The Health Care Scam Revealed

I have an idea for a health insurance company, one that is sure to work really well. Here's the pitch:

You pay me a fee every month—say, between $500 and $1,000—and I pocket the money. In return, in the event you need someone to cover your medical expenses, I'll tell you in so many words to go fuck yourself, you're on your own. I'll use any excuse to deny your claim, and if one of my employees does the unthinkable and puts me in a position of having to shell out money to pay for your freeloading, I'll send that imbecile to join you on the unemployment line.

I might feel the occasional bout of generosity; I might deign to throw you the occasional bone, just to keep you complacent, and cover some minor thing. But don't expect me to pay for your heart operation. What were you doing wearing it out by making it beat so much, anyway? Don't you know that's a sure-fire way to end up needing surgery at some point? Especially if you don't take care of yourself by eating right and exercising regularly? And you can forget about that cancer treatment. Drugs cost money. Go buy your own. I'm busy counting.

By the way, you can forget about complaining. Even if you manage to get through the array of computers set up to discourage you from lodging a complaint, any human employee is going to give you the runaround, too. Raise too much of a ruckus, and I'll just cancel your policy. That'll show you, you ingrate.

And I won't stop there. Just in case some uppity customer decides this isn't legal, or shouldn't be, I'll use some of the money you pay me every month to bribe politicians in the form of campaign contributions to pass legislation protecting my right to bilk you for those monthly fees. Oh, sure, you might complain. You might even try to vote out corrupt politicians who accept my bribes, but by the time you get off your lazy ass I'll have bought pretty much everyone in D.C. and the fifty states who might be capable or inclined to resist. Let's face it: with campaigns costing more and more money each cycle, politicians listen to those who can fork over a hell of a lot more than that measly ten or twenty dollars you can afford to part with. You're screwed.

Great idea, right? Well, not for you, but we're talking about me. You don't factor into the equation, except as an ever-opening wallet. What's that? You don't think it's so hot a concept? You're right, it isn't. But that's exactly what you buy into whenever you sign up for insurance from companies ranging from Humana to Kaiser Permanente. The only difference between what I pitched to you, and what the health insurance industry tells you, is that I'm being up front about my intentions.

The health insurance industry is the among the biggest and most successful scam operations in the history of the United States. It is set up to get you to pay money in return for almost nothing. And because what little public health care exists is severely underfunded, and qualifications limited only to certain cross-sections of the poor and elderly, this means your options for alternatives are extremely limited. In fact, nearly fifty million Americans have no recourse but to go without insurance, because they cannot afford the premiums (I'm one of them, by the way).

How did all this get started? As Michael Moore pointed out in his excellent documentary, SiCKO (which I blogged about last year), the scam was created when the CEO of Kaiser Permanente at the time had his flunkies meet with then-president Richard Nixon to discuss how the insurance industry could kill two birds with one stone: kill what public health insurance existed, and ensure that it could never return, and become obscenely wealthy in the process. It wasn't long afterward that Nixon pushed through Congress legislation that would fundamentally alter the health care system of the United States—for the worse.

What Nixon and Kaiser rammed through Congress resulted in the creation of the HMO system we suffer today. It's the scam outfit that separates you from your money, while denying you coverage for your medical expenses. And you allow it to go on. Why is this? I could write a dissertation about it, but essentially it all boils down to fear and the dominance of the right in the media on issues such as health care. Professor George Lakoff of Berkley University described in 2005 how conservatives have come to shape and control the national discussion, and get Americans to vote against their own interests. The fear element involves scaring you with horror stories of socialism and the loss of freedom, never mind that you've already given up your freedom.

The problem is compounded not only by the failure of the Democratic Party to oppose this sort of swindle, but in its embrace of the status quo as a matter of policy. While Barack Obama builds up his illusion of progressivism, his actual history suggests he is not prepared to challenge the status quo at all, but merely is all too willing to continue it. Hillary Clinton joins him in being among the top recipients of bribe money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The two Democratic rivals for the presidency have even taken millions of dollars in bribe money from health professionals. And we all know where Republican John McCain stands on the issue of health care: more of the same.

