Insurance companies do not call the shots. Medicare and medicaid do. The reasonable and customary floor that insurance companies use is the re-imbursement set by Medicare and Medicaid. If the insurance cmmpany comes in at all above this level, then private insurance is more cost effective to the health care provider than government insurance. The health care bill increases the amount of leverage for the government reimbursement. The insurance companies will just follow that lead.
Here’s a variation of the broken windows fallacy — We can wish that there should be more sick and unhealthy people in this country so that the healthcare industry will grow and more jobs in the healthcare sector will be created.
WHile we’re at it, let’s complicate the tax code some more so that more people will need to become accountants who will try to navigate the maze of our tax code. You are essentially CREATING more jobs for accoutants. And oh yeah, don’t forget more jobs for IRS agents as well, who will be hired to ENFORCE the tax code.
VOILA !! JObs for both private and public sector !!
While we’re at it, let’s add more laws and regulations so that LAWYERS will be hired who can understand the legalese we’ve just created.
VOILA !! more jobs for the LEGAL industry !!
Let’s decree that businesses should go green so that more green jobs will be created as well. Let’s decree that GM and Chrysler design and manufacture GREEN CARS and let’s subsidize them so that such cars will be commonplace.
VOILA !! A whole new sector — the green sector created that will kill two birds with one stone -— make our environment cleaner AND add new jobs at the same time !
Think of the possibilities, schools and technical institutes will now be offering courses on green technology and we now will be HIRING new teachers/professors/professionals to teach these courses.
If you speak to a liberal ( and a liberal economics professor ), that’s how their minds work.