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?

Read the rest of this entry »