How Obamacare Made Health Insurance Industry ‘Villains’ Into White House Partners
30th July 2014
Recall, for a moment, how health insurers were treated by Democrats in the Obamacare debate. They were the bad guys, in no uncertain terms. “They’ve been immoral all along,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then the House Majority Leader said in July 2009, as the debate over the government-run public option raged. “They [insurers] are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way.”
Democrats found some success in casting insurers as the antagonists, and made a show of targeting health insurers. “It is well known to the public that the health insurance companies are the problem,” Pelosi said in October as she warned insurers how much the health law would cost them.
So, how did Obamacare end up punishing the big, bad insurance company villains? By creating a federal program to help cover their costs in the event of higher than anticipated spending—and then expanding that program at the request of the insurers following the launch of the health law’s exchanges last year.
They just wanted them on board. The National Socialists had this “join us or die” tactic down to a science.