Health Care Reform: Summing it up

[Cruzan]

The insurance companies are not merely "delighted at the way reform has been unfolding," but have in fact steered the way that reform has been unfolding. The Town Hall disruptions are a smokescreen to attract the media, draw out crazies and ideologues, and otherwise create the impression that a significant portion of the American public opposes health care reform. Everyone covers the Town Halls and both interviews, tries to answer, the crazies and ideologues. Meanwhile, the real action is unfolding elsewhere, and was set in stone months ago. The Senators who control health care reform -- Grassley, Conrad, Baucus --are bought. The disruptions are to provide them with a fig leaf for votes that were never at issue. The purpose of the month long delay, as Grassley let slip yesterday, has been to give the disruptions a chance to happen. It's all camouflage for the hard truth that our leaders in Congress are corporate tools.

The media has been totally hooked into this charade, and President Obama has been duped into believing that (1) good faith bargaining was going on and (2) public opinion matters. In fact, public opinion polls show that the public still favors a public option. This entire campaign by the insurance industry has been aimed at creating the illusion that such opinion has changed, to give certain Senators cover for a vote that has nothing to do what what the voters want.

As Wendell Potter, the Cigna exec turned whistleblower, wrote yesterday in an article, published on the CNN web site, the slogans and platitudes of the Town Halls and talking points of the Congressional opponents of reform were put together by public relations firms working for the insurance companies, for the precise purpose of drawing out extremists and other fringe elements. Everyone is out covering the resultant circus, and nobody realizes that the circus is a mere diversion.

The real story is in the Finance Committee; the deal was cut months ago; the public option will be killed and the rest of the bill gutted; and, readers, we have all been had.

Link

[Laelth]

1. k&r for a possible, disturbing truth. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth