Insurance Industry Mouths Stuffed with Gold?

The O’Care debacle has the fat cats in the insurance industry with their collective backs to the wall. In reality, all that lies ahead for this greedy and miscalculating crowd is the firing squad. Here at National Review Jonah Goldberg lays out the plight of America’s insurers. It is hard for me to conclude that a full-scale revolt is not at hand. And the fault rests largely with O’Care itself, not that the insurance moguls were not licking their chops awaiting some form of O’Care bonanza.

When will the insurers revolt?

It’s a question that’s popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We’re talking about pinstriped insurance-company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary zeal, actuaries rank slightly behind embalmers.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder how much more these people are willing to take. Even an obedient dog will bite if you kick it enough. Since Obamacare’s passage, the administration has constantly moved the goalposts on the industry. For instance, when the small-business mandate proved problematic in an election year, the administration delayed it, putting its partisan political needs ahead of its own policy and the needs of the industry.

But the insurers kept their eyes on the prize: huge guaranteed profits stemming from the diktat of the health-insurance mandate. When asked how he silenced opponents in the health industry during his successful effort to socialize medicine, Aneurin Bevan, creator of the British National Health Service, responded, “I stuffed their mouths with gold.”