Insurance Lobby Outlines Opposition to House Health Bill (Again)

In a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the health insurance lobby reiterated today that it won’t be supporting the $894 billion reform bill scheduled for a floor vote tomorrow, according to reports.

No shocker here. America’s Health Insurance Plans has long feared the consequences to business if Congress created a public insurance plan to compete with private companies — a public plan like the one contained in the Democrats’ bill. Indeed, that seems to be the central reason for AHIP’s opposition.

“We share the concerns that providers, employers, and patients have raised about the significant disruption a new government-run plan would have on the current health care system,” AHIP President Karen Ignagni wrote in the letter. “A new government-run plan would bankrupt hospitals, dismantle employer coverage, exacerbate cost-shifting from Medicare and Medicaid, and ultimately increase the federal deficit.”

Ignagni can at least be happy that liberal Democrats have abandoned their push for a single-payer system.