This is the scam you pay for with your tax dollars, and the money you pay out of pocket. In my next entry, I'll tell you how you can do something about it.

What's behind the hatred of Hillary Clinton?

It seems everyone is in uproar over Hillary Clinton’s remarks about her staying in the race for the Democratic nomination to run for president through the month of June, and her ill-chosen example of Bobby Kennedy—the senator and brother of John F. Kennedy who, like his presidential sibling, was assassinated. The remarks were, of course, in the poorest of taste and they have received all the scorn they deserve. But are the commotion raised by those remarks, the sheer outrage and disgust, for the right reason?

Clinton could just as easily been talking about herself, and the potential threat of assassination to her own person, as about her rival for the nomination, Barack Obama. That few, if any, seem to realize this is yet another attack on her for all the wrong reasons. Yes, it was insensitive and divisive, hurtful and potentially dangerous, for Clinton to invoke the trauma of Bobby Kennedy’s murder in 1968 in making the case that she must remain in contention for the nomination to run for president.

Hillary Clinton’s poor judgment is grounds for pushing her out. Consider her recent threat to obliterate Iran. No, the threat was not a direct one, being as it was merely a loaded response to an equally loaded question put to her by an interviewer. But that Clinton would even take the bait—knowing full well that the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stated flat out that Tehran is not pursuing nuclear weapons; that it abandoned any attempts to do so as long as five years ago; that its nuclear ambitions really do seem geared more toward energy production (at least for the time being); and that even if it were making weapons it would still be nearly a decade before even one successful bomb would be made—shows her willingness to be manipulated into saying and doing potentially very destructive things by the far right.

And who can forget her teary-eyed display of selfish egomania right before the New Hampshire primary, wherein she said, so very condescendingly, that Americans are too stupid to realize how much they need her to be president—right before segueing into an attack on her chief rival’s readiness that was worthy of Karl Rove himself? These examples paint a clear portrait of someone so bent on pursuing a crown, so egotistical, that her stability (indeed, her very integrity) as a leader must be called into question. For these reasons, more than anything else and for the sake of honor, Mrs. Clinton should drop out now.

But the reasons for pressuring her to abandon her pursuit of the presidency go far beyond her moral vacuum, her willingness to say and do anything in order to be crowned president. And they have nothing to do with delegate math; Mrs. Clinton is in a far better position to win the nomination at convention than any of her underdog predecessors of the past thirty years. No one in the media pressured Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, or Jesse Jackson to drop out of presidential races before convention—at least, not on the level pundits who have called for Clinton’s departure have done. Nor do the reasons have to do with the false allegations of racism that have plagued both Hillary and her husband, Bill, since the campaign began heating up. Indeed, if any of the presidential candidates from either political party have exploited race in a negative fashion, it is Barack Obama with his insistence on distancing himself from any and all hints of Black resentment at how this subsection of our society has been treated through America’s history.

The reasons for calling for an end to the Clinton campaign stem, I think, from an irrational hatred of the woman that runs far deeper than it has any right to. Had a man said half the things she has said, he might be allowed to slide—especially if that “man” happens to be a Republican, such as John McCain (the presumptive nominee of his party this year). What is behind this hatred? I can only guess; certainly, Americans are justifiably wary at the prospect of going twenty or more years with either a Bush or a Clinton occupying the White House. But we’ve had political dynasties before, to one degree or another, with nary a peep from the press or the public.

Could it be, in the end, the prospect of having a woman in power who truly, unlike any “First Lady” since Eleanor Roosevelt, dared to be more than presidential arm candy? There appears to be some justification for this theory; the intense opposition to her attempt to reform the health care system during her husband’s presidency sparked chauvinistic indignation that a woman would involve herself in presidential-level policy-making. But, again, this doesn’t really hold up, for after the public and very final defeat of Hillary’s effort to change the health insurance system, she sold out to the industry and became little more than the caricature of a “First Lady” her opponents wanted her to be. Her public involvement in Bill’s policy-making seemed to go away. She was, or so many believed, properly chastened for being uppity enough to think she could be more than a pretty face.

