Mr. American Enterprise ~ Making Money Off Misfortune

Ill: Webdailyplanet

GWB Sez: "It's a way to encourage people to transfer from the private sector to government health-care plans. . . . I think it's wrong, and I think it's a mistake."

Today's news that Bush threatens to veto a renewal of a plan to cover more uninsured children & the poor has your Demon spitting blood, but she really can't decide where, exactly to direct her vitriol first ~ Bush, as always, is at least consistent in being the shill for the corporations doing such a bad job of things that they're destroying their own markets in the rapacious pursuit of profit. Talk about a dysfunctional industry ~ seconded only by automakers who insist on building gas-guzzling, chrome encrusted SUV's.

I say let them adapt to changing market conditions or die like the dinosaurs they are. The bulk of the U.S. population is aging, as well as living longer. What's the private health insurance industry's response to that? After demanding & collecting our premium payments for years, we find ourselves dumped unceremoniously when we develop serious health problems, as we all inevitably do (unless, of course, you're immortal or a member of Congress, & in the latter case you enjoy the finest health care in the country, at the taxpayers' expense).

Try the high-risk healthcare pool, if your state has one, & if you can afford to maintain the premiums, pay sky-high decuctibles, & go without prescription coverage. In my state, private health insurers have so cowed the state regulatory board, which at one time insisted on advocating for consumers, the insurers threatened to stop offering their wares, & now there may as well be no regulatory board at all. We take what we're offered, & we will like it.

No, I can't feel sorry for them & their dwindling profitability. Business is business, eh Bush? Keep up or die. So sorry. Nothing personal.

Not that I don't also reserve some ire for the "Key members of the Senate Finance Committee [who] announced a bipartisan deal late last week that would raise the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 61 cents, to $1 a pack, to expand the program by $35 billion over the next five years. That would create total program funding of $60 billion over the period -- enough, lawmakers said, to cover 3.3 million additional kids while keeping the focus on children of the working poor. The committee is expected to vote on the plan as early as this week."

Or the equally annoying "House Democrats, meanwhile, have sought an even bigger increase: $50 billion, for a total of $75 billion in funding over five years. It would be paid for, at least in part, by trimming payments to private Medicare plans for seniors. Such an expansion would reach even more of the nation's 8.3 million uninsured children and, more generally, provide a foundation for further efforts to cover more of the 45 million uninsured Americans, they argue."

The time for tinkering & preposterous "sin taxes," as well as shameless attempts to rob Peter to pay Paul is long past. (Lessee, children or seniors, who gets healthcare?)

We have a genuine healthcare crisis on our hands. Step up to the plate & do the right thing. Universal healthcare for all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401000.html