I still don’t see any evidence that Obamacare will reduce health care premiums for ordinary Americans. These cost controls were promised as the prime reason for Obamacare back when Barack Obama first ran for president. At Huffpo, Wendell Potter explains some of the reasons that healthcare premiums continue to skyrocket. It’s a story permeated with corruption, involving the malfeasance of both Democrats and Republicans. Here’s the introduction to Potter’s article, “Why Americans Pay So Much for Health Care: Friends in High Places (Just Not Your Friends)“:
If you wonder why we spend more money on health care than any other country but have some of the worst health outcomes, you need look no further than the halls of Congress to it figure out. And you need look no further back than the recent “fiscal cliff” drama for compelling proof of how decisions are often made, not based on protecting the public’s interest and bringing costs down but on protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms and other special interests that grease the palms of our elected officials.
Even when they’re not pandering to paying interests, they’re pandering to appearances rather than reality.
Chip. I think that’s right. I’ve heard that the health insurers are raising their rates by more than 25% in many places this year.
Mine went up 23%.
It’s not so much corrupt individual politicians as it actually seems to be the corruption of the legislative process.
Let me ‘splain.
The basic concept of a corrupt politician is the quintessential carpet bagger: an unethical conman who enters politics with the intent of getting rich through influence.
What is happening here is something quite different and definitely worse. Big money interests have been waging a massive war against legitimate government control, through copious spending to shout down saner messages in the media, by misleading the public in the belief that government is the problem and that unrestricted corporate freedom is the cure.
Astroturf campaigns to promote groups like the TEA parties have resulted in the election of businessman turned politicians who are true believers of this twisted ideology. Their business prowess may be debatable in some cases, their ethics may be absent in others, but their ideology is strong. They believe that greed is good, that regulation is bad and they will never see it any other way.
However, many of these true believers are completely incompetent as legislators. Since they believe in the altruistic motives of the corporations, and they defer the writing of laws to corporate partnership groups such as ALEC and the US Chamber of Commerce. I guess you could call it “Corruption by proxy”.
Sooner or later, somethings gonna break. When that happens, the villagers will take up the shovels, bats, and all those nice military grade rifles, to go huntin’ after the puppets when they should be pursuing the full force of the law against the criminals hiding behind the personna of Wall Street, while the laws still exist.