Business Week Declares the Winners in Health Care Reform

Business Week suggests you get to know your Insurance CEOs and I agree... UHC's Hemsley (a high flying member of the bonus class)

And guess what… it isn’t you and me. Here’s the front page story from August 6th, 2009.

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

All this back and forth on rw/lw blogs about whose grass roots are nuttier or meaner or better organized is cute, but while this debate on how many wingers can fit on the tip of a town hall meeting goes on, the real health care anti-reform is happening on K Street. The circus only stops you from looking at the men behind the curtain. Not one teabagger or ACORN rent-a-protester or you or the rest of us are part of the real conversation. Shouldn’t our focus be on why the Health Insurance is happy about what’s going on? Uh, maybe while you’re all throwing memes at each other, some one should be watching the pile of money on the floor that’s disappearing before our very eyes? The Democrats have the votes to make this pass. BUT, wtf are they passing? You really think this is an obsequious foot in the door?

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.”

Okay, did you take a deep breath long enough to read that highlighted line? Do you realize that all we’re doing with the current format is giving these guys new customers to fleece with their 30% mark-up? Is that a good deal? That’s worth a symbolic vote for single payer and an inkle of a public option? A few more folks in 2013 join the fleecing of the ill while it’s paid for by throwing children off SCHIP and removing benefits from Medicare? Are liberals really fighting for THAT? Are conservatives thinking THAT’s socialism?

What fresh hell is this?

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.

There is a fascinating discussion in this article about UHC and their relationship with several key members of Congress. Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner of Virginia was featured prominently. Read it and wake up! (Then thank DLC for this K Street addicted abomination!)

UnitedHealth’s relationship with Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner of Virginia illustrates the industry’s subtle role. Elected last fall, Warner, a former governor of his state and a wealthy ex-businessman, received a choice assignment as the Senate Democrats’ liaison to business. The rookie senator landed in the center of a high-visibility political drama—and in a position to earn the gratitude of a health insurance industry that has donated more than $19 million to federal candidates since 2007, 56% of which has gone to Democrats.

UnitedHealth has periodically served as a valuable extension of Warner’s office, providing research and analysis to support his initiatives. Corporations and trade groups play this role in all kinds of contexts, but few do it with the effectiveness of the insurers. In June, Warner introduced legislation expanding government-backed Medicare and Medicaid coverage for hospice stays for the terminally ill and other treatment in life’s final stages. The issue isn’t a top UnitedHealth priority. But the corporation wanted to help Warner with his argument that in the long run, better hospice coverage would save money. UnitedHealth prepared a report for lawmakers finding that 27% of Medicare’s budget is now spent during the last year of older patients’ lives, often on questionable hospital tests and procedures. Expanded hospice coverage and other services could save $18 billion over 10 years, UnitedHealth asserted.

When Warner went to the Senate floor on June 15 to offer his bill, he cited those exact figures. He thanked the company for its support and put a letter from UnitedHealth applauding him in the Congressional Record.

Warner acknowledges in an interview that he worked on the hospice-care legislation with UnitedHealth executives.

I want to just reprint the entire article here but I’ll just beg you to go read it. Don’t forget to bring your highlighter to the Daschle part of the expose. I’ll just leave you with this as the last word and then I’ll ask you how esoteric discussions about townhall meeting madness are going to stop this from coming to fruition?

What people in Washington tend not to discuss, at least on the record, is the open secret that insurers are minimizing their forecasts of the eventual windfall they will enjoy from expanded coverage for Americans.

Please Digg!!! Share!!! Tweet!!!

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine