What Does The Budget Impasse Predict For Health Care?

Prior to the early 1980's, health insurance was a side business of insurance companies.  It is what they had to provide to big employers in order to get their other insurance business which was highly profitable. Then came inflation and things changed.  As interest rates climbed and the health insurance business became profitable, among other reasons, because it allowed the insurers to profit from the "float,"  the insurers suddenly realized that they had hit an inflation gold mine. 

One evening, at a dinner, Justice Arthur Goldberg (who told me that he served on the board of a prominent nation-wide health system) asked me what I thought of President Carter. He really wasn't waiting for my answer - and proceeded to tell me that he thought that Carter was lacking in capacity because he allowed interest rates to climb to more than 22% and that was destructive to our country.

I recall one group of physicians who - in the high interest early 1980s found itself paying more than 14% interest rates on loans it needed to continue its practice - and were only available - you guessed it, from insurers!

The danger of the impasse in the budget process, and the Republican refusal to raise the US debt limit,  is that the uncertainty surrounding the outcome will force interest rates to rise, again rewarding insurers who manipulate their floats, slow down payment to hospitals, physicians and other providers, and reduce access by patients to what may be desperately needed life-saving services.

So, when the national debt ceiling adjustment is blocked by one party, is one consideration of that party the benefit which will accrue to the insurers who fill its campaign coffers?  Is it the strategic ability of that party to further damage our health system. Or is it, as it should be, the well being of the United States of America and its citizens?