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    Health Insurers and Their Pavlovian Ideologues Disrupt Health Care Reform

    By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 2:12am |
    I'm grateful to obey and miguelitoh2o and all the others who have written recently with such clarity and passion about the abuses of our health insurance industry.

    In light of such information about Insurance Company abuses, it seems puzzling that the insurance industry lobbyists can actually mobilize people to disrupt town hall meetings on behalf of the insurance industry. Yet, it shows that these corporations can be strategic actors in the marketplace even as they are so inept at serving it.

    If anything, the insurance lobby is pretty good at framing the debate with inflammatory rhetoric. Terms like "big guvmint," "socialism," and other triggers are thrown around like raw meat by these corporate organizers, with result that their "pavlovian populist idealogues" strain at the leash to just "git me a Congressman" when invited to do so on command at these meetings.

    These people at the Town Hall Meetings are angry, to be sure! But if they would only take a minute to realize it was the corporate handlers who had actually sand-papered their assholes with practices like rescission and other abuses, they would turn their anger on their masters and really sink their teeth into the problem. With the insurance company parasites dispatched thusly, we could then anticipate some GENUINE health care reform and abandon this silly notion of INSURANCE INDUSTRY reform.

    Someone please explain: If the objective is to be health care for everyone, what role does "insurance" have to play? Stated another way: If we are to collectively provide health care for all - with no limitations on pre-existing conditions or "exposure to risk" - what need is there to insure against "loss." In adopting universal coverage, aren't we determining that we are in fact going to accept the "losses" as part of our compact with our fellow citizens that we will be there for them (and us, too!) in their time of medical need? Or are we going to continue using health care dollars to "pay premiums" (contributions toward corporate profits - and lobbying!) to cover only healthy people?

    Yeah, I'm angry too. But if I were to go to Washington with pitchfork raised, my first stop would be on K Street, not Congress. And if I were to choose to disrupt a meeting, it would not be at a gathering of citizens discussing matters with their elected officials. No, it would be in some corporate board room where I could righteously give a full-throated expression of the contempt I feel for the parasites who stand between us and genuine health care reform.

    At the very least, I want returned to me the health care dollars I contributed as insurance premiums that are now being used to organize houliganism at these Town Hall Meetings. And then I want these insurance industry parasites to get off my back!