Via the American Prospect’s Dean Baker, the New York Times does an outstanding job of shining up an Insurance industry turd and making it look like solid gold. You would think that, with a title like “Insurers Seek Bigger Reach in Coverage,” this would be a story about insurers really making an effort to make sure everybody got covered under their plans. Ha! You would if you were a sap.
Instead, the plan is: let those who can afford the good stuff pay for private insurance, and let the po folk and the sick folk go beg the gubbamint for their lives:
Insurers Seek Bigger Reach in Coverage – New York Times
The proposals, approved by a board of the industry’s main trade group, would make it harder for insurers to cancel policies or deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. The steps would also limit the premiums that could be charged for such people. The trade group also called on states to provide individual coverage for people who were likely to incur very high medical bills.
About the only bright spot in this discussion is the fact that this points out a certain inevitability factor for universal health care. Big Insurance has figured out the game, and like all good business men, is seeking to lose on their own terms, which is the same as winning.
