Thursday, July 9, 2009
While leading economists and health experts have shown that an inclusive Medicare-for-All system would be the most efficient and cheapest form of health insurance, big corporations have been lobbying fiercely against such a system, which is also known as single payer.
No wonder! The big insurance and pharmaceutical companies want to keep up their profits. They want to maintain their complicated procedures: the awful claim forms, the "experts" who deny coverage, the refusal to cover "pre-existing conditions," we've heard it all before. They want to run their ads on national media for erectile dysfunction drugs, and that costs a bunch of money. Rather than insuring the uninsured or keeping health care costs from skyrocketing, they are running a health-care protection racket. "If you want to stay healthy, America, better play ball with us."
As this system fails, as health care costs and health insurance costs keep climbing, and our elected representatives are accepting big donations! They are falling for the protection racket! Dianne Feinstein has yet to come out for the President's public option plan -- not as good as single payer, but at least a step in the right direction -- because the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies give her their campaign donations.
She's in the pocket of their lobbyists, their enforcers, their protection racket.
Feinstein needs to understand that Californians are demanding affordable and comprehensive health care coverage, and that the big insurance giants cannot provide it. She needs to support her ordinary constituents, not her fat-cat lobbyist friends. She needs to endorse the public option, not some watered-down version. If she had real guts, she would support single-payer, but her support for the President's public option plan must be guaranteed.
Friends and neighbors, call one of the Senator's offices, here in California or in Washington, and tell her to support the President's efforts to create a lower-cost and universally accessible health insurance system. Tell her to support a strong public option plan. –Howard Winant, Santa Barbara