Healthcare insurers get upper hand. The end result may be a financial 'bonanza.'

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-insurers24-2009aug24,0,6925890.story

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Obama's overhaul fight is being won by the industry, experts say. The end result may be a financial 'bonanza.'
LA Times

Reporting from Washington - Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.

The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums.

"It's a bonanza," said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive for 20 years who now tracks reform legislation as president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates Inc

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They are talking about Exchange Subsidies. This is why the Health CAre reform packages are so expensive. We are supposed to subsidize the for-profit insurers to cover people who can't afford their rapidly rising premiums.

This will just cost billions MORE in the future as premiums keep going rapidly upward (twice the inflation rate).

Why not just have a Public Option along a choice of private plans - BUT NO SUBSIDIES TO FOR-PROFIT INSURERS? We would save billions. WE could subsidize private insurers up to the cost it would take for the government to do it. If they want subsidies of that kind that would be okay. But subsidize their higher G&A AND PROFIT?? What another bank bail-out only it's a perpetual bail-out. NO THANKS CORPORATE LOBBYIST PARTY. We did that with Wall street banks. Not again!

If we at least get a public option some people will choose that. The insurance companies want to kill even that. They want universal coverage as long as they get paid to cover all the people AT THEIR RATES!

I have emailed senators and representatives telling them to fight for the "public option" or nothing. THen if it goes down we at least can point out who killed it. What I don't like is smoke screening to hide the perpetrators.

i posted this to induce people to email and keep telling the Congressmen to fight for the public option. It's a compromise but it's better than subsidizing the insurance companies to cover all the uninsured. (acaataully, that will just blow up in our faces anyway, in few years. At the rate premiums are going up it will come crashing down in 10 years or so.

my wife and I were active in her campaign and know she fully supports a public option . . .

lays it all out, no holds barred. written by Matt Taibbi. you have to buy the magazine to read it, but it's worth it. also, an interesting Beatles article is in there, too.

any bill that doesn't have a universal, powerful public option. Then he needs to explain why he did so. If not, we will be much worse off than we are now.

They see to it that he runs against Palin. (Big Insurers being so closely allied with Big Banks and Big Media, that it is all really one big happy family, though not all that big.)

Eight years in the WH in exchange for the individuals of the USA gettin' screwed.

The same as it ever was.

But if you are I will make this prediction. The US will lose standing in international trade which will result in a few things. We will lose this standing in trade because health care costs will spiral out of control making us much less competitive. This means that innovation will almost stop in the US.

First, we will have a devaluation of our currency which will cause rampant inflation. This will effect everyone and will accelerate the job losses and foreclosures already in the pipeline.

Second, and this is the big one, OPEC will drop the dollar as the currency of international trade in oil. This will cause our dollar to lose at least 70% of it's value overnight and bankrupt both the country and it's citizens. You wouldn't be able to get a loan with a handgun at that point.

Third, both Canada and Mexico will build fences to keep the "yank-backs" out.

I mean, innovation? What innovation?

We just had a government program to help people scrap cars, some of which are only six or seven years old, so that they (The public) can get a 4,500 dollar credit toward a new car. A new car that will not necessarily get better mileage than things being built by AMC back in the late 1970's. How is that for innovation! (Cleaning out the garage some weeks back, I came across magazines from late 70's and early 80's - cars were getting high thirties and low forties then! What happened that we back tracked on this? Oh yeah, Reagan and the oil industry of course.)

And I suspect hyper inflation will occur from Bernanke/Geithner's exorbitant money maneuvers. The only other time in our history when we borrowed amounts equivalent to our GNP was back in the forties. ANd doing that then fueled the war effort - which put most people in America to work, and so actually circulated the money around. Bernanke and Geithner are fueling a jobless recovery that will not help Main Street very much at all.

Iran already trades its oil for Euros. And that is why it is still high on the list of places we need to attack, although No Korea is a much more legit target.

I'm betting the fix is in.