Democrats in Damage Control Mode After Health Insurance Report

Health insurance companies, unhappy with how things appear to be progressing in Congress on a healthcare overhaul bill, brought out the big guns recently, putting forth a report on the likely effects of the Obama administration’s desired health plan. The report indicated that health care legislation will increase premiums on people who already have health coverage, and threatens to derail what progress has already been made among a skeptical middle class. White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass called the report "Distorted and flawed," while AARP strategist John Rother referred to it as "fundamentally dishonest."

A spokesman for Max Baucus, D-Montana, the de facto head of congressional health reform, called the report "a hatchet job." Nonetheless, the industry is threatening to get in the fight even further in the near future, and a spokeswoman for the health insurance industry would not rule out attack ads. If the industry is successful in convincing America’s large, insured middle class that their already-skyrocketing premiums will actually go up with new legislation, it would appear that reform will have no chance at all. And, if we’re being honest about it, any bill that does not promise to lower healthcare costs for the middle class – and deliver on that promise – is all just one more step towards a corporate and social welfare state anyway.

Summing up the position that health insurers are in, former industry executive Robert Laszewski noted, "We’ve got ourselves a real health care shooting war now. The industry has come to the conclusion that they way things are going in Congress, we’ll have a formula that will be disastrous for their businesses, so they can’t stand on the sidelines any longer."