The Health Insurers Have Already Won

[Orwellian_Ghost]

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


Stevens directs industry leader UnitedHealth's strategy on Capitol Hill Stephen Voss

By Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein
August 17, 2009


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."

Impressing fiscally conservative Democrats like Matheson, a leader of the House of Representatives' Blue Dog Coalition, is at the heart of UnitedHealth's strategy. It boils down to ensuring that whatever overhaul Congress passes this year will help rather than hurt huge insurance companies.

...

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.

...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_33/b4143034820260.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

[nightrain]

1. yep. I saw that article also, and perhaps the Obama administration

is "recalibrating" its position.... see

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/08lobby.html?_r=1&hp

[timeforpeace]

2. Yeah, by calling up the industry lobbyists and saying "how we doing, any suggestions?"

[nightrain]

3. LOL. good one. So it seems.... Obama and Congress ?ought to have the

power differential, not the corporations. But, we have it reversed, don't we?

This could be one of the shortcomings of Obama's seeming difficulty with actual conflict. Ya can't appease the corporations AND get to universality and cost-containment in healthcare. I think they are mutually exclusive. The leeches need to go.

[KG]

4. i never expected anything else. rearrangement of the deck chairs and a bunch of politicos

patting each other on the back.

and anybody with any kind of objectivity could see it coming a mile away.

the political capital from the 2008 totally pissed away. of course. because the dem party is wholly owned by corporate america.

anything like real 'change' in this country is never going to come from the democratic party. get used to it.

[TBF]

5. K&R nt