Health Lobbies: Start Your Engines

Tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on its ten-year long health insurance reform bill. It has taken about a year to write, numerous amounts of drafts to go through, and, of course, millions of dollars of health insurers' revenues to sway Congresspeople.

Most of the money that has gone into the bill-writing process from the health lobbies have been used for the actual creation of the bill. The money has been used behind the scenes, with hopes to sway Senators and Representatives to vote nay on reform. Thankfully for us, a large block of these men and women have stuck steadfastly on helping the American People. They understand the necessary course of action right now and will see it through for us.

While thinking in idealist terms-- like we are doing in the above sentences-- will help us in some ways, we must also realize that money is power. At this moment in time, the lobbies are now switching their tactics. Instead of sticking in the background, they have, late last night, come out in full force to undermine the process and feed the right wing with lies and "mistruths." The organization, America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, paid for a report that said that the Baucus bill in the Senate Finance Committee would add over $1600 in annual costs to families with health insurance. As I'm sure any of you in the intelligentsia out there can tell, the AHIP is a political advocacy group and, as such, is a biased organization. The people responsibly for the report yearn for reform about as much as Rush Limbaugh yearns for a late-night snack of nice, tasty rice cakes. In other words, they are hoping reform dies.

Here is the irony of this whole situation. The People pay their health insurance companies thousands of dollars in premiums every year, the intent being that, if they die, that money be used for their hospital bills. Then, these corporations take the money, and put it into organizations like the AHIP, which in turn uses the money to feed lies to the People.

This is not an isolated case. On average, health insurers spend 17% of every dollar on over head costs. Seventeen percent of your premiums goes to exorbitant administrators' salaries, private bureaucracies, real death panels, and, of course, marketing. We give these corporations our money so that they can spend it on getting more suckers into their ranks to give them more money. This is the cycle.

To put this all in perspective, Medicare spends only 5% on overhead charges. This whole idea of public programs as huge, wasteful bureaucracies is silliness. Its dangerous, and we should not allow the big wigs to get away with the lies. End it.

Forget about the public plan. Forget about the Baucus Bill. As I see it, everyone in the nation should be able to take advantage of a plan so efficient that it only spends 5% of their money on overhead costs. That is competition. Limbaugh should be proud.