They had their chance in 1993. The health insurers could have been part of the solution then, but they chose to sabotage reform and spend the next 16 years making the health care system in American far more expensive, far less available and far worse than the minimum expected in an industrialized nation.
Now, when the evidence is overwheliningly against them and the jury is voting to convict, they want a deal.
…representatives from the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, Advamed, the California Hospital Association, the Greater New York Hospital Association, and SEIU (presented) Barack Obama with a letter promising to aid his health care reform effort by cutting health care spending by 1.5 percentage points over the next 10 years. That sounds minimal. But it actually amounts to $2 trillion in savings.
The politics of this should surely cheer supporters of reform. In essence, this is the entire medical industry stepping forward and declaring themselves partners in Obama's effort. It leaves Republicans isolated. It allows the administration to credibly claim that they are working with the stakeholders to cut costs. It puts the industry on record saying that reform will bring new efficiencies rather than increased spending. And it's simple evidence of the momentum building behind the administration's effort. These groups wouldn't be jockeying for a seat at the table if they didn't think everyone was eventually going to sit down.
But it's not just the administration that benefits from the optics. It's the medical industry. The fact that the White House is making a big deal of their support means it would be a big deal if they lost it. And so it's worth asking what, exactly, the health care industry has committed itself to.
And the answer is: Not much. As one senior administration official said to me, "this is a commitment, not a plan." The industry coalition has gestured towards various areas of potential savings -- among them billing reform, health information technology, and linking payment to outcomes. But they've not presented a detailed proposal for attaining them. They have not set down enforcement mechanisms. Put simply, they are, at this juncture, helping the White House with its messaging. But that doesn't mean they will help the White House with its legislation.
This is the kind of deal not even the most unrepentant street criminals would propose. They break into your house and steal all your stuff. The cops catch them. The thieves say to the judge: OK, if you let us go and let us keep all the stuff we stole, we promise that instead of robbing 1,000 houses in the next 10 year, we'll rob only 985.
Let's remember who we're talking about. These aren't car manufacturers who are stupid but still pay skilled laborers middle-class wages to create valuable goods that benefit the economy.
These aren't even grossly overpaid Wall Street con men whose none-too-bright schemes at least keep money flowing through the system
Private health insurers are criminals, period. They deliberately charge back-breaking premiums to the people most in need of health care, then cruelly deny them coverage for life-saving procedures or medication.
They make hundreds of billions of dollars in profit by cherry-picking the wealthy and healthy and murdering - yes, deliberately denying care is negligent homicide - the poor and sick.
Monster corporations like HCA and Humana that sell health insurance also run their own for-profit hospitals, which either refuse to treat the uninsured, or else charge the uninsured ten times the reimbursement rate for the same treatment given to insured patients.
Insurance companies are why you and your doctor NEVER make the final decision about what care you get - insurance company drones do. Insurance company drones who are paid bonuses according to how many requests for coverage they DENY.
And no, I do NOT buy the prissy line "well, at least this shows the insurers are on board with reform." Really? How you figure?
They are giving up NOTHING. They are offering NOTHING. They are promising NOTHING. They are guaranteeing NOTHING.
They have one goal and one goal only: Stop a public health care option at all costs. They will lie, cheat, steal and keep on murdering thousands of people every day to ensure they get to keep making billions of dollars in tax-free profits off of all those dead bodies they themselves murdered.
Letting the insurance companies set the terms of the debate - and make no mistake, this is precisely what Obama is doing - is the biggest mistake Obama can possibly make as president.
Worse than not prosecuting Smirky/Darth for war crimes.
Worse than watering down the stimulus package to ineffectiveness.
Worse than failing to slow global warming with cap-and-trade.
Worse than handing $5 trillion - so far - to Wall Street con artists as a reward for fucking the economy into the ground.
Bush's re-election was not quite enough of a catastrophe to make people move to Canada.
Health care "reform" on terms the health insurance companies want will be.
These fuckers are sixty years and several orders of magnitude behind what Americans want. They know goddamn well that they're stuck in a narrow tunnel with the Single Payer train roaring toward them. They've got nothing and they're trying to pull a massive bluff.
Here's the deal Obama should offer the health insurance industry: We're outlawing you. Kill yourselves now and we'll let your widows and children beg on the streets.
C'mon, Barack, you're a poker player. The health insurers are making one last, desperate ploy. That's flopsweat turning their cards into mush. Crush 'em. Crush 'em now.
Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic.
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