Democratic investigators target health insurers to access proprietary corporate data and advantage government program: Antitrust?

Democratic investigators are targeting health insurers, asking for a range of information on critical operational data including:

• Executive Compensation
  • Salary
  • Bonus
  • Stock Grants
  • Realized value of options
  • non-equity compensation
  • Pension value/Deferred compensation
  • All other compensation
• A list of all board members and their compensation
• List of all conferences, retreats, events, etc that were paid for by the company.  Include purpose, participants, expenses, transportation, etc
• For 2003-2008 list
  • Total revenues
  • Net Income
  • Total Dividends
• Documents provided for the board, compensation committee, models, projections, performance criteria, etc.
• For 2005 - 2008, a table listing premium revenues, claims, payments, sales expense, other G&A and profit for all the companies health insurance products.  Aggregate by
  •  Self insured employer market
  • Insured employer market
  • Individual market
  • Government market (Medicare etc)

Now some of this is public data and readily available, so Congress could have found it the same way the rest of us get it, via a 10k.  But a bigger issue is Congress wants to go into the health care business, with the public option.  Can you imaging IBM sending Apple a request to provide all their private competitive data so that IBM can build a competing product to the Iphone?  No.

If government wants to offer health care, they need to get out of the regulatory business.  Or be a regulator, not a health care provider.  Most people would call this request a mater of anti trust.  Waxman thinks its OK to get this data because, hmmmmm......   well I don't know why. 

If this is the way congress acts before health care reform, just think what will happen after once there is no going back. 

The public option is supposed to stand on its own.  That should mean, it competes in the marketplace based on paid insurance plans, without impinging on the rest of the insurance market.  So, hospitals should not be able to cost shift government underpayment of claims by increasing fees on private insurance patients.  Similarly, congress can't use private corporate data to structure a program that will directly compete with private insurers.  Its not fair.  It is theft of valuable data.  

If I were an executive I would tell them to go look at my company 10K, and pound sand.