Health insurance company CEOs are nervous about the idea of Mitt Romney winning the election, according to an article in  LifeHealthPro, an insurance industry newsletter.

Insurance company executives are worried about Romney’s  pledge to repeal Obamacare because they have spent millions of dollars getting prepared for 2014, when the bulk of Obamacare begins.

You see, insurance companies like Obamacare – well, some of it. They don’t like the part that requires them to spend 80% of their premium revenue on their clients’ medical bills.  And they don’t like having to get approval for premium increases of 10% or more.

Insurance companies don’t mind the idea of accepting everyone for coverage, even with pre-existing conditions…. if everyone is required to buy health insurance.

According to the LifeHealthPro article:

Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant and blogger, says the tension is becoming unbearable. “I spend a lot of time in executive offices and board rooms, and they are good Republicans who would like to see Romney win,” said Laszewski. “But they are scared to death about what he’s going to do.”

…Obama’s law is starting to look more and more like a tangible business opportunity. In a little over a year, some 30 million uninsured people will start getting coverage through a mix of subsidized private insurance for middle-class households and expanded Medicaid for low-income people. Many of the new Medicaid recipients would get signed up in commercial managed care companies.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimated the new markets would be worth $50 billion to $60 billion in premiums in 2014, and as much as $230 billion annually within seven years.

Nearly every advertisement by every Republican candidate says they will “Repeal Obamacare!”.   Many of these candidates have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in  campaign donations from insurance companies and insurance industry PACs (political action committees).  Insurance companies don’t really want Obamacare repealed – just the parts they don’t like.

So if Mitt Romney becomes President, don’t expect him to follow through on his pledge to repeal Obamacare. He will tweak it and give the insurance companies what they want:  more customers, more profits, fewer regulations – and fewer protections for Americans who rely on their health insurance.

With or without health care reform and 30 million newly-insured Americans, everyone agrees we need more primary care physicians, more physician assistants, and more skilled health care workers. Everyone seems to agree there should be a coordinated effort to identify locations where there are doctor shortages and come up with ways to train and hire health care workers around the country.  But the politics of health care reform is preventing this from happening.

The Affordable Care Act calls for the creation of a commission to guide the country in matching the supply of health-care workers with needs. A commission of health care experts was appointed more than 8 months ago -but they have been unable to start their work because Congress has withheld funding.

The Washington Post reported:

The group cannot convene, converse or hire staff because $3 million that it needs for its initial year has been blocked by two partisan wars on Capitol Hill — strife over the federal budget and Republicans’ disdain for the health-care changes that Democrats muscled into law 14 months ago.

The National Health Care Workforce Commission is intended as an ongoing brain trust to focus new energy on solving an old problem that will become increasingly severe. The law says the new commission will analyze primary-care shortages and propose innovations for the government — and medical schools — to help produce the doctors and other health workers the nation needs.

Proponents of the workforce commission say they were surprised that Republicans have balked, because there has, in the past, been little ideological schism over the need to bolster the supply of primary care — doctors, nurses, physicians assistants and others.