Last year, the insurance industry issued a report saying that health care reforms would lead to significantly higher insurance premiums. Obama dismissed the report as "bogus".
Huh. Well I guess that's the good part about the apparent collapse of this whole health insurance reform thing. At least we won't have to worry about those significantly higher insurance premiums. I mean, if there's any group of people who have established a record for honestly and integrity, it's health insurance company executives.
That was the end of the story. Here's the beginning:
US Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday called on a health insurance company to publicly explain why it raised premiums for some customers by 39 percent.
"With so many families already affected by rising costs, I was very disturbed to learn through media accounts that Anthem Blue Cross plans to raise premiums for its California customers by as much as 39 percent," or 15 times faster than inflation, Sebelius said in a letter that was faxed to the insurer.
The rate hikes were "even more difficult to understand" in the light of soaring profits at Anthem Blue Cross's parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, Sebelius said.
Wellpoint earned 2.7 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2009, she said, calling on the insurance company to "provide a detailed justification" for the increase.
In an imaginary but quite plausible reply to Ms. Sebelius, Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly said the justification for the rate increase was quite simple.
"Oh, that report last year? The president was right, it was totally bogus. The very definition of bogus actually. We were quite surprised that anyone really believed it. Pleasantly surprised that is. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those crazy-ass teabaggers, and particularly those tools who voted in the Massachusetts special election for doing our bidding far more effectively than an army of K street lobbyists ever could."
"The amazing thing is, they did it all for no pay and in direct conflict to their own self interest, that's what I can't get over. Whatever. You're all our bitches now, and you better not do anything to annoy us ever again." Ms. Braly concluded. "Now beg us to cover your heart valve replacement. BEG US!!!!!!
Ms Braly then announced in my imagination that the 5 people who begged the hardest would have the procedure covered. At out of network rates. And if you didn't like it you could suck it.
I would just like to take this opportunity again to thank the voters of Massachusetts for fucking us all.
2 comments:
My friend's husband died at 40..after his death, her one child developed juvenile diabetes and the other systemic lupus that attacked her kidneys which had to be treated with chemo. Premiums went from $800/month to $2500/month. In under a year.
It's nice to know when things are going bad, there is somebody there to stick the knife in just a little deeper and give it an extra twist, just for good measure.
I'm sorry DM, but I took President Obama's dismissive interpretation to mean exactly that the report provided by the insurance industry was nothing more than an elaborate fabrication, that its conclusion would be bogus no matter what they attempted to say, and there should be no reason that anyone believes a report published to tout its own self-interest; the meaning of whatever they were trying to say was based on insufficient statistics, and bogus.
I did not actually read the report, but in fact assumed that whatever it said would conclude quite obviously to the imbeciles among us they were doing everything correctly and ethically, that the status quo was fine, and there was absolutely no reason to desire any measure of reform of any kind at all.
As a matter of fact, I understood President Obama to state on more than one occasion that for all intents and purposes of this particular response, we were not heading toward Heaven in a handbasket.
Did someone put something in that Laphroaig?
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