Didn’t take long for the insurance industry to cave:
After battling President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul the better part of a year, the insurance industry said Monday it won’t try to block his efforts to fix a potentially embarrassing glitch in the new law.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the industry’s top lobbyist said insurers will accept new regulations to dispel uncertainty over a much-publicized guarantee that children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year…
“Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition,” Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a letter to Sebelius. Ignagni said that the industry will “fully comply” with the regulations, expected within weeks.
There’s still nothing to stop them from charging more for those children, but I take this as a sign that they really don’t want this fight – at least not in public. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic.
