Pre-existing outrage

Coffers over Coughers

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Coffers over Coughers

Sen. Max Baucus (Influence redistributionist - Mt),  is the most bought-and-paid-for of scores of legislators who've been bought-and-paid-for by deep-pocketed, shallow-souled medical racketeers. This money-grubbing goon squad has spent the year dispensing a mammoth and McCarthyistic dose of disinformation from corporate journo-shills cluttering up a foreboding yet worthless media skyline. The rest of the medical mega-dough has been put into the aforementioned high-yield legislators.

The propaganda and fiscal arm-twisting campaign is meant to keep our allegedly exceptional nation from joining the rest of the world in acknowledging that single-payer health care is the only answer for those who prefer civilization. Unfortunately, due to the river of green that's flowed under Washington's table, single-payer is all but off it. There are still some peeps about a "vibrant public option" but what we really need is to kill the private one before it kills any more of us.

According to the moola-minting med community, single-payer is unacceptable because it would leave health care in the hands of the same people who have never missed a scheduled mail delivery to me in my 56 years on Earth. The single-payer smear campaign warns of the risk posed by such an unproven bureaucracy. Yeah, no sense risking it when we can instead leave life and death in the hands of those who will literally let your mother expire if her demise means an extra nickel in their greasy little paws.

This week the health care cabal acted out a professional wrestling morality play by turning on their money-tender from Montana with a two-day offensive slagging the Senator's thoroughly compromised compromise plan for national health care reform. The offensive cautioned against the Baucus scheme that was about to be put before the Senate FinanceD Committee. The insurance thugs last minute warnings were as ham-handed (OK, lamb-handed) as an Osama bin Laden election eve denunciation of George W. Bush. (Oh please, don't re-elect the bait-takingest moron in the history of American dunces!)

crimmins 8969

Baucus's plan would make the purchase of health insurance mandatory for all Americans. Concerned that a program designed to force each citizen to purchase their oft useless product might not make it out of committee, the racketeers put on their villain garb to verbally body-slam the Big Sky Bagman's plan. Mind you, these hated criminals know better than to appear in public, except when they want to exploit America's inability to fathom reverse psychology. The insurance peddlers scripted remarks cautioned us that Max's bill could result in higher premium prices. There's little doubt that this increased-cost warning will soon be looked upon as prescient. But getting credit for its ability to foretell its own price-fixing is a paltry co-pay compared to the billions of extra bucks Baucus' mandatory insurance plan will steam-shovel the sticky hands people's way.

Of course Baucus's effort to further socialize the high cost of health insurance profiteering passed the committee he chairs. Maximum Max is being celebrated by many of the same Osama-spooked rubes who voted for Bush in 2004 and are now afflicted with the intense pain in the wallet that is a never-covered condition for American health insurance consumers. These suckers are joined by a slew of Obama acolytes who will look upon even impotent reform as a large victory for their recently hapless hero. As a result, Chairman Max has gained esteem by fighting for our right to buy into plans much more likely to impoverish us than keep us in the pink. On the bright side, this redressing of our grievances in reform drag will most assuredly keep Baucus's Montana goldmine boldly in the black. Hey, it's a start!

Sadly it's a start right back down the awful road that brought 47 million of us into a health care-less state. It has also brought millions and millions more the next worse thing -- insurance that almost never provides proper health care. As countless sane people have said until they went untreated for being blue in the face: we need health care not health insurance.

My friend Barbara Staley of Seattle commented on the farce that is health insurance when she wrote NPR about it last summer, asserting:
The discussion revolves around a faulty premise: that health care is the same thing as health insurance. It is not. Health care is a basic human right. Health insurance is a profit-driven commodity that seeks gain through delaying and denying care. In a rational, civil society, health care should be a given. It should not depend on an individual's ability to do savvy comparison shopping for a product that seeks to profit by denying the very service it purports to provide.

You said it, Barbara! If only anyone would listen. In the meantime, the insurers' shrill protestations over Baucus's insurance imposition will be muffled by the cascade of cash about to flutter down upon the toniest neighborhood in the brier patch.
crimmins 8969

ADD COMMENT

I favor single payer myself, but...Thursday, October 22nd 2009 12:17PM

I differ with, "According to the moola-minting med community, single-payer is unacceptable because it would leave health care in the hands of the same people who have never missed a scheduled mail delivery to me in my 56 years on Earth."

In the past dozen or so of my 67 years on Earth those people have missed quite a few mail deliveries to me, along with delivering mail that does not belong to me, some of it not even in my zip code.

Well then I've been fortunate compared to you but the point remains the USPS is much more reliable than private health care.

C RayTuesday, October 20th 2009 11:26AM

Even what is purported to be "Health Insurance" isn't actually insurance per the definition of the word
(Insurance: an arrangement by which a company gives customers financial protection against loss or harm such as theft or illness in return for payment premium).
What we really have should be called Health Roulette.
Place your bets, spin the wheel, drop in the ball and it's…Red 38, sorry that means you have a pre-existing condition no chemo-therapy for you. Spin again?

KozmosSunday, October 18th 2009 9:01PM

Barry- great dissemination. For me the most significant part is Barbara's succinct differentiation between 'health insurance' and what should certainly be the basic human right to health care.  If we really do consider ourselves to be the most advanced species on the planet, of course...

COMMENT ON THIS

John A. Joslin- DetroitFriday, October 16th 2009 8:15PM

" Health insurance is a profit-driven commodity that seeks gain through delaying and denying care."- Barbara Staley


Thanks Barry , for doggedly trying to reach us back-sliding suckers. It's very hard for us libs to think these days because we have been buried up to our eyelashes in bulls**t  on this Health Insurance Industry Preservation Act they always call by another name ... a whole bunch of other names . All deceptive... none healthy for children , non-children or other living things.

Your friend out in Seattle nails it.  Reminds me of good ol' Accounting 101 where they patiently explained to us rubes that profit is anything left over after all business expenses are paid...  "all business expenses" meaning total wages , salaries & benefits along with the whole shebang of overhead and material costs , utility bills ,  connectivity charges,  fees, fines, floor wax, peppermint candy,air freshener and everything else .

So after making nearly good on the absolute bare -bones minimum of health insurance claims that they can get away with reluctantly  paying (  per the very fine print in the " insurance policy" contracts they peddle ...) , and AFTER  paying all wages , salaries , benefits and bonuses due to themselves and their employees ,  including the hapless hordes of  cubical serfs who toil in the vast claims -denying orchards of the industry , hacking away at the legitimate needs of the sick and injured , pruning people's lives every day until the sun goes down ... only THEN does the Health Industry start counting up all the extra loot ! That'd be the, uh... profits, folks.

So when you attempt to explain how the Democratic Party has joined the Republican Party in a seamlessly vile coalition to save the for -Profit Health Insurance Industry you are really shining a bright light on an unforgivably criminal scheme to keep on robbing people under cover of a blatantly false claim of progress.    1,000 plus pages of armor plated legislative drivel has been fabricated to seal the tomb where our latest hope will be banished to forthwith.

Nothing but a  bald -face, bipartisan betrayal of the entire country . Which also reminds me ... Canada is a country , too,  only a half- mile from me in Detroit , and once upon a time they cleverly subdued the for-profit Health Insurance Industry thieves preying on their nation by passing a handy little eleven page bill which outlawed the despicable racket.

C RayThursday, October 15th 2009 7:11AM

Those without won't want it, those with won't need it.
The only ones who will benefit are those who do already.
The original American Dream. "Let us find a new land of riches for ourselves and bloat in its abundance".