In unfettered capitalism the almighty dollar reigns supreme and the shareholders come first, customers second.  Economics 101 is in order.  For-profit health insurance companies have several ways to make money and increase profits and usually to the detriment of their clients.

1. Secure a large enough pool of customers such that sufficient funds are always available to pay claims while maintaining profitability.  When administrative costs, salaries, profits, etc are kept in check this business system works fairly well.
2. However, when greed steps in, competition is compromised, premiums rise, high-risk individuals are eliminated, deductions and exclusions increase, and covered percentage decreases.
3. HMOs and Co-operative enterprises have reduced some of the costs, but choices are limited and pre-existing conditions are still restricted.
4. Universal, governmental, public option or whatever you want to call it is the only option that can reform health care in the USA.
5. Initially, the public option, if indeed implemented, will be populated by the poor, the unemployed and those who cannot get insurance otherwise.  The rates will be considerably less than the private carriers, but there will be regulations in place to prevent companies from unilaterally dropping employee coverage and restrictions to prevent individuals from dropping their health insurance in favor of the lower cost public option——it will be based on the percent of income spent on health insurance.  If the cost of private insurance exceeds a threshold you will then be able to subscribe to the public option.
6. In any event, it is known by physicians, the medical insurance industry, the pharmaceuticals, and the hospitals, that the public option will eventually lead to their demise in dictating medical practice.
7. Referring to No. 1, the public option will need a very large customer pool to moderate costs and will eventually lead to private customers leaving their carriers for the public entity which will supply the same medical package a la Medicare.  Individuals on company sponsored plans will follow and no complaints there.
8. However, Medicare is not a cheap venture, just cheaper than private carriers.  With the extra insurance for the 20% not covered and the doughnut hole, Medicare runs between $4000-$6000 per year.  Of course, once an individual has less than $2000 in assets, then Medicaid steps in, but don’t count on A1 care——just adequate.
9. 20 years from now when government run health care is the norm physicians will be there because they want to be and not for the money, though the pay will still be quite good, but not extravagant.  Sort of like teaching was in the first part of the 20th century, before it became a relatively lucrative profession populated by poor performers.

This is hilarious, we are attacking the “puppets” and not the puppeteers.

You want change folks…simple

Let the puppeteers know that you will not buy their products and services until they tell their puppets to give us universal health care.
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Recipe to turn America around…....
Get the names of the biggest contributors to Republican elections off the internet. They are easy to find.  Then don’t buy their stuff.
Just change your habits and you will scare the puppeteers to death
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Just who do you think runs this country anyway!

I still argue that health-care reform is NOT the issue; it is merely the catalyst to restart the right-wing diatribe against Obama which began the moment he became the Dem nominee.

An article in “The New Yorker,” Sept., ‘08, ‘The Obama Nation’ - Obama “is a corrupt, enraged, anti-American, drug-dealing, anti-Israel, pseudo-Christian radical leftist black-militant, plagerist, and liar, trained as a Muslim and mentored by a menagerie of Marxists, Communists, crypto-Communists and terrorists.” 

Sound just a tad familiar?

The problem I see with many libertarians is that you get their gung ho capitalism but not the end Drug War, end the Sex war that they claim they are for too. Too often they are just republicans with nicer rhetoric. Like Reagan who sounded so good in his speeches but was a destroyer of our country. [I should say he started us on this tobbogan run to ruin we are at now.] I didn’t buy it because it contradicted what he had done as governor of California. [Raised taxes on everyone but the wealthy, called in the IRS to get them and increased the bureaucracy by a factor of 2.]

Obama is just like him and Clinton who say one thing but do another. He was no liberal or progressive. He is a Regressive in Progressive-like clothing. A very good mimic but the claws do come out and the sheep do die. How many more will die before the herd demands the wolf-sheep stop killing?

Hulk2008,

On TV, I watched people in your part of the country standing in line.

And, I certainly share your frustration, a word that is probably far to weak to describe how you really feel.

In Indiana, there are no 3rd party candidates allowed for Pres.  It’s a struggle to get a Dem on the ballot, much less Nader.  In Johnson County in fact there are almost as many Libertarian candidates as Republican - but NO Democratic candidates.  The Libertarian candidate for governor was, at least, a bit colorful, if misguided on social issues.  Talk about your vast wastelands. 
  We stood in line for many hours to vote - almost a complete waste of time except “in principle”.  We do get tired of “moral” victories over the years.

“Those who have hoped for more substance than sentiment are likely to be disappointed.”

Disappointment doesn’t even begin to cover the way I feel about whatever “health insurance reform” plans are floating around. I have always seen Obama as more of a manager than a leader, and he continues to prove me correct.

Instead of health care reform, “we the people” will be forced to feed the beast as health industry CEOs and other executives salivate over the fact that they will be taking in even higher profits, and it’s just another upward shift of wealth to the already too-wealthy!

As stocks tumbled yesterday, August 17, 2009, health-care stocks held their own, and went up in value. “We the people” have been handed over to the corporations with the blessing of almost all of our elected officials—Republicans and Democrats.

I will continue to vote for third party candidates.