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Insurance industry attacks healthcare legislation

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Unwilling to accept the new momentum behind healthcare legislation lying down, the health insurance industry launched a new attack against the healthcare legislation drafted by the Senate Finance Committee, which will be voted on Tuesday.

America's Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for the industry, said Sunday that the legislation will drive up premiums rather than make coverage more affordable. The lobby is using the findings of their commissioned report from accounting powerhouse PriceWaterHouseCoopers as ammunition for their claims. Senate Democrats dispute the findings and cite tax credits and lower administrative costs as important cost reducing factors. In addition, people will be able to keep their current health insurance plans unchanged if they wish--a move Senate Democrats claim ensures continued choice including that of top-shelf insurance plans.

The PriceWatersHouseCoopers report says that the cost of the average family coverage will rise from the current $12,300 to $18,400 in 2016 under current law, and it will rise to $21,300 if the Senate bill is adopted. The report also says the cost of individual coverage, currently at $4,600, will cost an average of $6,900 in 2016 under current law and $7,900 if the bill is passed.

The Democrats' swift counter-attack primarily focused on discrediting the report on the grounds that it was commissioned and paid for by the health insurance industry. Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for Democrats on the Finance Committee, said, "This report is untrue, disingenuous and bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging consumers for too long..."

For more:
- read the New York Times article

Related Articles:
AHIP says private insurance being demonized
AHIP opposes creation of government health plan to rival private insurers

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So take the (Republican) argument in support of globalization: You don't subsidize an industry just because your fellow citizens' or constituents' jobs depend on it. Let the most efficient producers do the production of each good or service.

By that same logic: The insurance industry has a 20% overhead to play with. Is it a risk that they could use that 20% (of a few $ Trillion) to lobby? Could this lobbying activity be used to prevent trimming of that 20% overhead? Why would voters want to preserve this never-ending loop? Overhead -> Lobbying -> Overhead -> Lobbying. Isn't it in violation of free market principles? Shouldn't those less-efficient insurers be displaced, as in globalization, in favor of the more efficient insurers, using the same rationale as that for globalization? Shouldn't inefficient, higher overhead insurers also be “off-shored,” and perform some other, more efficient, economic activity?

So there’s an option that the government claims will eliminate the overhead, among other things. The counter-claim is that subsidies will make it artificially cheap and put insurers out of business. So, have a watchdog make sure the government isn't subsidizing that plan to make it artificially more competitive.

An unsubsidized, low-overhead plan would be a better standard against which an efficient insurer should be measured.

why would one ever trust the insurance industry & their paid lobbyists to do the right thing. it's all about greed and how3 much th top execs can put in their pocket... and how much can they extract from consumers pocvkets by paying less or not at all or raising prices or all of tyhe above. it's about time they got their hats handed to them.

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