TPMDC
AHIP Gave White House No Notice Of Pending Report Despite Meeting Last Wednesday
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The White House is tempering its reaction to the new health insurance industry report we've been writing about today since the administration questions its legitimacy.
A senior administration official said they weren't yet sure if America's Health Insurance Plans was launching an offensive to try and defeat health care before tomorrow's Senate Finance Committee vote, but was skeptical of AHIP's motivations.
"Given how they behaved in the past, it's very likely they could be up to their old tricks," the official told TPMDC.
The official said the report left out large chunks of information about the bill and from the new Congressional Budget Office estimate that shows the bill would decrease the deficit.
The official said the report ignores provisions that make health care more affordable - tax credits, an exchange for small businesses and plans for the young and healthy - and doesn't take into account that the bill does not require those with employer-sponsored health insurance to change.
AHIP's Karen Ignagni said on a conference call that's going on right now they started to be concerned over the last several weeks, but the administration official said the White House was "misled" by AHIP, which gave no heads up before dropping the report late Sunday.
The official said Ignagni, president and CEO of AHIP, met last Wednesday night with NancyAnn DeParle (director of the White House health office, aka a "czar") and Larry Summers (director of the White House National Economic Council) and did not complain about the issues raised in the report a few days later.
"There was this good conversation going on and she told us she's gotten some experts to take a look at the bill but was a ways away from having anything they were going to put out," the official complained. "Clearly it was in the works."
I spoke to a PricewaterhouseCoopers staffer who said the accounting giant isn't able to comment about the report despite being flooded with requests. Asked specific questions, he told me it was "doubtful" PWC would share the numbers about how much AHIP paid to commission the report. But AHIP told reporters on a conference call just now that questions about the methodology would have to go to PWC.
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mans_best_friend
October 12, 2009 1:45 PM
Nate Silver has an interesting observation that may play a role in this "report". Insurance company shares are down an average of more than 11% since Labor Day. In dollars and cents, that's $10B in lost value. In a month and a half.
Over the same time period the S&P500 is up almost 7%, so the insurance companies underperformed the stock market as a whole by some 18%.
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Walter Mitty
October 12, 2009 1:46 PM
I hope this was a cheap shot by the AHIP, hopefully this gets the back up of President Obama and the rest of the White House staff working on the reforms and they go all in with a robust public option for all.
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TheRealFish
October 13, 2009 12:28 PM in reply to Walter Mitty
Or it was a direct, extortive threat.
You know, people can be legally fined for price gouging for supplies in the wake natural calamities. While the attempt to regulate an out of control illness-profiting industry is certainly and directly a threat to those industries' ability to capitalize on natural disasters (the type of "protection" only mobsters can love: pay me money to protect me from breaking your legs), I have never seen a more clear example of exactly why they need to be legally constrained.
I believe that relying on public options for competition, whether the "option" even means being able to choose a single-payer alternative, is far from enough.
These literaral vampires need to be legally constrained from their ongoing price gouging. Their ability to do so needs to be made illegal regardless whatever other health reforms are put in place.
Then they can threaten or extort all they want but the moment that they put the gun to the head of all citizens because we constrain their amoral profit center — our health and wellbeing — then they need to pay huge fines and/or do prison time for price-fixing, price gouging and extortion.
Period. End of sentence.
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rbeats
October 12, 2009 2:04 PM
Karen Ignagni is one of the most vile human beings currently walking this planet.
She is personally responsible for more deaths, bankruptcies, and thwarted dreams than any number of Al Queda mission directed towards our country could accomplish in a decade.
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jimbomoron
October 12, 2009 2:13 PM in reply to rbeats
I'm sorry. My father in the 90s worked for Karen Ignagni when she was head of GHAA, which was one of the few trade organizations that backed the Clinton Health care plan in the 90s. She doesn't have nefarious motives -- she's just wrong.
