Advocacy Groups Jumping On AHIP Report

The Columbus Day holiday hasn't kept politically powerful organizations from slamming AHIP today over the group's new report criticizing the health reform bill up for a final vote in the Senate Finance Committee tomorrow. In the past hour, powerful lobbying groups representing nurses, seniors and progressives have put out statements blasting the AHIP report.

From the California Nurses Assoc., the largest nurses union in the country: "Our legislators should respond to this bullying and stop coddling a useless industry whose sole function is to make enormous profits from the pain and suffering of patients while providing little in return."

From the AARP: The AHIP report
is not "worth the paper it's written on."

From Americans United For Change: "The bottom line is that the insurance industry wants to kill health insurance reform so they can continue to be free to exclude people with pre-existing conditions, free to rescind policies when people get sick, free to use their exemption from the anti-trust laws to monopolize markets, free to continue increasing profits for Wall Street -- and free to give their CEO's tens of millions in compensation. "