Blue Cross Fires the First Shot Across the Bow…

-of America’s future.

Back as recently as February, we discussed the imminent threat to Healthcare Reform posed by lobbyists and the Healthcare industry they represent. Well, it’s already starting.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Blue Cross Blue Shield has created commercials and an "informational" website that will “warn” Americans about a government-sponsored health insurance option, currently called the “Public Plan.” The Obama administration has proposed this plan as a leaner, not-for-profit system that will push out more coverage and service to all Americans by largely appropriating the money and revenue that: shareholders; executive payrolls; rampant price gouging on administrative fees; procedure prices; and financing charges currently comprise. This would be a far more affordable option for Americans who can’t afford private insurance (COBRA is a joke, and if you grew up on “G.I. Joe” cartoons also kind of scary) and a huge weight off the back of American industry, like our own American automakers for example, who are collapsing under the cost of insuring American workers among other negotiated operating loads, while their counterparts around the globe lean on the support of their respective nationalized healthcare systems and build cars more “cheaply” thanks to their reduced cost of “labor.”

American industry needs Healthcare Reform as much as we do, maybe more.

Predictably, the Healthcare industry is already saying that this plan will threaten the state of the existing marketplace; in that sense they are not lying. But they were clearly being dishonest when they pledged to do what they could to curb rising health costs and address the masses of underinsured and uninsured in America.

If Americans fall for this nonsense, this ridiculously transparent act of self interest and greed that stabs at the heart of our country’s future, then we will continue to lose what market share we have in the global industries. We will continue to increasingly depend on the foreign manufacture of… well everything, because no domestic business I can imagine will be able to compete with foreign concerns who operate under governments that understand Healthcare is a right. A right that when guaranteed, keeps society as well as individuals safe and strong.

As many a Free-Market Conservative over the last twenty five years has proclaimed: business that operates unfairly doesn’t need regulation to step in and correct it, -its incompetence or criminality will force its demise in the marketplace. The trouble is we’re not talking about a failure at making candy bars or golf clubs. We’re talking about a failure at keeping Americans healthy and alive.

Were health insurance affordable and mandatory, wouldn’t the mass participation ensure its feasibility? …but there’s no money in that is there?

I hope enough people have the sense to see that caring for a nation should not be a concern governed by profit and loss sheets, but when money’s at stake, hope is never enough is it?

Even when we're talking about each other's lives.

-SJ