Max Baucus failed his insurance company buddies and they're letting him know it. Here's what happened when the SFC decided they needed to make insurance more affordable, and lower the penatlies uninsured Americans face under the bill.
WASHINGTON – The health insurance industry doesn't want Congress to let you off easy if you decide to ignore a proposed requirement that all Americans must have coverage....
The industry — counting on millions of more Americans buying insurance — says the penalties are now so weak they practically beg to be ignored. The result, the companies warn, is that people would wait until they get sick to buy coverage. That would raise premiums for everyone else, since Congress' health care overhaul would also require insurers to take all applicants.
"People will drop coverage and those who stay in would see rate shock," Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry trade group, said in an interview Monday.
Alissa Fox, a top lobbyist for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said the Senate Finance Committee had "severely weakened" the proposed requirement to buy health insurance.
"It's become an aspirational goal, because it's a mandate with no penalty, and a mandate with no penalty is not a requirement," Fox said.
Hey, here's a radical thought. Insurance companies could maybe not pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars every year and actually, maybe, put those combined millions and millions of dollars into, oh, I don't, providing coverage? Or they could cut a lot of staff hours and have them work more efficiently by not having them spend all that time doing research to figure out how to deny claims.
The insurance companies don't give a damn about providing coverage. They are not in this business out of the goodness of their hearts, and any bans on medical discrimination Congress puts into effect are going to have lots of loopholes. Cherry-picking might become a bit more creative, but it will still happen, because they're going to keep squeezing every single dollar they can get out of us for as long as they're in business.