One of Their Own Speaks Out

Read what a former Cigna executive has to say about the illegal business practices of health insurance companies.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec09/health_08-20.html

Propaganda of the Absurd

Health care hypocrisies abound which any reasonable person could dispute.

People oppose health insurance reform because the government will kill the elderly. Concern about killing the elderly would have more validity if we weren’t already killing the young in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where’s the raucous debate or concern over that?

Besides, health insurance companies are already killing people by refusing to refer patients to see doctors other than their primary care physician or their refusal to pay for cancer medication saying it’s not medically necessary.

Another misguided protest slogan is that free markets work best in health insurance. In the health insurance world it’s not a free market. The insurance companies decide how much a procedure, test or office visit is worth. They reimburse at the rates they want to pay. How is that a free market? Can we pay our own allowed rates for food, gas, insurance, utilities and mortgages? That’s out of the question because insurance corporations control the media and delude people into thinking health insurance reform means the free market is under attack. Hardly, the free market has already been attacked by CEO’s like Cigna’s CEO who rakes in eleven million a year.

There’s nothing wrong with making a profit. But making exorbitant profits at the expense of the suffering of others is unconscionable and un-ethical.

Another easily refutable slogan is saying health insurance reform will bankrupt us, we’re already bankrupt. Add up the seven hundred billion we gave to Wall Street and the nine hundred forty seven we’ve given to war, that’s almost equal to this year’s deficit or a trillion dollars over ten years for health insurance reform.

Saying that all these Town Hall Meetings is democracy in action is absurd. It’s the machinations of insurance companies working through former politicians like Richard Armey and his organization FreedomWorks instigating these dog and pony shows. People voicing their opposition to health insurance reform are repeating whey they hear from TV clowns, who get paid millions, to repeat to the public what the corporations want us to hear. If anything, these Town Hall meetings prove that the American people are determined to keep the insurance corporations in control.

And the public option plan that is everyone is so worried about, well not to worry. This public plan won’t be socialist but fascist. After the federal government mandates that all citizens have health insurance like the insurance companies want, the public option plan will be a pool of private insurance companies from which people will choose, essentially pouring more of our tax dollars into the pockets of private insurance companies.

Who’s in control? In the end we’ll get a few bones thrown our way like the elimination of a maximum an insurance company will pay in a lifetime, caps on out of pocket expenses and maybe even a cap on how much insurance companies can raise yearly premiums, but control will remain in the hands of the few, the insurance companies.

Reforming Corporate Masters

Instead of the debate being about reforming “health care”, it should be about an investigation into reforming the health insurance companies, and the reason it isn‘t is because of the insurance company’s control of the politicians and have turned the issue.

The insurance companies make billions because they are allowed to operate using unfair, discriminatory and exclusionary business practices.

We have some of the best medicine in the world, but what good is it if we can’t avail ourselves of it? How many women don’t have mammograms because they can’t afford it? Now, if it’s routine it’s not covered by the health insurance. So we’re paying insurance premiums and paying for the tests. It’s a win-win situation for the insurance companies and a losing situation for the citizens. They have plenty more tricks aimed at denying all claims which in turn allow them to keep the premiums we pay, while refusing to reimburse the doctor. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of doctors. Who wants to practice medicine under a corporate master?

Senator Charles Grassley is against a national health plan that would compete with private insurance companies because government would “take over the market”, which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The insurance companies have already “taken over the market” and taken over our politicians, they just don’t publicly admit it.

The July 15 issue of the Washington Spectator reports seven of the top ten political donors to Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, are health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Companies including Schering-Plough, Amgen, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Healthy competition is necessary to a healthy economy. Maybe that’s why our economy is so sickly, because there’s no competition in either the consumer market, or in our political elections. In the health insurance field, there’s even less competition and no rules. The only ones making up the rules are the insurance companies; and they’re making them up for their own benefit as they go along., and it’s working. Insurance companies control our health care and our politicians.

In America it used to be a two way street, now it’s a one way street with all the advantages money can buy, but especially the cash, flowing to the health insurance companies.

Abolish the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 as a central bank with a mandate from Congress to move interest rates up and down, it’s purpose was to keep prices stable and inflation low.

Thomas Jefferson said “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our civil liberties than standing armies”. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

The current Fed Chairman Bernanke, doesn’t agree. In recent discussions of the administration’s proposed new financial regulations the Chairman said the Federal Reserve needs independence from Congressional oversight to keep politics out of the nation’s monetary policies.

Current Federal Reserve policies include the Fed doling out 80 billion for AIG, trillions for banks and financial institutions, yet the Fed didn‘t have the 40 billion needed to fill the hole in Lehman Brothers whose failure was the beginning of this global recession. Wall Street investment banks have recently posted billions in profits, was there political motivation in allowing Lehman to fail?

William Greider stated in the Nation magazine- “The Feds favoritism toward bankers is embedded in its DNA”.

President Wilson said after creating the Federal Reserve that “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.” We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world -- no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

We should abolish the Federal Reserve; they are the reason we’re in this recession and why Jefferson’s predictions ring true today.

