The Broken State of American Health Insurance Prior to the Affordable Care Act: A Market Rife with Government Distortion
[T]he health insurance industry is the shark that swims just below the water, and you don’t see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark.
— Senator Jay Rockefeller, February 2010
It was sentiments like these that President Obama’s signature legislation addresses. One of the main goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, is to control health insurance, an industry plagued with problems, all of which supposedly share a common diagnosis.
At the White House health summit, at which Rockefeller made the above comment, he continued (mixing metaphors), “Nobody has particular oversight of [health insurers]. . . . They can do what they want . . . . [Y]ou have to go at them to clip their wings in every way that you can.” He repeated, “This is a rapacious industry that does what it wants.”
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