The death of decency in America!
We have been somewhat astounded by the bad press that president Obama has gotten over the statement that he made that said that any American who wants to could keep the health insurance that they already had. When the president made that statement he was probably not aware of how many Americans had truly bad health insurance policies in their possession that were in violation of a clause in the Affordable Health Care Act that stated, in effect, that your insurance policy should provide some minimum form of actual insurance coverage. If those policies did not come up to the standards mentioned in Obamacare, then they had to be cancelled and could not be sold anymore.
The ire of the American people was raised, mainly by neocon Republicans opposed to the act in its entirety as they always have been, and the presidents favorable opinion ratings went in the toilet. Members of the liberal press joined in and called the president an out an out liar. Particular in this assault was the black columnist Leonard Pitts who began a column by simply stating that “you lied, Mr. President!”
Perhaps in one respect the president had misinformed but, in reality, it was a minor bit of misinformation the surrounded just how complicated this law really is. We were in the insurance business for almost twenty eight years and we were constantly amazed at what some state insurance departments allowed to be sold in the insurance marketplace. In reality, many insurance departments in many states are controlled by the insurance industry itself with former insurance department employees going to work for the industry if they are good and tow the line on not very heavily enforcing existing insurance statutes, much less coming up with any new enforcement.
We saw cases where major insurance companies complied with Medicare statutes that stated that there must be a conversion option at the time that the policy was cancelled due to Medicare taking over that provided a Medicare supplement that paid only twenty five dollars a day regardless of the amount of the medical bill that was submitted to them. They wrote stuff like this into the policy itself and many gullible consumers never read their policy to see what was actually inside of it. We personally saw one elderly lady who was stuck with almost a thousand dollar bill while her insurance company would only pay twenty five dollars of it. We recently talked to a lady who was insured by a major American health insurance company who, in her sixties, was paying less than three hundred dollars a month for health coverage when, on average, even a large deductible policy would cost her close to six hundred dollars per month because that is what she was offered when her existing policy was cancelled due to its inability to meet even Obamacare minimum standards. And, we see advertisements on cable television all the time offering to find health insurance using the Obamacare tag line that all Americans can now get heath insurance regardless of their health status. We know for sure that all of them are frauds.
It has been a staple in the insurance business for decades to sell the idea of insurance without actually providing much, if any of its coverage in the event of an actual claim. The state of Texas, along with several other red states, have been famous for allowing and even promoting this practice with their lack or non existent insurance laws and the non enforcement of even what they already have on the books.
As we are seeing daily with the constant groining of the radical right, there has been a great deal of money made in the sale and purchase of health insurance policies and they, as lap dogs of the insurance industry, would like for that to continue.
There is something indecent about taking hard working, moderate income Americans and exposing them to the practices of this lewd industry and some of its worst practitioners. It is bad enough when the industry simply has refused to pay claims in the past on decent policies and has condemned so many to slow and not so slow deaths when they could not get the treatments that they needed to preserve or prolong their lives. These are things that are reserved for those who have the resources to afford them and has created the divide that caused the Affordable Health Care Act into being in the first place. Many have heard the story of how president Obama’s mother fought with her insurance company before she died of the illness that killed her. As Mr. Obama has recently written, doing the health care bill was not a particularly smart political move but it was a moral thing with the president after seeing what his own mother had gone through.
When we think about Barack Obama, morality has touched many things that he has done even though there are those who hate him especially and only due to the color of his skin. When we think of Mr. Obama we think of another black leader--the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.--who made the statement once that it might have to be the negroes who became the final consciousness of this nation. We are not likely to see another leader such as Mr. Obama in a very long time to come and we had best take advantage of his leadership and sincere morality on issues that matter while we have the time to do so. And writers such as Leonard Pitts should have their Pulitzer Prizes stripped from them for not telling the whole story surrounding the things that they print. If we continue to castigate those who try to institute some standards in this nation we are going to have what you have when you have none of them--a free for all where only the rich and the powerful prosper on the backs of those who struggle daily merely to survive.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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