The communists are coming

Communism once was the antithesis of democracy, now we’ve embraced it with a bloodless coup.

The communist creed is “everyone from according to their wants to everyone according to their needs.” This sounds like head lines we’re hearing today in the news, that more and more Americans are buying only what they need, as opposed to they want. This is scarier than the president bringing us socialism.

We’ve recently witnessed the rise of capitalist communism; where the minority of corporate crooks control all of our government and all of our accessibility to the basic necessities in life, like food; clothing; fuel and shelter.

Corporate consolidation in our food industry created agribusiness, leaving us with fewer choices and poison food. Consolidation has eliminated the boycott as an option to fight against price gouging. If we boycott one product there’s no telling how many other products that same company is selling in the same store, rendering the boycott, a Revolutionary tool useless.

Every year health insurance premiums increase while coverage decreases. This yearly increase ensures many Americans take home much less year after year.

That’s capitalistic communism, ensuring the robber barons make more money while the rest of us are all equal in taking home less.

Thomas Jefferson believed a government should provide for a society where citizens could be industrious and work towards self improvement. How can anyone work towards self improvement when they make less every year?

Our disastrous engagement in “the grave yard of empires” in Afghanistan will lead us to bankruptcy just like it bankrupted the Soviets. The Washington Spectator, a newsletter published by the Public Concern Foundation, reports that we have spent 947 billion between Iraq and Afghanistan thus far. And we have years to go in Afghanistan, so we’re told.

We have a secretive government who spies on us and allowed billionaire hedge funds and private equity firms to precipitate the downfall of our entire financial system.

The corporate crooks control this country with an iron fist and it’s as heavy handed as that of any communist iron fist.

Cap and Trade Taxes

One aspect of the American Clean Energy and Security Bill is the Cap and Trade tax about energy corporations being required to purchase permits for the amount of pollutants they emit. The higher the output the higher the number of permits will be required.

Representative John Boehner said that the cap and trade tax will put small businesses out of business and cost American jobs. Republican Eric Cantor said this bill will impose an energy tax on people and repeated the mantra of putting small businesses out of business. The price of health insurance is preventing small businesses from hiring Americans yet we don’t hear any outrage against that. But when we try to tax the energy industry well, don’t the howls go up then.

Thanks to the good servants of Big Oil who worry about the cap and trade tax affecting small businesses the oil companies are allowed to contaminate, sicken and destroy lives with the poison their antiquated refineries belch into neighborhoods in California cities. Their refineries are old, decrepit and in need of repair. Big Oil and their market propaganda has been able to shift the focus and blame their steadfast refusal to update their refineries onto the backs of the tree huggers across the country. And it’s worked, many believe Big Oil’s propaganda. How many jobs would updating oil refineries create, how much cleaner would the air be with more efficient refineries? Not only is Big Oil polluting our earth they’re charging us top dollar for a necessity like oil for heat and gasoline for cars.

The Democrat’s dance, saying they’re creating a bill for the public good and the Republican’s dance says the Democrats are going to tax you more and we’re here to say we told you so.

In the end, any public good this bill may have in it will result with us paying more in taxes, Big Oil and Big Energy will see to that, and continue with their insane profits. Just like the US government subsidizes Big Oil for the share the OPEC countries charge for their oil, Big Energy will make sure we subsidize any penalties they pay.

Big Business will not pay the price for their pollution, we will; not only in taxes but with the additional suffering destroying the earth’s resources will bring us.

Big Brother Insurance

Many are saying this government funded health insurance plan is the first step to nationalized medicine with a socialist bent. It’s not socialism at all, but Big Brother.

The Democratic House plan is to mandate that all citizens have medical insurance and the insurance companies are going to drop the pre-existing clause. This is what the insurance companies want, they’ve already said as much.

The Democratic House plan includes new taxes on health insurance benefits (ha what benefits), taxes on sugared drinks and alcohol. Not only will we continue to pay exorbitant prices for medical insurance, if this plan passes we’ll all be paying more of our taxes into the insurance companies. This is not socialism but oligarchy.

Thomas Jefferson believed one role of government was to prevent corporations from “taking the bread out of the mouth of labor who has earned it”.

It’s up to the government to ensure healthy competition amongst these insurance companies and to prevent them from turning medical insurance into industrialized mega-corporations; consolidation of too much market share leads to exploitation, which is why the price of health insurance is too high and prohibitive to so many.

Supposedly this government funded plan is intended to promote competition amongst insurance companies to bring down the cost of health insurance. Healthy competition keeps prices low. We don’t have healthy competition and that’s why our economy is so sick and insurance premiums too high.

Why is it that the only way we can get out from under the merciless control insurance companies have over us is by paying more?

In addition to the sinfully extreme cost of medical insurance Americans are forced to pay now, the American taxpayer will be forced to pay even higher premiums and drug costs. Why does an inhaler in Canada cost $12 a month while the very same inhaler costs $160 a month in the US?

The insurance companies are not going to lose money, no matter what plan the federal government creates. As a matter of fact, they’ll be making more money and we still won’t see equality in health insurance; and that‘s the plan of the corporate crooks, the minority who own our government, Big Brother, there‘s no socialism about it.