Comments on: Health Insurers Report Profits Aplenty – to Pay Lobbyists

By: LKN2

LKN2 — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:31:55 +0000

But the health insurers WILL be able to adjust premiums for age. Watch them jack up premiums for the over 50 and close to medicare groups – with the “mandate” to purchase their products, the oldsters will be held hostage to the medical industrial complex. Hope this goes to the Supreme Court. It should be unconstitutional for government to require citizens to purchase a product from a for-profit company, but with the current set of corporate stooges on the bench, I don’t hold out much hope for justice.

By: redfish

redfish — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:04:46 +0000

Single payer was never an option. That was a false starting point and patently absurd to even discuss in this country. As far as a public option is concerned it should be pretty clear that there are not enough elected officials willing to vote for it.

But, a bill will get signed and pre-existing condition exclusions and dropping people who pay their premium will end. That’s a good thing.

By: KenInIL

KenInIL — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:57:20 +0000

Isn’t Senator Chris Dodd beyond the age where active measures should be take for his prostate cancer??? This guy should belly up to the new reality if he is going to vote for it. Palliative measures only for the old guy!!

By: SouthernDragon

SouthernDragon — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:56:29 +0000

“democrat party” @ 10 = Freudian slip?

By: masaccio

masaccio — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:47:40 +0000

You think the public option is far left? Most of us thought we were being pragmatic by supporting that instead of single payer.

By: redfish

redfish — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:07:48 +0000

I am not debating the merits of single payer or a public plan. I would support either. My point is that pragmatism and realism makes the world go round, especially in this country. We are not and never will be a far left country. Barack Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Biden are as good as it will ever get. Ever.

And instead of realizing that and keeping unified and fighting to get what we can, the far-left decided that attacking democrats and Obama was preferable. Now his poll numbers are plummeting, he is a weakened president presiding over a divided democrat party with a good possibility that in 2010 we will lose control of congress and call Mitt Romney president in 2012. In addition you are getting nothing you wanted; it was all for naught as people like me knew it would be.

By: starvedforfacts

starvedforfacts — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:05:07 +0000

I spoke with someone from Mike Ross’s office an hour ago. I briefly stated my support for a strong health care bill with (at least) a public option, and politely expressed my disappointment in Ross’s efforts to obstruct reform. I then asked if it was true that the Congressman has stock in a pharmacy company (as reported here). The shyster’s arrogant employee hung up on me….or maybe someone was at the door and he needed to leave abruptly —- another wad of cash for Mikey for his sell-out of the American public.

By: masaccio

masaccio — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:58:45 +0000

Insurance companies are counting on having enough fish like you to enable them keep piling up profits on the backs of sick people.

Talk about the bigotry of low expectations, that sounds just like the Animal House pledge: “Please sir, may I have another?”

By: TomThumb

TomThumb — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:57:40 +0000

In all, 75 percent of participating small businesses expressed support for a meaningful role for a public
health insurance plan in health reform.

By: bkhull

bkhull — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:47:28 +0000

People keeping using that phrase “keep the insurance companies honest”. I don’t think that phrase means what they think it means.

Since when have the Health Insurance companies been “honest”? I mean, I have a friend who makes his living trying to fight health insurance companies when they refuse to pay for what their policy clearly requires them to pay for, so I may be jaded; but hey! Profit motive is the only principle a corporation has. That’s just the way it is.

Health is too important, too key to every person’s life, to expose it to the mercies of something completely without moral or ethical principles. I’m not saying that corporations can’t be run by people with moral and ethical principles; just that it doesn’t work out that way in real life.

Let’s just cut to the chase and go 100% single payer. I realize that suggesting that losing another 16% of our GDP, by destroying the Health Insurance industry entirely, right now as we’re just starting to pull out of our economic dive will be wildly popular, because this particular 16% needs killing. Those who have any interest in the well-being of their fellow Americans can get a job in Health Care, instead of in Health Care Prevention, and the other 95% of them can just take a lateral transfer into the financial sector or organized crime or the Republican party and continue to use the skills they’ve honed.

Not that I have a particular opinion, one way or the other…