Who Took Whose Country?
Rachel Maddow told me that, according to the SEC, the profits of health insurance companies were $2.4 Billion in 2000, but $12.7 Billion in 2007. This is only a 429% increase, almost keeping pace with inflation. (I watched the segment at Joe.My.God.)
She also notes that by 2007 the average compensation of the CEO of one of those companies was $11.9 Million (each). Since that's only enough to buy a health insurance policy for about 4,700 of the 46 Million uninsured Americans (one-hundredth of a percent), perhaps we should just gloss over that figure as insignificant.
Why in the world would I distrust the motivation of health-insurance companies who have, oh, a billion dollars to spend buying congress people to convince me that they don't need no competition from a public option in health care?
But, truth to tell, I can easily understand the motivation of the insurance companies and if I had a billion in loose change to make sure my profits would keep going up, you can be sure I'd buy myself a baker's dozen of congress people. It is, as I've said before, mere chump change. Personally I'm a single-payer advocate but if "health care" were my business and I made $12 Million a year doing it, I suppose my priorities might change.
What I cannot understand is this small number of loud and angry white people, many of them living comfortably on their social-security checks and happy with their Medicare coverage, who are so ready to jump into the astroturf fray funded by–who else but the "health-care" insurers?–and denounce universal health insurance in the US as "socialism", "government run" [!], "living like a european", and even seemingly believe incredibly crazy hyperbole about things like "death panels" for forced euthanasia and mandated sex-change operations for everyone.
It's all summarized so ironically by that man shouting "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" Are these people just really so skilled at believing something impossible before breakfast, White Queen style?
One thing that certainly unifies liberal and conservative political metaphysics is this: we both know that the other excels at holding contradicting positions and believing in things that are obviously not believable, let alone possibly true.
And so, as a liberal, I face with incredulity the fact that so many people will be so emotionally attached to doing something that is so not in their self interest. Why the fierce loyalty of some very not wealthy people to voting Republican?
Why this incredible anger, not to mention the incredible effort of believing such contradictory things, at the idea that a government-run health-care system might be as popular as the government-run Medicare and perhaps more affordable and more available to these very people than the current cesspool of private "health-care" insurers making obscene profits off their very backs?
Among these groups the notion of getting their country "back" is a very popular rallying cry. It would seem like a reasonable goal, and I'd be happy for them to have it back, if only they would realize who had taken their country in the first place.