Let’s get it straight: When it comes to health insurance, the United States has the most misinformed, fearful, gullible, short-sighted, and short-changed population among developed nations. The private insurance industry has made fools of us.
Please consider this:
If you view your life and health as above all means for private profit and not ends in themselves; if you prefer Russian roulette to a sense of well-being;
if you equate choice with chaos and confusion;
if you wish health insurance premiums to pay for bloated administrative salaries, for armies of actuaries and lawyers finding loopholes to avoid paying for what you had been promised, and hire Washington lobbyists and public relation firms to work against your best interests;
if you don’t resent being refused health insurance after paying premiums for 30 years;
and if you don’t mind a time-consuming bureaucracy intervening between you and your doctor’s choices, then you are obviously happy with the present private insurance system.
All the fear-mongering arguments and lies rightwing ideologues use against a universal insurance program apply to our present private insurance system, not to a so-called “public option.”
This article appears in Sep 17-24, 2009.