhanced Medicare for All bill is operative. So, again, neither you nor we, nor any Americans will have to worry about your raising insurance prices again.”
“We’re going to do all of these things, because we and most other Americans have had about enough of you, your arrogance, your sense of entitlement, your lack of social responsibility, the 45,000 American fatalities that result every year from your actions, and the 80 – 100% excess in annual health care expenditures we pay because of your very valueless existence. We’ve also had enough of the more than a million bankruptcies you’re responsible for each year, and God knows how many divorces. It’s not worth it to the rest of America to keep you in business, and we’re not going to do it anymore. We’re not going to tolerate the banality of your evil for one more minute. As far as we’re concerned you’re done, and somebody ought to stick a fork in you. We’re going to move on and try something new. Enhanced Medicare for All, single-payer universal health insurance. “Everybody In, Nobody Out.” And when we’ve done that we’ll sing: “Free at Last. Free at Last. Great God Almighty, we’re free at last.””
Seriously, folks: this report should be the last straw. Let’s get over this compromise, Public Option bullshit. Let’s reset back to pushing for enhanced Medicare for All, single-payer. It’s time to go to war with the insurance companies, win that war, and get them out of insuring essential health care services forever. It’s time to take America back from the corporate plutocrats. Let this be the first step.
(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)