Angoff is a class-action litigator who specialized in and made millions by suing insurance companies for “price gouging.” As insurance commissioner of Missouri he was famous for going after insurers he believed had too much in reserve (too profitable).

By Robert M. Goldberg at American Spectator

Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that it expects that the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services will spend up to an additional $200 billion over the next decade on administering Obamacare. That’s in addition to the estimated $1 trillion that will be spent in 2014-2019 under the new healthcare law.

Much of the money will go to hiring hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats to administer Obamacare over the next decade. But in the short term, the additional dollars will bankroll a two-pronged campaign to re-elect congressional Democrats. The Department of Health and Human Services will not only provide talking points in defense of Obamacare, it is preparing to use the new law for short term political gain and in ways that could make health insurance less affordable and available in 2014.

As Politico noted: “The Obama administration…gave more shape to its health reform selling strategy: Focus on the early roll-out of tangible benefits and, if all goes as planned, win over a skeptical public more than any argument ever could.”

This strategy involves much more than trying to win a media battle. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who is leading this effort said she expects the process to involve “hand-to-hand combat” with insurance companies.

To that end, Sebelius and the White House have appointed someone with lots of experience and a zest for trench warfare against health plans. Sebelius picked Jay Angoff to head the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS.

Angoff is a class-action litigator who specialized in and made millions by suing insurance companies for “price gouging.” As insurance commissioner of Missouri he was famous for going after insurers he believed had too much in reserve (too profitable). In a study he prepared for the trial attorney trade that was funded Center for Justice and Democracy, he claimed insurers were artificially inflating the premiums they charged doctors for malpractice insurance, which in turn drove health care prices through the roof.

He will now be running one of the most powerful offices in HHS or in any federal agency. He has control over developing and enforcing new rules for insurers, organizes the temporary high-risk pools, collecting information abut health plans and setting up and running new state exchanges.

Single payer and consumer groups are gleeful: After Angoff’s appointment, his former law partner Cyrus Mehri told the New York Times: “Having been a state insurance commissioner, Jay can see through the games insurance companies play. He will put teeth into the law. He will create a whole new federal regulatory regime to rein in the abuses and excesses of the industry.”

FULL STORY

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