The for profit private health insurance companies and their paid minions are out in force trying to scare the public and our representatives with lies and meeting disruption tactics that have been well described in other diaries. Their tactics have gotten me thinking about how they murder by spreadsheet. I used to train race horses. I used to say of the mob that they wouldn't hesitate to kill horses since they were willing to kill people -- that despite the fact that a mobster could be charming, they weren't nice people. I am impressed by how little difference there is in that description and the leadership of these for profit health insurance companies. They are willing to kill for money and everything else unethical and immoral is on the table as well as, despite the fact that they can be charming, they are not nice people.
I know evil exists in the world. We've had genocide and slavery as the policy of some governments. Even the US was so recently involved in torture and endless imprisonment without charges. Bankers worked hard to create situations where families lost their life savings and their homes. And health insurance companies worked hard to shore up their profits by seeing that sick people didn't get treatments approved even when their policies said they were entitled to said treatments. The insurance companies killed by using any vague excuse to declare something a preexisting condition and therefore not pay, or used delay tactics, and also did plain out inappropriate claim denials that required law suits to overturn. When the person died in the process of trying to get what they had paid for, never mind.
So now, with a public option on the table, the profits are looking to be imperiled in the face of honest competition by a closely regulated government health care option. Why would any company that is willing to kill as part of its normal, everyday operation, shrink away from using every tactic possible to continue the money coming in unimpeded? They'll lie, steal, bribe, etc, shamelessly. Despite the billions they have made off the public, they never have enough. So far, no one is threatening to send these people to jail. After all, what they have done is legal.
I had a discussion the other day with one local official about the concept that just because something is legal doesn't mean it is right. The local official was arguing that legal meant whatever was okay. I pointed out that the genocide in Nazi Germany was legal and that slavery in the US was legal. And so on and so on.
But it was a good day when those things were made illegal. I think it will be a good day when the tactics of the health insurance companies, the banks, the lobbyists, etc. are made illegal too.
I think arguing for the pubic option in the face of these thugs is giving in too much. Lets go back to arguing for what we really should have -- government supported single payer insurance and just put the murderers out of the health care business entirely. I don't think murderers should be trusted to oversee our health care even if they are charming sometimes.