Will the Insurance Company Lobby forever define "Health Care" in America?

[XOKCowboy]

If so there will be no change in America. We won't be able to compete with the other industrialized nations. We'll still near the bottom of the infant mortality ratings and we'll be paying more per capita for "health care" than any other country. As long as the insurance companies are pouring billions of dollars into lobbying Congress we're stuck with the shitty system we now have.

We need campaign financing reform NOW! We also need to tell Chuck Schumer that we want the Health Care that he enjoys.

[Triana]

1. As long as "health care" is a profit-driven "industry" and the companies OWN Congress..

...yes.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Which is the same Health Care that Obama promised..pre-election.

I remember that well.

[Oregone]

3. I wasn't aware Obama advocated a non-funded anemic "public option"

The conditions that Schumer was defining make this next to useless

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. I prolly wasn't clear what I was responsing to in the OP..

which was :
"We also need to tell Chuck Schumer that we want the Health Care that he enjoys. "

I seem to remember hearing Obama promise the same health care that members of Congress got.
the implication being it was not going to be an insurance company give-away.

[truedelphi]

4. Health care industries are able to secure their power in part through their

Ability to advertise.

Ever wonder why there are all those obnoxious health care commercials from the only hospital in your area? Or one of two hospitals in your area?

You know the commercials that I mean. The ones in which the little precious child has a fairy godmother granma who tucks her in. And other people
The main reason for those commercials is so that the TV Channel that they are on is beholden to them. Without those commercials, the TV Stations might have as their headline news about how shitty the local hospital is. Or how overworked the nurses are. Or how procedures that are needed are not mentioned, and how people are turned away for lack of insurance.

But advertiasing dollars work well for the insurance companies.

[XOKCowboy]

5. Oh yes and I also remember the head of one of the major health care companies

say on TV that if he didn't have his job he couldn't get health care (insurance). The hypocrisy in that statement infuriated me.

[peacebird]

7. Sen Webb is for a public option in the health care package

and while that isn't single payer, it IS a step in the right direction.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

8. My Theory FWIW

The right-wing (and some pro-corporate Dems) KNOW that if we ever adopt REAL universal health coverage in this country, whether that be a public/private option or a single-payer system, it will, like Social Security, become another "rail" in American politics and will never be able to be undone, which is why they are so hysterical and fighting so vociferously against it and trying to stoke fears of "socialism" and "socialized medicine". Despite all of their platitudes about "the free market" and "competition", they have all but admitted that the public would overwhelmingly benefit from and support a public plan over a private one, which is extremely ironic because they are the SAME people who claim that government can't be trusted to do anything right, the overall health and stability of popular problems such as Social Security, Medicare, and a host of other initiatives that the government has accomplished and managed over our country's history notwithstanding.

[Psychic Consortium]

9. No. nt