As I mentioned earlier, I'm at the American Health Insurance Plan's National Policy Conference today. You know it's an industry conference because it's at the Ritz Carlton, rather than Brookings, and because the water is in tinted blue bottles, rather than clear pitchers. The candies on the table are foreign, the schwag from the vendors include truffles, and oh those chandeliers... I'm having the odd problem right now of having far, far too much to write about. The morning saw three political presentations: One from Senator Ron Wyden, one from Congressman Dave Camp, and one from Andy Stern. At some point, I'll sit down and write up some thoughts on each. But the remarkable thing was this: The hit of the day -- in front of a crowd on insurance executives -- was Stern. Then Wyden. The only reaction which verged on hostile was towards Rep. Camp. This is rather extraordinary, because Camp came in and gave a liberal's fantasy of a pitch-perfect speech for the insurance industry. After saying that Wyden was a nice guy with some interesting ideas, he followed up with, "but we don't want a government controlled, bureaucratically regulated health care system where only those with the money to fly to other countries will be able to get life-saving treatments, and you all will be out of business." Silence. "We have to start defining this debate, we have to start defining what Obama-Clinton-Stark-Dingell will be." Silence. Republican talking points followed, tripping out one after the other. The five pieces of reform were changing the tax code, eliminating regulations, focusing on wellness, instituting electronic records, and beating back a government takeover. Silence. Then came questions. The first asked why politicians talked so much about reform but never did anything. One of the next questions stated that Stark may be for singe-payer, but he's on the leftmost edge of the Democratic Party, just as Camp is on the far right of the Republicans. Given that, would we ever see compromise? Camp sweated his way through that one. Then came a questioner saying, "put your personal preferences aside for a minute, what chance do you think the Wyden bill has?" And these were, I'll remind you, insurance industry executives and employees. Something very strange is going on when the Republican Party is far to the right of the industries they claim to protect. Camp kept using the word "we" to refer to insurers and Republicans. But in this room today, there was no we. And when Andy Stern came up afterwards and made fun of Camp's presentation ("that plus a $1.45 will get you a metro card, and you can go around in circles all day."), laughter rippled through the room.
