Z. Byron Wolf at ABC News has an excellent rundown of how insurers benefit from Obama’s health-care reform. Some highlights:
the Senate health reform bill … would give the insurance companies millions of new customers required by law to buy health insurance….
the government would give to people money to buy insurance – $336 billion over the next ten years. That money, ultimately, would have to go to… drum roll… insurance companies.
People without employer-sponsored insurance who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and less than about $88,000 for a family of four, would get tax credits to help them buy insurance on the open market. But the payment of the tax credits would be made, point out Republican researchers, directly to insurance companies. See page 37 here of the Senate Finance Committee’s exhaustive explanation of the plan:
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama criticized a proposal by Sen. John McCain because it would send government help for people to buy insurance directly to insurance companies.
“But The New Tax Credit [For Health Insurance] He’s Proposing? That Wouldn’t Go To You. It Would Go Directly To Your Insurance Company – Not Your Bank Account,” said Obama in October on the Campaign trail.
And yet that’s exactly what Democrats’ proposal would do…
