So the health care industry is gonna get screwed in this deal too huh?

Who knew?

Ed's got some good analysis as always.

I just want to highlight a couple things.

Similar to Big Nuclear selling its soul to the cap-and-trade devil and this week's Doctorturfing, members of the health care industry have cut deals with the White House to promote ObamaCare in exchange for guarantees on several items including the individual mandate. Obviously, an individual mandate will force millions onto Big Health's insured rolls resulting in huge windfalls in new policy premiums.

The problem begins when Big Health realizes that no compromise worked out by Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee can possibly make everyone happy. Abe Lincoln's famous quote is directly applicable here:

Many lobbyists and independent analysts underlined what they called major flaws in the Finance Committee's bill, saying it probably would draw the sickest, most expensive patients into the health coverage system without balancing the insurance risk with more young, healthy people. The result, they predicted, would be ever-rising premiums for the people, businesses and governments that pay for medical care.

"The consequences of this would be an upward spiral; rate shock to everyone who stays in," said Karen Ignagni, president of the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans. "This legislation will fail the test of affordability for individuals."

"You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you cannot please all of the people all of the time." Abraham Lincoln 

And that has never been more true than it is with this health care debacle. In order to placate Big Health, Congress has to piss off millions of people and threaten them with fines and jail time if they don't buy health insurance.

Also, for every concession made to Big Health, like the individual mandate, Congress has to take something away of nearly equal value. The taxes on thousands of medical devices will drive up costs to providers and insurers. Not increasing Medicare reimbursement on top of that will drive providers and insurers out of business.

The American Medical Association is concerned because the 10-year $829 billion cost of the Senate bill does not include $200 billion in promised higher Medicare payments.

They should have thought of that before they started striking unrealistic deals with the only entity that can break deals without consequence.

There's just no way to pay for this thing without ballooning the deficit, raising taxes or cutting Medicare; and more than likely you'd need a combination of all three to pull it off.

And at the end of it all, after all of the compromises have been shattered and the bill hangs in limbo, is single-payer health care.

I honestly believe that's where all this is leading.

I hope I'm wrong.

Russ