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Insurance companies are not whining; on the other hand media do on their behalf, but insurance companies basically wrote the law, so you won't see BlueCross or

• jjoonathan 13y ago
  I disagree. Not about the fact that politicians and the media put words into the mouths of insurance companies for the purposes of political gain, but about you claim that "insurance companies basically wrote the law." I don't think they made off nearly as well as you think they did. Also, we wouldn't expect their CEOs to make much of a stink about this, at least not publicly (perhaps I should have said "hurting" instead of "whining"). We would expect them to be busy telling investors how they plan to best take advantage of the new rules. Because that's what they're paid to do. Any CEO who says they don't know how to do this is begging to be replaced. We'll be able to tell who was right in 3-4 years by comparing their margins (or another metric like administrative overhead) to what we see today in the individual insurance market. I would bet a sizable chunk of money that they will be much closer to the margins we see in the employer-provided insurance market today.
  • DavidAdams 13y ago
    The insurance companies were consulted and included while the law was being drafted (over decades, because remember a lot of the groundwork was laid by the Republicans during the Clinton Administration). But it's not all rosy for them. They accepted the downside of this approach to healthcare reform because they saw potential alternatives as being much worse. A single-payer system would put the lot of them out of business, so they were willing to take some lumps to ensure that they're part of the American healthcare system moving forward.