I listened very carefully to the President's speech last week. Here's the thing that I find really unnerving, and no one seems to be asking questions about it: what about price controls? The whole rhetoric of "no one will be denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition" [applause applause] "because we're going to outlaw it" [applause applause]...well, here's the thing. Really, no one is denied insurance right now because of a pre-existing condition. I bet that if you're willing to pay $25,000 a month, you could probably get insurance no matter what kind of chronic illness you have. Of course, it would then probably cost more than you would pay out-of-pocket for your treatments, but whatever. It's meaningless to say that insurance companies won't be able to do this, that, or the other thing, when they can easily say, "Oh, no, we offered Parents-of-Child-With-Leukemia coverage, and they didn't take it" when the Parents-of-Child-With-Leukemia were offered a totally unaffordable premium. Not one person in the Obama administration has said word one about capping what the insurance companies can charge people who are now required to purchase health insurance.
This makes me deeply suspicious. After all, I have had to pay auto insurance for the last 15 years--required to do so in order to get a license and register my car--and I therefore consider this a tax that I pay for which I have yet to receive anything. Now, I'm sure that as I type this a tree branch is swinging threateningly over my car and I'll have to come back and xxxx this sentence out, because of the karma. But the point is, I, and a hundred million other people, have been forced by the government to support private, for-profit companies. It's fucking lame, is what it is, and now we're seeing the lamery repeated on a much, much larger scale. I don't care about paying taxes to a democratically elected government who I can (theoretically) hold accountable for services which I, or my loved ones, will receive. I am a big fan of the post office, public schools, public libraries, municipal water and sewage treatment facilities, public immunization programs, and so on, and so forth. I am much much less a fan of being forced to essentially tithe my income so that a C.E.O. of some insurance company (who is totally unaccountable to me or any of his customers) can buy that vacation home in St. Bart's for his third trophy wife.
Is anyone else at all concerned about this? Does no one else hear the insurance companies fappity-fapping away at the thought of the tens of millions of people who will now be their unwilling dupes--er, "clients"--at whatever rates they choose to charge? And that this is why they've been so surprisingly docile during this whole carnival?
Oh, Obama did say that if one couldn't afford this new mandatory help-the-rich-get-richer charity donation, then one could get a waiver. Not, my fellow Americans, a waiver of payment, or a voucher for insurance. No, you could just get a waiver so that you wouldn't get in trouble for not purchasing your overpriced bullshit SupraEcono(trademark!) Insurance Plan. Which, it seems to me, does not actually solve any problems for anyone at all--those who most need health insurance will still not get it. They will just have to fill out paperwork now, showing why they cannot afford the thing the government requires them to have, but for which the government will not pay.
So, fuck it. No public option (p.s. still pretty lame--it will start happening in fucking four years, on some insurance exchange whatever? By which time who knows how many people will have actually died because they didn't say that they once had a blister this one time, during band camp?) no fucking dice.
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