AHIP has excellent timing. Releasing their "report" on the eve of the Senate Finance Committee's vote on the Baucus bill had a real boomerang effect. It made the argument for the public option, as Rep. Anthony Weiner effectively argued.
Now Americans United for Change is seizing the moment with this ad, pointing out that there are only two industries exempt from anti-trust laws: baseball and insurance.
How are professional baseball and insurance companies alike? Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from anti-trust laws.
How are they different? Insurance industry executives are scared of competition. Baseball players aren’t.
When baseball players fix the games, they get in trouble. When health insurance executives fix the game, they get ... rich
Time for competition when it comes to health insurance... we need the choice of a public health insurance plan.
Greg Sargent sees a "growing sense in Washington that the insurance industry inadvertently breathed new life into the public option."
It seems like a potentially big tactical error by the insurance industry, and it’ll be interesting to watch how proponents of the public option capitalize on it to pressure the White House and Senate leadership to put a public plan — or some form of it — into the final Senate bill that’s being negotiated this week. The public option lives!