Stake the vampires

[lapsedmodernist]

OMG why am I even shocked that the apparent castration perpetrated by the Reptilians Republicans on the Democrats during the Bush Residency is irreversible?

WASHINGTON — In an effort to defuse the most explosive issue in the debate over comprehensive health care legislation, a top Senate Democrat has proposed that any new government-run insurance program comply with all the rules and standards that apply to private insurance.

The proposal was made Monday by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, in a bid to address fears that a public program would drive private insurers from the market.

Calls for a new public plan have provoked more political passion than any other issue in discussions of how to revamp the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care system. The Senate Finance Committee begins to wrestle with the idea at a meeting on Tuesday, where it will examine ways to expand coverage.

President Obama campaigned on a promise to create a public plan, in an effort to compete with private insurers and keep them honest. But insurance companies and Republican lawmakers say a government-run plan could drive private insurers out of business and eventually lead to a single-payer system run by the government...

...Insurers also remain skeptical. Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, said, “We are very, very grateful that members of Congress have been thoughtfully looking at our concerns.” But she said she still saw no need for a public plan “if you have much more aggressive regulation of insurance,” which the industry has agreed to support.

Fuck you, Schumer, fuck you, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, fuck anyone who works for an HMO and gets their annual bonuses for denying sick people treatment. They are all vampires. Karen M. Ignagni is a vampire. Your nice neighbor down the street who is in middle management at Aetna is a vampire. Your mom who is the manager in the Appeals department of Blue Cross is a vampire. America would be better off if they would all fucking killed themselves, but, of course, that won't happen, because they are vampires, and they've got a corporate Hellmouth (or more like Wolfram & Hart, I s'pose) and they will kill the poor, the sick, and the disenfranchised instead.

Also I propose that anyone perpetuating that morono-meme that single-payer = socialist medihorror, with doctors chained up do their chairs, and waiting 27 years for a check-up, be prosecuted for shouting FIRE in a crowded room. Or for hate speech, and by hate I mean hate against everyone who is poor, sick, and disenfranchised (ironically that would be themselves a lot of the time--that is what we call FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS). Yes, I know hate speech is not a crime in America. Perhaps America should take a page from Europe on that, too. In fact, all corporate lobbying = HATE SPEECH. Anything that comes out of the mouth of any HMO CEO = automatically hate speech!

I am going to start my own health insurance company that will have a fleet of time machines and specialize in retroactive abortions so that every piece of shit that ever conducted their upward social mobility via the HMO corporate escalator, operated by corpses and heartbroken family members, would instead be destined for stem cell research labs.

Comments

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

when defamiliarized/enstranged, it sounds so...Dickensonian, no?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I was thinking Dickensonian because of the "industry"--and truly, the American health insurance situation is like some nightmarish passage out of Dickens.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

or Emile Zola. OR--DEFINITELY THEODOR DREISER.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

are you deliberately or accidentally not using "Dickensian"?

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Schumer is such a whore for big business, anyway. I can't believe that Clinton's replacement in NY is even more conservative than Schumer.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

That "wait time" argument infuriates me. The counter-argument I always give is that every country averages wait times across its entire population. In Canada, we average wait times equally, regardless of socio-economic status. In the US, they average wait times based on how much money or how good a job you have; some people don't wait at all, and some people wait until they die.

This was nicely proven when Massachusetts enforced health insurance for (almost) all; suddenly everyone's wait times shot up, and it got hard to find a primary-care doctor. In other words, the US only has "low wait times" because of all the uninsured people, not because of its awesome medical facilities and private insurance industry.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

totally.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

1) You always seem so composed and chic... I am a little *whoa* at the passion of this post. *Whoa* an admiring way. I wish I was better at saving my rant for when it's best deployed.

2) And oh, boy, I am with you all the way. Health care in America is not a case of Yes We Can. Of course we Can. There's no doubt about Can. It has to be a case of Yes, We Want.

3) And if you don't Want to make sure Americans are healthy, able to access necessary treatment across the board, and not told their lives are only worth what they can pay for them, then, yes. You are a vampire.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

1. I do? How peculiar! I generally think of myself as all over the place and chaotic, and get the impression that I frequently come off that way, too. Also clearly you didn't read my livejournal from 2001 until 2008 (with especially consistent and potent cathartic vitriol deposited here on lj almost daily just so I wouldn't choke on my own rage-vomit every morning while reading the news).

2. Healthcare is, like, the medieval morality play anvil example of how INSANE American capitalism is in a number of ways.

3. A vampire ruling class supported by zombies repeating zombie arguments fueled by atavistic circulation of the Red Scare and people who've only ever read three books, and Ayn Rand was one of them. If I ran the world, people would be carded when buying books.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

Ayn Rand... there is an Ayn Rand Essay Contest poster outside my office that makes me want to... gah! Mostly makes me want to take it down and draw moustaches on Ms. Rand. Sheesh.

And also, mostly I'd just make people read lots and lots and lots.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

you didn't read my livejournal from 2001 until 2008 (with especially consistent and potent cathartic vitriol deposited here on lj almost daily just so I wouldn't choke on my own rage-vomit every morning while reading the news).

