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Wendell Potter: President Santorum Would Be Insurers’ Best Buddy
President Santorum Would Be Insurers’ Best Buddy
by WENDELL POTTER on JANUARY 9TH, 2012
Former Pennsylvania senator was co-sponsor of misleading bill pushing health savings accounts.
I don’t expect that Rick Santorum will be our next president, despite his near-win in Iowa and likely a decent showing in tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary. I’m pretty certain that when more voters become aware of his views and voting record, Santorum will join Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty as former contenders for the GOP nomination.
But if by some strange turn of events he is sworn in a little over a year from now as our 45th president, no one will be happier than the executives I used to work with in the health insurance industry. Santorum was without a doubt one of the most reliable go-to guys in the Senate when insurers needed a champion for one of their causes. That was certainly true in regard to the industry’s efforts to shift ever-increasing portions of the cost of medical care from them to us.
by WENDELL POTTER on JANUARY 9TH, 2012
Former Pennsylvania senator was co-sponsor of misleading bill pushing health savings accounts.
I don’t expect that Rick Santorum will be our next president, despite his near-win in Iowa and likely a decent showing in tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary. I’m pretty certain that when more voters become aware of his views and voting record, Santorum will join Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty as former contenders for the GOP nomination.
But if by some strange turn of events he is sworn in a little over a year from now as our 45th president, no one will be happier than the executives I used to work with in the health insurance industry. Santorum was without a doubt one of the most reliable go-to guys in the Senate when insurers needed a champion for one of their causes. That was certainly true in regard to the industry’s efforts to shift ever-increasing portions of the cost of medical care from them to us.
I accepted every invitation to these shakedowns except one: the gathering for Rick Santorum when he was running for reelection in 2006. By that time I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable supporting the industry’s claim that health savings accounts (HSAs), coupled with high-deductible plans, were the sure-fire way to get more folks covered and reduce health care costs.
Santorum was among the original supporters of HSAs, which were established as part of the Medicare prescription drug law in 2003. Heralded by Republicans, including then-President George W. Bush, and insurance executives as a private sector solution to the problems of skyrocketing health care costs, HSAs were actually designed originally to attract only the healthiest and wealthiest among us. They represented a brilliant new way for insurers to almost perfect their decades-long practice of cherry picking the people they wanted to enroll in their health plans.
more...
http://wendellpotter.com/2012/01/president-santorum-would-be-insurers-best-buddy/
Santorum was among the original supporters of HSAs, which were established as part of the Medicare prescription drug law in 2003. Heralded by Republicans, including then-President George W. Bush, and insurance executives as a private sector solution to the problems of skyrocketing health care costs, HSAs were actually designed originally to attract only the healthiest and wealthiest among us. They represented a brilliant new way for insurers to almost perfect their decades-long practice of cherry picking the people they wanted to enroll in their health plans.
more...
http://wendellpotter.com/2012/01/president-santorum-would-be-insurers-best-buddy/