Winners and Losers in Obama's Health Coverage Plan
The upcoming summit designed to address President Obama's health coverage plan, and hopefully to find some common ground between Republicans and Democrats, is already revealing some winners and losers in the health care arena.
According to Reuters, the biggest losers of Obama's health care legislation would be health insurance companies, prescription drug companies, and to a lesser extent, generic drug makers.
Health insurance companies would lose out for obvious reasons - no more denying people health coverage for pre-existing conditions, no more ability to raise rates as they see fit, and no more canceling insurance on sick people. This will definitely cost them.
Prescription drug makers stand to lose out because of the fees that would be imposed on them. At a whopping $10 billion dollars, these fees are designed to eliminate the "doughnut hole," or the gap in Medicare's prescription drug coverage that leaves a lot of sick Americans struggling to get their medications.
And finally generic drug makers stand to lose money for accepting "pay-to-delay" settlements. Generic drugs are usually very helpful for consumers whose health coverage won't include expensive new drugs, but will cover less expensive generics. Some generic drug manufacturers accept payment to delay these drugs so that larger pharmaceutical companies can make more profits.
These health care power players are definitely not pleased with President Obama's health coverage plan.
But since it proposes to save the dollars - and the lives - of millions of uninsured or under-insured Americans, let's all hope that Republicans and Democrats finally find something to agree on.

