Health insurer cartels are liberals’ backdoor to government-run healthcare

 UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurance and services corporation for nine years in a row, could soon become the world’s first trillion-dollar healthcare company. Ironically, the fact that UnitedHealth, along with a small handful of massive corporate health services cartels, now controls much of the U.S. healthcare system suits most liberal politicians in Washington just fine.

As odd as it sounds, this is likely those politicians’ new plan B for “Medicare for all.” Democrats have figured out how both to control and manipulate these soon-too-big-to-fail corporations to achieve their policy and political goals. Furthermore, this plan allows liberals a means to avoid blame when the entire system collapses: What better time to offer government-run healthcare as the only viable option?

The new reality is that many of the same progressive leaders who once claimed to loathe big health insurance companies are now discreetly allowing a few selected companies to monopolize the system. What else would explain the near silence of anti-corporate crusaders such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as these massive corporations expand control over a vast array of health services and entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, while the prices of premiums and patients’ out-of-pocket expenses simultaneously skyrocket?

Moreover, this explains the lack of antitrust outrage over mass industry consolidation and acquisitions of wholly owned business subsidiaries, which consist of massive pharmacy benefit management companies, specialty pharmacy operations, primary and urgent care practices, surgical centers, home health giants, health IT services, and more. UnitedHealth alone employs or is affiliated with nearly 10% of physicians in America and even operates a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured bank.

Both Democratic politicians and the healthcare mega-companies benefit from this arrangement, trading favors and diverting revenues in the process. Often, this is done at the direct expense of patients and critical health programs.

Such behavior was on full display with the passage of President Joe Biden’s laughably named Inflation Reduction Act. Under the guise of lowering Medicare drug prices through government price control measures, Democrats were able to raid $280 billion in so-called “savings” from the seniors’ health program to fund unrelated spending priorities such as electric vehicle tax credits. In tandem, big insurers now receive a financial windfall in the form of large subsidies on expanded Obamacare policies and the prospect of lower government-set prices on medicines they are forced to cover.

Unsurprisingly, the Inflation Reduction Act’s special interest handouts were distributed immediately, while most of the drug pricing provisions promised to those in Medicare received delayed implementation schedules of two to five years. It is no wonder that nearly two years after the passage of the bill, polls show over 80% of older people have either seen their insurer-imposed costs — premiums, copays, deductibles, etc. — and prescription drug prices stay the same or go up, not down. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth and other health conglomerates have seen record-setting revenues.

Playing head cheerleader for the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act was none other than the AARP. While many people know it for its soft-feeling TV ads and direct mail touting itself as a seniors’ advocate, the AARP has quietly been paid well over $7 billion dollars over the last decade via UnitedHealth alone through a lucrative financial partnership with the giant corporation. In fact, AARP spent over $60 million to help pass the Inflation Reduction Act.

Many of the other biggest healthcare challenges that are devastating patients and families, such as skyrocketing premiums, have received a notable lack of action on the part of Democratic leaders and the AARP. Reforms to prohibit PBMs from pocketing large drug pricing meant for patients, allowed under a legal exemption from anti-corruption kickback laws that was extended under the Inflation Reduction Act, were stalled. Democrats have also shown little interest in trying to pull back billions in alleged overcharges to Medicare, investigate insurer denials of medical care for seniors, or investigate the massive consolidation taking place within the health services industries.

Democratic leaders in Washington know precisely what they are doing, and powerful health conglomerates such as UnitedHealth and proxies such as AARP are all too happy to oblige them. It is time for voters, patients, and families to recognize why they are doing so and stand up against them before it is too late.

David Safavian is executive vice president and general counsel at the Conservative Political Action Coalition. Andrew Langer is director of the CPAC Foundation’s Center for Regulatory Freedom.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2979546/health-insurer-cartels-backdoor-government-run-healthcare/