Reports have emerged over the behind-closed-doors deal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is desperately trying to make with Big Unions in order to get the waters smoothed for his Obamacare policies. These reports show where Reid’s sympathies lie: with union bosses and not with the voters.

The Hill reported that Reid made “several significant concessions” to organized labor to smooth the way for his healthcare policies.

We’ve reported in the past that Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, has been highly skeptical of Obamacare because of the punitive tax placed on so-called Cadillac healthcare plans. Trumka feels that this tax will hit his membership too hard. For several decades unions have often foregone hourly wage hikes in order to take on richer benefits the result is that union members often have more extensive healthcare plans than most American workers.
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The Associated Press posted an interesting piece revealing that the health insurance industry is far from the image that Democrats and other leftists want to present. Insurance companies are so often presented as rapacious, fat-cats ripping off all their customers and growing fat on profits. But the AP finds that reality does not quite fit the left-wing image.

In fact, the insurance industry makes far less profits than other industries. As the AP notes, the Hershey chocolate company even has a higher profit margin than health insurers.

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Ooopsie! Looks like the image of the fat-cat insurance company is not so pat as the far left and their Democrat enablers want you to believe.
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The L.A. Times published a story that was probably meant solely as a bash on insurance companies, but still the report brings up several issues that Obamacare will only make worse if passed. The problem raised in the headline, “Healthcare bills lack protections against treatment denials, experts say,” isn’t the only problem the story touches upon — not that the L.A. Times dwells on them.

The headline problem is important, of course though the Times tries to phrase the problem as an evil failing of insurance companies. The fact is it is really but a common-sense inevitability. The Times reports that Obamacare will force an increase in denials of services to patients because of cost overruns.

By requiring insurers to cover everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions, healthcare reform will make it more difficult for insurers to control their costs, or “bend the cost curve,” by avoiding sick people.

That leaves insurers with the other big cost-containment tool: turning down requests to cover treatments.

The Times seems to imagine that all of this will go away if there is a public option included in the healthcare legislation. There is a woeful lack of logic to the Times’ contention, however. The government’s public option will drive down the charges that medical suppliers, doctors, and hospitals can charge by introducing artificial pricing. Additionally, government will constantly attempt to force insurers and providers cut costs. The Times doesn’t properly reveal this to its readers, but these actions forced on the healthcare industry by government will lead to precisely the situation the Times decries. To cut costs services will be rationed. In truth there is no way to stop this once Obamacare becomes de rigueur.
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Representative Mike Rogers (R, Mich.) made some great points in his opening statements against Obamacare as the debate heats up in D.C. He began by asking why we are punishing 85% of America because of the problems of 15%? He also told us of how bad the survival rate for cancer in the U.K. is compared to the U.S. but that Obamacare will make our survival rate as bad as England’s.

Great stuff, Mr. Rogers, great stuff.