Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

For a wee change o' pace, let's begin by taking the Smack-o-Matic to some deserving Dems, mostly because the Cons haven't come up with any creative ways to piss me off today.

Diane Feinstein's reconsidering whether health care reform should even be done, because she'd rather people lack health care than spend any money attempting to keep them healthy. Diane: there's a place for you in the Con party.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has decided to do for funding abortion what the White House did for funding illegal immigrants: even though the current bills don't allow funds for either, since the right wing's raising a stench anyway, the White House is ever so eager to assure them that icky promiscuous women and dirty brown people won't get one single cent. Note to White House: stop pandering to the Cons until they've started pandering to you. Negotiations typically include not just offers, but counter-offers. Learn the meaning of quid pro quo, or you're going to end up giving all quid for no quo. That's no way to bargain, you dumbshits.

Oh, and Cons? Before you get all cocky, keep in mind a little something friend of the Cons Scott Rasmussen said: opposing reform could come back to bite yer arses in a big way.

That's got a lot to do with the fact that people hear stories like this:

Today Brave New Films released their second installment in the Sick For Profit series, taking a look at the corrupt practices of CIGNA, denying care to their customers while their lead executives rake in millions and lead lavish lifestyles.

Meet Jo Joshua Godfrey. She had cancer without knowing for over a year.

"I would go to CIGNA and they would tell me I had bronchitis and give me medicine and send me home. No matter what medicine they gave me I wouldn't get better. Then the CIGNA Director called me up and she told me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. I called the doctor, and I came with my film and my CAT scan and he just put it in, it took exactly thirty seconds. He told me, 'You have cancer,' and he said the reason CIGNA did not want to give you your records is they've known right way back for years that you have cancer and they're not going to treat you."

CIGNA took in $19.1 billion dollars in revenue last year, with a $292 million dollar income. That doesn't include the salaries given to people like CEO Ed Hanway. He made a cool $12 million last year, and over the past five years he took in $120 million. Hanway has $28 million in unexcercised stock options. The company corporate jets, also not seen in profit statements, cost $68 million. This money is gained, as former communications director Wendell Potter says in this video, through denying claims and dumping the sick, enhancing the value of the company for Wall Street investors.

And after hearing such stories, aren't too happy with anyone who'd protect these predatory fucks.

So it's pep talk time. We need a public option - a fact obvious to everybody except most of our politicians. For fuck's sake, it's obvious to the majority of folks in Arkansas, and they trust Limbaugh over Obama any day. The vast majority of physicians support the public option (when they're not busy supporting single payer). Sen. Tom Harkin, who took over Ted Kennedy's chair on the H.E.L.P. Committee, vows we will not only have a public option, but a strong public option.

We wants it. We needs it. We must whip it.

Roar.