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rbeats
October 12, 2009 2:32 PM in reply to jimbomoron
Tell that to the child who just lost a parent because they were denied a life saving treatment because it cost too much.
Tell that to the family living in a shelter who lost their home, thanks to Karens work on Capital Hill.
Tell that to the dead. The hundred of thousand of dead, that Karen help put in their grave, thanks to her work on Capital Hill.
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docrocktex
October 12, 2009 2:56 PM in reply to rbeats
she's had some awful plastic surgery too apparently
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tmccarthy0
October 12, 2009 3:45 PM in reply to docrocktex
:D, funny! I love it, I wonder if her health insurance paid for it!
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CityGuy
October 12, 2009 9:35 PM in reply to rbeats
Amen to that! And yes I'm sure this was a sucker punch timed for just this week! Loathsome critters in AHIP
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Tim
October 12, 2009 11:14 PM in reply to rbeats
She is America's Angel of Death, Angel of Extortion, and Destroyer of the American Economy.
It's time she was justly demonized for her role in allowing tens of thousands of Americans to die each year so that private health insurance can extort from its customers.
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Lestatdelc
October 12, 2009 2:06 PM
Of course AHIP wants to scuttle this, unless the bill ends up being nothing more than forced mandates to buy their shitty product. Anything else and they will stab any back necessary to avoid accountability and competition.
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jfields
October 12, 2009 2:07 PM
Let's not put it all on Karen Ignagni. I would say that any exec currently making eight figures off the current state of affairs is just as culpable.
There's plenty of evil and blame to go around, here.
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rbeats
October 12, 2009 2:29 PM in reply to jfields
Anyone making millions a year on the corpses of American citizens, deserve no respect, and deserves to be called out for their barbarism.
Just because someone is being paid millions to support the legalized murder and pillaging of fortune from the middle class and poor of America does not make it ok. Pretending that it is OK, actually perpetuates the problem.
In any civilized society Karen Ignagni would be put in a prison.
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Tim
October 12, 2009 11:17 PM in reply to rbeats
Prison is not how these kinds of persons were treated, historically. In France, I seem to recall, it was the Guillotine.
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3star2nr
October 12, 2009 2:13 PM
There is an old saying.
If you lye down with dogs you'll get fleas.
ENJOY THE FLEA BITE
The Whitehouse shouldnt have been negotiating with these people from the beginning. They should have said enough is enough we are going single payer. Dont like it go fuck yourself
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xargaw
October 12, 2009 4:50 PM in reply to 3star2nr
These were my sentiments as well. When you partner with thieving greedy bast**ds, don't be surprised if they turn their arrows toward you. The insurance industry is out for the insurance industry. They could care less about the people they are supposed to serve. It's all about the bottom line and huge bucks for the top brass. If tens of thousands of customers have to suffer for those profits, so be it. This is exactly why we need a strong and accessible public option. Any Senator that backs away from this can never claim to be pro-life again, or claim to care about the health of his constituents. To deny the need for the public option is to DELIBERATELY ignore the facts.
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rhallnj
October 12, 2009 2:16 PM
This lends credence to my belief that the private insurers are untrustworthy partners. You might as well try to make deals with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Or might they be wanting to create the impression for public relations purposes that they are being forced into HCR with a gun to their heads, knowing that it is a windfall for them? Maybe this is Kabuki theater?
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ohyeathatsright
October 12, 2009 3:27 PM in reply to rhallnj
"You might as well try to make deals with the Taliban or Al Qaeda."
Aren't we?
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virginiacynic
October 12, 2009 2:16 PM
Wait, the white house is amazed at insurance cos?
This is standard tactics: browbeat the liberals and make big pharma type deals so to make the legislation weak from the beginning and then attack what the congress produced after one has beaten them into a submissive stance and produced a weak bill.
