When I first read about...

...Paul Ryan's new budget this week (I know, I know -- Let it go, it's Dead On Arrival), I couldn't help wondering exactly which insurance companies were just dying to insure seniors. After all, as Chris Matthews pointed out the other night, seniors all have one glaring pre-existing condition -- they're old! I mean, really, who in their right mind would want to write a health insurance policy for my 91-year-old mother? (Sorry, Ma,  for telling the world your age, but I don't think many of your friends read this blog anyway.)

But then I read this truly terrifying piece by Wendell Potter, "Pay Much Attention to the Insurers Behind Paul Ryan's Curtain." (You remember Potter. He's the former insurance executive turned industry critic.)

Say what? Insurers want in on the market for seniors? According to Potter (my emphasis):

Ryan et al would never propose such a fundamental reshaping of those programs unless they were confident that corporate America stands ready to help them sell their ideas to the public. Like big business CEOs, Congressional Republicans wouldn't think of rolling out Ryan's budget plan without a carefully crafted political and communications strategy and the assurance that adequate funding would be available to carry it out.

Republicans know they can rely on health insurance companies -- which would attract trillions of taxpayer dollars if Ryan's dream comes true -- to help bankroll a massive campaign to sell the privatization of Medicare to the public.
___

While they were leading the effort to torpedo the public option, the insurers were lobbying hard for a provision in the bill requiring all of us to buy coverage from them if we're not eligible for a public program like Medicare or Medicaid. They won that round, too. That provision alone will guarantee billions of dollars in revenue the insurers would never have seen had it not been for the bill the president signed.

But even that is not enough for the insurers. For many years, they've lobbied quietly for privatization of Medicare, with significant success. They were behind the change in the Medicare program in the 1980s that allowed insurers to offer what are now called "Medicare Advantage" plans. The federal government not only pays private insurers to market and operate these plans, it pays them an 11 percent bonus. That's right: People enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans cost the taxpayers 11 percent more than people enrolled in the basic Medicare program.

During the Bush administration, the insurers persuaded lawmakers to allow them to administer the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program. That has been a major source of new income for the many big for-profit insurers that participate in the program.

Rest assured that insurers have promised Ryan and his colleagues a massive, industry-financed PR and advertising campaign to support his proposed corporate takeover of Medicare. If Democratic strategists really believe that Ryan has all but guaranteed the GOP's demise by proposing to shred the social safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens, they will soon be rudely disabused of that notion. The insurers and their allies have demonstrated time and again that they can persuade Americans to think and act -- and vote -- against their own best interests.

This reminds me of how President Bush tried to privatize Social Security after the 2004 election. Can you imagine if the public had loaded up on stocks just before the Crash? It would have been a boon for Wall Street but a disaster for America. (We would have needed a TARP for seniors, too.)

Maybe the government does perform some functions better than the private sector.