Kevin Sack in the NYT

But if Anthem was the whipping boy the White House needed, the confrontation has also reinforced an emerging shift of focus in Washington from the need for universal coverage to the need for serious cost control. And it brought into clear relief the deep rift between the administration and the insurance industry concerning a central question: whether such unsustainable pricing is driven by the bloodless economics of risk or a corporate culture of greed.

I haven't heard any major player in the health care debate talk about universal coverage in any other terms but cost control in months. More to the point, the Anthem rate hike represents exactly why universal coverage is necessary for cost control. Anthem's claim was that due to the recession, healthy people have been saving money by not getting covered, leaving Anthem with a sicker pool, raising costs and necessitating a premium hike.

In statements and letters, Anthem and WellPoint have explained what the industry calls a recessionary death spiral: as unemployment and declining wages prompt healthy people to drop their insurance, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and more expensive to insure, which in turn forces up prices and pushes more people out of the market....

The death spiral “highlights why we need sustainable health care reform to manage the steadily rising costs of hospitals, drugs and doctors,” Anthem, which is based in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Of course Anthem has been fighting reform from the beginning, presumably because it wants the individual mandate but no regulations. But I'm not sure how this 'Exhibit' underscores "an emerging shift of focus from universal coverage to cost control." In fact, it has been the language of the "death spiral" that has been pretty much the only thing keeping universal coverage from being entirely neglected in the discourse of the Administration and key Democrats for months.