INSURANCE SHOULD BENEFIT CONSUMERS, NOT JUST CORPORATE MANAGERS AND CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS

Insurance shouldn't be a for-profit business. In fact, it has failed miserably as such. So far this year the insurance industry is the 8th biggest source of bribes "contributions" for congressional Republicans ($7,541,565) and the 11th biggest source for congressional Democrats ($9,126,935). (In 2006, when they were fight for their hero Rick Santorum, insurance executives doled out $13,277,247 for Republican candidates (62% of their total) and $7,705,797 to Democratic candidates (36% of their total). This year, with greasy Democratic thugs Schumer, Emanuel and Hoyer replacing greasy GOP thugs Santorum, Delay and Blunt as the enforcers with the power, Dems have gotten 55% of the insurance industry's bribe stash. Why? Well, it surely isn't because they have suddenly gotten that old time religion and realized that Democratic ideals, values and principles are best for the country. It's far more likely that SchumerEmanuelHoyer has assured them that Democratic ideals, values and principles will never get in the way of, you know... business.

The first time I met Howard Dean he talked to me about how health insurance was too crucial in people's lives to be left as a private industry out to make a quick buck and incentivized to deny peoples' claims whenever they can get away with it. Today's CongressDaily features a story by Shihoko Goto that makes it abundantly clear that many Democrats agree with the Republicans that insurance shouldn't just be a private industry, it should be an unregulated one with license to rip everyone off at will, the way they do now.

A bill seeking to create a federal office for insurance regulation within the Treasury Department is coming under close scrutiny, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle questioning the need for it.

It started off as a bipartisan measure meant "to improve financial regulation by setting up an Office of Insurance Information that would collect insurance data at the national level and beef up the government's in-house expertise on insurance policy. In addition, the office would advise legislators on international as well as domestic insurance concerns." Pretty tame stuff, right? Listening to right-wing Republicans and their Blue Dog counterparts, you would think someone had just proposed socialism. "I believe in states' rights," said Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, adding that he needed more information to decide on whether he would support the bill. His sentiment was echoed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y." Why?

Some members of the insurance industry expressed concern about the bill and the possibility of adding red tape to the business.

"There is no crisis in the insurance industry" that warrants the establishment of a federal office, and change current business practices, said Brian Kennedy, a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives and president of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators.

Even if legislators don't see it-- their own system is dandy-- health insurance is one of the problems Americans are most pissed off about. If Democrats can't go beyond talking about it and actual fix it, they will be as reviled as Bush and his rubber stamp Republicans.

The economic downturn is speeding up the unraveling of America's healthcare system.
In what experts call a "startling" development, the number of people who have health insurance but not enough to pay their medical costs has spiked from 16 million in 2003 to 25 million in 2007, according to a new analysis.

They're called the underinsured-- working Americans whose employers don't provide health insurance so they have to buy it on their own, or who have jobs that offer only catastrophic plans with high copayments and deductibles in the thousands of dollars. An increasing number are solidly middle-class.

The study by nonprofit, nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund also found that underinsured Americans are now acting more like the nation's 47 million uninsured: They're more likely to forgo recommended medical care for fear they won't be able to pay for it. Such preventive intervention is key to keeping healthcare costs down, medical experts say.

A total of 75 million working adults were either uninsured or underinsured in 2007, the study found. That's 42 percent of the US population ages 19 through 64, up sharply from one-third in 2003.

"This erosion in insurance protection is putting patients, families, and the nation's health and economic security at risk," says Cathy Schoen, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Fund and one of the study's coauthors. "As a nation we are losing ground. We need to move in new directions."

McCain and Obama have very different perspectives on the insurance problem. Obama is trying to figure out how to effectively and efficiently deliver services to consumers. McCain is bogged down in protecting the special interests of Republican campaign contributors. This morning Obama gave a speech in Chicago about protecting consumers from predatory credit card companies that is worth listening to in order to help understand where he's coming from. The problem isn't just insurance or credit cards; Obama understands it and so does McCain, but McCain is part of the problem, not part of the solution: