The Health Insurers Have Already Won: No matter what the specifics, they will emerge more profitable

Well, at least we've accomplished our goals of expanding the war in Afghanistan and transferring billions of dollars to the wealthy. Too bad we seem to have blown the best chance for genuine health reform in ages. Can't win 'em all.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_33/b4143034820260.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories

The Health Insurers Have Already Won
How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit

By Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein

August 17, 2009

Why Insurers are Winning

As the health reform fight shifts this month from a vacationing Washington to congressional districts and local airwaves around the country, much more of the battle than most people realize is already over. The likely victors are insurance giants such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Aetna (AET), and WellPoint (WLP). The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable. Health reform could come with a $1 trillion price tag over the next decade, and it may complicate matters for some large employers. But insurance CEOs ought to be smiling.

Executives from UnitedHealth certainly showed no signs of worry on the mid-July day that Senate Democrats proposed to help pay for reform with a new tax on the insurance industry. Instead, UnitedHealth parked a shiny 18-wheeler outfitted with high-tech medical gear near the Capitol and invited members of Congress aboard. Inside the mobile diagnostic center, which enables doctors to examine distant patients via satellite television, Representative Jim Matheson didn't disguise his wonderment. "Fascinating, fascinating," said the Democrat from Utah. "Amazing."

Impressing fiscally conservative Democrats like Matheson, a leader of the House of Representatives' Blue Dog Coalition, is at the heart of UnitedHealth's strategy. It boils down to ensuring that whatever overhaul Congress passes this year will help rather than hurt huge insurance companies.

Some Republicans have threatened to make health reform Obama's "Waterloo," as Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has put it. The President has fired back at what he considers GOP obstructionism. Meanwhile, big insurance companies have quietly focused on what they see as their central challenge: shaping the views of moderate Democrats.

The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business. UnitedHealth has distinguished itself by more deftly and aggressively feeding sophisticated pricing and actuarial data to information-starved congressional staff members. With its rivals, the carrier has also achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.

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"government run" health care doesn't work. We'll be lucky if Medicare and Medicaid survive this disaster.

Once people get on it they find out that it's actually a pretty good deal. Coincidentally, those same people have the AARP, one of the most powerful groups in America, to act on their behalf. Medicare is here to stay.

they cannot be trusted when it comes to healthcare.

People may like Medicare, but conservatives and insurance companies don't - and the current health care debate has made it clear who Congress listens to (hint: not us).

town halls are almost certainly on Medicare, given their age! I'd be willing to put serious money on it.

all of which equal raising rates, cutting services, etc...
I feel America is a failure right now. This is the proof in the pudding. For my health and being able to stay in our home, help will not come soon enough I fear. Am deeply saddened by the state of our Nation and it's discard of it's people by doing anything with the Big Pharma and Health Insurance industries.

See how that works?

Dashel is a piece of shit for working for United Health.

K&R

Everyone here should keep kicking and recommending this article, I'm off to send it to everyone I know.

What people are going to be mandated to buy is shit but people are going to be FORCED to buy it and that's all that some people on this site seem to care about.

Any mandate of a tax to the corporate system has no authority.

It is bait to create burn out from despair and hope cycles.

If it fails to meet the proper requirements then the whole thing comes down.

Notice that his article is to create a perception. He even uses the word likely, showing he does not know, but wants people to give up.

and in turn trying to get us to just give up, fuck that.

We're blowing our last chance to save the environment that sustains us.

we just don't have that kind of will as a species.

even people who KNOW what's happening are still driving their cars and otherwise living with and leaving huge carbon footprints.

you can wish on all the stars you like- but until something completely climactically climatecally cataclysmic occurs- we won't be changing our sociological ways- and by then it will be too late to stop it anyway.

so just keep living life to the fullest, like every day is your last.

The industry is going to die, the question today is how big the pot will be when the looting begins.

When the greedy corporate leaders walk away from the ruins of their unsustainable industry, their pockets full of gold, we will all be dumped on the doorsteps of government health care.

I'm all for skipping the looting part.

But, does anybody listen? Of course not, we're just paranoid, unrealistic, perfectionists.:eyes:

I know, I know, nothing has passed yet and the Great Chessmaster Obama has yet to amaze us all with his last minute miracle...

the jury is out for me. Because the media lives to turn us against each other, Obama gets benefit of the doubt for now. There is so much conflicting information being pushed by so many different news outlets, I don't know what is true and what is not true. I have my 5 or 6 journalists that I trust, when they say bad things about Obama I take their arguments to heart. Obama is not perfect. He's a mixed bag, for sure, his economic team can suck it, but I don't trust a word the corporate media says about Obama.

Obama is the person I honestly believe will get the American people the best deal they can get. Who knows just how far down the rabbit hole we actually are, but until we know, I refuse to despair and say all is lost. I'm not a quitter, and while i think that this article is intended to dampen our spirits and make us give up, the reason I think that it is SO VERY IMPORTANT is that it gives great insight into the things being snuck into the bill that we must fight against.

worse than nothing. Health care reform has been turned into corporate welfare for the health industry.

That's my problem with Obama, he has "taken a stand" firmly in the corner of the corporations against the best interests of the people. He had the opportunity and a mandate to continue on the path blazed by FDR and Teddy, instead he chose to go for, and with, the money.

The best of any of the current proposals is a disaster and will make things far worse for people.

Consider this, how bad does the deal have to be to get Dennis Kucinich to vote with the republiks?

nt

...money makes the senate go round.

...money makes the senate go round.

They are engaged in a profit endeaver with aid of bought representatives. They are the new American government and everything must run through their bank accounts.

Profits without end. Amen.

nt