Thursday, June 4, 2009
Bob Bennett: Insurance Industry Shill
Posted By Brandon Burt on June 4, 2009, 4:46 PM
According to a recent press release from the office of Sen. Bob Bennett, the senator wants to make sure we don't even have the option of enrolling in a public health plan (such as the very nice public health plan that senators and their families enjoy for life). According to the press release:
"Bennett Strongly Opposes Obama's Plan to Include a Public Option in Health Care Reform, says public plan 'will unfairly change the playing field and ultimately drive out all other choices'"
Yep, that's right. It's "unfair" because so many of us are begging to just have the option of a public health plan, but must now settle for crappy halfassed private insurance. He knows that just having a public option would mean the corporate insurance agencies--which have grown used to providing an inferior service--would no longer be able to hold us hostage to their bullshit, obstructionary practices.
Yeah, I agree the insurance corporations will find themselves at quite a disadvantage--but it will be their own fault. It's been nearly 20 years since the insurance industry scared Americans with tales of "rationing" and assured us that the "free market" would provide the best health-care solution.
Well, the free market had two decades to solve the problem, as the insurance industry and the Republican Party promised it would do.
And it failed. Miserably. The expansion of corporate health care has only made things exponentially worse.
Poor, poor insurance corporations. The public option would force them to compete against an agency whose job is to actually provide health care (which requires planning and investment) rather than prevent it (which only requires raking in the dough while laughing and laughing).
In fact, it's ridiculously easy for insurance corporations to turn outrageous profits--all it takes is to pay out as few claims as possible. But that only works as long as the industry can maintain its monopoly and keep the public option off the table. That's why they're sweating bullets.
Bennett says: "Let's realize that the American voter will never stand for the kind of rationing by delay that seems to have crept into every other government-run health care system."
Apparently, Bennett believes that the current rationing schemes--"rationing by income level" and "rationing at the whim of numb-nuts insurance adjustors who earn big bonuses if they can prevent your mother from having her tumor removed"--have been working so well for us that we couldn't possibly want an alternative.
Bennett, you are out of touch.
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