THAT'S LATIN for "sick of hear-
First, the usual disclaimer: Health care needs reform. People who lose their jobs, people with special needs, people with pre-existing conditions--these folks need help. But the kind of reform many Democrats in Congress are proposing is the wrong way to go.
An update: After removing the "public option" from the Baucus bill just long enough to get it out of committee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has re-added it to the combined Senate bill. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the Capitol steps last Thursday to present her 1,990-page bill, which also includes this provision, to an elite group of invitees.
Mrs. Pelosi justifies the public option (a government-offered plan) by talking about "the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." Truth is, Tupperware is more profitable than health insurance.
The Associated Press places health-insurance companies' profits at about 6 percent. Last year, they were 2.2 percent. In fact, health insurance ranked 35th in profitability out of 53 American industries. Immoral? Hardly--unless capitalism itself is immoral.
Ms. Pelosi, et al. use the term "Bush" as a fire starter. But did those insurance-industry profits increase outrageously during the "Bush years"? No. Insurance's 8.8 percent profits remained steady during that time and were neck-and-neck with Clorox, Tupperware, Coors, and Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell).
Meanwhile, our current federal health-insurance program, Medicare, is fast going broke, has higher administrative costs than private plans, suffers $60 billion in fraud losses each year, and compensates doctors so poorly that 29 percent of patients have trouble finding a provider.
So lets expand that, right?