This hatred of Hillary Clinton is much more personal, and I don’t know why. Nor, I suspect, do those who have so relentlessly attacked her.

Why Clinton is going to become 2008's Ralph Nader.

Everyone's talking about Hillary Clinton's win in Pennsylvania yesterday over rival Barack Obama. Ten whole percentage points: may I make whoopee in my pants, now? It's still not enough to help the senator supposedly representing New York catch up to the one supposedly representing Illinois in terms of pledged delegates.

Clinton's broke, trailing her Democratic rival by a small but undeniable margin, and now reduced to threatening to nuke Iran in the event it uses its non-existent nuclear weapons to attack Israel (let me reiterate: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, a finding held by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies—so the fact that Clinton and Obama keep acting as though the opposite is true means neither of them has a fucking clue on anything, and why we're supposed to trust their judgment when they can't even call bullshit on the lies being shat out by the Bush-Cheney regime is beyond my comprehension). Meanwhile, John McCain gets to have the media give him another round of reportorial oral sex for his "decency" in choosing not to run a dirty ad against Obama.

As recently as last month Zogby and other polls were showing the senator pretending to represent Arizona narrowly ahead of either of his Democratic rivals for the dictatorship. The Republican is using the time between now and the general election to win back his party's crazed right-wing base, raise money, and plot out his general election strategy. Do I even need to continue explaining what this all means?

Hillary Clinton wants the presidency so bad she is willing to tear the Democratic Party asunder in order to get it, leaving it too battered and weak to win in November. She absolutely cannot let it go, cannot allow an upstart like Barack Obama to "steal" what she thinks is hers by inheritance. And it sure as hell doesn't help that Obama is too big a pandering, hard-headed phony to be able to seal the deal and win a clear mandate from Democratic voters by embracing the Edwards-Kucinich bloc. No, he'd rather use them and dump them to the curb, and his piss-poor performance at the last debate proved he, too, is running out of steam. Like Clinton, he never expected to have to compete this long for the Democratic nomination, and he is becoming dangerously low on ideas.

So no matter how the remaining primaries play out, this fight is going all the way to the convention in August. All because Hillary Clinton won't let go of the illusion that the presidency is somehow hers. If 2008 accomplishes anything, it may be to finally rid Ralph Nader of the blame (wholly undeserved) for destroying any chance Democrats might have had of winning back the White House this century.

Somebody pass me a brick, so I can throw it at my television set the next time I have news coverage of the campaign on. Oh, wait, I have my steel mace for that. Never mind. At any rate, I'd be really grateful for some ideas for how we might avoid this fiasco—because if we can't, the massive ego of Hillary Clinton is going to rain shit down on all of America.

Obama had better pull his head out of his posterior.

According to MSNBC, McCain has erased Obama's ten point lead over him. If the senator from Illinois doesn't start running like a Democrat, and stop acting like a fucking Republican, he's going to find himself making one hell of a concession speech come November. And that shall be bad in far more ways than one.

If Obama really wanted to win this thing, he could have distinguished himself by running to the left of Hillary Clinton -- not to the right of her. His failure to seal the deal, combined with his Republican-style attacks (not that Mrs. Clinton is innocent of following suit) and condescending dismissals of the challenges faced by minorities, indicates that he is fully prepared to blow it come November. Consider this: Recent polls show that Ralph Nader may actually get up to five percent of the vote in November, and that a sizable number of Clinton supporters are likely to vote for McCain -- twenty-eight percent, in fact.

That is how things stand at this point. Can you imagine what shall happen if a bruised and battered Obama comes out of the Democratic National Convention, having alienated upwards of 33% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, and with the media attacking him at every turn having smelled blood in the water? Imagine that pathetic creature going up against McCain. We cannot allow overconfidence to cost us this time. There really is far too much at stake.

My Primary Vote

I just returned from voting in Ohio's primary. I cast my ballot for Dennis Kucinich, as my choice for both the presidency and the 10th Congressional District's representative. And thus my conscience is clean.