For people that are so smart ( and make no mistake Obama is that smart) they seem to have forgotten hubris: "oh the insurance people won't pull that on us . we entered this in good faith and talked with them to get consensus. "
Let us hope that the WH now reacts as one scorned instead of a whiner that is crying about duplicity
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Lestatdelc
October 12, 2009 2:24 PM
What makes me laugh about this is, let AHIP raise their rates even more than they would have otherwise with a robust public option. That will only make them lose more customers to the public option.
I know raising your price when you have competition is a create business model to earn more customers. /snark
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Lestatdelc
October 12, 2009 2:25 PM in reply to Lestatdelc
Ugh, should have read:
"I know raising your price when you have real competition is a great business model and a sure path to earn more customers. /snark"
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fishbrake
October 12, 2009 2:33 PM
Let me see if I have this straight - the health care bill in its current form would actually raise revenues for the insurance industry? And yet they oppose it? Hilarious.
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sdhays
October 13, 2009 6:48 AM in reply to fishbrake
This is really what I don't get. I'm thinking they waited too long for this; August was the time. I mean, the Baucus bill is pretty much the best they can hope for, and they're trashing it? That weakens the conservative Democrats arguing against a strong public option since the insurance industry sure looks like it's stabbing their allies in the back. It pisses off the White House when we're getting ready for the final push, and final details are being set. A majority of the Democrats on the Finance Committee just want to get the darn thing out of the committee and merged with the HELP bill; so if the insurance industry really wants to scream to the top of its lungs that the Baucus bill will raise rates, then... I guess the final bill should take more drastic action against that eventuality, like including a strong public option, for instance.
At least that would be my response; Congress often doesn't seem to actually operate with logic, though, and I'm not paid millions of dollars to affect their decisions, so what do I know?
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dougom
October 12, 2009 2:43 PM
We negotiated with Republicans to persue that popular Washington chimera, "bi-partisanship", and they stabbed us in the back. We negotiated with the insurance companies so that we could be sure that we "brought everyone to the table," and they stabbed us in the back. We took single-payer off the table so that we could negotiate with both these groups, and now we're barely keeping a public option alive.
Can we jettison these lying, back-stabbing, nakedly greedy and political jerks now, and ram single-payer through congress without a lot of negotiation? Please?
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Vermont Devil
October 12, 2009 2:56 PM
Let me understand this - the WH is "SHOCKED" and I mean "SHOCKED" that the lobby firm would pull this kind of thing?
Is the WH staff too clever for their own good - forgetting that this is what lobby organizations do, meddle in affairs of governance for their own members' benefit.
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Beetlejuice
October 12, 2009 4:16 PM in reply to Vermont Devil
i get the impression Obama has been playing the industry like a fish. using fancy lures to get them interested, come out from hiding then attacking the lure expecting a free lunch only to find out they're the lunch.
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docrocktex
October 12, 2009 2:58 PM
Opt-in Medicare for all. Get it done.
YES WE CAN
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MyMy
October 12, 2009 3:01 PM
Or else let's do what the Swiss do--make all health insurance companies NON PROFIT. Blue Cross of California was non profit and it made so much money even without as much gouging as today, back in the 80s and 90s it decided to go for profit status. The State of California wisely forced them to fork over the excess to create the California Foundation which supports a number of excellent programs. Let's do the same with the AHIP gang.
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Spiffarino
October 12, 2009 3:18 PM in reply to MyMy
Exactly right. If the Reich wing wants to maintain private insurers, then we can do what the Swiss and Germans do and run health insurance as you would a public utility. The insurer is guaranteed 10-15% above the cost of providing health care to all citizens. In exchange, they must pay claims promptly and completely or lose the business. This gives them a strong incentive to be efficient but also to not cut corners.
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Mateo123
October 12, 2009 3:28 PM
What a shock. To think that an industry group with a lot to lose would come out -- at the last second -- and seek to destroy a bill that would severely limit their operations is shocking.
You really have to hand it to Emanuel. He played this one perfect. I hope when it's over, Obama walks into his office and says, "Rahm, all the capital I spent on health care has essentially made me a one-termer. So, I'm not going to wait to get rid of you."
