Politicians don’t talk about real issues in campaigns. Interest rate swaps? Screwed savers? Who the heck cares? Too complicated, you people wouldn’t understand.

Nelnet improperly exploits a loophole in the student lending regulations for years, and then last Friday afternoon settled a $1+ billion student loan fraud case for $55 million, just as college students head back to campus. Lovely.

But I’m sure that nothing like this could happen with insurance companies and the Health Insurance reform regulations, or the Wall Street firms and the FinReg rules . . .

Welcome back to campus, everyone.

The insurance companies have been taking an incredible amount of heat lately for their stunning rate increases. Anthem kicked things off with their 39% increases in California, but these were not isolated hikes. WellPoint, Anthem’s parent company, is increasing rates by double digits in at least 11 states. And other big insurance companies are hiking rates in at least half a dozen more states.

The idea that insurance rate hikes are driven by increases in the underlying cost of medical care has also been pushed by AHIP, the insurance industry’s top lobbying front group.

Given the health insurance industry’s duplicity on everything having to do with the health care system and their role in it, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find out that this talking point is a straight up lie.

Barack Obama gets his Mission Accomplished banner day, hits the airwaves, and blows smoke up America’s enormous-because-it-won’t-get-off-the-couch ass