Wednesday, October 21, 2009

US Health Insurers Up the Ante

By Robert Parry
October 21, 2009

The chutzpah shown by the U.S. health insurance industry in taking aim at the weakest reform bill in Congress – the one approved by the Senate Finance Committee – reflects the insurers’ sense that they have beaten back other proposals that might have represented significant threats.

Read on.
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2 comments:

fact checker said...

Pleased that you wrote about this topic. You've described the situation very succinctly -- the best I've seen.

Wed Oct 21, 10:16:00 PM 2009
fact checker said...

...but, with that said, how about putting the heat on Obama himself? What's up with him?


The president is back to lecturing us about health care reform
by John Aravosis (DC) on 10/21/2009

There's something funny going on here. We've got the polls on our side, we've finally got momentum on our side after the Teabagger mess in August, and the president himself supported the public option during the campaign, and claims to still support it as the best solution to our health care mess. Then why isn't the White House pushing for a public option?

We're missing something here. A political friend at dinner last night suggested that maybe the White House promised to kill the public option as part of its secret deal with Big Pharma last spring. I have no idea if that's true, but something is wrong here, some piece of the puzzle is missing. It's becoming increasingly clear that the President has no intention of including a real public option for everyone in the final bill. If he did, he would publicly push for it. He's refused. His staff has refused. In politics, as in life, if you tell your opponent that you're not terribly wedded to your proposal, then your proposal is toast.

There's something the President is not telling us. And it's rather annoying for him to be lecturing us about coming together when, frankly, we are together. Unified around a campaign promise he is so blithely blowing off. We have the best chance at reform in a generation, and this White House is trying awfully hard to get the bare minimum with the least possible effort. We deserve to know why....

Wed Oct 21, 10:22:00 PM 2009

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