Private health insurers admit they will always behave terribly

The group America’s Health Insurance Plans came out strongly against against the Cruz amendment in the Senate Republican health care bill, but the Cruz amendment is terrible only because America’s private health insurers are collectively promising to act terribly every chance they get.

The Cruz amendment would allow insurers to sell policies that don’t cover everything and exclude people who actually need health care. AHIP rightly notes:

As the U.S. Senate considers the Better Care Reconciliation Act, we are writing to urge you to strike the "Consumer Freedom Option" from the bill. It is simply unworkable in any from and would undermine protections for those with pre-existing medical conditions, increase premiums and lead to widespread terminations of coverage for people currently enrolled in the individual market.

What is important to note, however, is that this scenario only happens if the private insurers make it happen. The Cruz amendment merely allows insurers to offer deceiptive or exclusionary non-compliant plans -- the insurers don’t have to.

If the insurers really care about people with pre-existing conditions and a stable market, the insurers could reach a collective agreement that none of them would offers these plans -- problem solved. Just because the Cruz amendment would allow them to behave badly doesn’t mean they have to. The market only destabilizes if private insurers choose to destabilize it in the pursuit of short term profits.

The fact that no one inside or outside the industry thinks such collective action is even in the realm of possibility means that while condemning the Cruz amendment, the private insurers revealed something telling about their true nature.

AHIP is promising that as an industry, insurers will eventually exploit any legal leeway they are provided to make money, even if it costs people their lives. They are promising to do things they publicly admit are morally wrong if the government doesn’t hold them back at every turn.

They are indirectly admitting they can’t stop themselves from hurting people, like a werewolf begging to be chained up in the basement before the full moon. This who is in control of the country's health care.

Yet Democrats are still wondering why an individual mandate forcing people to be customers of an industry which admits they can’t be trusted was deeply unpopular.