I know, I know. "You just wasted your vote," many of you shall say. To that I give you this simple response: Horse shit. The only votes wasted, dear readers, are those not cast and those cast for a candidate who doesn't represent you. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you, or doesn't know what he's talking about.

These are not things I write lightly. I know quite well that what I've just typed shall piss off a number of people. The truth, however, was never designed to make people happy.

Primaries are precisely the time when we as voters are supposed to stand up and vote our beliefs. Why in God's name would anyone vote for someone who doesn't represent him? "Pragmatism"? That's a bullshit excuse, one designed to justify keeping the status quo intact. And for far too long, far too many Democrats have succumbed to that argument. We voted "pragmatically" in 2004, cast our ballots for a candidate who wasn't worth the toilet bowl he shat into, and what did it get us? Nothing, except four more years of crap raining down upon our country. Four more years of craven capitulation -- two of them under a Democratic Congress -- to a boy tyrant who in a sane world would have been removed from office and convicted of treason during the first year of his reign.

Neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have earned so much as a single Democratic vote. But for the desperation of Americans to elect anyone other than a Republican, the adulation and scorn of the corporate media, and the humongous egos of the two prima donnas themselves, they are the candidates we have been saddled with in this primary season.

There is an admonition against allowing the "perfect" to be the enemy of the "good". But really, how many people do you know who ask for or expect perfect? I and everyone I know is fully aware that nothing and no one is perfect. All we want are good policy and good representatives. Yet each and every election cycle, we're forced to accept the mediocre and the downright bad.

It doesn't, and shouldn't, have to be that way. However you intend to vote in the general election, is this or is it not the time to vote your beliefs -- to cast your ballot for the presidential candidate who represents you? Not Big Business, not the DLC, but you. Mr. and Ms. Average American. To hand your ballot to someone who doesn't represent you is to surrender it to the status quo, to send a message that, no matter how much you may complain about the way things are, you're perfectly content to leave it as is.

That isn't democracy, ladies and gentlemen. It's a monarchical system, one in which the will of the public is subjected to the greed and ambition of a political minority whose interests are to keep you beaten down and in service to the economic elite. And I don't know about you ladies and gentlemen, but I refuse to give in to that bullshit. Politicians are supposed to work for us, to be our voices in the halls of power. We are not supposed to subject our interests and political beliefs to those we employ.

Maybe your state's primary or caucus has already been held. Maybe it's today, or has yet to be held. For those of you who fall into the latter categories,ask yourselves if it isn't worth it to challenge this fucked up system by voting for the candidate who represents you, just to see what would happen.

What Romney's departure means for the general election.

With Mitt Romney now out of the Republican race for president, John McCain is much, much closer to locking up his political party's nomination. What does this mean for Democrats? Bad news, and here's why:

McCain now has less to worry about going into November. Mike Huckabee might yet pose a serious challenge, since he has the backing of the religious far right. But this assumes that Huckabee manages to win most states in the remaining primaries and caucuses. And there's no reason to think this shall be the case. The most likely scenario is that McCain continues to do well, and there will be no brokered Republican National Convention.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for delegates, both are likely to go to the Democratic National Convention to settle who shall be the party's nominee for president. Obama has a slight advantage of money; Clinton has had to lend her campaign money from out of pocket, and have her paid staff go without their salaries for a while. But since Super Tuesday, both Clinton and Obama have managed to raise roughly equal amounts of campaign money.

As reported by DHinMI, Howard Dean is trying to get the two prima donna candidates to make some sort of deal to avoid a brokered convention. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee knows why a brokered convention would be bad for the party; while McCain uses the time between now and his party's convention to shore up support, raise money, and form a general election campaign strategy against the Democratic nominee, we'll still be fighting the nominating process out until August. That means whoever the nominee is shall go into the general election exhausted from a drawn out primary fight, and having expended much of his or her financial resources.

