Real Danger of “Obamacare”: Insurance Company Takeover of Health Care

[Kimura]

A great piece by Nomi Prins detailing the the insurance companies coming monopoly under Obamacare. The inevitable consolidation by health insurance spells trouble for health care down the road.

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.)

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.

Given that premiums have increased 97% over the past decade, I see no end in sight for rising costs and continued price gouging.

Real Danger of “Obamacare”: Insurance Company Takeover of Health Care

 

[Greenbeard]

It's refreshing in some respects to see critiques of the ACA from the left for once, but they do tend to stray a bit toward the notion that insurers are evil or they're sucking up all the cash flowing into the health care sector or whatever.

The reality is that they're often subject to forces beyond their control, forces that can be contained by 1) instituting consumer protections as a matter of law and 2) addressing structural deficiencies in health insurance markets. This is one of the things the ACA set out to do. Insurers have an important role to play and they can play it, particularly when they're not coping with pressures from a market that isn't set up for success.

When you've got the right saying it's a government takeover of the health sector and the end of the private insurance industry, and you've got the left comparing it to various deregulatory efforts in the past, there's a fair chance you're looking at something fairly balanced not too far from the center of the ideological spectrum.

 

[dblack]

When you've got the right saying it's a government takeover of the health sector and the end of the private insurance industry, and you've got the left comparing it to various deregulatory efforts in the past, there's a fair chance you're looking at something fairly balanced not too far from the center of the ideological spectrum.

And there's a fairer chance that you're looking at some shitty legislation - a body of law that no one likes (albeit for different reasons), except for the financial interests so integral to its creation.