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Meet Lawrence A. Hunter, the executive director of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, senior fellow at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) and the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). He might sound more familiar to you as the director of the Social Security Alliance, a 501(c)(4) group with the following mission statement (from their 2008 990 filing):

Working to promote the retirement security of today's seniors and the seniors of tomorrow. SSI's top policy priorities are to stop the raid on Social Security trust funds, prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and protect seniors from health care rationing and other limitations on their access to health care.

SSI was a recycle of an organization originally launched in 2004 at the time of the Great Social Security Privatization Debate. That organization was also known as the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity", and was spun off by Jack Kemp and Dick Armey from Citizens for a Sound Economy, known today as FreedomWorks, and Kemp's Empower America. The IPI That organization's stated purpose was as follows:

Advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at reforming Social Security by dedicating a substantial portion of the payroll tax to large personal accounts.

The newest incarnation of the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity" is a bit different, as Hunter indicates in the video. For starters, it's a for-profit group, purporting to be a "true alternative to the AARP". To that end, it offers members the opportunity to "ensure a prosperous, enriched and secure retirement" for the low, low price of $60 per year for the premium membership, and just $16 for an individual membership.

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There was never any doubt in my mind that once PBS was moved by the Republicans to corporate sponsorship instead of full public funding, their content would inevitably grow to reflect the viewpoints of the people who wrote the checks.

It seems that insurance company investments are paying off in the healthcare debate. While this Frontline piece does address corporate abuses of their clients, the journalist who worked on it says it was altered to reflect insurance company interests, according to Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter:

Last year, former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid made a great documentary for the PBS show Frontline titled "Sick Around the World."

Reid traveled to five countries that deliver health care for all – UK, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan – to learn about how they do it.

Reid found that the one thing these five countries had in common – none allowed for-profit health insurance companies to sell basic medical coverage.

Frontline then said to Reid – okay, we want you to go around the United States and make a companion documentary titled "Sick Around America."

So, Reid traveled around America, interviewing patients, doctors, and health insurance executives.

The documentary that resulted – "Sick Around America" – aired Monday night on PBS.

But even though Reid did the reporting for the film, he was cut out of the film when it aired this week.

And the film didn't present Reid's bottom line for health care reform – don't let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance.

They can sell for-profit insurance for extras – breast enlargements, botox, hair transplants.

But not for the basic health needs of the American people.

Instead, the film that aired Monday pushed the view that Americans be required to purchase health insurance from for-profit companies.

And the film had a deceptive segment that totally got wrong the lesson of Reid's previous documentary – Sick Around the World.

During that segment, about halfway through Sick Around America, the moderator introduces Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the lead health insurance lobby in the United States.

Moderator: Other developed countries guarantee coverage for everyone. We asked Karen Ignagni why it can't work here.

Karen Ignagni: Well, it would work if we did what other countries do, which is have a mandate that everybody participate. And if everybody is in, it's quite reasonable to ask our industry to do guarantee issue, to get everybody in. So, the answer to your question is we can, and the public here will have to agree to do what the public in other countries have done, which is a consensus that everybody should be in.

Moderator: That's what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone, and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized.

But the hard reality, as presented by Reid in Sick Around the World, is quite different than Ignagni and the moderator claim.

Other countries do not require citizens buy health insurance from for-profit health insurance companies – the kind that Karen Ignagni represents.

In some countries like Germany and Japan, citizens are required to buy health insurance, but from non-profit, heavily regulated insurance companies.

And other countries, like the UK and Canada, don't require citizens to buy insurance. Instead, citizens are covered as a birthright – by a single government payer in Canada, or by a national health system in the UK.

The producers of the Frontline piece had a point of view – they wanted to keep the for-profit health insurance companies in the game.

TR Reid wants them out.

“We spent months shooting that film,” Reid explains. “I was the correspondent. We did our last interview on January 6. The producers went to Boston and made the documentary. About late February I saw it for the first time. And I told them I disagreed with it. They listened to me, but they didn't want to change it.”

