Fearing 'blue wave,' drug, insurance companies build single-payer defense
Afraid their obscene profits will dry up? 
It sure isn't about us.
Fearing ‘blue wave,’ drug, insurance companies build single-payer defense
By Peter Sullivan - 08/10/18 06:01 AM EDT
Powerful health care interests worried that a Democratic “blue wave” could give new energy to single-payer healthcare legislation have created a new group to take on the issue.
The formation of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future is a sign of the health care industry’s alarm over growing support for a single payer healthcare law within the Democratic Party.
Health insurance and drug companies, who are often at odds on policy issues, banded together to form the group, which lobbyists say could run advertisements against single-payer plans and promote studies to undermine the idea.
Industry groups are worried that support for single payer is quickly becoming the default position among Democrats, and they want to push back and strengthen ties to more moderate members of the party to promote alternatives.
“Their worry is about 2020 and it's becoming the litmus test for Democrats,” said one insurance industry source familiar with the plan to create the new partnership.
When Democrats controlled the White House and Congress at the outset of the Obama presidency, they stopped short of a single payer system in creating ObamaCare, which the Trump administration and GOP Congress has worked to dismantle.
But support for a single-payer system has since gained steam, and a wide range of potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have backed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill, including Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
more...
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/401169-fearing-blue-wave-drug-insurance-companies-build-single-payer-defense
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