Friday, July 31, 2009

Private health insurance IS socialism

The dirty big secret of the insurance racket is that the insurers can't afford it.
In fact, there's pretty good evidence that government spending is all that stands between the struggling insurers and complete disaster.
How will Obama rescue the insurance companies? By using government subsidies to insure the uninsured. But, as hipparchia at Corrente notes, the uninsured already get charity care paid for by the government.
The money right now goes directly from the taxpayers to the hospitals. If instead we direct that money to subsidies to poor people so they can buy insurance, then the insurance companies get to skim their 18.4% off the top before paying the hospitals.
Since the insurance industry cannot survive on its own, Baucus and Obama plan to save it by turning it into a government-funded make-work program. The big winners will be CEOs and upper management, whose huge payouts will come from your tax dollars. As Orwell noted, some animals are more equal than others.

It's socialism for the corporations. If we must have socialism, why not socialism for the citizenry?

4 comments:

Jesus X. Crutch said...

This is corporate welfare, they must be weaned off the dole. Bootstraps!

Gary McGowan said...

The strategy teams of both Pelosi and Obama, recognizing the public's hatred of the insurance industry, are now trying to play off that to ram through their Tiergarten 4 "healthcare reform."

Look for it.

lambert strether said...

Round-up of A list coverage that single payer will get an up or down vote on the House Floor:

Spoiler alert... Well, no. You already knew they'd censor that, right?

Anonymous said...

i would bet the insurance companies are heavily entangled in the credit swaps and face huge losses in that unraveling.
—g.