For Profit Health Sector Mostly Rejoices on Health Care Vote

The New York Times has a fairly good overview piece on which for profit health care businesses will make out like bandits.

With a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system, Congress would be giving the health care industry as many as 32 million additional paying customers in the next few years.

That would mean millions more Americans buying private health insurance and better able to pay for their hospital stays, doctors’ visits, prescription drugs and medical devices.

Over all, the legislation would be a positive for much of the industry, said Les Funtleyder, who oversees health care strategy for Miller Tabak & Company, a New York investment firm.

Here is the great change:

One place where the rules of the insurance game may shift most significantly is in a new kind of state-supervised marketplace, called exchanges, in which insurers would be required to sell their policies for individuals and small businesses. The exchanges are expected to involve much greater regulatory oversight than insurers now typically face and to alter their business models drastically. Currently, insurers seek to protect profits by trying to enroll only the healthiest individuals, while also charging enough to recoup the expense of covering sick people. But the legislation requires insurers to cover even people with potentially costly pre-existing conditions.

The new law would also place strict limits on how much more an insurer could vary premiums among the people taking out the same policy, largely to factor in age differences.

Dean Baker points out (referencing the same article), that $85 billion dollars for Big Pharma is only 2% of their revenues for the same time period.

It's a good article to explain who wins by corporate and business profits and after all, that's what health care is all about!

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