Far be it from me to use football terminology, but it sure seemed like America’s Health Insurance Plans threw a Hail Mary pass when it issued an eleventh-hour report that it apparently hoped would throw a giant-sized monkey wrench into the glacially-coalescing health care reform legislation being incubated by the Senate Finance Committee.

The Finance Committee was scheduled to vote—finally!—on its package on Tuesday, Oct. 13.  AHIP released its study on Sunday, Oct. 11.  The gist of the report, cobbled together (and none too well at that) by PricewaterhouseCoopers, was that the Senate Finance legislation would actually jack up the cost of health insurance premiums for ordinary folks. Indeed, the report said, premiums would rise higher than under the current system.

Now, if you’re going to do something like this—especially after you’ve pledged to play nice, as health insurers have—you really need to make sure that the bomb you’re lobbing is actually going to go off and cause the havoc you desire on your target as opposed to exploding in your hands and leaving you in tatters like Wiley Coyote or some other cartoon character.

The administration and other Democrats were quick to jump on the 26-page report as “distorted and flawed” (in the words of a White House spokesman).

The New York Times reported it thusly: “White House officials said the industry had ignored features of the bill that would lower costs for consumers, like subsidies for people who could not afford insurance.  The report, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, acknowledges, ‘We have not estimated the impact of the new subsidies.’”

Oops.

It is hard for me to believe that AHIP President Karen Ignagni, who is usually very savvy in the ways of Washington, could believe that this type of thing would succeed. 

Rather, it has all the flat footedness and tone deafness of executives who can only see what they want to see without regard for how it’s going to play out in the political arena and in the long term. 

And, of course, what it does is once again reinforce that image of health insurers as greedy, ‘we’ll do anything for a profit’ robber barons. 

Earth to health insurers: That image needs no further reinforcement.

Even the GOP, which ordinarily would jump on something like this, kept its distance.  As if what looked like red meat had a distinct odor.

On the other hand, perhaps the report did have a bit to do with swaying one vote among the Finance Committee members.  Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., who was the only Republican to join committee Democrats in approving the bill, was reported as saying of the AHIP report that “it wasn’t based on any valid assumptions.”    

The final vote was 14-9 to vote the bill out of the committee.

I don’t think anyone should have great expectations about insurers being called on for their input from here on out.  The folks who are going to be doing all the wheeling and dealing as the bill makes its way to the Senate floor and then into the Senate-House conference to iron out the differences between the two chambers’ final bills are probably going to have pretty vivid memories of how faithless insurers were at the end of the process.

With this report, insurers committed the worst blunder possible in D.C.: they looked desperate and they failed.

I have to admit I don’t know any sheep farmers, but even I know that it’s not customary for these folks to ask the wolf for suggestions about protecting the sheep.  Questions about fences and guard dogs are not something about which the farmer would consult with the predator.   This is not horse (or sheep) sense.  It’s just plain and simple common sense.

That is why I have to laugh whenever I read in the mainstream press about how Wall Street, meaning the big banks, is “resisting” new rules and tighter regulations in the aftermath of the catastrophic meltdown that the Street brought about.

My response to this “resistance” is quite simple: Who’s asking them what they think?  And why?

It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out who the predators were in the events of the last few years.   And it certainly doesn’t take a genius to know who the prey was!

Yet, here we are a year after Lehman Brothers collapsed and we are no closer to tougher regulation for these predators than we were before. 

Can I understand that Wall Street would “resist” being overseen more stringently?  Of course. 

But in point of fact, the Street through its reckless machinations and “innovations” nearly brought this country’s and the global financial system to the very edge of the cliff.  The only reason all of us weren’t dragged along with Lehman was that the government pulled out all the stops to prevent it. 

Since it was the government that saved the butts of almost every major Wall Street firm and big bank, the government should be calling the shots when it comes to creating a system where these firms don’t carry us to the brink again. 

It’s a year later and here we are (in typical American fashion) marking the first anniversary of Lehman’s demise. And we’re doing it almost as a historical exercise. I fear we have already forgotten just how terrifying last September was and the stomach-churning that marked day after day of failures and bailouts.

There is yet another pocket of resistance to stricter regulation, greater consumer protection and restructuring the financial regulatory system, and that comes from the very regulators who failed us so terribly in the lead-up to September 2008.   None of these banking regulators wants to give up turf—not to another regulator or to a new agency with the express mandate of protecting consumers.   

My reaction both to Wall Street and Bernanke and Co. is ‘tough,’ a word the street knows and respects.

So I hope that President Obama is tough and means to follow through on his stern message to Wall Street on Sept. 14.  Speaking to those who “are misreading this moment” and “are choosing to ignore” the lessons of Lehman, the president said, “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.”

After what’s happened I don’t believe that firms should even have the option of “choosing to ignore” the past. Recklessness and malfeasance have to have their consequences.

Settling for anything less, and especially to placate Wall Street, is the equivalent of putting the farmer inside the fence, while the sheep are left on the outside with the wolves.

If you’re a driver, then it’s likely that the only time you pay attention to speed limit signs is when you spot a cop car parked on the side of the road or when (even more inconveniently) the cop is on the road doing the speed limit and no one dares go faster, meaning you have to go that slow until the cop gets on an exit ramp and out of the way.  Then, as if all the drivers were a bunch of lemmings, everyone picks up the speed they were going before or maybe even faster to make up for lost time.

Speed limit signs, in other words, are pretty ineffective at controlling drivers and are treated by most of them as mere suggestions.  

This insight, I believe, is what is behind the administration’s and other Democrats’ insistence that any health care reform needs to include the so-called “public option” as a way of making sure health insurers obey the speed limit, as it were.

The health insurance industry’s reaction has been unenthusiastic, needless to say. 

Here’s what a spokesman for AHIP said in response to the one Democratic package unveiled recently: “A government-run plan would dismantle employer-based coverage, add additional liabilities to the federal budget, and turn back the clock on efforts to improve the quality and safety of patient care.  A better approach is to pursue reforms that can achieve broad bipartisan support, including strengthening the health care safety net, overhauling existing market rules, promoting shared responsibility, and transforming the delivery system to reward quality and value.”

Now, who could possibly disagree with those noble goals?  But the devil, as they say, is in the details or, in this case, how to get from the present unsatisfactory point A to a point B where the health care system works for everyone.

The reality of the situation is that you’re not going to do it without the cop. 

Any idea that’s put forth that would dramatically change the status quo is jumped on by Republicans as leading to a government-run health system. 

Public option?  Socialism!

A tax on rich health benefits? Socialism!

Individuals being required to have health insurance?  Socialism!

This last really gets me because the people spouting this nonsense don’t believe health care is a right but they don’t want to make it a responsibility either.

So much for the “broad bipartisan support” so nobly wished for by the AHIP spokesman.

The reality is that something major in the current way we insure people is going to have to change in order for the system to get better. Tweaks are not going to do it.

President Obama made a telling point about the public option in his press conference on June 23.  “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government-which they say can’t run anything-suddenly is going to put them out of business?  That’s not logical.”

Shortly before Mr. Obama’s press conference, Karen Ignagni, president of AHIP, and Scott Serota, president of the Blues, wrote a letter to the Senate that said, “We do not believe that is it possible to create a government plan that could operate on a level playing field.  Regardless of how it is initially structured, a government plan would use its built-in advantages to take over the health insurance market.”

This is pretty lame and the industry really should be able to articulate its case backed by evidence instead of simply resorting to jejune arguments.

The fact is that when the cop is on the road, everyone else is on their best behavior.  And if they’re not, they should be ready to get pulled over.