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Overnight Reflection Thread

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subsailor6811/05/2009 9:29:19 am PST

re: #625 NJDhockeyfan

Hmmm…from your link:

What’s more important is what is in the new amendment. Much of it reflects Democrats’ concerns that their bill would cause an increase in health insurance premiums. Remember when the House leadership, the White House, and sympathetic media commentators everywhere attacked the insurance industry for predicting that the Democratic bill would cause premiums to go up? The manager’s amendment is, in effect, the House Democrats’ admission that it would do just that. Their answer: more government control. The new language sets up a process for the government to monitor “unjustified premium increases” and threaten insurance companies with exclusion from the government-run Health Insurance Exchange if they exhibit a “pattern of excessive or unjustified premium increases.” The government, of course, will determine what is “excessive” or “unjustified.”

It’s rapidly becoming a game of whack-a-mole. As unintended consequences begin to arise, legislators respond to each individual issue by modifying the bill - thus creating new and improved unintended consequences. And the mole reappears - only to be whacked again.