On the eve of the Senate Finance Committee vote on the Baucus Debacle, scheduled for tomorrow, AHIP (the helpful folks that represent the private insurers) released a memo and report yesterday to "Member Plan Presidents and CEOs" detailing just how much they're going to have to raise rates if the Baucus bill passes. Because they weren't going to raise rates regardless of reform passing? From the memo:

The report makes clear that several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system. The report finds that the proposal "will increase premiums above what they would increase under the current system for both individual and family coverage in all four market segments for every year from 2010-2019." For example, the analysis shows that the cost of the average family policy is approximately $12,300 today and will rise to: $15,500 in 2013 under current law and to $17,200 if these provisions are implemented.

$18,400 in 2016 under current law and to $21,300 if these provisions are implemented.

$21,900 in 2019 under current law and to $25,900 if these provisions are implemented. In fact, between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.

(Just as a point of comparison, insurance rates under the status quo have risen 119 percent in the last decade, and are projected to double again in the next decade, if the status quo remains. Under the status quo, by 2020 the Commonwealth Fund projects an average family policy to increase to $23,842. So when they pretend they're looking out for you, don't buy it.)

The report, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers, (as Ezra points out, the same group that the tobacco industry turned to in the 90s to create reports on the economic devastation which would result from taxing tobacco), is long on dire predictions, short on comprehensive analsyis. Ezra highlights a few problems in it: the analysis "assumes no behavioral changes in response to new policies" in response to the increased taxes on high value plans, assuming or that individuals and employers won't demand cheaper plans that control their costs; they also assume "full cost-shifting of cuts to public programs," as if healthcare spending would remain constant and that "every dollar that a public program cuts from its payments to hospitals is a dollar the private health-care industry has to add to its reimbursements to hospitals," which is insane--this is about cutting costs, not keeping the level of money flowing throughout the system level because we're spending way too much. Jonathon Cohn has another glaring deficiency in the report: it doesn't take into account the subsidies the bill creates to help people purchase insurance.

All of which has led White House and Senate Finance spokespeople to blast AHIP and their report as "self-serving" and "untrue, disingenuous and bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging too many consumers for too long."

And here just several months ago they were all best of friends, hanging out together writing a bill. If the White House and Baucus didn't see this coming, they were naive. And just think, this is the one bill out of the five that the insurance companies actually did get to help write--how much are they going to be willing to do to kill one that doesn't provide as many gifts to industry as the Baucus version?

How ironic is it that the insurance industry is in the same league as the tobacco industry? Just tells you how much they care about the health and well-being of their customers. The bottom line for the industry is always going to be their bottom line--they want nothing less than having all Americans mandated to buy their crappy insurance with no public option to compete, no taxes on their most expensive plans because that would increase demand for cheaper plans, and they still want to be able to cherry pick the healthiest, cheapest individuals. They'll fight to the bitter end.

Hopefully this little tantrum from AHIP will open up some eyes in the White House and among Senate Dems. Enough is never going to be enough for AHIP, so maybe they should turn their focus now to what's going to work to actually reform our healthcare system and work for the consumer.

There's more discussion in TomP's recommended diary.