Remember how much President Obama and the Democrats portrayed Obamacare as a broadside to the special interests, especially the health insurers?
Nancy Pelosi said of the insurance companies, “They are the villains in this.” Obama pitched the bill as an improvement on a system that “works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn’t always work well for you.”
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This sort of talk happened because the White House figured out this was a way to sell the bill to the public. The Washington Post reported at the time:
As is typical of Obamacare, the language used to pitch the law has not proven true in fact.
“[S]ince the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership,” writes Robert Pear at the New York Times, “that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.”
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The Times article is well-reported and thorough. Here’s a good nugget:
This dovetails with what I’ve been seeing for years. It was the health industry that has pushed states to expand Medicaid and build Obamacare exchanges — a loss for taxpayers. And here’s an example that shows how the gains made by Obama and the insurers is a loss for patients: Obamacare’s regulations create a moat around the existing insurers and protect them from competition.
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