Paul Waldman on insurance companies and aggressive mimicry:
When Barack Obama made the election promise of ambitious health-care reform in his first year in office, anyone who had paid attention to the issue would have predicted that the battle would be fierce. But one of the most curious developments of this debate has been that the group one would have thought would be leading the charge against reform – the health-insurance companies – has largely stayed quiet. They haven’t aired attack ads, as they did in 1993, nor have they sent their representatives to the talk shows to blast the president and his efforts.
Before we start rethinking whether the insurance companies are as malevolent as they’ve been made out to be (spoiler alert – yes, they are), it’s worth noting just how remarkable their relative absence from this debate has been. Whatever else you can say about them, they’re not the ones whipping up fear of “death panels,” or comparing Obama to Hitler, or screeching about “socialized medicine.” In fact, if you didn’t know about their history, you might think they’ve been desperately hoping for positive change.
