Real Danger of "Obamacare":

[zeos3]

Insurance Company Takeover of Health Care


http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2012/11/10/real-danger-of-obamacare-insurance-company-takeover-of-healt.html

The Tea-Party Conservative types get it embarrassingly wrong when they call it a “government takeover of health care.” Likewise, Progressive Obama-supporters are deluded in accepting it as the most sweeping healthcare reform since Medicare. (Side note: I wish the word ‘sweeping’ could be retired from politics until it actually means -sweeping.)

Here’s why. The PPACA does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry. This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into a acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a restriction, including laws that exist and ones to come.

How? By doing the same thing energy and telecom companies did after they were deregulated in 1996, and that banks did after they were summarily deregulated (after moving that way for decades) in 1999. They are merging, consolidating, eliminating competitors, and controlling their domain. They are manufacturing power.

Investment bankers are roaming the world to exploit this hot new opportunity. That’s one reason insurance companies don’t even call themselves that anymore. Now, they are ‘managed health care’ companies. Call yourself a managed health care company, and you can buy everything from other insurance companies to hospitals to clinics to doctors. The more consolidation, the more fees bankers rake in, and the more premiums and medical reimbursements and health care procedures, each company can control.

[BlueCaliDem]

1. Ah . . . Fascism Health Care - health care controlled by corporations, world-wide.

Still, the Obama Administration intends to sponsor two public option-like health care insurance companies under contract with the Federal government and what will be offered to consumers in every state. They've been working on this for the past four months, and they've already bought the company.

These multistate plans were included in President Obama’s health care law as a substitute for a pure government-run health insurance program — the public option sought by many liberal Democrats and reviled by Republicans. Supporters of the national plans say they will increase competition in state health insurance markets, many of which are dominated by a handful of companies.

The national plans will compete directly with other private insurers and may have some significant advantages, including a federal seal of approval. Premiums and benefits for the multistate insurance plans will be negotiated by the United States Office of Personnel Management, the agency that arranges health benefits for federal employees.

Walton J. Francis, the author of a consumer guide to health plans for federal employees, said the personnel agency had been “extraordinarily successful” in managing that program, which has more than 200 health plans, including about 20 offered nationwide. The personnel agency has earned high marks for its ability to secure good terms for federal workers through negotiation rather than heavy-handed regulation of insurers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/health/us-to-sponsor-health-insurance-plans-nationwide.html?_r=0

We'll see who wins out.

[zeos3]

3. Thanks for the link. n/t

[BlueCaliDem]

4. You're welcome.

[msongs]

2. profiting from sickness and death, that's our current "health" care industry and that could be

changed quite easily by having some sort of nationalized health care system

[Mojorabbit]

5. I hope it is a stepping stone to real health care. nt