Boy, these insurance companies really have hearts of gold, don't they? They finally agree they won't kick out sick kids - "but it'll cost you." They're going to milk every last dime out of this until the new law kicks in:

Insurers said they would comply with regulations the government issues requiring them to cover children with pre-existing conditions, after a dispute with lawmakers over interpretation of the new health-care legislation.

The Obama administration has made near-immediate coverage for sick children a priority in its health-care overhaul. But shortly after the bill's passage last week, insurers contended that the law didn't require them to accept sick children until 2014.

The insurance industry's lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, initially said the law meant only that they needed to cover treatments for sick children who already were customers.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, sent AHIP president Karen Ignagni a letter Monday pledging to issue new regulations in coming weeks to clarify that insurers must take applications from sick children starting in September. "Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system," Ms. Sebelius said.

AHIP said de-linking the requirement to insure sick children from the law's mandate that everyone buy health-insurance coverage, which goes into effect in 2014, could drive up prices in the meantime. But the group said it would do whatever HHS tells it to do.

[...] Roughly eight million children remain uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, but just 1% to 2%—or 80,000 to 160,000—have a health condition such as cystic fibrosis or cancer that would disqualify them from private insurance coverage, said Sara Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the health-policy department at George Washington University and a children's health-care expert. Many of those children's families were unaware they could qualify for Medicaid or CHIP assistance or enroll in an employer plan, she said.

"We're talking nationwide about a handful of children" who might benefit from expanded private coverage, Ms. Rosenbaum said. "I can't imagine why insurance companies are fighting this so hard."

It got a brief mention on some of the cable channels, but the only major TV network that carried live coverage of this healthcare reform rally in D.C. yesterday was Fox - and then, only to ridicule it:

The reason? AHIP, the health insurance lobbying organization, was meeting in (where else?) the Ritz-Carlton. A coalition of groups led by unions including SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW and Health Care for American Now declared the meeting site a "corporate crime scene" and attempted to make a citizens' arrest:

In a reverse twist on the old protestors' tactic of getting arrested to make a point, union leaders and other backers of President Obama's healthcare plan issued "citizen's arrest" warrants for health insurance executives Tuesday – accusing them of exploiting consumers.

The "warrants," delivered to police during a demonstration outside an insurance industry meeting at a Washington hotel, were an attempt to dramatize protestors' call for insurance reform – and to build public support for the Democrats' healthcare legislation.

The demonstration, which drew several thousand protestors from as far away as Illinois and California, was organized by groups that for more than a year have pushed Congress to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of national healthcare overhaul.

While that policy objective, known as the public option, is not part of the healthcare legislation pending in Congress, the groups are nonetheless mounting a multi-million dollar campaign to promote the bill. The effort will continue in coming weeks, with more demonstrations, paid advertising and other events, including a hearing to take place Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Boy, there was a time when you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing someone about Tea Party rallies. I guess the only way you can get on TV these days is to be on the side of the insurance companies.

Co-author Rep. Tom Perreillo (D-VA) to Insurance Companies: "Be afraid, be very afraid..."

A positive step in the right direction:

By a vote of 406-19, the House passed the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act (HR 4626), introduced by Reps. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and Betsy Markey (D-CO). This bill is designed to restore competition and transparency to the health insurance market – by repealing the blanket antitrust exemption afforded to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945. Under this legislation, health insurers will no longer be shielded from legal accountability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in order to gain monopoly power, and other such anti-competitive practices.

Over the last several years, the health insurance industry has become increasingly concentrated–giving consumers fewer and fewer meaningful choices in shopping for health insurance. According to a recent study by the AMA, there have been more than 400 mergers among health insurers in the past 14 years. [..]

This bill is also necessary because, over the years, health insurers have been able to use this antitrust exemption to block court actions regarding anti-competitive behavior. In Ocean State Physicians Health Plan, Inc. v Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, the First Circuit Court – citing the McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption – overturned a jury verdict against the dominant health insurer for using its monopoly power to put financial pressure on area employers to refuse to do business with a competing HMO.

