Feb 25 Take a Hike

If I was any of the insurance companies being asked to justify the premiums they charge to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, I'd tell her to take a hike, that that isn't her responsibility. There's no chance that that's what they'll do but that's what I'd do if I was in their position.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asked the heads of five major health insurance companies on Wednesday to meet with her next month to explain why their premiums are on the rise.

Mrs. Sebelius' move came as Democrats stepped up attacks on the health insurance industry ahead of a bipartisan health care summit Thursday they hope will jump-start President Obama's stalled overhaul legislation.

At a contentious House hearing, Democrats confronted executives of one company that has sought rate increases of up to 39 percent in California and accused them of purging their sickest customers while spending millions on exorbitant salaries and retreats at ritzy resorts for executives. And the House neared a vote on revoking health insurers' antitrust exemption.

It's frustrating to watch these idiots' grandstanding. The reason the rates increased is because the healthiest dropped their health insurance. When that happens, the people in the pool are mostly higher risk customers. That's what's driving insurance premiums higher.

If insurance companies were dropping high risk patients, that would produce a pool with a relatively low risk, which would drop insurance premiums.

Lost in all this is that Wellpoint in California got California's insurance commissioner to approve the rate increase. It's interesting that HHS Secretary Sebelius isn't talking about the state health insurance commissioners, isn't it? I wrote here that creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority was a naked power grab being authored by the Obama administration.

Rather than trusting insurance commissioners to monitor and accept or reject insurance premium increases, President Obama wants Washington to strip that authority from the states. What could possibly go wrong? But I digress.

As usual, the Obama administration is ignoring the Tenth Amendment in their attempt to consolidate as much power in Washington as possible. The Obama administration has proven time and again that they're perfectly willing to ignore the Constitution when it gets in the way of their agenda.

Even if health care is signed into law, it's far from a settled thing because of the constitutional challenges it's sure to meet. This Tenth Amendment challenge is just one aspect that would be challenged. The individual mandates will be challenged, too. The special treatment that the Nebraska Blue Cross and Michigan Blue Cross is constitutionally suspect, too.

Rep. Henry Waxman is using his authority as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to bully private companies:

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing on WellPoint Inc. that his panel's investigators had received internal company documents showing that in 2008, 39 company executives received salaries of $1 million or more. And in 2007 and 2008, it spent $27 million for 103 executive retreats, which Democrats said included stays at fancy resorts in Hawaii and Arizona. "Corporate executives at WellPoint are thriving, but its policyholders are paying the price," said the California Democrat.

I won't defend Wellpoint's profits but I will defend them from the standpoint that they are a regulated business who's won approval of the rate increases fair and square. As I highlighted earlier, it isn't the federal government's job to regulate businesses that are regulated at the state level.

This is classic liberal overreach. They don't have the constitutional authority to do something but they're attempting to do something anyway. It's time that these progressives were taught a lesson in constitutional limitations. If that happened, the federal government's overreach would be limited and states could return to their proper roles as regulators closer to the people.

I smile anytime that accountability is brought closer to the governed. So did the Founding Fathers. That's good enough for me.

Comments welcome at LFR.