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3star2nr
October 12, 2009 3:28 PM
They should have declared war a long time ago and the shot should have been fired by the whitehouse.
These clowns are so greedy they arent satisfied with the extra revenue they will be getting from the bill and the amount of customers who will be forced to buy their plan that they are pushing for more. More profits.
What the white house needs to do is embrace the study and push for real reform. A real public option. available TO EVERYONE
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Leftflank
October 12, 2009 4:19 PM
AHIP could also stand for "Americas Health Insurance Profits". Seems much more fitting anyway.
Nice of them to let us know what shitty, greedy bastards they are too.
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ajkrueger
October 12, 2009 4:22 PM
Declare WAR on the WHITEHOUSE? The insurance lobby declared war on you and I long, long ago! FUCK the insurance companies! The gravy train is pulling out of the station!
SINGLE PAYER (MEDICARE FOR ALL) is the ONLY SOLUTION!
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ericAZ
October 12, 2009 4:58 PM
If Price Waterhouse was willing to give phony reports to an Indian company for for tens of millions in rupees (not much, really) -- http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/25/stories/2009012550150100.htm -- what would they be willing to do for hard currency?
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WNCBlue
October 12, 2009 8:41 PM in reply to ericAZ
Give an Oscar to Anthony Hopkins for "Silence of the Lambs?"
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screaminmeme
October 12, 2009 5:18 PM
The WH should curb its inclination to chase every red herring that swims by. The WH cannot -- and should not -- try to play Fox's game. First off, doing so is beneath the dignity of the office. Second, one cannot play in that league unless one is prepared to adopt the same (i.e., slimy) rules which, by definition, means climbing down into the ooze with them. And, last, it is a no-win proposition either way: you appear either whiny, or distracted. Take an occasional, well-considered shot, hit the target, and move along.
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cheesenstein
October 12, 2009 5:44 PM
If the AHIP report is accurate, then clearly the health insurance "business" is no longer viable and the federal government should simply put it out of its misery before it drags the rest of the economy down with it.
Perhaps their shares should be considered Toxic Assets.
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barth
October 12, 2009 6:52 PM
I haven't read their report, but from what I have heard about it, it makes a fair amount of sense. If a new system brings in everyone or almost everyone, no matter what the state of their health is today, it will cost more money to cover all the exigencies for which insurance is required. Given what goes on today, and what appears to have been proposed by the members of Congress owned by the insurance industry, we can expect that such a system while cost the rest of us big time.
Unless as somebody wrote a few weeks ago
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Veritas78
October 12, 2009 7:05 PM
If we'd had "single-payer" on the table from the beginning, we could go right back to it and say goodbye to these extorting thieves.
In fact, let's do it anyway. NO ONE in America loves their private insurer, or will shed a tear when we put them out of business.
Give me Medicare, or give me death! For some of us, that may be the choice.
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slinkypomo
October 13, 2009 7:58 AM
LOL, is anyone actually surprised by this? I mean really!
RT
www.true-privacy.net.tc
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June 8, 2010 4:12 AM
This is really what I don't get. I'm thinking they waited too long for this; August was the time. I mean, the Baucus bill is pretty much the best they can hope for, and they're trashing it? That weakens the conservative Democrats arguing against a strong public option since the insurance industry sure looks like it's stabbing their allies in the back. It pisses off the White House when we're getting ready for the final push, and final details are being set. A majority of the Democrats on the Finance Committee just want to get the darn thing out of the committee and merged with the HELP bill; so if the insurance industry really wants to scream to the top of its lungs that the Baucus bill will raise rates, then... I guess the final bill should take more drastic action against that eventuality, like including a strong public option, for instance.
At least that would be my response; Congress often doesn't seem to actually operate with logic, though, and I'm not paid millions of dollars to affect their decisions, so what do I know?
m65 kamagra
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