There is also evidence that removing this antitrust exemption will result in lower prices and other benefits for consumers. Time and time again, increased competition results in lower prices, increased choice, and greater innovation. A healthy and competitive health insurance market will drive prices down in the health insurance industry, just as we have seen it do in so many other industries where competition is allowed to take hold. Since California passed a law in 1988 that eliminated the state antitrust exemption for the auto insurance industry, for instance, auto premiums for consumers in California have risen by 9.8% while the rest of the country has seen auto premiums rise by over 48%.

An incremental victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless. I like what Nancy Pelosi had to say:

The House of Representatives, Mr. Chairman, is called "The People’s House." Today, we live up to that name. By passing legislation that increases leverage for the people by changing the playing field, a playing field that has been dominated by the insurance industry for over 65 years and now it’s the people’s turn. The insurance companies will now be playing on the people’s field.

Rep. Anthony Weiner had the money quote, however, as captured by Think Progress:

You guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. They say this isn’t going to do enough, but when we propose an alternative to provide competition, they’re against it. They say we want to strengthen state insurance commissioners and they’ll do the job. But when we did that in our national health care bill, they said we’re against it. They said we want to have competition but when we proposed requiring competition they’re against it. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. That’s the fact!

Love it! Of course, there are a couple of senators in the Democratic caucus that we can say the same thing about. I'm looking at you, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.

Oh no he didn't! What happened to "every day we delay, Americans are dying"?

What the hell is wrong with Obama? Why does he always choose accommodation over moral action?

And his lack of leadership is getting downright scary. Congress is fumbling through a game of charades, trying to figure out the clues, while it becomes increasingly clear: There's no game plan.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says "we should take our time" getting to a final health care bill.

He said Thursday he wants to go through the legislation in detail with Republicans to examine their ideas and Democratic ideas to see whether there are better ways to improve the nation's health care system than have already been proposed.

Sure. Because those dying people? They're not going anywhere!

Obama said that letting some time pass before calling for a vote also will allow "everybody to get the real facts."

Or, as is more likely, it will give the insurance industry time to gather their forces for one final game-winning attack.

The president spoke to donors and supporters of his political organization, Organizing for America, one of a handful of fundraisers he was headlining Thursday for Democrats.

Obama said it is most urgent to focus now on a jobs package, but that health care must be addressed afterward.

But a fed-up Sen. Al Franken (who's getting a reputation for being "difficult," bless his heart) took David Axelrod to task at a "tense" closed-door meeting with the Democratic caucus today:

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

“There was a lot of frustration in there,” said a Democratic senator who declined to be identified.

“People were hot,” another Democratic senator said.

Democratic senators are frustrated that the White House hasn’t done more to win over the public on health care reform and other aspects of its ambitious agenda — and angry that, in the wake of Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts Senate race, the White House hasn’t done more to chart a course for getting a health care bill to the president’s desk.

In his public session with the senators Wednesday, Obama urged them to “finish the job” on health care but did not lay out a path for doing so. That uncertainty appeared to trigger Franken’s wrath, and the sources in the room said he laid out his concerns much more directly than any senator did in the earlier public session.

Just got off another blogger conference call, this time with Howard Dean, former CIGNA exec Wendell Potter, and Mike Lux.

Dean announced the results of a DFA poll that is "really quite stunning," he said. (You can read the results here.) The Senate cloture vote is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, he said.

Democracy for America's "No Option, No Mandate" campaign to contact Harry Reid clocked 7000 calls in four hours, too, he said.

Dr. Dean opened the call by saying "this bill has always been a giveaway to the insurance industry, but we were willing to compromise" to get the public option.

He recapped all the compromises we made: "We wanted single payer, but that was taken off the table early on. That was a mistake. We had to get to the place where we had health insurance for all Americans." But now, he said, there's no public option, and no Medicare option.

"You're forced to pay money to an insurance company or get fined $750 by your government, while 27% of your money goes to CEOs who are flying around in these private jets," he said.

