What evidence is there that he will do that? He conceded

Quote:

Trumpcare’s Lonely, and Seedy, Supporter

David Leonhardt MARCH 17, 2017

The Republican health bill doesn’t have many outside supporters. Groups representing doctors, nurses, hospitals, retirees, patients of various diseases and even insurers have all criticized it. Some of the only outside praise has come from the chief executive of Anthem, the country’s second largest insurer.

And therein lies another tale of the Trump administration’s conflicts of interest.

It turns out that one of the bill’s few high-profile fans may not even support it on the merits. Instead, Anthem appears to be providing political cover to the administration at the same time that company officials are lobbying the administration for a favorable decision on another matter. It’s pretty brazen.

Here are the details: Anthem, which is based in Indiana, is already the largest insurer in California, Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere. Two years ago, its chief executive, Joseph Swedish, made a big bet.

He decided to put public pressure on Cigna, another major insurer, to accept a merger. Eventually, Swedish succeeded, and Anthem agreed to pay $48 billion to buy its rival.

But the Obama administration’s Justice Department filed suit against the merger, arguing that it would force consumers to pay higher prices. Last month, a federal judge agreed and blocked the merger.

Cigna isn’t happy with the deal anymore either and has filed a $14 billion lawsuit against Anthem. None of it makes Swedish look good.
Anthem’s best remaining hope for the deal is probably to persuade the Trump administration to take a different view of the merger and unblock it.

Against this backdrop, Swedish wrote a carefully worded letter last week to Congress praising the Republican health bill. He stopped short of supporting the entire bill, as Jordan Weissmann of Slate has noted.

Rather, Swedish lauded a few provisions (which would clearly help Anthem’s bottom line) and offered enough kind words that the White House could claim Anthem supported the bill.

“The time to act is now,” Swedish wrote. The bill, he added, “will ensure more affordable health plan choices for consumers in the short term.” More objective evaluators of the bill — like the Congressional Budget Office — are less sanguine.

Regardless of its accuracy, though, the letter seemed to make the White House happy. “Progress on repeal & replace: Major insurer supportive,” Kellyanne Conway tweeted, linking to Politico’s story about the letter.

More significantly, President Trump and Tom Price, the Health and Human Services secretary, granted Swedish a private meeting this week. At it, Swedish lobbied for changes to the bill that would benefit Anthem, according to reports in Bloomberg and Modern Healthcare.
Anthem’s chief financial officer, John Gallina, all but bragged the next day at an industry conference about the meeting’s success:

“We feel very good, very encouraged, by the fact that the president and his team are listening and actually making changes based on feedback that the industry is providing.”

It’s too early to know whether his self-interested optimism is warranted. The health care bill is in enough political danger that no version of it may pass, and the Anthem-Cigna merger may likewise be unable to come back from the dead.

But the episode is important because it shows both how big companies play political hardball and how unconcerned the Trump administration is with basic government ethics. That second point isn’t a partisan one.

Top ethics advisers to both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have repeatedly expressed shock at Trump’s approach to ethics.

As it happens, recent history offers another insurance-industry tale that highlights the seediness of the Trump approach. Two years ago, around the same time that Anthem tried to buy Cigna, another insurer, Aetna, announced a plan to buy a rival, Humana.

That deal also ran into antitrust opposition from the Obama administration. Aetna responded with a bold attempt at quid pro quo. It threatened administration officials that it would withdraw from Obamacare insurance markets unless the merger was approved, even though withdrawal would cost the company money.


Aetna executives tried to keep their conversations about the threats to phone calls rather than email “to avoid leaving a paper trail,” as a federal judge later found.

Yet the Obama administration didn’t buckle. It didn’t shower Aetna with private meetings and friendly tweets. Aetna did indeed withdraw from the markets last year, and the Trump campaign gleefully pointed to the decision as a sign that Obamacare was “imploding.”

Back then, Trump had it easier. He was a candidate, not the president, and he could pretend that he would magically fix the health market by offering coverage that was better, cheaper and universal.

Now that he is president, he has discovered how complicated health policy is. And one of the only people who likes his ideas is someone whose paycheck may depend on making the president happy


cherrylog754
Atlanta, GA 6 hours ago
Excellent article. Noted that Anthem is publicly traded, and there-in lies the problem. So long as we have stock-price driven health insurers, we will have some of the highest premiums for our coverage.

Back in the 60’s and 70’s our premiums for health care were much more reasonable. And most insurers were non-profits back then. Anthem was a non-profit until 2004 when it went public and the offering price was $36.00. Today their stock price floats around $168, just over a 450% increase.

And you wonder why our insurance costs are some of the highest in the world.


Annie Dooley
Georgia 6 hours ago

Maybe smart reporters need to be asking Mssrs. Ryan and Price (Trump doesn't know enough about health insurance or healthcare to answer intelligently) to explain how their plan is going to foster competition and thereby bring down the cost of insurances for consumers when already, four of the giant insurers are trying to merge and eliminate competition.

Will the Trump Justice Department also block these monopolistic mergers? Republicans keep repeating that deregulation
and "competition" will bring down prices, as if it were a foregone, take-it-to-the-bank conclusion, and somebody needs to call them out on that as often as they say it.

All Republicans are really saying is that there will be more cheaper plans that cover less, more exclusions, bigger deductibles and co-pays or some other gimmick in the fine print that makes people think they have insurance they can use until they find out otherwise the hard way.