Here is the text of the e-mail I sent to Senator Kent Conrad (D?-ND) this afternoon.
Senator Conrad:
I’ve been hearing your ruminations regarding health care legislation and your news-making idea about a privately administered cooperative system as a counter balance to a health insurance industry that is exempt from anti-trust law and largely unregulated.
How exactly will that be working out? Will interested parties have to take on work on their own to market such a plan to at least 500,000 individuals and work out the specifics of the plan and do the billing and administer the claims and meet all of the laws regarding insurance in different districts? If they do that, can they get a billion a year in compensation like old what’s his name over at United Health Care? C’mon, you must remember his name. I bet it showed up on the bottom of a lot of campaign checks that you cashed.
Would it be that privately held, for-profit health insurance companies could be enlisted to administrate these cooperatives instead? How would that differ from the entirely broken, no relationship to a free market, colluding CEO system that exists now?
I have heard your sorrowful plaint about how you think that any sort of government plan isn’t going to fly because you’re afraid that it just doesn’t have the votes. Even with fifty-six Democrats, there just aren’t going to be the votes there for it. Of course, the other question that screams out for resolution is, how can you be so sure about your prediction with a plan that has yet to be unveiled.
You know, I don’t think that the Republicans had that large a majority from 1996 to 2006 (with that very brief hiatus) yet they had no trouble at all in passing the most egregious of George W. Bush’s wild eyed pipe dreams. Where the hell did they get the votes? Oh yeah, they had you voting with them, and there wasn’t enough courage to mount a filibuster any more than there is enough courage to stand up to one now.
Besides, when a Blue Dog gets bought, they stay bought. And it’s not like a Republican who greedily slurps up those corporate donations with a gratitude for how well the corporations’ interests mesh with their admittedly twisted principles. No indeed, a Blue Dog won’t even trouble themselves with consideration of party or principle as they stand with the grease dripping from their palms.
Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to resign ourselves to no change. Yeah, I guess things are just going to go on with the status quo, at least with the way the American public is being fleeced on their health care. The way it is happening would, no doubt be criminal if it weren’t for the stalwart sellouts like Kent Conrad standing in protection of their racket, for a price.
Oh, Kent, did you see how much dough Barack Obama raised from people who became aware and expressed a desire for change? I think your next primary opponent is going to have that kind of fundraising experience. That will be the next change for us to direct our energy towards. I know I’ll certainly be working for that enlightened and beneficial end.
And, gee, we’d like to hang on to you Kent, but the cost is just too high and I don’t see that the votes are going to be there for it.
No single payer on the table? No government plan on the table? Then no for-profit on the table.
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