Health Care Special Interests Four Hundred Billion - Consumers Zero

That's the Congressional health care score card for December.

As the year winds down and must pass year-end spending bills are completed––and with that any chance of attaching and approving health care legislation––the special interests have won big and consumers have lost big.

Employers, unions, and insurance companies won big with the repeal of the "Cadillac" tax on high cost benefit plans at a cost of $200 billion over ten years as well as the repeal of the health insurance tax (HIT), and the 2.3% medical device tax sales tax.

The total cost for repealing just these things will add about $400 billion to the deficit over a decade and are part of a mammoth $1.4 trillion spending bill larded up for lots of different interests.

Is the Drug Industry an Existential Threat to the Private Health Insurance Business?

At a time when many Democrats are calling for a single-payer health insurance system, are the drug companies inadvertently driving the system on a course to that end?

Consider this.