"Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure...They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening."
It has been a decade or so since I first heard Rush Limbaugh use the phrase "a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance" to describe Rosie O'Donnell. I fell in love with the term immediately, and would like to fondly extend it at this time to San Francisco's own Nancy Pelosi.
I would like to, but I would be doing her a kindness in labeling her rhetoric as the offshoot of a mere lack of adequate knowledge. Pelosi knows full well what she is doing in falling back on the tried and true tactic of blaming the rich or vilifying "big business" for the results of her own failed pet projects.
Private insurance companies offer the best possible protection against catastrophe of which a consumer can avail himself. Like any business, they have to earn a profit to stay afloat. This is done by bringing enough people into the insurance pool who fear the results of being caught in a disastrous circumstance that those who actually encounter such a dilemma have enough dollars to avoid being soaked.
Thomas Sowell, with the pungently common sense that is his trademark, raised some very salient questions in a column last week that counter Pelosi's reckless charges:
With both common sense and economic analysis saying that Obama cannot expand government medical care without expanding the already runaway federal deficit, it is quite a trick to get the public to believe otherwise — a big challenge requiring big distractions...
Insurance companies are [a] distraction and a scapegoat because they do not insure "pre-existing conditions." Stop and think about it: If you could wait until you got sick to take out health insurance, why would you buy that insurance while you are well?
You could avoid paying all those premiums and then — after you got sick — take out health insurance and let the premiums paid by other people pay for your medical treatment.
That is not "bringing down the cost of health care." It is sticking somebody else with paying those costs. So is taxing "the rich." So is passing on those costs to your children and grandchildren through government deficit spending.
More and more people are catching onto this, which is exactly why Obamacare is tanking in the polls, even as a health care bill was passed in a House committee on a 30-28 party-line vote late last night.
Contemplate a few possibilities with me:
1. It is more than likely that a politician who constantly claims to speak for "the American people" cares very little about what the American people actually think about a given subject, but is desperate to hold onto his power base, which is sustained by the Washington gravy trough.
2. That same politician has usually never met a payroll and signed paychecks every two weeks for any employees, while trying to decide what kind of health insurance plan they can afford.
3. Trial lawyers, which form a huge component of the Democratic party base, have exacerbated health care costs for decades now by continuous malpractice suits. Some of these are valid, but many of them are frivolous and, as a result, have driven up malpractice insurance premiums. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting tort reform any time soon out of these Congress, though or even entertained as a quasi-serious notion.
4. Could it be that that "filthy rich businessman" may actually be a person who compensates his employees well, is a contributing member of his community and actually has incorporated some economic principles into his business dealings that work in the real world where the requirement not to deficit spend has to actually be met? Not to mention demand for a product that people want to buy and on which they are willing to spend hard-earned dollars?
The time has come to begin to examine preconceived templates. Yet, in spite of the lack of evidence, we embrace the dictates of a biased media and phony politicians, rather than doing the hard work of understanding the economic principles that actually keep the world functioning.
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