I don’t comment much but have been a lurker here for years. A laptop on my workbench at work keeps me connected to FDL all through the work day. The healthcare posts and threads of recent days have been both comforting and disturbing. Comforting in that I am clearly not alone in my quiet desperation. Disturbing in that I fear we are fucked again.

There have been several commenters that attempt to insist that healthcare reform is not affordable. What they all refuse to admit is that we pay twice as much as it actully costs. Already. Why is that so hard to understand. What needs to be discussed and is being ignored is how to redirect what is spent now. Why is that so difficult? Why willingly choose to put the interests of insurance companies ahead of the interests of 300 million people? Yes it is costing me sleep at this point.

I don’t understand why it has not been said out loud that any plan that is not a road map to universal care is not reform. It will be nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

33 years ago, when I became a machinist, manufacturing in America was a truely mighty economic machine. It was the very thing that our country was built on. The demise of domestic manufacturing, and the resulting death spiral of our economy, is caused in no small measure by employer based health insurance. What was once, not so long ago, a path to a comfortable retirement for a high school graduate has been destroyed.

Just a middle of the night rant to nobody in partical. Thanks FDL.

here’s an extended CJR interview link with Wendell.

Well I’ve hit the wall.

Good night firedogs..)

Frustrated Americans have long complained that their insurance companies valued the all-mighty buck over their health care. Today, a retired insurance executive confirmed their suspicions, arguing that the industry that once employed him regularly rips off its policyholders.
Retired health insurance executive Wendell Potter told Congress today that insurance companies routinely rip off customers.
Retired health insurance executive Wendell Potter told Congress today that insurance companies routinely rip off customers.
(ABC News Photo Illustration)

“[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors,” former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Snip

As for nukes.. it would be suicidal for NK as well, wouldn’t it?

I really don’t see how NK can win anything. They can cause great harm on their way out if they choose, but they can’t prevail.

What exactly can we do about an entire country which is that crazy?

I mean, we can’t evacuate Hawaii just because the nutty leader of N.K. says something. But, what can we do?

It revives old thoughts from the Cold War, not that I obsessed about nukes. Once the fear takes over you’re toast…just a quivering piece of meat laying on the floor with drool all over.

I think they fear a leader who would change their society. They’re militaristic — the ultimate Military Industrial Complex. Without this they all die of starvation, right? Is there any way that kind of situation can go except to gradually become more crazy until war breaks out?

We have other involvements and this is not a good time for having to deal with N.K.

Having to dish out so much to health has pretty much bankrupted the car companies, so think which other companies/entities are that tied to healthcare costs.

If you want to pull down costs you have to induce more competition in the marketplace. There are various ways and the public option is one. If government chose to ‘beat’ the private insurers it could, but in the current reform discussion the public option is primarily to ensure everyone gets coverage.

The Exchange is where you bring together insurers who have had semi-monopolies in some states, so they can compete directly. That has to bring down costs.