In public, Hillary Clinton includes health insurance companies on her short list of “enemies.” But campaign donations from health insurers and recent meetings between Clinton’s presidential campaign team and trade groups representing insurers suggests that the two sides are more friend than foe.
Senior advisers on Clinton’s campaign met last week with executives from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an industry trade group, and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Politico Pro reported. On top of that, health insurance companies and their employees have donated heavily to the Democrat’s presidential campaign and to her family’s charity, the Clinton Foundation.
According to Politico Pro, Clinton’s senior policy adviser, Ann O’Leary, met last Monday with Marilyn Tavenner, the CEO of AHIP and former administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
As CMS’ chief, Tavenner oversaw the implementation of Obamacare, a law which Clinton says she will defend and which has been a major boon to insurance companies.
Held at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters and at the request of AHIP, the conversation between the two camps reportedly covered Obamacare exchanges, mental health, delivery system reform and high drug costs. Clinton’s team also met with executives from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association to discuss health plan consolidation, an issue Clinton has discussed on the campaign trail, Politico Pro reported.
Clinton has been critical of mega-mergers between health insurance companies. “I’m worried that the balance of power is moving too far away from consumers,” she said last month.
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
Clinton’s links to health insurers are a surprise given her campaign rhetoric. Asked during the first Democratic presidential debate last month to list her enemies, Clinton said “well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians, probably the Republicans.”
Out of that short list of adversaries, Clinton and her campaign have only met with health insurers.
Campaign finance disclosures also show that in the third quarter of 2015, employees at the nation’s top insurance companies donated $42,027 to Clinton’s presidential campaign. Political action committees such as Employees of United Health Group donated $4,037. Employees of Kaiser Permanente, another PAC, donated $22,434 to Clinton’s campaign.
Health insurers have also donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation. Companies have given between $2.3 million and $10.6 million to the Clinton family charity.
The two biggest donors are Humana Inc. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which have both given between $1 million and $5 million.
