Big Insurance to Government: You Make it Affordable, We'll Gouge the Profit!

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Lost in the fog of all the healthcare bills on Capitol Hill is the issue of how for-profit insurance can co-exist with the goal of reducing medical costs.

Excellent point, and Big Insurance and Big Pharma have the usual "free market" answer: let the taxpayers subsidize our profits!

In short, if you require Big Insurance to eliminate pre-existing conditions and not cut off people who become sick and not deny care, then how can Big Insurance make a profit?

Easy, we -- the taxpayers -- will pay for subsidies to people and companies that can't afford (without a public option) the costs of Big Insurance premiums that rise much faster than the general rate of inflation.

Just as with the government bailout of Wall Street -- which is supposed to be our "free market" savior -- the "free market" of Big Insurance can only afford to exist under healthcare reform if it -- in essence -- receives welfare from the government in the form of tax credits or direct subsidies to premium purchasers.

This isn't a "free market" solution; it's socialized support of "profits" -- basically a shakedown. It's the only way -- under the myth of Big Insurance providing enhanced "value," which it doesn't -- that for-profit insurance companies can survive, because they are -- as Medicare has shown -- unnecessary (essentially, a expensive redundancy) except for the explicit purpose of enriching a select few: the executives and shareholders.

We saw this happen under Medicare Part D, which was written by Big Pharma under the Bush Administration.  Seniors got a reduction in prescription costs, but without the government being able to negotiate the costs of the prescriptions. It was a multi-billion dollar socialized medicine gift to Big Pharma.

If you recall -- and others have pointed out -- Medicare Part D had the "Trigger" scam written into it, but, of course, no one in the Big Pharma friendly federal government (attribute that to campaign contributions and revolving door lobbyist regulators) has ever pulled the trigger and Big Pharma has made out like a bandit at government expense.  They are perhaps the biggest welfare recipient in the nation right now, but Big Insurance may be about to lay claim to that title if "healthcare reform" goes through without a public option similar to Medicare, where the government negotiates and determines fees.

The "Trigger" scam is a great favorite of transferring wealth from the working class to the already bloated wealthy, using the government as the gilded welfare intermediary.  Rahm Emanuel, Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe and Harry Reid (depending upon what he is saying on any particular day) are among the most visible promoters of the "Trigger" (now you see it, now you don't) sham.

The only trigger that should be pulled in healthcare reform is on the theft of taxpayer dollars to create "profits" for Big Insurance.

That's emergency room robbery that we should pull the plug on.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Afternote: The following quotation is from a September 18th Washington Post article:

• Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the ranking Republican on Baucus's committee, is suggesting government assistance to insurance companies to help them control premium costs. And lawmakers in both parties are questioning whether Baucus's main revenue source, an excise tax on insurance companies for their most generous insurance policies, would simply be passed on to consumers.

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