Bob Johnson (continues)

Most significantly, in order to make up the gap between the limited pool of money that the cooperative has available and the coverage demanded by its subscribers, they will provide only a paltry reimbursement to the healthcare provider. As they do now, healthcare providers will just not accept the “insurance”. The reimbursement hardly covers the overhead to collect it much less the time and expertise of the healthcare provider to treat the patient. Ask anyone “covered” under Medicaid how difficult it is to find a doctor. So again, they will end up seeking discoordinated acute care in emergency rooms instead of effective longitudinal care.

The Senate Finance committee bill does not cut costs since the insurance companies are still raking it off the top and still in the business of denying care. Just as Congress cannot now control the bonuses given to AIG and bank executives, it cannot control the obscene profits, along with compensation, realized by the insurance companies. How much more suffering and expenditure is it going to take to realize that insurance companies are heartless, soulless, amoral entities, run by the same ilk of executives, who only mission is the extreme maximalization of their bottom line.

The only way to provide universal coverage and cut costs is to eliminate the low hanging fruit of the insurance companies. One third of the healthcare dollar is eaten up by administrative costs. The overhead of Medicare is only 3.5%. We can no longer afford the overhead costs of private insurance companies.

So why doesn’t the congress get it when 70% of the American people do. For the very reason that Senator Baucus and his “bluedog” colleagues are bought and paid for by the insurance industry. Their staffs are part of the revolving door of K street insurance lobbyists. Even in our own congressional district, we are served up candidates who don’t have the spine to face down big money. Not one of them will support the public option, much less taking the insurance companies out of the mix.

The latest last minute objection of the insurance industry to the Finance committee’s bill is a smoke screen to provide cover for its members. The insurance companies are laughing all the way to the bank with the Bluedogs singing “signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours.”