He talked about the compromises made for pre-existing conditions, the most disturbing one the ability to charge you 300% more, merely for being older. "It's guaranteed issue, but if you’re making $65,000 a year for a family of four and you’re paying $20,000 for insurance, how is that reform?"

He said the real bad stuff in the Senate bill was

"hidden in the weeds, so you can’t find it."

Dr. Dean brushed aside the "Get a bill, any bill" mentality in Washington. "Any legislation passed will have a huge impact on American healthcare. If they can’t fix it, it shouldn’t pass."

Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive and reform activist, said the insurance industry got "every single thing they wanted" in the Senate bill.

"There's no individual mandate, no public option. There's also three words, 'benefit design flexibility' in Senate bill – that means the freedom to design plans that will pass more and more of us into ranks of the underinsured - and charge up to 22% of income if someone gets sick," he said.

In Massachusetts, they have a 2 to 1 premium ratio, "and they're already having trouble finding affordable, adequate insurance. The industry wants to shift even more costs to individuals and families, having the government pay them half a trillion dollars. The Senate bill meets every one of their requirements," Potter said.

"They will continue to shift the cost burden to consumers and get around not using preexisting conditions by charging for certain factors like high cholesterol."

Dr. Dean pointed out the House bill "is the compromise, we didn’t think it was right to take the option of an employer-based system away if people liked it."

In Vermont, he said, you can't be charged more than double the lowest premium.

Dean listed some more of the insurance company wish list the Senate was so eager to fill. "Getting rid of the anti-trust provision. This contributes to the predatory effect of the insurance companies – they're essentially unregulated. We need to get the provision in, get them regulated.

Wendell Potter talked about something you often hear pushed from the Republican side: "Just let us sell across state lines and let the market decide." As he points out, insurers would go to the states with least regulation.

Paul Hogarth from Daily Kos asked them to address criticism that if the bill is killed, "there's no reform and we’re worse off, the momentum is gone."

"I don’t know that we’ll be worse off," Dr. Dean said. "We ought to strip down this bill and get rid of the mandate. It should have been done by reconciliation."

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On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, a discussion of the political machinations around the public option:

On the Roundtable, Bloomberg’s Al Hunt says that a health reform package can’t pass without the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe. She provides cover for moderates like Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and may pull over a couple of Republican votes.

HUNT: "Olympia Snowe, I think, thinks privately that in the end the trigger will be the compromise everyone has to rally around and give a little bit of face-saving to liberals and she and a few other republicans can go for it."

They really don't get it, do they? They're so out of touch with reality that they don't understand the kind of serious harm they're doing to the Democratic brand with this bait-and-switch routine on the public option.

A trigger? A frackin' trigger? How much longer do we have to wait to get relief from the predatory practices of the insurance industry? And how much more obvious does it have to be that the priority in the Senate is incumbency protection?

Ah, the audacity of playing it safe! Obama clearly doesn't understand how positively this will affect people's lives, or he wouldn't be so lukewarm. The public option is polling well everywhere - including those conservative districts.

In fact, just about the only group not strongly supportive are the big contributors:

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.

"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.

"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."

But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.

Getting the public option in the Senate bill makes it that much more likely that we'll be able to get it through conference, and not through the reconciliation process.

Via Raw Story, some news that really isn't such a big deal. Third-party administrators are already a cash cow for the insurance industry, but my guess is that this contract will have a lot of built-in cost controls:

A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday's Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat.

The public-option debate is frustrating some Democrats, who have come to believe that a government-run plan is neither as radical as its conservative critics have portrayed, nor as important as its liberal supporters contend. Any public plan is likely to have a relatively narrow scope, as it would be offered only to people who don't have access to coverage through an employer.

The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy. In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

The problem with insurance companies isn't the third-party administrators - they simply administer claims decisions on the basis of what the client pays for. (Although their administration fees are so often heavily padded, and the feds will have to watch them closely.) This is commonly done with so-called "self-insured" plans.

This is one of the reasons why it won't happen overnight. Someone's going to have to come up with the oversight structure.