Jack & Jill Politics

From PoliticalInaction.com

Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The White House is caving

With the private insurance companies spending $1 million a day lobbying Congress, and President Obama, the White House is preparing to cave on a public option for insurance. What does this mean? It means Obama is going to throw away a few trillion dollars, our premiums will still go up, and millions will still be uninsured. Obama’s healthcare bill is on the verge of becoming a massive giveaway to private insurers like Aetna and Blue Cross. You’ll still be paying out the ass for healthcare coverage. You’ll still be underinsured. You’ll still get denied care that you need. All because Obama is bitching out because a few Democrats are wavering under intense healthcare industry pressure.

Let’s get a few things straight. We are the richest nation on earth, yet 1/6th of our population doesn’t have healthcare insurance, and the majority of those with it are underinsured. Our current healthcare system is bankrupting our country. But guess what…it is profitable for the private insurers. They aren’t losing money. They are making it hand over fist. What they have done is found a way to pass of the expensive care, roughly 20% of those seeking healthcare, to the government, or to the people themselves. That is the current system. How does Obama’s copout plan address this? Competition? The marketplace led to our current system, yet Obama is going to use this model for his grand solution? Nonsense. The free market means that people are given every choice available, and they choose what is best for them. If a public option is in play, and you and I choose to go with it instead of Aetna or Blue Cross, then that is the free market. So what Obama’s is planning on doing is actually anti-free market and anti-capitalist.

It is very simple math really. Deny the person with cancer, or some other pressing medical need care, or pass off as much of the cost to them as possible, and you make more profits. This is exactly what is happening in the insurance industry today. They create entire departments within their organization and incentivize them to figure out ways to deny claims. How is Obama’s plan going to change this?

At the end of the day, the only way this works is with a public plan. All of the sudden, the government takes our tax dollars and covers 50 million people. That is an entire new group of people who previously didn’t have healthcare, who now can go to the doctor and not have to worry about going bankrupt if they get sick.

How, if Obama’s plan doesn’t have a public option, are we going to be able to keep our current insurance if we leave/lose our job. Say I’m a married 45 year old man with a decent nest egg and 3 teenage kids, and I wanted to open up a restaurant. That is a big gamble. But one I am more likely to take if for the entire year of planning and preparation I don’t have to worry about my insurance, or that of my kids, if I have a public option for insurance. I can buy an affordable plan for my family, and go about living the American dream and owning my own business.

The private insurers smell blood in the water. They know that they can come out of this thing without any real changes in the way they do business, and 60 million new customers REQUIRED to buy their product, which if they can’t afford it, the government will pick up the tab. The reason they don’t want a public option is that all of these new customers will choose that because it will be cheaper, transferrable, and it will be accepted anywhere. All these new mandated customers will flock to it because it will be better than anything currently offered in terms of price/quality ratio. You’ll get more care for less with the government option.

After 8 years of George W. Bush and his Republicans ramming every single piece of legislation they wanted down the throats of the American people, which led to all our current crises, it is tragic to see Barack Obama bow to the very lobbying he campaigned against and promised he would stand up to.

60 million people can’t go to the doctor tomorrow if they get sick.
60 million people will postpone necessary treatments because they don’t have insurance
60 million people will put their lives in jeopardy solely because they can’t go to the doctor without being responsible for every single test/procedure/medication/consultation required
These are the people who elected Barack Obama to change it. These are the people he hugged at rallies and promised that he would fix it. These are the people who are losing their jobs and their houses. These are the people destroying our neighborhoods and communities just because some radiology place took them to collection.

Barack Obama was elected because in America at this moment in time, if you accidently break your arm, you might lose your house. And instead, he is turning his back on all those people because Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, thinks it might be too difficult to get a few senators to support a public option.

posted by Brian Francis at 2:12 AM

Please call the White House and let them know how you feel about the public option

Phone Numbers. Comments: 202-456-1111. Switchboard: 202-456-1414 …