"Dems Play with Private Insurance Industry, Get Burnt"

[shcrane71]

Wendall Potter is a hero. I've wondered how the insurance industry would react if the individual mandate was struck down, but the rest of the ACA remains. It seems the health/profit insurance industry fears that scenario the most.

Et tu, Ron?

As President Obama read former Aetna CEO Ron Williams’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal renouncing his support for a key provision of the health care reform law, he must have felt like Julius Caesar when Caesar realized, as he drew his last breath, that his close friend Brutus was in cahoots with his assassins.

...

Williams’ op-ed would never have appeared in the Journal if industry leaders weren’t nervous about what the high court will do. Their worst fear is that the mandate will be struck down but the rest of the law will be allowed to go forward. Knowing they can’t rely on Obama and the Democrats to get rid of the new regulations and consumer protections under that scenario — they’ve tried without much success so far — they will need to help flip the White House and the Senate to Republican control to be certain the job gets done.

Williams’ real audience for that op-ed was Republicans lawmakers and kingmakers. It was a signal to the GOP that the industry’s brief and often rocky affair with Obama is over and done with, that they were just playing the Democrats all along.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/25-11