So the advantage clearly goes to McCain, if Clinton and Obama insist on staying in competition for the Democratic nomination until convention. And this is where Dean's attempt to make the two prima donnas reach some sort of deal shall fail. Because their egos are so huge, neither Clinton or Obama is willing to accept second fiddle status as vice president. And the fierceness of the campaign so far has taken a publicly visible toll; at the shrub's last SotU liefest, Obama gave Clinton the cold shoulder as she moved to shake hands with Senator Edward Kennedy -- who endorsed her rival. Obama's latest 'Harry and Louise'-style attacks on Clinton's health care plan (which is pissing off a lot of progressives, including economist Paul Krugman), strengthens the likelihood that there will be no Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket.

So while many are cheering Romney's departure from the Republican race, it also presents a serious problem for Democrats. The opposition now has less of a reason to worry about its chances in November, while we have plenty to worry about. Howard Dean's attempts to get the prima donnas to shelve their differences and reach some kind of deal are a public acknowledgment of this problem.

Which makes it all the more sad that John Edwards and not Clinton or Obama was the one to call it quits. Had he won enough early states to be the likely nominee, all this would have been settled and we would be able to stand a chance in November. But now, with Obama and Clinton duking it out until convention, we have once again shot ourselves in the foot by sticking our party with a fundamentally weak candidate going into the general election. The Democratic Party, as usual, has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And that is bad for all of America.

Even Dowd saw through Clinton's crocodile tears.

When Maureen Dowd -- the New York Times' resident über-feminist -- sees through Hillary Clinton's act, that is saying something that ought not to be casually dismissed. In her newest column, Dowd speculates that Clinton might win the nomination by playing the female victim card, as she did in New Hampshire. Now, before I continue, I should point out that I don't care much for Maureen Dowd. She is the NYT's version of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, practicing what I call the schoolgirl characterization brand of political analysis. That is to say, she's all about the shallow, superficial aspects of politics -- chattering on about haircuts and masculinity and clothes, rather than the actual substance of policy positions. But today she was in fine form. She points out:

She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.

Getting brushed back by Barack Obama in Iowa, her emotional moment here in a cafe and her chagrin at a debate question suggesting she was not likable served the same purpose, making her more appealing, especially to women, particularly to women over 45.

Clinton's act the other day was a cynical act of political calculation, one that has served her well. It allowed her to do two things going in the wake of Iowa: gain voter sympathy as the beat-up girl in the campaign; and have cover for her attack on Obama over national security, a page pulled straight from Karl Rove's playbook.

Gordon Brown comes in, the very next day, there are terrorist attacks. Thankfully, they were unsuccessful, from London to Scotland. So, you've got to be prepared on day one with everything ready to go.

It was, as I stated, a cynical calculation. And fundamentally dishonest. For what incoming executives -- other than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- would not have a transition team in place long before election day to prepare for upcoming eventualities, both real and potential? Had Clinton not pretended to lose control of her emotions when she did, her attack would not have worked and Obama might have prevailed -- albeit by a narrower margin than he did in Iowa. Instead, the fake tears tipped that statistically marginal balance in Clinton's favor. Never mind that in terms of delegates, Clinton and Obama won an equal number. She knows as well as her chief rival that what matters is how the press reports the results, not how the statistics break down.

I've never believed, as some have suggested, that Hillary Clinton has no emotions. I do believe she has much better control over them than most lay people, by simple virtue of her trade. She knows when and how to display emotion, and use it to her advantage. There is never a time when Clinton is truly out of control. Consider this bit of condescending whining: "I just don’t want to see us fall backwards...some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not." Put the selfish, teary-eyed whining and the Rovian attack together, and Clinton's political calculations become evident. Her phony breakdown became the thing that salvaged her presidential campaign.

This is not to say that Clinton's near-breakdown didn't have a hint of genuine emotion; after running for months on a sense of entitlement to the presidency, the former president's wife had clearly come to believe the hype over her perceived inevitability. As she saw her hopes of becoming president dashed, she honestly felt as though she was being robbed a second time.

[T]here was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”

The Clintons once more wriggled out of a tight spot at the last minute. Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?

Kudos to Dowd for being smart enough to see through Hillary Clinton's whiny victim act. The question now is, will the rest of America?