Windfall Profits

by digby

Following up on the post below, I see that Ezra points out another possible response from the Democrats to this AHIP salvo:

The short-term impact of this seems to be that Nancy Pelosi's windfall profits tax on the insurance industry just got a whole lot more likely, as Democrats just got a whole lot angrier at a group they never liked in the first place.
I certainly hope so. It was a good idea anyway, and now it seems like a necessity.

Meanwhile, I just heard Andrea Mitchel characterize the report as "devastating" --- but she also called it dirty pool, because the industry released it on a three day week-end when DC is empty of lawmakers. And this is very interesting:

TPMDC's Christina Bellantoni asked Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), about the insurance industry's attack on health-care reform. After making pretty clear that he basically agreed with the report, Bardella cautioned that "any Republican that uses the report should double-check to see how much money they've received from the industry, as that'll be a very easy rebuttal for Dems to hit back."

Ya think? The problem, of course, is that the same thing can be said about Democrats. Presumably, they will distance themselves from the report, but they should not be then allowed to portray the Finance Committee bill as "the compromise." That looks more and more like the real danger here.



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