New TV Ad Answers How Baseball and Health Insurance Companies are Alike
New TV Ad Answers How Baseball and Health Insurance Companies are Alike: Both are Exempt from Anti-trust Laws
But, Insurance CEO’s are Afraid of Competition While Baseball Players Are Not, Underscoring the Need for Health Insurance Reform, Including a Competitive Public Option
Click Here to View “Real Competition”
Washington D.C. – As part of its continuing offensive on the health insurance industry, Americans United for Change unveiled a new television ad today that answers how baseball and the insurance industry are alike: both are exempt from anti-trust laws, which forbid businesses from monopolizing a market or restraining free trade. Airing this week on cable television in the Washington D.C. market, the spot titled “Real Competition” also answers how they are not: health insurance CEO’s are afraid of competition while baseball players are not. See script below.
As noted in a recent report from Health Care for America Now : “The American Medical Association reports that 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated. Shrinking competition among health insurance companies is a major cause of these spiraling costs. In the past 13 years more than 400 corporate mergers have involved health insurers, and a small number of companies now dominate local markets…Contrary to industry assertions, these mergers have undermined market efficiency; premiums have skyrocketed, increasing more than 87 percent, on average, over the past six years.”
Tom McMahon, Acting Executive Director, Americans United for Change: “It’s not widely known that the insurance industry is exempt from the anti-trust laws, an exemption that they exploit at every opportunity. This effort is designed to spotlight the complete un-competiveness of the current health insurance market place, which underscores the urgent need for health insurance reform including a competitive public option. The insurance CEO’s will say or do anything to kill any kind of reform that forces them to compete so that they can continue to exploit their exemption from the anti-trust laws, continue to exclude millions of people with pre-existing conditions, continue to rescind policies when people get sick, continue to raise premiums four times faster than wages, continue to increase profits for Wall Street -- and continue to give their CEO’s tens of millions in compensation.”
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Script “Real Competition”
How are professional baseball and insurance companies alike?
Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from anti-trust laws
How are they different?
Insurance industry executives are scared of competition.
Baseball players aren’t.
When baseball players fix the games, they get in trouble
When health insurance executives fix the game, they get … rich
Time for competition when it comes to health insurance… we need the choice of a public health insurance plan.