"AMY GOODMAN: And what are those talking points? What is the game plan of the health insurance industry?
WENDELL POTTER: Well, the game plan is based on scare tactics. And, of course, the thing they fear most is that the country will at some point gravitate toward a single-payer plan. That’s the ultimate fear that they have. But currently—and they know that right now that is not something that’s on the legislative table. And they’ve been very successful in making sure that it isn’t. They fear even the public insurance option that’s being proposed, that was part of President Obama’s campaign platform, his healthcare platform. And they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that.
And they’ll be working with their ideological allies, with the business community, with conservative pundits and editorial writers, to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead us down the slippery—excuse me, slippery slope toward socialism and that you will be, in essence, putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. That is—you know, they’ve used those talking points for years, and in years past they’ve always worked."
America, we need to beat these people. We need to stop them because they are literally putting at greater risk, or killing, our parents, our children and ourselves.
And as Michael Moore points out, his movie is not NOT just for the poor and the un-insured, it's for the people who HAVE insurance but are at risk for being dumped off the policy whenever they most need the coverage. The industry is in it for the money and they will dump people off in any way they can.
Business owners need to get involved in this, and not just swallow the party line that's being dished out. Small businesses are being pushed to the wall, forced to drop insurance coverage on their employees (some of whom are family!) or to pay exorbitant premiums, only to see coverage vanish when someone actually has a serious claim.
ReplyDeleteBusiness has traditionally opposed a government plan because it would be funded with taxes, but the fact is that the insurance companies are "taxing" them to the limit and beyond.
You are completely right, Pogonip, about Small Business owners getting the shaft in this.
ReplyDeleteAnd by small business, we are talking about anywhere from truly small ones and those which gross in the million dollar range. These small companies had, at one time, started to band together into an association(and I don't know what that movement is doing now) to get better rates for their insurance coverage for employees. It was not government that was the problem there, it was the insurance industry's fiddling and fudging to cost cut to the bone.
This industry is a FOR PROFIT industry- thus the name-and never should have been allowed to insinuate itself between the doctor and the patient.
I am watching with trepidation for how a sib's insurance will handle the family's "coverage", as this one is legendary for dropping the insured when a big issue arises. I'm being as transparent as I dare, here.