Monday, July 25, 2005
BooHooHooHoo...Poor WSJ...
The poor Wall Street Journal.0 comments
Sniff. Forced to do the bidding of that evil corporate world. Sniff, sniff. Anyone have a tissue?
I love this editorial. It starts out great: Many good, good Americans are being screwed by the healthcare debacle in this country. OK, great start.
But instead of shining its sizeable media spotlight on the greed and avarice of the health insurance companies or the healthcare delivery system, WSJ turns its focus on the real culprit: state legislatures!
AHA!
A bit of background. One of the reasons that the health insurance industry is so difficult to attack is that a few years ago, they got their friends in the Congress to pass legislation exempting them from the federal court system (and thereby, federal regulation), placing them under the jurisdiction of each of the different states and their laws.
Basically you can see the benefit. If they lose on the federal level, they're stuck. But if they can play on the state level, they can happily work on your underpaid, underloved, thoroughly unknown state assemblyperson to vote their way. And if they lose in New York, say, well there's always Missouri. If they lose in New Jersey, there's always Delaware.
Sweet racket.
In the '40s and '50s, that just what they called this type of thing: The Rackets.
It's what the FBI spent their time on. They were called, "Racketbusters."
But without any visible "Racketbuster" around the ol' FBI compound these days, the health insurance crowd are now happily putting pressure through their official party organ, the WSJ, on the state legislatures that have had the courage to stand up to the industry and force them to offer services that residents of the state demand.
This is an opening salvo in the frontal attack on the hardline regulatory legislatures around the country. Those which appear interested in doing the people's business rather than the company's.
BooHooHooHoo.
posted by Gotham 10:35 AM
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