And it's not just WellPoint. You gotta know that, even as you read these words, a small army of green-eyeshade insurance company accountants are working around the clock figuring out ways to game the new health care laws.
They will not go quietly. Like bears accustomed to foraging in backyard trash bins, they can't be reformed. They have to be either relocated or shot - (metaphorically speaking.) And they can't be relocated since most industrialized nations on earth would arrest them on sight for what they do legally here. And, of course we can't really shoot them, though we'd like to from time to time... okay, most of the time.
No. Instead we must now just wait... wait for them to commit social suicide. And gaming the reforms just passed to restrain them, will end up being a metaphorical gun they will point at themselves. (Ugh. Sorry for the Palinesque gun imagery.)
Unfortunately it will not be a quick death of the current system. My guess is we have a decade ahead of us as Wylie Coyote government regulators waste their time and our money chasing after insurance company Roadrunners as each tries to out fox the other. Finally, and inevitably a actuarial-safe will pound both into the earth once and for all.
Then, and only then, will we get what we should have gotten under FDR: Universal, single-payer, health care. Had we included a robust public option as part of what just passed, it would have so gutted health insurance profits that we could have gotten to something like a single-payer system in maybe five years instead of ten. But this is the path we're on now and, while America's health system will continue failing us, we can at least enjoy watching the WellPoints out there die a too-slow death of a thousand cuts.
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