"Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies"

[applegrove]

Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies

By ROBERT PEAR at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/us/politics/health-law-turns-obama-and-insurers-into-allies.html?_r=3

"SNIP......................



WASHINGTON — As Americans shop in the health insurance marketplace for a second year, President Obama is depending more than ever on the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage for the sick.

Those same insurers have long viewed government as an unreliable business partner that imposed taxes, fees and countless regulations and had the power to cut payment rates and cap profit margins.

But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.


The insurers in turn have provided crucial support to Mr. Obama in court battles over the health care law, including a case now before the Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low- and moderate-income consumers. Last fall, a unit of one of the nation’s largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group, helped the administration repair the HealthCare.gov website after it crashed in the opening days of enrollment.




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[Nye Bevan]

1. It is indeed an ugly, unholy alliance.

But unfortunately it was a necessary one; there is no way the ACA would have passed in the face of the insurance companies opposing it. (Remember Harry and Louise from 1993?) And regardless of what some claim, while the ACA is far from perfect it is vastly preferable to what we had before.

[Man from Pickens]

2. It's a law written for the benefit of insurers

Democrats who got taken along for a ride on this thing have been suckered. This isn't social medicine, or any step to single payer. This is the final step in a Fascist health care program, where people have to pay the insurance companies for the privilege of being alive, or the government will act against them.

The law doesn't actually guarantee anyone will receive any care, or any particular standard of care. What it does guarantee is that no matter how badly things go, the insurers will be paid.

The tip-off to what this law was really about was in the built-in bailout for insurers. For this we paid such a price that almost half of the Senators who voted for it (every last one a Democrat - this got zero GOP votes) are no longer in office and the House majority we once had is now the smallest minority in nearly a century?

[djean111]

3. "the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage

for the sick. "

Now they are just padding profits. Yay!