Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Karen Ignagni: Not a happy camper (AP Photo)
Coming off a bad month of stock market losses, the insurance industry launched a last-minute scare attack this weekend against Democratic health reforms. Citing a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Karen Ignagni, president of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, which paid for the study, warned that “several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system.”
In one worst-case scenario taken from the report, Ignagni pointed out that the average American family could see its annual health insurance bill rise from $12,300 to $25,900 by 2019, if the Democrats’ plans become law.
But Jonathon Cohn at the New Republic argued that the report left out “some pretty big things, starting with the subsidies that would help people buy insurance.”
Meanwhile, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight noted that health insurers are “not happy campers” these days, after watching their stock values drop 11% since Labor Day, representing $10 billion in losses, during a period in which stocks in general gained 5-8%.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
New Bill Would Raise Rates, Says Insurance Group (by Ceci Connolly, Washington Post)
Is the Insurance Industry Declaring War? (by Jonathan Cohn, New Republic)
Why The Insurance Industry is Fighting Mad (by Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right)
Potential Impact of Health Reform on the Cost of Private Health Insurance Coverage (PriceWaterhouseCooper) (PDF)
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