Obama’s Weekly Dress
With My Weekly Criticisms
By Andrew deRenzy
Sunday, August 16th, 2009, 15:41This week, I’ve been traveling across our country to discuss health insurance reform and to hear directly from folks like you – your questions, your concerns, and your stories.
Of course you heard people like me, but did you actually listen and consider the opinions of those you didn’t plant in your audience?
Now, I know there’s been a lot of attention paid to some of the town hall meetings that are going on around the country, especially those where tempers have flared. You know how TV loves a ruckus. But what you haven’t seen – because it’s not as exciting – are the many constructive meetings going on all over the country where Americans are airing their hopes and concerns about this very important issue.
Or because the only non-ruckus events that have occurred are the ones you hold because of your plants effectively shielding yourself from real criticisms. Or maybe the meetings held by republicans have been more civilized?
I’ve been holding some of my own, and the stories I’ve heard have really underscored why I believe so strongly that health insurance reform is a challenge we can’t ignore. They’re stories like Lori Hitchcock’s, who I met in New Hampshire this week. Lori’s got a pre-existing condition, so no insurance company will cover her. She’s self-employed, and in this economy, she can’t find a job that offers health care, so she’s been uninsured for two years.
From HealthInsuranceInfo.net:
If you are a small employer buying a fully insured small group health plan, you cannot be turned down because of the health status, age, or any factor that might predict the use of health services of those in your group. All fully insured health plans for small employers must be sold on a guaranteed issue basis.
Self explanatory? Obama flat out lies about pre-existing conditions. Also its noteworthy to show that Lori Hitchcock runs a tech staffing business that employs at least 14 people [that spoke.com could find], and was a member of the steering committee for the Kerry-Edwards Campaign in 2004
Or they’re stories like Katie Gibson’s, who I met in Montana. When Katie tried to change insurance companies, she was sure to list her pre-existing conditions on the application and even called her new company to confirm she’d be covered. Two months later, she was dropped – after she’d already gone off her other insurance.
First of all, a pregnant woman cannot go to a grocery store and expect to get half her food for free purely because she is expecting a second mouth to feed. The same thing applies to insurance, you are assessed for your risk, and expecting a healthy persons price is preposterous! And doing a little research she did find another company first that wanted a higher premium to cover her.
Secondly, insurance companies can’t drop you when you get sick. From her story “Finally she turned to the Montana state Insurance Commissioner’s office, which in 2007 found wrongdoing by the insurance firm.” So instead of essentially forcing insurance companies to give away free product, why not penalize them, increase the penalties, and educate the people about their rights under insurance plans? Must be too logical for the elitist to understand.
These are the stories that aren’t being told – stories of a health care system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people. And that’s why we’re going to pass health insurance reform that finally holds the insurance companies accountable.
Entertaining thought from my least favorite source wikipedia: Story can mean: Soap opera, in older and/or rural American slang, usually said in the plural. That’s exactly what these are, the cases that fall through the cracks, dug up by the Obama camp and then exaggerated to instill emotional stress for these people and anger against the insurance companies. This bates those that disagree with reform into arguments of us wanting these people to suffer, as Reagan said “That’s ridiculous, and of course no one has advocated it.”
But now’s the hard part. Because the history is clear – every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests with a stake in the status quo use their influence and political allies to scare and mislead the American people.
Obama is like the little boy that refuses to understand that the circle block doesn’t fit into the star hole. History is clear, Medicare and Medicaid have failed, government is not a business, the people don’t want this. We have a special interest in this, a very personal special interest. Our quality of life is under attack.
If you twist the circle around or jam it in the star, it will fit. That’s exactly his plan. He is the one scaring and misleading the people.
As an example, let’s look at one of the scarier-sounding and more ridiculous rumors out there – that so-called “death panels” would decide whether senior citizens get to live or die. That rumor began with the distortion of one idea in a Congressional bill that would allow Medicare to cover voluntary visits with your doctor to discuss your end-of-life care – if and only if you decide to have those visits. It had nothing to do with putting government in control of your decisions; in fact, it would give you all the information you need – if you want it – to put you in control of your decisions. When a conservative Republican Senator who has long-fought for even more far-reaching proposals found out how folks were twisting the idea, he called their misrepresentation, and I quote, “nuts.”
The bill is funded by cuts in medicare, is that not death panel enough? The real death panel was in the stimulus bill, the ObamaCare bill just provides another vehicle to administer the deaths.
Some Obamedication for you “If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?” It’s a good thing Obamedication is how the world works. $30,000 to chop off a foot. Noone needs a legitimate tonsillectomy. Sometimes the cheaper pill isn’t the best pill, what will the government do then? What happens when the blue pill isn’t working, do you deny them coverage of the red pill because of your cost cutting? You can’t answer that question because it reveals your true agenda, “Death Panels”.
