Health Care update from Washington

So a few weeks ago we had a member of Obama's transition team and a former Hillary Care White House staffer at a roundtable. He said Health Care was dead two days when he talked after the Massachusetts election. What he did not know was the story would break two days later that the (EVIL) insurance companies were going to anounce 30% price increases to make their 2% margin next year. Since with millions of lives that transpires into hundreds of millions in profits this infuriated the two people that matter in Washington as well as their all too willing accomplices. So we had a talk with our Washington connection.
He is dumbfounded by the Hallmark bill. Not only could Washington have accomplished the same ends months earlier without the nuclear option, but this action has poisoned the waters. Pointing out the political suicide of the action, he also discussed that due to the partisanship the issue had already caused thru the two "summits" at this point getting something done was a less worse alternative to not getting something done. Focus groups tell insurers and politicians that if people are told insurers increase costs they will believe it, while if they are told insurers dont save costs they don't believe it. Thus, the third party payer system inherently has a distrusting element that the Democrats understood and were all too willing to incorporate into their agenda.
Now players from insurers to hospital to drug companies to payers have 4 years to make changes. They will. United Health Care is reviewing getting out of the individual health care insurance space. Dupont who self insures and is backed by Lloyds has lost the reinsurance backing (rumor has it). Now with reduced incentives for Medicaid reimbursement California insurers had to make changes. Just nobody thought that the President and Mrs. Pelosi seeing this happening in her state would create the kind of promises and deals so unprecedented in history to ram this thru. The caution ...look out if Republicans get control of the House or Senate and are in charge of oversight after the election,. It wont be pretty what they uncover in the dealmaking. Health Care is now a pure partisan issue. We will get Mark back on the road this summer.