Donald Johnson

Why the 'Group of Six Senators' Is Opposed to a Public Health Plan

If the CEOs of the five or six largest insurers told AHIP to propose real reforms of state and federal health insurance regs, they could kill the public option in a matter of days and reform health insurance markets without costing the Feds a fraction of the $2 to $4 trillion ObamaCare probably will cost over the next 10 years.

Why the 'Group of Six Senators' Is Opposed to a Public Health Plan

I wish the senators cared as much about insurers' shareholders as implied. I doubt it.

Heck, I wish the insurers were more concerned about their shareholders. If they did, they'd be waging a smarter campaign to reform fed and state health insurance regs.

Those regs have so distorted the health insurance markets that no insurer looks honest.

Problem is that the insurers' lobbyists helped draft the screwy state and federal regs. So it's hard to feel sorry for them.

Insurers are their own worst enemies. I don't think they really want to be in the insurance business.

Why the 'Group of Six Senators' Is Opposed to a Public Health Plan

Intrade's back up to 41% bid.

Health Care Stocks Anticipate Weak Reform Bill, If Any

www.intrade.com shows speculators think there is a 30% chance that health care reform will be enacted before midnight Dec. 31, 2009, down from 46% about three days ago.

Link is here: www.intrade.com/

Health insurers' and hospital companies' stocks are soaring in anticipation of a watered down health deform bill or, even better, no bill.

Link is here:

www.businessword.com/

The consensus that's emerging, in other words, is that Obama's press conference last week hurt the drive to Canadianize health insurance markets in the U.S.

Significant minorities of Dems in the House and Senate are showing the common sense to oppose putting the politicians who created the failed Medicare and Medicaid and VA Health Systems in charge of fixing our health insurance markets. Ted Kennedy's old single-payer plan, which has failed to provide quality and affordable care in every country in which it's been tried, won't work in the U.S. either.

Health Care Stocks Anticipate Weak Reform Bill, If Any

As I've blogged many times, most of the problems with the health insurance markets could be resolved with some changes in state and federal insurance regulations that wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime.

If ObamaCare goes down the drain, maybe the hard left members of Congress who've been blocking real reforms because they wanted to force Americans into a Government HMO (Fannie Med) will start listening to Sen. Jim DeMint and others who have better ideas than Teddy Kennedy and Henry Waxman.

Obama Takes Pressure Off Health Insurers

Politoco.com reports Obama has rolled back his chief of staff's comments on the public option.

Do these guys talk?

Obama Takes Pressure Off Health Insurers

Health insurers and health ETFs popped this morning on the news.

Daily charts are here:

stockcharts.com/script...

Obama’s Health Insurance Plan Is No Panacea

ObamaCare will increase the cost of health insurance to enrollees for several reasons.

First, if the plan subsidizes health insurance for the 6 to 8 million uninsured American citizens who aren't eligible for existing programs and can't afford basic catastrophic plans, the plan will cost billions. This cohort tends to be uneducated, unemployable and, most important, chronically ill. They would need a lot of attention when they first got their coverage and would cost more to insure over time than most people.

Second, if Obama's public option health plan, which I call the Government HMO (GHMO), is enacted, it would initially lower premiums in an effort to drive private insurers out of the markets. After private insurers are gone, Congress would mandate that the plan offer more benefits, raise premiums and taxes on non participating employers and the rest of us and ease initial limits on access. We'd be in an expensive, low access single-payer plan, which is Obama's objective.

Third, if Congress goes the Wal-Mart employer mandated coverage, it will mandate all kinds of benefits at the behest of lobbyists and campaign contributors and raise premiums and taxes.

The literature is beginning to show what I've been saying for years. Most expensive preventive care is covered by insurers because the states mandate that coverage at the behest of providers who support politicians' election campaigns with contributions. Only a small part of preventive care cuts costs for the long term, and very little if any cuts costs for the long term.

Because preventive care contributors have the attention of members of Congress and presidential candidates, it's like ethanol, basically an expensive scam.

I've been writing and blogging on health care and health insurance businesses and economics for years at businessword.com.

It is amazing that people who claim to be health insurance experts continue to say there are 46 to 50 million uninsured. That's a number inflated by the government officials who believe in health care reform and publish it to help providers turn a small problem into a crisis. Their gambit worked and will give politicians and some providers' trade associations much more power, but it will cost everyone under 65 trillions.