Insurance Companies will be made to Pay if we don't pass HCR and things remain AS IS!

[FrenchieCat]

Poll question: Insurance Companies will be made to Pay if we don't pass HCR and things remain AS IS!

True or False?

[DJ13]

1. Heads they win

Tails we lose

[FrenchieCat]

We pass it, they win, we win something...

we don't pass it, we lose, they win bigfuckingtime!

That's why they are paying for the ads.
They'd rather not pass shit....cause they are doing just fine as is.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. At this pointit looks like the insurance companies will come out ahead either way...

so you are right..

[IndianaGreen]

2. And who is going to make them pay? The Democrats in Congress????

:rofl:

[FrenchieCat]

4. That's the point.....those who think nothing is just as good or better

than passing what we currently have on the drafting board
don't seem to realize that the Insurance Companies agree with you....
and it is certainly no skin off their backs if we don't pass shit.

[valerief]

7. No, our Roberts Court!!!!

:rofl:

[Laelth]

3. The current system is unsustainable.

The boomers are about to go on Medicare. Businesses are dropping coverage for employees because it's unaffordable. California is about to pass single-payer (if we will let them).

The insurance companies are scared for their futures, and rightly so.

They will be marginalized and crippled very soon if we don't bail them out, and yet ...

that is exactly what the Democratic Party is trying to do.

Why?

:shrug:

:dem:

-Laelth

[FrenchieCat]

5. Will they be crippled, or will millions of Americans without healthcare

be crippled?

They don't give a shit if they go under draining our very last dollar, and by God, they don't mind taking us down with them.

So why to so many here care about the Insurance companies more than they do citizens? I don't get that.

[Laelth]

9. They will be crippled.

No fewer people will have "health care," but a lot fewer people will have private "health insurance." A whole bunch of them will move to public health insurance (the boomers). The private health care insurance industry will suffer (unless we bail them out by ordering most Americans to buy their products).

:dem:

-Laelth

[FrenchieCat]

10. I'm a boomer and have 14 more years to go before I get any medicare.....

so what are you talking about?

They'll just hike the prices, and even more Americans will go without healthcare,
if this bill doesn't pass.

[Laelth]

11. They'll just hike their rates if the bill does pass.

Nothing in this legislation prevents private health insurance companies from raising their rates.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ipaint]

17. We are giving renewed life to a dying industry.

"Private health insurers lost an estimated 9 million customers between 2000 and 2007. In many cases, people lost coverage because they or their employers could no longer afford it as premium increases outpaced wage growth and inflation.

Recession job losses are adding to the toll. Some economists estimate that every percentage-point increase in the jobless rate adds 1 million people to the ranks of the uninsured.

The industry's real trouble begins in 2011, when 79 million baby boomers begin turning 65. Health insurers stand to lose a huge slice of their commercially insured enrollment (estimated at 162 million to 172 million people) over the next two decades to Medicare, the government-funded health insurance program for seniors.

"The rate of aging far and away exceeds the birth rate," said Sheryl Skolnick, a CRT Capital Group healthcare investment analyst. "That's got to be very scary. . . . This

... So the best way for the industry to preserve the private insurance market -- and derail the campaign for a single-payer system -- may be to go along with more palatable proposals on the table now, said Jeffrey Miles, a healthcare analyst and president of the Miles Organization, a Los Angeles insurance brokerage firm.

"If healthcare goes down this year, you are going to end up with single-payer care much sooner than anyone expected," he said.

But there is a limit to how much change the industry will abide. It draws the line at proposals, supported by President Obama and others, to offer consumers a public insurance alternative to private coverage. is the biggest fight for survival managed care has ever faced, at least since they went bankrupt in the late '80s."

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/07/business/fi-healthcare7

(LA Times archive is temporarily down. Cached page on google)

Not only do they kill 1 million americans over the last 20 years, they are now facing a crippling loss of customers in the next two decades. I'm sure lawmakers and the white house are well aware of that fact. The mandate and taxpayer subsidies are meant to save the industry.

Ironic, the one time we have a real opportunity to pull the plug on the ins. giants thereby freeing future generations from their massive abuses, we save and strengthen them instead and leave the whole sordid mess for future generations to struggle with.

Just what wall street and the industry ordered be done. By the time this goes through the senate it will be the "insurance mandate bill". And since the government hasn't successfully regulated a major industry in decades, good luck with the no pre-existing conditions law. That legislation will be on the shelf sitting right next to the no illegal wiretapping and no torture laws.

[FrenchieCat]

18. so....

"Private health insurers lost an estimated 9 million customers between 2000 and 2007."???

and those folks became uninsured because they couldn't afford the premiums....

And so you are saying that supporting the bill will discourage private health insurers....
and you believe that throwing folks out on their asses is a good thing, or is better in a long run.....because you are advocating that if we wait long enough for enough folks to be uninsured, then maybe, just maybe, the general public will come around to the idea of single payer?

That's disgusting.

[ipaint]

19. No I didn't say that but once again you are incapable of understanding what I did say.

And your reading skills have definately gone south.

What else is new.

[stray cat]

8. How?

[Sebastian Doyle]

12. If this congress had any interest in punishing corporate criminals

They would have passed Single Payer and then gone after Wall $treet.

If they won't attempt either one now with huge (theoretical) majorities in both houses, then when exactly would they?

[FrenchieCat]

13. "They would have passed single payer and then gone after Wall $treet?

What world do you live in. Please let me know, cause if it's that easy to pass Single Payer, I want to live there.....cause over here, in this world, it is impossible, period.

[Sebastian Doyle]

14. Exactly

So why are you in favor of enabling the insurance criminals to steal from EVERYBODY?

[FrenchieCat]

15. Cause that's the system put in place from years ago.....

and it ain't going away anywhere anytime soon,
so might as well get something for the dollars paid to those assholes....

What I do know is that no passing HCR is not going to give them any pain,
nor put them in jail or anything else for that matter.....
It will just mean that we go as we are, paying through the nose,
while some can't even get coverage.
And you must think that that will show them, hey! :sarcasm:

[Sebastian Doyle]

16. That's not what I'm saying at all, and you know it.

Democrats should be DEMOCRATS. Leadership should LEAD. The DLC is neither.

If anyone calls themselves a "Democrat" and will not support AT THE VERY LEAST, a true public option open to anyone who chooses it, they are not Democrats, and they should be expelled from the party.

And the Repukes? Tell them to SIT DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP. Which is exactly what they do when they have the majority.

[FrenchieCat]

20. The truth is that you are not really saying anything,

other than what I mentioned in my post; that you believe that if enough people suffer,
at some point, everyone will wake the fuck up.

To that I say, we've waited 15 years just from the last time,
premiums have gone up incredibly,
and still, we are having to fight just to get little bits.

So no, we can no longer wait for people to wake up,
cause many of them are sleep walking,
and I am not a suicide Kamikaze with the express mission of driving insurance companies out of business.....while sweeping away the collateral damage.

[Sebastian Doyle]

21. 15 years from the last time? More like 62 years.

Harry Truman wanted a national health care system in 1947. My mom was in kindergarten then. She's on Medicare now, if that puts the time frame in perspective.

[FrenchieCat]

22. You're the one ready to wait the Ins. Cos out......

and till then, just have us hanging in the wind!