I knew that Lanny Davis was perhaps the least principled person in Washington, but I didn’t know that he was willing to make himself look like a complete idiot to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the issues related to health care reform. I mean, who is his audience for such nonsense? If he posted this crap in the USA Today, I could understand. Let me give just one example:
On mandatory coverage with pre-existing conditions, at least some Republicans, such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) at the summit, have said they favor some way to address this issue, and apparently some states already do by regulation. Obama and McCain should be able to agree on a base standard for state regulation to minimize denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
No, they shouldn’t be able to do that unless they mandate that everyone buys coverage. Insurance companies are in business to make money, and you don’t make money by insuring someone’s home against fire damage if their house is already on fire. Likewise, you don’t give someone with diabetes health insurance and agree to pay the cost of their dialysis. You can’t make insurance companies take on customers whom they know will cost them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or, more precisely, you can’t do that unless you also force millions of healthy people to buy their product, thereby making it a profitable trade-off.
That’s only the beginning of Lanny’s idiocy. He should go back to shilling for right-wing Latin American generals.