profit over patients

digby writes:

Insurance companies have had the marketplace all to themselves for many years. And it has also been clear for many years that the ever increasing cost of health care is unsustainable, that our businesses can't compete because of it, that Americans are going bankrupt by the millions because of an illness even if they are insured, that care is being rationed in an arbitrary and cruel fashion and that insurance companies, particularly their CEOs, have been getting obscenely wealthy on the backs of their sick customers. They could have fixed this system, or at least behaved like decent corporate citizens at any time. They chose not to, squeezing every last penny out of their customers and giving as little as they could get away with in return.

Insurance companies have been instrumental in creating this crisis and are now complaining when the government has to take measures to keep the whole system from imploding and taking down the American economy with it. But this time we can either bailout the average working American by giving them a real option for a change rather than bailing out another failed industry with more taxpayer dollars.

The insurance companies are using the vast wealth they accumulated in the run up to this crisis to keep from having to pay the piper. They do not want to have to compete with an entity that will be charged with actually serving their patients over profit. It's not like they didn't see it coming. They could have fixed many of the problems themselves and chose not to because they figured it was cheaper and easier to buy off the political class instead.

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