[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]Those in Congress who are protecting the insurance industry from government intrusion are doing a great job — of protecting their campaign contributions.
They've managed to so complicate the healthcare debate that many Americans have been completely blinded to what should be clearly obvious.
There's only one issue in this debate:
Whether we want to entrust the healthcare of our families to an entity whose only goal is to provide service, or one that's in the business solely to make as much profit as humanly possible.
In order to see through the smoke and mirrors of this debate, we need to ask ourselves only a few basic questions.
First, do we really believe the insurance industry is giving politicians $1.3 million a day just so they can protect our well being?
Second, how have the insurance companies become so rich that they can afford to give away that kind of money?
The Power of Fear
Third, if they're doing such a good job of looking after our interests, why do they fear that a public option will lead to a government takeover of the industry?
And finally, what's so bad about government-protected healthcare anyway?
The government protects us with the police department, the fire department, the military, Social Security and Medicare. So why do we allow these things to be run by government? What do they have in common?
The answer is simple. They are all services much too essential to our well-being to entrust to those whose single motive, and sole reason for being, is to make a profit.
Can you imagine what it would be like having to negotiate with the police department after having a child kidnapped? Imagine the police telling you, “I sorry, but your daughter just turned eighteen. So she's no longer covered under your kidnapping policy.”
That's exactly what's happening to Americans on a daily basis regarding their family's healthcare.
The fact is, the so-called insurance industry is not an industry at all. An industry produces products. The insurance business produces nothing. It is made up of Wall Street speculators who take your money with the promise that they'll protect you from financial ruin. Then, if something unforeseen does happen, they spend much of that money trying to find loopholes to get out of honoring their agreement.
Committed to Profits Not to You
Their entire business model is based on the proposition that they can get more money out of you than they'll have to pay back. So they're not in the business of providing you with a service. On the contrary, they're in the business of taking your money while providing you with as little service as possible. That's how they make a profit.
Now, with his healthcare reform, it is President Obama's contention that too many Americans are being denied services. As a result, they're dying or losing everything they own just so these speculators can make money. He wants to bring that to an end.
In response, the politicians who the insurance companies are paying to deceive you, are screaming bloody murder.
And since they don't have truth on their side, they've taken to lying to the American people.
If your representative is among them, instead of representing your interest, he's being paid by the insurance companies to lobby against you.
He's trying to convince you that it's a bad thing for you to have the choice of a public option that would protect you and your family from loss of coverage if you're laid off your job.
Or it would protect you from having your insurance cancelled if a member of your family contracts a disease that the private insurance companies deem so expensive to treat that it cuts into their profits.
In short, he's placing his seat in Congress before the welfare of your family.
These politicians often will claim that a public option would place a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. But the fact is, the healthcare plan that the President is proposing for you is the exact same plan that your representative and every member of Congress enjoys.
And I've never once heard a member of Congress complain about his or her health-care.
In addition, they always conveniently fail to mention that with your current healthcare you have a businessman, who's out to make a profit, between you and your doctor. You're rarely aware of what goes on between your doctor and your current insurance company because your doctor simply won't prescribe a treatment that he knows the insurance company won't cover. But how many times have you gone to the pharmacy and had a generic drug suggested because your insurance won't cover the drug that the doctor originally prescribed, and wanted you to have?
In addition, we mustn't forget that the infamous AIG also is an insurance company.
It was supposed to be insuring Wall Street against investment losses, and you see what happened there. AIG was so greedy for profits and paid so little attention to the precarious condition of its customers that when Wall Street collapsed and AIG's customers came to it to cover the losses that they'd paid billions of dollars to insure, AIG simply said, “Sorry, we can't help you.”
Thus, if the crooks on Wall Street can't trust the insurance companies, the average American family doesn't have a chance. Remember, even though AIG was founded, appropriately enough, in Shanghai, China, and was doing business and spreading its money all over the world, when it found itself in trouble, it ran back to the United States to pick your pocke, in order to get back on its feet.
That's not the worst of it.
Once the American taxpayer did agree to help them to get back on their feet, they took much of our hard-earned tax money (while we were losing our homes and jobs) and used it to wine and dine company bigwigs at plush resorts and pass out multi-million-dollar bonuses to the very people who ran the company in the ground.
These are the people many of your representatives want to protect from a government takeover. Never mind what's in the best interest of your family.
It is these very same people who already have robbed you of your tax dollars who your representative wants to see standing between you and your doctor, with calculator in hand. Of course he does, because the government is not going to contribute to his campaign.
So if your representative comes to you during this break and tries to feed you this nonsense, you should respond with just one sentence.
“You're out of here in the very next election.”
You'd be entirely justified since his support of the insurance lobby is irrefutable evidence that what he sees as his vested interest is far removed from your own.
Mr. Wattree is a writer, musician and poet who may be contacted at wattree@verizon.net
You may learn more about Mr. Wattree at wattree.blogspot.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think and act like me. It's just that God does.
