Fowler, as it would happen, was a former vice president at WellPoint, the country’s largest health-insurance carrier. She returned to Baucus’ staff just for this occasion. As the Guardian would later write: “Few people embody the corporatist revolving door greasing Washington as purely as Elizabeth Fowler.”
Meanwhile, Big Medicine donated heavily to Democrats, who suddenly began to see the industry in a far less menacing light.
Obama also began backpedaling. “We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into health-care reform, where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy,” he said. Avoiding a single-payer setup and Wyden’s plan not only kept the donations flowing but also allowed the president to make his famous claim that people could “keep the plan that you have.”
In exchange for maintaining the status quo, hospital groups pledged $150 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings over the next decade, while insurers agreed to limit their overhead to 20 percent. Anything more would have to be rebated to customers.
“Clearly, we made a mistake in taking so much off the table before we ever started,” says Congressman John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky). “We should have left single-payer on the table just so people had an idea what the extreme really was. I’m sure that was just a bone to insurance companies to get them onboard.”