Why backroom deals w/ the health insurance industry could be called a genuine bipartisan effort

THE... effort to overhaul the U.S.'s broken health care system has become bogged down in a surreal discussion about "death panels," forced euthanasia and Big Brother government. In this respect, the town hall meetings have the feeling of a reality show being acted out far from where the real "debate" is. And that is in the back rooms of the White House and the Congress where health industry "stakeholders" are really shaping the policy.

...Terhune and Epstein focus primarily on the role of United Health, the largest health insurer in the country, showing how the company has catered to members of Congress with seemingly reliable actuarial projections, and fact-filled PowerPoint presentations...

These efforts are nothing like the nefarious role of the Lewin Group, an industry front group whose suspect research has abetted conservative propaganda against publicly funded health insurance, right? Liberal MSNBC cable show hosts Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have called out the Lewin Group for producing corporate propaganda masquerading as research.

One problem with this picture, though: United Health owns the Lewin Group. So there you have it: the health insurers, not to mention Big Pharma, the hospital lobby and the rest, have health reform coming and going. In fact, one might even describe this as bipartisanship in action: while the Lewin Group provides the GOP with its talking points, United Health and their friends are supplying congressional Democrats with theirs...

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/18/how-the-democrats-sold-out-health-care

is that the politicians should bring family members on who have been screwed by the big insurance companies and tell their stories. Particularly compelling stories are folks with preexisting conditions losing their jobs and insurance. Denial of claims or treatments would be additional effective stories. One poster was talking about the out of network expense for an emergency ambulance ride (his daughter was at college - I guess the insurance company expected them to call an ambulance from a state away??)

Where this is losing momentum is that folks with Cadillac plans (like our UAW) workers need to be convinced that portability and some security regarding premiums when you lose your job are worth a lot. I am trying to convince the folks in my office, but so far no takers and our insurance is not nearly as good as the union insurance.

Maybe someone should ask UHC why a 16% payroll tax (like the Germans) does not make more sense than their high deductible plan which I have through my employer. Before they start paying, my employer and I have have to spend $16,000 ($12K in premiums and a $4300 deductible). I am pretty well compensated, but I still would be better off under the German system than my employer's plan (and I get portability and security if I lose my job).

What have those abused citizens done for them lately? Money talks and bullshit walks, and as far as those recipients of campaign funds are concerned, we are bullshit.

There was recently a very good article on Tom Daschle's conflict-of-interest insurance and pharmaceutical industry lobbying, and who the clients are, etc., by the New York Times on August 23rd, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/health/policy/23daschle.html . Daschle is self-described during the article as "the architect of the President's health plan," and is the inventor of the "trigger" charade, that would effectively kill all public style plans, by never allowing the public option to be deemed called-for by commercial industry not meeting its obligations. Rachel Maddow has exposed this by having the writer David Sirota on to explain it, and this routine has been used before to kill legislation.

I now believe--as many do--that the whole "we need bi-partisanship" routine is wholly and completely a corporate lobbyist propaganda campaign; it was never even "stupid but sincere." First they narrow their known-universe down to their own group, Congress, where the entire spectrum of thought can be summed up with the words "both sides of the aisle," "both sides," then having shut everybody else out, they pretend that adherance to the corrupt little corporate club of vested interests that Congress (and the White House) has become, is actually an attempt to expand to include "all" ranges of opinion. The whole time, all their alliances with each other were private, individual corporate deals they were making amongst themselves. I have even come to the conclusion that the disruptions at all the health care town hall meetings during August, were either deliberately planned, or if not, then were welcomed anyway--by corporate Democrats even. They completely derailed the issue, made it impossible for the REAL anger and overwhelming popular opinion to be expressed--the one where the American people tell nightmare stories about out of control prices, denied care, and being cut off insurance--and replaced it with corporate slogans about "death panels" and other unanswerable things that don't make any sense.

The recent one with that phony, Steny Hoyer, is what convinced me. You might remember that Hoyer has been one of the blocks in the House, killing a Medicare style program on behalf of corporate interests; I have listened to early town halls, before all this "organized" crap, where Hoyer has lectured nurses and doctors, that there will be no songle-payer or public plan, "we don't have the votes" line, etc. (How can you "not have the votes" when 80% of the American people are begging you for this? YOU are stopping it.) Then, at one of the recent town halls with all the yelling, etc., Hoyer spent the whole time "trying to reassure" the audience that it would NOT be "liberal," NOT be "socialism," and after a while I started to wonder what the fuck this phony liar is acting this way for. Especially when Hoyer went on and on about "I know you are worried about taxes" and "costs," when that has not been the popular outrage at all--we are ALREADY being bled to death, BY CORPORATIONS. The focus now becomes, "Don't worry, I won't be a liberal"; deliberate.

Remember when they first propsed bailing out the Wall St. speculaor/brokers, and were overwhelmed with millions of phone calls, e-messages, and other contacts, some 95% against it--then all of a sudden they got calls that were supporting it, and so they told us all the "we" had changed our minds and now supported the bailout, which they then did? Then it came out that the pro-bailout flurry of calls at the end, were all traceable to Washington, D.C. lobbying firm phone numbers--Bernie Sanders said this on the floor of the Senate, for example--but it had already been done. Same thing here; this whole situation is very bad.