That plan, in fact, serves the interests of the insurance establishment. As Patrick Woodall of Public Citizen says, "The managed competition-style plan the Clintons have chosen virtually guarantees that the five largest health insurance companies -- Aetna, Prudential, Met Life, Cigna and The Travelers -- will run the show in the health care system."
These big companies helped develop Clinton's plan of managed competition, and all but The Tavelers paid for much of the research that was done by the Jackson Hole Group, an organization that drew up the original blueprint for managed competition. (The Administration tries to obscure this; in rebuttal to the H.I.A.A.'s ads, the Democratic party made a commercial saying of the Clinton plan: "The insurance companies may not like it, but the President didn't design it for them-he designed it for you.")
Robert Dreyfuss of Physicians for a National Health Program says, "The Clintons are getting away with murder by portraying themselves as opponents of the insurance industry. It's only the small fry that oppose their plan. Under any managed competition scheme, the small ones will be pushed out of the market very quickly."
Indeed, the H.I.A.A. is made up mostly of small and medium-sized insurers. The five biggest insurers have formed their own organization, the Alliance for Managed Competition, which basically backs the Clinton approach. These big insurers stand to gain from the Clinton plan's increased corporatization of health care since they have been rapidly buying H.M.O.s, 45 percent of which are now owned by the eight largest insurance companies. The outlays for advertisements by the big insurers and the H.M.0.s dwarf the moneys being spent on advocacy ads by the H.I.A.A. and either the Democratic or Republican Party.
The compelling question, then, is not who's behind "Harry and Louise" but who's behind Bill and Hillary?
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