President Obama has told us that those opposing his health-care law were simply serving “those who profit from the status quo” and that passing the bill represented “standing up to the special interests.” Republicans who tried to kill the measure were supposedly shills for the insurers.
Someone forgot to tell the insurers:
At a closed-door meeting Wednesday at D.C.’s Grand Hyatt with member plans from across the country, association officials covered topics like “Moving exchanges forward,” “What motivates conservatives to oppose creating exchanges? Myths vs. facts,”….
According to multiple people who attended the meeting, there was a focus on what Blues plans could do to counter “hard-core conservatives” who are refusing to set up exchanges….
“The idea was really to go over what has worked so far in red states,” one meeting attendee said. “It was important to hear from Mississippi, a very, very red state that is using their high risk pool as a way to follow the law.”
In linking to this report, Ben Smith of Politico oversimplifies, I believe the relationship of the insurers to the ObamaCare when it was on the Hill, writing “The insurance industry was a major obstacle to President Obama’s health care plan….”
But remember that is was the insurers, in November 2008, who made the opening bid on ObamaCare, proposing the rules regarding pre-existing conditions and price controls in exchange for the individual mandate — these proposals made up the core of ObamaCare.
Of course the HMOs are also lobbying to save the individual mandate, the main object of conservative ire.
Maybe soon we can expect the media to stop swallowing Obama’s misleading “reformers-vs-industry” framing.
