from The Nation:
Killing the Public Option posted by Laura Flanders on 05/21/2009 @ 09:20am
The nation's for profit health insurers are out to scuttle anything within the Obama healthcare plan that might be in any way public.
One week after the insurance lobby pledged to voluntarily constrain rising costs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is preparing a public message campaign aimed at killing the public non-profit part of Obama's reform plan.
Anyone who's been watching has heard the data that have the insurance profiteers so scared. A government-run plan, with no need for profits for Wall Street or bonuses to retain CEOs -- a plan run only to deliver healthcare for the public -- would cut the cost of healthcare. Period. Single payer advocates say that's the only way to go but Obama's still offering a compromise: a bit of both.
According to the Washington Post, as part of what it calls an "informational website," Blue Cross Blue Shield has hired an outside firm to make a series of videos to terrify the public about Obama's so-called public option. In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors.
One spot in the series shows a woman and child wandering down a darkened hospital doorway, "as if they're starting to realize that they've lost their way," according to sketches of the video. "We can do a lot better than a government-run healthcare system," the narrator concludes. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/437573/killing_the_public_option
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