Obama Threatens Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption

Obama Threatens Insurers’ Anti-Trust Exemption
By PETER BAKER
Published: October 17, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of airing “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to push back against industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

Rather than trying to curb costs and help patients, he said the industry is busy “figuring out how to avoid covering people. And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

Thanks Thrill. Great article. :kick: & Rec.

If we do not get a robust PO, then they will have been right, with or without this speech.

I like this particular approach of taking on insurance directly, so things do seem to be looking up...

Semantics might save the day on a message board, but it wont save us in the midterms.

If he fails, then it means he did not do enough, period.

case of sit down and shut up.

The exemption needs to be repealed no matter what!

tho, threatening them 1st is nice.

Just do it.

"‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

No.. corporatewhores, Not This Time.