This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, September 3rd, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown. Big insurance companies may have much to gain from Obamacare.

It's the mid-sized insurance companies that may have much to gain from Obamacare.

It's the mid-sized insurance companies

that stand to lose the most under the president's plan

to increase the reach of government into health care.

So says Mike Tanner, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, and co-author of the book Healthy Competition.

The constant refrain from Barack Obama has been he wants to keep insurance companies honest, but you won't have to

switch out your insurance plan for one that's designed by the government, but at the same time he is prepared

to support potentially an individual mandate. Why? This is a potential windfall for the insurance industry.

They see 25 or 30 million new customers, many of them subsidized by the government, in many cases having to buy more expensive

plans because the government will mandate additional benefits in.

So they see a great deal of money potential on that end.

And to get that, they're willing to accept some more regulation on things like

pre-existing conditions. They think they'll be better off.

Now, of course, the insurance industry does not want to see, and correctly so in my viewpoint,

a government run option that would drive them out of business.

So they, right now, are at the table trying to rake in the pot

without losing anything on the other side of it.

At the state level, do insurance companies really care

when service providers essentially lobby state governments to push

to have their particular procedure or often a particular drug covered being mandated to be covered by insurance plans?

...