This is from that horrible left-wing Politico site. (H/T RightKlik via Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

As Republicans push forward on repealing health reform, planning the law’s demise, a different conversation is happening among thousands of health care investors gathered in San Francisco for this week’s J.P Morgan Health Care Conference: how to capitalize on health reform’s new business opportunities.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates 32 million Americans will gain health insurance by 2019 if the law stands. For health insurers, that represents a potential boon for both their individual market business as well as in the Medicaid market, where states regularly contract with private insurers to manage care.

And they especially don’t want to lose the individual mandate… which forces healthy people to pay for coverages they would never use because of their own lifestyle decisions.

Health insurers spent barely anytime discussing Republicans’ repeal efforts. Aetna’s Zubretsky touched on the subject briefly only to say that Republicans understand that a rifle shot approach to tearing out specific health reform provisions, particularly the individual mandate, would not bode well for their business.

“The unintended consequence of repealing and replacing part of the legislation is the biggest risk here,” he said. “If guaranteed issue stays but the enforceable mandate disappears, you need another mechanism to make the costs in the risk pool work.”

Zubretsky said Aetna has been in touch with the GOP on the issue and “believe the Republican leaders we’ve been talking to understand the consequences of decoupling the mandate from the guaranteed issue.”

Ugh! I hope the Republicans behave themselves and repeal as much of this bill as they possibly can!

This isn’t free market capitalism – it’s crony capitalism. Conservatives hate crony capitalism! Liberals love it. Conservatives love small business! Liberals hate it.