Health Insurance Industry's Latest Double-Cross

Just in case anyone thought the insurance companies couldn’t sink any lower, they've made yet another sleazy move in the ongoing battle over health care reform. This morning, American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the main industry shill group, announced a new "report" warning  that the proposed reforms would raise a "typical family's" health insurance premiums by as much as $4,000 over the next ten years.

The report is a particular stab in the back to President Obama and Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus. Both have spent recent months assiduously kissing the insurers’ gold-plated butts in exchange for their "co-operation" on health care reform. The Baucus bill is already a giveaway to the health insurance industry. By requiring millions more Americans to buy private health insurance plans, it stands to shovel even more money into their coffers, while imposing little government regulation and no competition from a public plan.

But that still wasn’t enough for the insurance companies. As the Los Angeles Times reports, health insurers have concluded that Baucus bill doesn’t do enough "to draw young, healthy people into the insurance pool. Industry analysts predict that by postponing and reducing penalties on those who fail to buy health insurance, it would attract less-healthy patients who would drive up costs." In other words, some of the new policy-holders might actually require insurance companies to pay for health care in exchange for their bonanza of new premiums. That, of course, might chip away at their profit margin, whch would never do—so their only option is to raise already sky-high insurance premiums even higher. Or so they say.

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