Ha, that totally explains why I feel like you've been so much calmer lately!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

ha!

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

Here's an essay by ian welsh on american insanity. He describes what he sees as three distinct sources of the insanity:

Essential Insanity (http://www.ianwelsh.net/essential-insanity/)


Insane -– believing things that aren’t true. (example, single-payer is worse than what exists)

Insane –- decision makers are cut off from the consequences of their decisions and in fact are getting reverse feedback, as things get worse for most Americans and as America gets weaker and poorer, they are the richest they’ve ever been.

Insane –- so rich that no one will stop doing things that clearly don’t work and are harmful, because people are making money off the insanity.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

3. A vampire ruling class supported by zombies repeating zombie arguments...

thank you for properly labelling them "vampires." people routinely refer to the insolvent banks as "zombie" banks, when they are clearly "vampire" banks -- (un)dead, but sucking the life out of the living population.

i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[prostheticgod04.livejournal.com]

I dig your posts in general, but this one, specifically, has what those in the know call "the zing."

I liking very much this post am doing.

For what it's worth, Max Baucus + Ed Kennedy are equal to or greater than (1)Chuck Schumer and they're a bit more pro-change in the HC arena so take heart in the Senate. It's anyone's guess what the final result will look like, but I think change is a comin' and there's the Obama machine in the White House and some strong advocates for the good stuff in both houses. I doubt the final product will be as totally awesome as something I'd come up with if it were left to my own devices but Republicans are somewhat involved so would it be realistic to expect an absence of flaws?

Re: i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

Have you not heard Baucus's "pre-compromise" where "single-payer is 'off the table'?"

("Why is it off the table?" "well, because it would never pass" "uh, have you no understanding of the concept 'to negotiate'?" "well, i do, but i'm not negotiating with them -- i'm lying to you.")

Re: i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[prostheticgod04.livejournal.com]

I had not. Now I'm a little worried - why are they so afraid of Single Payer?

Re: i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

Here is Luke Mitchell repeating what Baucus had said. I have heard the audio of Baucus saying that single payer is "off the table," but I don't have a link to that audio:


AMY GOODMAN: So, why isn’t single payer being considered? Why has it been rejected out of hand? Why do you think it’s the only answer?

LUKE MITCHELL: Well, it’s amazing how far—how out of hand it’s been rejected. Max Baucus said a couple of months ago that everything is on the table. Max Baucus, the US senator who’s going to have a big hand in coming up with whatever reform we do see this year, said everything is on the table, except single payer. He went out of his way to say that we can’t have single payer.


Interview with Luke Mitchell (http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/6/as_obama_hosts_summit_on_health)

See also, Economist Dean Baker on 'insurance' companies objections to single-payer (http://www.truthout.org/042709B).

I posted some excerpts below in this thread.

Re: i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[prostheticgod04.livejournal.com]

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00004643
this might shed some light on it as well...

Re: i'm with anthrokeight on this one...

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

When Baucus held a hearing recently, single-payer advocates showed up to ask why single-payer was not being considered. He had them thrown out/arrested.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/6/headlines#6

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

and eventually lead to a single-payer system run by the government...

Which is the only kind of system that actually works and provides decent health care for everyone. We used to have such a system in Australia, until we got a conservative government. Now we have a complete mess.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

For Orwell's sake, I don't call them "conservative." It's a marketing brand that they have been developing. They don't pay me to spread their propaganda. "Right-wing" is more descriptive and doesn't let them abuse English.

[pyoor_excuse]

I find it ironic that when I whine about what people in my emergency department whine about ("I've been here 2 hours, and the doctor's not reviewed me yet" [In that time they've been seen by: Nurse for triage, Doctor for initial review, radiologist for Xray, Nurse for analgesia...]) my friends from the states tell me how they wish it was like that in the US...

...and friends in the US talk about waiting 10-12 hours in an emergency department for treatment...

...and then Bush came over here to tell *us* how to run the NHS...?

Le sigh. I hope you get free-at-point-of-use-universal-healthcare soon...

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

dean baker on the so-called "health insurance" companies:


The insurance industry has taken a creative tack to this prospect. They have argued that a public plan would put them out of business because everyone would want to buy into it. This is rather novel because it implies that the insurers don't think they can compete successfully with the government.

They have some evidence for this view. Private insurers have long had the opportunity to operate within the Medicare system and compete with the traditional government-run program. The overwhelming majority of beneficiaries have always opted for the government program.

This is why the insurers insisted on a system of subsidies in the Medicare Advantage program that was put in place in 2003. Under this system, the government pays a subsidy of more than 11 percent to private insurers for the people who sign up for their plans, costing the government close to $10 billion a year.

Apparently, the private insurers don't feel they would fare any better on a level playing field in the market for insurance more generally than they have in Medicare. Hence, they are arguing against allowing the government-run plan because it would put them out of business.

This is extraordinary. In the old days, we used to think that private businesses could provide many goods and services more efficiently than the government. Now, the insurers are complaining that because the government can provide health insurance more efficiently, they should not be forced to compete with a government plan. That ranks pretty high in the chutzpah category.


Can Health Insurers Whine Louder Than Bankers? (http://www.truthout.org/042709B)