Ms. Landman is partly correct in showing how "Big Health Insurance" is using the same sort of lobbying tricks and techniques that Big Tobacco has used in the past. I believe she is incorrect however in portraying it as in any way unique or unusual to those two industries.
I'm quite sure that if one peeked under the skirts of Big Pharma (You know, the NicoGummyPatchyProductPeople) or Big Antismoking (e.g. The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids) you'd find exactly the same sort of sleazy trickster Madison Avenue type advertising and public-opinion-molding techniques.
Unfortunately a lot of folks think it's just fine for the "good guys" to play on our fears or on our love for our children in order to trick us into supporting their plans or buying their products.
But they're playing just as sleazy a game with us as the bad guys ever did.
Michael J. McFadden,
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
I own a small business and if this plan is accepted as is I will drastically change my operation so I do not pay the FORCED TAX upon my business-for principle as well as financial reasons. I will not succumb to socialism.
Dear Wendell,
I sent the following to all my activist friends hoping to get the word out about your key info.
I hope you'll spread the word about <b>medical-loss-ratios</b>, the odious detail that finally pushed me off the Sickened Cliff into a free fall of dumbfounded disgust.
I'm amazed that people in these town brawls are so violently eager to use their premiums to pay CEO Ron Williams of Aetna's $24-million-dollar annual compensation. I'm happy for them to do that, but I'd like the choice, the public option, not to buy the gold-rimmed luncheon plates on the Aetna jet.
I'm amazed that people are so virulently eager to have Wall Street between them and their doctor. The medical-industrial-complex insurance corporations are only rewarded for collecting your premiums and then *not* paying your claims. It's called <i>medical-loss-ratio</i>. If a health-scam corporation starts paying too great a ratio of medical losses (aka patient claims), its stock gets punished. (I learned this from the wonderful Wendell Potter, whistleblower, ex-Cigna PR chief.)
I think if people knew more and weren't responding to fortune-cookie propaganda, there'd be no question that they'd demand a public option to at least slow the juggernaut of the built-in rapacious greed-for-profit of the current gold-rimmed-plates Let's Dupe the Sheeple arrangement.
According to Joe Califano, President Lyndon Johnson said, "I will fight for Medicare as long as I have breath in my body." We need this passion in the current Democrats.
The one sure way to drive down health care costs in the this country is the contrary of having every body insured. Yes no body should have health insurance. Doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies can keep raising the cost of their products because of the insurance industry. If no body is insured these costs will plummet. The way to have nobody insured is to pass a law outlawing health insurance. Persons should only be allowed to purchase catastrophic insurance to pay hospitalization and care for terminal illnesses.
While I fully comprehend and respect the dangers associated with nuclear energy, I have a hard time understanding why so many environmentalists and progressives oppose its use. The use of nuclear energy, combined with solar and wind, could virtually eliminate our dependence on hydrocarbons, which have resulted in far more deaths than that attributable to nuclear energy. 80 percent of the waste generated by nuclear power can be eliminated by reprocessing. A new technology emerging right now at Lawrence Livermore Lab may create the possibility of reprocessing even that remaining 20 percent into usable fuel, which, when finally spent, will have half-lives which will only need to be contained for decades rather than centuries or millenia.
Rather than demonizing the nuclear lobby, we should be assisting them! Of course they should be required to build state-of-the-art plants equipped with all the necessary safety systems. I do not suggest they be given carte blanche. However, when one weighs the danger of global warming against the dangers of plant meltdowns and nuclear waste, even the worst case scenarios fail to compare--nuclear is much safer than petroleum and coal. Period.
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