While 14,000 Americans lose their healthcare each day, the health insurance industry is spending $1.4 million a DAY to buy the votes they need to stop healthcare reform. Apparently they are not only buying votes from Blue Dog Democrats, there are reports that the vicious mobs who are disrupting healthcare town halls are being funded by surrogates for the healthcare industry as well.
Why shouldn't the health insurance industry do what they can to stop healthcare reform? It is in their interests to do so. Billions of dollars of profit are at stake for them and they clearly will not go down without a fight. And so, they have whipped up a frenzy of distortions and outright lies to stop healthcare reform at any cost. They have energized the 'teabaggers.'
The sad reality is that the 'teabaggers' don't have a clue that they are slaves to the health insurance industry.
In a much earlier post I wondered why many whites do not vote in their best interests. The spectre of the vicious mobs roaming from Democratic Town Hall meeting to meeting begs the question once again. In fact, I would like to share with you a personal encounter I had with one of the teabaggers that illustrates how blinded these people are by either ignorance or racism (or both).
Congressman John Lewis' healthcare town hall meeting was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The first questioner was a white woman who shared her story about the difficulties she experienced in caring for her husband, who was stricken with cancer. I was shocked when she took a huge right turn and vehemently denounced healthcare reform. I couldn't let her leave the auditorium without learning more about how she reached the conclusions that she reached, given her negative experience with health insurance. This woman told me that she spends $1,000 a month for her health insurance premium, has a $10,000 deductible, and her 19 y/o daughter was just kicked off because she 'aged out' of the plan. Yet she fights healthcare reform! The healthcare reform being proposed is designed to help people just like her. Somehow she can't see that TODAY we have a rationed healthcare system with denials for pre-existing conditions, cherry picking and unjustly increased insurance premiums. She can't hear that with healthcare reform she still gets to keep her doctor, pay less and receive better care.
These folks have suspended all reason and rationality. They now believe in fairy tales: President Obama isn't an American citizen; President Obama is a socialist; President Obama wants to kill all the old people (why would any Democratic President want to kill off people s/he could tax???)
Democrats and Progressives should not spend any energy trying to talk to these people. They cannot hear. They will not listen. But we must ensure that the national healthcare conversation continues. The vicious mobs and their industry backers have no right to stop this vitally important discussion.
I hope every supporter of healthcare reform attends a local healthcare town hall meeting. Your representatives need to see friendly, intelligent and reasonable faces. They need us now. Don't let them down.