Just think how I feel when they deny my claims, just to see if I'll appeal.

If "the polling says [for-profit health insurers] are an easy target" that couldn't possibly be because their own actions make people see them as vultures and vampires, could it?

If the shoe fits, say it loud and often. (To totally trash a cliche.)

how his grandmother and grandfather would react to what he's doing and how he's trying undermine one of his father's goals.

More blunt in an interview today was a member of AHIP's board of directors, James Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt who runs the Tufts Health Plan in Massachusetts and is a longtime Democratic National Committee official. He said he had no problem with reform proponents shifting the framing of the debate to "health insurance reform." But, he added, the increasingly harsh anti-industry bent to the rhetoric was "offensive."

"I like the focus on health insurance as opposed to trying to accomplish everything at once in trying to reorder health care -- this is the great trap that Democrats fall into, that they try to change the system as a whole, and then people get scared and it falls to pieces," he said. "But the part about calling insurers villains and morally bankrupt I find offensive and ineffective. The polling says we're an easy target, and it's easy to see the political motivation, that to get this to the goal line you need to create a villain. But I do worry that that does ramp up the opposition as much as it ramps up support."

Were his colleagues on AHIP discussing jettisoning their collaborative stance for full-bore opposition? "What I see is people being very irritated but so far staying committed to universal coverage and the things you have to do to get there," he said.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/nanc...