The insurance industry is now publically showing its hand. These clowns won't support any type of reform, period.
The health insurance industry has been working until recently to help draft legislation, while publicly endorsing President Barack Obama's goal of affordable coverage for all Americans. The alliance has grown strained as legislation advances toward votes in Congress.
Late Sunday, the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans sent its member companies a new accounting firm study that projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.
Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study commissioned by the insurance group.
"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company CEOs.
The study projected that in 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.
All of sudden, these bloodsuckers are concerned about raising premiums? Disgusting.
And the reason they won't support even the watered down Baucus bill any more? You guessed it, the mandate penalties just aren't strict enough.
It [a consortium of insurance companies] concluded that a combination of factors in the bill — and decisions by lawmakers as they amended it — would raise costs.
The chief reason, said the report, is a decision by lawmakers to weaken proposed penalties for failing to get health insurance. The bill would require insurers to take all applicants, doing away with denials for pre-existing health problems. In return, all Americans would be required to carry coverage, either through an employer or a government program, or by buying it themselves.
President Obama, its time to remove these jackals from their place at the table once and for all. Its time to get real healthcare reform accomplished, with or (preferably) without them.