DrSteveB does it again this morning, posting a diary that exposes the big health insurance companies as corrupt institutions that profit by denying healthcare to the ill and dying. If there was any doubt regarding the depth of corruption in this industry, this powerful diary should lay those doubts to rest. It is a system that preys on the weak, exploits the ill and frequently consigns the gravely ill to death.
Now consider that our premiums are supplying the dollars that Big Healthcare uses to buy Max Baucus and Evan Bayh. And then consider that your pension plan - anybody's pension plan - is propping up the stock prices of the parasitic health insurers and healthcare giants by buying and holding their stock.
Last week I urged people, at least the healthy and those without dependents, to cancel their private health insurance policies. I understand that's a drastic step, but as someone who is self-employed it was my only option. But there is something else you can do, something far more powerful than the cancellation of individual health insurance plans.
Contact your union, or the human resources reps at your employer, and demand that YOUR PENSION FUND divest itself of health insurance stock.
It's time to start demanding divestment of health insurance company stocks. Pension plans, private and public, holding enormous amounts of stock in UnitedHealth, Wellpoint, and the other giant health insurance scammers. These holdings help lift the stock price of these companies and turn the options held by their executives into gold. Meanwhile, these insurance companies are raising your premiums every year at a rate more than twice the general rate of inflation. Even worse, they are routinely denying healthcare and coverage to the person in the office next to you, or the cubicle across the hall, and at the station on the shop floor just feet from where you work.
We are literally supplying the bullets that the private health insurance companies are using to kill us. From my perspective, it's a moral issue. Even as a purely practical matter, however, it makes no sense for your pension funds to be propping up the stocks of the big health insurance companies while they jack up your rates, deny you coverage and, worst of all, spend millions lobbying Baucus and Bayh to defeat the public option and maintain their unholy monopoly on health insurance in this country.
The utter absurdity of having your pension dollars invested in the health insurance companies is illustrated by the largest pension fund in the land - the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS. Just last year CalPERS had to sue UnitedHealth's former CEO to compel him to pay $30 million to CalPERS and other UnitedHealth shareowners and to cancel options to purchase 3.675 million shares of stock to settle CalPERS’ claims. CalPERS also reached a $895 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought against UnitedHealth over its stock-option grant practices. In other words, UnitedHealth was looting shareholder value to pump up the value of its executives' stock options at the same time it was systematically denying need healthcare coverage to California state employees - and yet CalPERS still has more than $125 million in UnitedHealth stock in its portfolio today!
This is the very definition of insanity. It's like a junkie paying his dealer to supply the poison that pollutes his blood. It's like giving your money to the tobacco companies. It may not be a moral issue from your perspective, but from any perspective it's just stupid, and bad for you.
We have to stop playing defense on this issue. The big health insurance companies are playing offense and they are playing for keeps. But we're spending all of our time defending the public option rather than attacking a manifestly disastrous plan proposed by Baucus to compel us to purchase private health insurance policies, a plan that will send healthcare cost inflation - already running at twice the general inflation rate - into the stratosphere. We're playing defense by phoning and e-mailing to keep democrats in Congress on board with the public option. Have you ever seen a team win by just playing defense?
It's time to start playing offense. Here's how:
- When you call your Senators or Representatives to support the public option, take a moment to tell them that the Baucus Plan is unacceptable because it is the HIGHEST COST alternative - Baucus's mandates and government subsidies for the purchase of private health insurance will inevitably send healthcare cost inflation into double digits and cost the country trillions over the next 10 years - far more than the estimated cost of even the most ambitious public option proposal.
- If you are in a union or work for state or local government, organize an effort to demand that your pension plan DIVEST ITSELF OF HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY HOLDINGS. If you work for a private firm, contact the human resources personnel who are in charge of managing your pension plan and ask whether the pension fund is invested in large health insurance companies. If the answer is "yes", ask why your pension fund is buying the stock of a company that is raising your premiums every year even as your health insurance coverage shrinks every year, and why you are subsidizing the denial of healthcare to your fellow workers.
- Wherever you work and whether you work for a private or public concern, contact your State representatives and demand that your State divest itself of holdings in the corrupt private insurance industry.
If there is one thing that history has taught us, it's that money talks. Ask South Africa. Ask the tobacco companies. A threat of divestment shakes the executive board room and sends CEOs scurrying to the executive washroom. It frightens other shareholders and immediately starts exerting downward pressure on stock prices. It takes executive stock options that are in the money and puts them underwater - think of it as waterboarding the stock options of the health insurance industry thieves.
The unions can get this ball rolling. They have the numbers and organizational structure to begin a divestment drive quickly and get media attention for their efforts.
This has to happen now. The future of healthcare and even the economy are in the balance. The public option will bring down the healthcare inflation that has forced millions to be uninsured and forced the insured to accept higher co-pays, higher deductibles and more restrictive coverage caps every year. Baucus's proposal will douse the raging healthcare cost inflation fire with gasoline, and healthcare company executives will toast their marshmallows over the fire that consumes you and our economy.