HEALTHCARE - When Health Insurance Executives Fix the Game

"New Ad Blasts Insurance Companies, Renews Push For Public Option" by Greg Sargent, Who Runs GOV

There’s a growing sense in Washington that the insurance industry inadvertently breathed new life into the public option by releasing that report yesterday predicting reform would hike premiums, creating a new argument in favor of creating competition for the industry in the form of a public plan.

Now the labor-backed White House ally Americans United For Change is going up with a new ad timed to capitalize on that sense to renew the push for the public option:



The ad, which is airing on D.C. cable in an effort to target lawmakers, concludes: “When health insurance executives fix the game, they get rich. Time for competition when it comes to health insurance. We need the choice of a public health insurance plan.”

The spot is designed to amplify the message — perhaps best delivered yesterday by Congressman Anthony Weiner — that the insurance companies made one of the strongest cases yet for a public option by essentially vowing to raise rates. The report also makes it easier for reform proponents to argue that the industry, which had been making nice with the White House, is a bad-faith actor not to be trusted.

It seems like a potentially big tactical error by the insurance industry, and it’ll be interesting to watch how proponents of the public option capitalize on it to pressure the White House and Senate leadership to put a public plan — or some form of it — into the final Senate bill that’s being negotiated this week. The public option lives!