So when folks with a stake in the status quo keep inventing these boogeymen in an effort to scare people, it’s disappointing, but it’s not surprising. We’ve seen it before. When President Roosevelt was working to create Social Security, opponents warned it would open the door to “federal snooping” and force Americans to wear dog tags. When President Kennedy and President Johnson were working to create Medicare, opponents warned of “socialized medicine.” Sound familiar? Not only were those fears never realized, but more importantly, those programs have saved the lives of tens of millions of seniors, the disabled, and the disadvantaged.
Status quo as in who runs the executive, legislative, and judicial branches? The same failed philosophy of socialism they are now trying to disguise as capitalism? Arrogantly thinking they can do it better. Hitler would have been their hero if it wasn’t for that whole you know, genocide mishap. We’re not quite as bad, we’re only putting together deal panels to put a value on peoples lives.
Those who would stand in the way of reform will say almost anything to scare you about the cost of action. But they won’t say much about the cost of inaction. If you’re worried about rationed care, higher costs, denied coverage, or bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor, then you should know that’s what’s happening right now. In the past three years, over 12 million Americans were discriminated against by insurance companies due to a preexisting condition, or saw their coverage denied or dropped just when they got sick and needed it most. Americans whose jobs and health care are secure today just don’t know if they’ll be next to join the 14,000 who lose their health insurance every single day. And if we don’t act, average family premiums will keep rising to more than $22,000 within a decade.
Is it discrimination if I lie to the insurance companies about my smoking habits? Or any past medical history? Where does this 12 million number come from? How are the insurance companies supposed to combat fraud? Stop pulling these numbers out of your ass. Stop demonizing insurance companies. Stop lying about how your plan rations care, makes our country bankrupt instead of the individual, slowly nibbling away at our freedoms. Give the people some responsibility, you can’t be our mother forever dear Bama, cut the umbilical cord.
On the other hand, here’s what reform will mean for you.
First, no matter what you’ve heard, if you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it. If you don’t have insurance, you’ll finally be able to afford insurance. And everyone will have the security and stability that’s missing today.
How will I keep my doctor when he decides its not worth his 12 years of school to only be told by you what prices he can charge and have a maximum wage he can make? I’m sure the new blood will go to Obamedication school and we get a bunch of nitwits that don’t even know what Ibuprofen is like in britain.
Insurance companies will be prohibited from denying you coverage because of your medical history, dropping your coverage if you get sick, or watering down your coverage when it counts – because there’s no point in having health insurance if it’s not there when you need it.
Insurance companies will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or lifetime, and we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses – because no one in America should go broke just because they get sick.
They already are mandated to not drop you when you get sick, they need to protect themselves against fraud. If you don’t fill out an application right, or disclose you’re whole medical history you can be dropped for a reason. If it smells like fish it typically is fish, people lie. And why am I not allowed to go bankrupt? It’s creative destruction, people need to take responsibility for their actions, learn from mistakes, and most importantly be able to take risks. Without any of that there is no American Dream. You no longer protect people from their enemies you protect them from themselves, a dire path to the end of American exceptionalism as we know it.
Finally, we’ll require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be saving lives and dollars by catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end.
Why should insurance cover maintenance? My car insurance does not cover maintenance, hell my factory warranty doesn’t cover maintenance. Maybe you could use that peanut between your two ears and think of something creative like taking out preventative care from insurance, and add an incentive for lower premiums if you do take the necessary steps to go to the doctor twice a year.
That’s what reform means. For all the chatter and the noise out there, what every American needs to know is this: If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. And we will deliver this in a fiscally responsible way.
I know there’s plenty of real concern and skepticism out there. I know that in a time of economic upheaval, the idea of change can be unsettling, and I know that there are folks who believe that government should have no role at all in solving our problems. These are legitimate differences worthy of the real discussion that America deserves – one where we lower our voices, listen to one another, and talk about differences that really exist. Because while there may be disagreements over how to go about it, there is widespread agreement on the urgent need to reform a broken system and finally hold insurance companies accountable.
Nearly fifty years ago, in the midst of the noisy early battles to create what would become Medicare, President Kennedy said, “I refuse to see us live on the accomplishments of another generation. I refuse to see this country, and all of us, shrink from these struggles which are our responsibility in our time.” Now it falls to us to meet the challenges of our time. And if we can come together, and listen to one another; I believe, as I always have, that we will rise to this moment, we will build something better for our children, and we will secure America’s future in this new century.
Translation: I refuse to let you live peacefully on your own, take responsibility for your own lives, and I must tell you what to do and how to do it. Oh and insurance companies are weeny heads.
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