BidenCare Means Giving Hundreds of Billions to Insurance Companies

One of the dominant debates in the 2020 Democratic primary was over whether the next president should try to eliminate private insurance, or merely rein in the industry by introducing a new government-run option. Yet to this point, President Biden has focused his health-care efforts on giving hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies.

As Kimberly Leonard, a former colleague, has written at Business Insider, Biden vowed to take on the insurance industry during the campaign; however, he used the COVID-19 relief bill as an opportunity to provide insurers with an extra $61 billion. This came in the form of an expansion of Obamacare subsidies as well as an expansion in subsidies for COBRA (insurance that people use when they have a lapse in employer-provided health insurance after losing or changing jobs). Those happened to be the main asks of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the leading lobbying group for the industry, in a letter to lawmakers during the Biden transition.

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Philip Klein

Philip Klein is the editor of National Review Online.

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One of the dominant debates in the 2020 Democratic primary was over whether the next president should try to eliminate private insurance, or merely rein in the industry by introducing a new government-run option. Yet to this point, President Biden has focused his health-care efforts on giving hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies.

As Kimberly Leonard, a former colleague, has written at Business Insider, Biden vowed to take on the insurance industry during the campaign; however, he used the COVID-19 relief bill as an opportunity to provide insurers with an extra $61 billion. This came in the form of an expansion of Obamacare subsidies as well as an expansion in subsidies for COBRA (insurance that people use when they have a lapse in employer-provided health insurance after losing or changing jobs). Those happened to be the main asks of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the leading lobbying group for the industry, in a letter to lawmakers during the Biden transition.