The Option of Conscience – Part 2

Posted on 08/20/2009 at 10:39 am by Bob Cesca

As I wrote yesterday, the public option is mandatory for more than just cost-control and competition purposes. If there are individual mandates and no public option, we would be required by law to finance the private insurance mafia. This is unacceptable.

While he’s being a little harder on the president than I am, Wendell Potter certainly seems to understand why the public option is so crucial:

Not only is Obama clearly ready to throw the public option overboard, he is embracing the requirement that we all be forced to buy insurance from private insurers. That means your tax dollars and mine will be used to pay subsidies to the big insurers to provide coverage to people who can’t afford to buy their policies, because the big insurers charge far more than they should because Wall Street investors demand that they do.

The healthcare reform bill(s) could reduce private insurance premiums to a dollar a month, but that’s still a dollar being fed into an inherently corrupt and worthless system.

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  • GItheJOE

    The idea of forcing everyone to pay for insurance in a fucked up systems sounds horrible.Can we see which plan the GOP support? My guess is this horrible idea.If so, the DEMs should steal the FREE MARKET bullshit banner away from the GOP in 2010 because the DEMs want CHOICE.

  • Allonfla

    Who was Wendells source for that? Glenn Greenwald?The last time I checked not one single persona making these speculations is in the White House.

  • alopecia

    The LA Dog Trainer (thank you, Harry Shearer!) ran an article a couple of months back on the individual mandate. The insurance companies are desperate to see everyone required to have health insurance because without those 40+ million extra policy-holders, the whole industry goes bust. (Last I checked, the article was still at the LAT website, but I can’t be arsed to check. Yes, I’m lazy, why do you ask?) And the easiest way to get those folks paying premiums is to require everyone to carry health insurance.It’s a stunningly bad idea for any number of reasons, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’ll be in whatever legislation that comes out of Congress.

  • trahan

    What’s your point Allonfla? If you do not pay heed from what Wendall Potter says, you’re quite naive about the whole industry. You’d also be wise to listen to what Glen Greenwald opines.