On the eve of the Senate Finance Committee vote, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the key insurer lobby, has emerged from the sidelines with a critical new study (pdf) by PriceWaterhouseCoopers that finds the bill will increase the average cost of a family plan.
The insurance lobby was a key opponent of President Clinton’s reform plan in 1994, most famously producing the “Harry and Louise” ads, supported the broad principles of the Democratic health overhaul intiatives. Bloggers are wondering if this apparent change in course could be a game-changer in the larger debate.
Politico’s Chris Frates headlines his post “And The Knives Come Out” and writes, “This could be a turning point that the White House and Baucus worked hard to avoid – when industry begins to publicly oppose Democratic reforms.”
Tevi Troy of the National Review’s Critical Condition says “Losing the insurers at this late hour is a blow to the White House’s hopes of keeping key industries aboard as the Baucus bill approaches a Finance Committee vote tomorrow. In addition, the study is giving Republicans ammunition against the Baucus bill.” He goes on to note: “trying to prevent people from feeling actual health-cost increases is one of the reasons that American health-care costs so much in the first place.”
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein jokes, “In the hallowed tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry has commissioned a report projecting doom and despair for those who seek to reform its business practices.”
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn says though PriceWaterhouseCoopers is probably “right about a few things,” the report makes several assumptions: “Plenty of experts, including the CBO, don’t think health care providers will simply charge private insurers more to make up for declining revenue from Medicare. The experts could all be wrong, but PriceWaterhouseCoopers doesn’t even acknowledge this belief let alone explain why it might be wrong. Indeed, nowhere in the document does the firm reveal its methods, which is interesting since–unlike CBO or even, say, a private outfit like Lewin–PriceWaterhouseCoopers is not particularly known for this sort of modeling.”
Heritage’s Ernest Istook defends the report: “The PWC projections track what The Heritage Foundation and many others have said about the legislation: It does not save money. It simply taxes those who have health coverage and uses the money to give care to others.”
But the American Prospect’s Adam Serwer thinks lawmakers could address AHIP’s concerns: “Despite the hype this seems far from a knockout punch, since there’s still time to fix things in conference if the bill passes the finance committee, and some of the things that AHIP wants changed health-care reform advocates probably want, too. It’s mostly politically frustrating for the White House, who seem to have assumed that all the ‘relevant stakeholders’ had been placated. By ‘relevant’ of course, I mean moneyed interests, not, you know, the American people.”
Tags: ahip, costs, finance committee, insurance, reform
