You know what you do with an ant?
You squish it. You stomp over it, you wrap it in a piece of toilet paper and drown it in the toilet.
"I feel like a little ant."
You wonder why your health insurance claims are not paid? You wonder why people stricken with cancer are denied chemotherapy? You wonder why insurance companies can walk all over us? You wonder why Nataline Sarkisyan is not alive?
This diary is going to help you undertand how this thoroughly corrupt system is stacked against us ants.
These simple, I would argue, elegant six words, summarize for me what's at stake--today, in New Hampshire, and certainly in November.
You and I--the American people, are tiny, little, squishable ants.
I am so Goddamn sick and tired of being treated by the political class as a worthless, disposable ant.
As elections draw near, you magically hear politicians excoriate "the special interests", while calling for bold change. Then just as magically, the day after the election, lo and behold, the cameras are gone, the crowds have vanished and the politicians are wheeling and dealing pulling in the cash. We learned in the last debate, that it's entirely legal to dine and be bribed by a lobbyist as long as you're standing up.
Are these politicians kidding us? Do they think we are zombie, jackass, sub-moron fools?
Which brings me to us ants and corruption.
Nataline Sarkisyan was an ant--this is why her life was drowned in a toilet bowl called CIGNA.
Here's further insight why insurance companies can squish us like ants.
This story is from Bloomberg News, no friend of us ants. It's about a woman named Zelphoe Maloney, who owns three hair salons in New Mexico and was diagnosed with a form of Lupus. She required a bone marrow transplant which her insurer denied.
Bribed Regulators Deceiving FBI Roil U.S. Insurance Customers
Zelphoe Maloney, who owns three hair salons in Albuquerque, New Mexico, knew she faced a battle when a doctor said in May 2004 she had a 50 percent chance of dying soon afterward unless she had a bone marrow transplant.
What she didn't expect was a fight with her health insurer- -and then with the state insurance department.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
It turns out, (surprise, surprise), they're all in bed together.
Zelphoe, like Nataline, was an insured American. Zelphoe had insurance through Lovelace Sandia Health System.
Lovelace Sandia Health System Inc., Maloney's insurance company, told her the transplant procedure wasn't covered against a life-threatening form of lupus, a disease in which the immune system backfires and attacks the body.
Maloney, 42, appealed Lovelace's decision to the New Mexico Insurance Division, which is supposed to help consumers get fair treatment from insurance companies. A panel appointed by then Insurance Superintendent Eric Serna recommended rejecting her appeal in September 2004, and Serna affirmed the panel's decision.
What Maloney didn't know at the time was that Serna wasn't just a state regulator: He was also a founder and president of a nonprofit corporation, Con Alma Health Foundation, which had received $60,300 in contributions from Albuquerque-based Lovelace from 2002 to 2004, according to Con Alma's tax returns.
"I feel like a little ant." But what do you expect in a system as corrupt as ours?
I'll say right here, if the politicians don't want to give up their heavily taxpayer-subsidized Cadillac coverage, how about if the agree to receive their healthcare in a Third World public hospital, like Grady in Atlanta?
I encourage you to read this very disturbing article about Grady which was on the front age of the New York Times, this morning.
By the way, the "Cadillac coverage" link I provided, goes to the state by state health benefits available to federal employees. Please check your state. Behold the feast of affordable options available. Behold what your representative is paying, then compare it to what you pay. Very little, you'll notice, thanks to the generosity of the taxpayers ants. Would someone tell me why we tolerate this?
Returning to us insured Americans ants. Isn't Zelphoe's story, your story? It's certainly my story.
Feeling Abandoned
``This is a conflict of interest,'' says Maloney, who eventually received a transplant paid for by anonymous donations. ``These regulators are supposed to be working for us. I feel totally betrayed and powerless. I feel like a little ant.'' Maloney's experience is symptomatic of a fragmented system of regulation, created 150 years ago, that gives each state the power to regulate insurance companies.
Insurance departments license companies, examine them to protect solvency and, in 39 states, set rates. The agencies are also responsible for protecting policyholders from unfair treatment, including refusal to pay claims. They can investigate misconduct, force insurers to pay policyholders, issue fines and revoke licenses.
Each state regulates as it pleases. While departments sometimes clamp down on misconduct, regulators in Connecticut, Illinois, Mississippi and New Mexico have at times done little to help consumers or punish wrongdoing by companies, according to court files and insurance department complaint records.
State regulators also act as insurance boosters by going on industry-paid trips and promoting the trade. Fifty percent of insurance commissioners in the past two decades, or 74 of 148 regulators, came from or went to insurance jobs, blurring distinctions between government and industry.
I would suggest that any voters who have an opportunity to question any candidate along the campaign trail, high on the list would be a grilling, I repeat a grilling, about how and whether they intend to strangle this Murder By Spreadsheet industry with draconian regulation.
This is what we are facing, dear friends ants.
Insurers spend millions of dollars a year to influence regulators and state officials who write insurance laws, sometimes leading to corrupt practices that have sent four commissioners to prison since 1991.
Insurance departments often fail to uphold their mission of protecting consumers, state and court records show.
``A lot of them are asleep at the switch or they are captives to their corporate constituency,'' says Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has joined other state attorneys general in probing insurance company abuses and has testified to the U.S. Congress about weak insurance regulation. ``They are often more favorable to insurance companies than to policyholders.''
Insurance companies, which had annual premium revenue of $1 trillion and assets of $6.1 trillion in 2006 in the U.S., touch families everywhere -- whether someone gets sick, buys a home or dies. The industry has never had concentrated oversight of the kind that Wall Street gets from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
I urge you to read the entire article. Then you'll understand why healthcare reform without intense federal oversight and regulation is meaningless.