By Kevin McCauley
Conservatives wanting to junk the individual mandate of the healthcare law are not acting in the best interests of the insurance industry, according to Wendell Potter, author of "Deadly Spin."
The former Cigna PR executive told The California Endowment Dec. 14 that the insurance industry’s business model isn’t sustainable without the mandate. He has referred to the mandate as the Insurance Industry Protection Act of 2010."
Potter explained that without healthy individuals enrolled in healthcare plans until they become sick, insurers would be forever jacking up premiums to the point at which "more and more people priced out of the system. That would erode bottom lines and either "hasten the demise of the insurance industry" or "bring about something far less free market-driven."
Potter spoke in the aftermath of a federal judge’s decision to declare the mandate provision of the healthcare law unconstitutional. He anticipates the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately decide the fate of healthcare law and will decide one way or the other based on how political it wants to be.
What about enrolling everyone in Medicare?
In an email to odwyerpr.com, Potter described how past efforts to expand Medicare to cover everybody failed. Senator Ted Kennedy tried to achieve universal coverage through Medicare expansion during the Nixon years, according to Potter. "Nixon responded by offering the HMO Act, which led to the rapid movement of Americans into HMOs and other managed care places over the subsequent years," he wrote.
Insurers and other special interests have fought a behind-the-scenes battle to fight off recent bids to expand Medicare. An expansion "would require a relatively simple bill but would lead to massive change in the financing and delivery of care, which special interests don’t want," noted Potter.
Conservatives cry that expanding Medicare is a "government takeover of the healthcare system and a move that would take us down the slippery slope toward socialism." They would "mount the mother of all spin campaigns" to prevent it from happening.
Potter concedes that expanding Medicare would increase taxes, but would overall reduce overall healthcare spending, especially on insurance premiums.
|