Today's New York Times has an article about the back-and-forth between the insurance industry and Democrats over the industry's report attacking the Baucus health care reform bill. The Obama administration and Baucus had worked hard to get the insurance industry's support. Too hard.
The last paragraph of the article is most telling. The leader of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Karen Ignangi, spilled the beans. In doing so, she laid out the case for why we need a public option. Her industry doesn't want to insure people with "health problems":
Ms. Ignagni said her biggest concern was that the bill would require insurers to accept all applicants for several years before the government had any meaningful way to enforce a requirement for people to have insurance. In that gap, Ms. Ignagni predicted, many people with health problems are likely to enter the market.Imagine that. Her biggest concern is insuring people with health problems. And, as we know, the insurance industry has a very, very broad definition of "health problems." If insurers don't want all those people -- and Ignangi said they don't -- we really need a public option.
Last night, I posted a video of Rep. Anthony Weiner explaining how the insurance industry report on the Baucus bill made the case for the public option, too. Ignangi and her crew might have just outsmarted themselves.
