Political Punch
ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
October 17, 2009
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports
President Obama is warning that, as the debate over health care reform draws to a close, the insurance industry is “rolling out the big guns” and “breaking open their massive war chest” as a “last ditch effort” to fight against reform.
“They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people,” the president said in his weekly address, “It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus.”
President Obama said that “like clockwork” the insurance industry “and their apologists” have gone on cable television waving “industry-funded” studies in the air to block reform.
“Every time we get close to passing reform,” he said, “the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”
President Obama cited the acknowledgement this week by PriceWaterhouseCoopers of the deficiencies of their own study performed for America’s Health Insurance Plans.
“Even the authors of one of these studies have now admitted publicly that the insurance companies actually asked them to do an incomplete job,” he said. …
With little or no regulation, the health-care industry has become quite wealthy.
Most human beings want to stay out of coffins and stay out of jails – so there is a natural motivation to pay the price charged for helping human beings stay out of coffins and stay out of jails.
While the products and services that help human beings stay out of jail are regulated, the neocons love of de-regulation has helped the health-care industry enjoy bountiful “bottom lines”.
While to some, this neocon action/inaction could be perceived as a bias, the neocons have an internal “shield” against such thoughts –some call the internal “shield” IN-DENIAL.
A ton of Americans would be priced out of the health-care market were it not for the assistance of corporate America. And corporate America is now feeling the pinch and asking the American workers to shoulder more of the cost of health care.
What kind of product/service prospers in a market environment where people can’t afford the product/service?
A single instance of a “broken body part” can pave the way to bankruptcy if paid out-of-pocket by the average American worker. And a single instance of an MRI service does not come cheap.
So, what motivates the health-care industry to stay entrenched in such a high priced environment?
Look at the below graph of a comparison of profits between Wall Street business and the health-care industry:
When the choice is: “your money or your life”, I guess that is no choice at all. But the comedian Jack Benny would need time to think that choice over.
[The Jack Benny era has gone. We are now in the neocon era. Any similarity between the Jack Benny era and the neocon era is likely due to defective observation or perhaps hallucination]
|
*** |
Tags: block reform, funding studies designed to mislead, industry funded studies, insurance industry, massive war chest, president obama
