Posted on 11/24/2013 5:55:17 AM PST by Kaslin
As a columnist I am supposed to dispassionately convey a viewpoint to educate my readers about the topic du jour. But I am hopping mad. Not at Obama or Queen Kathleen because I lost faith and confidence in those two long ago. After the escapades of the last week, my anger is totally focused on the leaders of the businesses who are in cahoots with Obamacare -- either through providing insurance or working on the website. Once again big business allowed their greed to cause them to be exposed to politicians defaming them.
After more than three years of working hand-in-hand with the people trying to nationalize health care in this country, health insurance companies have found out who is going to get the blame when things go wrong. Our President, trapped in a downward spiral that even his political allies could not tolerate any longer, called an audible. Finding that the country would not tolerate millions of Americans having their health insurance plans cancelled to accomplish Obama’s goal of a nationalized health industry, Obama offered a one-year reprieve so that Democrats in Congress would be able to continue on their sinking ship past election day -- November 4, 2014. With senators and congressmen seeing their future without their free health insurance, they forced Obama to care politically about someone other than himself. But the problem is Obama’s solution is nearly totally unworkable, and when it fails there will be someone to blame -- and it will not be politicians.
It goes even deeper than that. The insurance companies have known for a long time that they were going to be cancelling the policies of just about one in the individual insurance marketplace. If they were honest with their customers and they were not in cahoots with Obama and his cronies, they would have warned Americans about this looming disaster ages ago. They knew this before the election last year, but kept their mouths shut. The only rationale for such behavior is they saw that they were going to line their own pockets; i.e., greed.
In fact, they have been keeping their mouths shut about the coming Tsunami. While the President and his human mouthpiece (Jay Carney) minimize the pain of 16 million Americans as only “5% of Americans,” the truth is that almost every small business health care plan is going to be cancelled by the end of 2014. That is tens of millions of Americans. The only reason they have not been cancelled is the illegal reprieve given to business plans by the President. I know; I have a small business health insurance plan myself and I have been informed by multiple authorities that the cancellation notices are coming. The reason the insurance companies are not telling us the truth about that is – yes, you guessed it – greed.
If you are not sure I am correct, then take it from Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans), which is the industry’s trade group. On their website they bill themselves as “one of the most effective trade associations in Washington D.C.” When appearing on Fox News Sunday, she was asked by host Chris Wallace a direct question: “When the President was going around the country promising ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan’, did you know that was not possible under the terms of Obamacare?” Her answer “Chris, I am not in the blame game biz,” and then she went on.
I am not against greed. I agree with Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street when he said “Greed is good.” But everything has its limits, and in this case the limit is counterbalanced by one of my favorite sayings “There is a responsibility level to being a Capitalist.” When Capitalists act irresponsibly, the Socialists in our country pounce with new laws and restrictions on our activities. There is always a bigger picture than just lining your own pockets. It may not be illegal what the Health Insurers are doing, but it certainly is immoral.
The health insurance companies should have seen this coming. They could have learned from recent episodes where politicians ran and hid after creating the conditions for the housing collapse. Or they could have seen the pounding that Jaime Dimon has taken from the government after they begged him and JP Morgan to take over failing companies during the 2008 financial crisis. The government is now extracting penalties from his company for the actions of the acquired companies in the period prior to acquisition. Get it straight – when you get in bed with leftist politicians they are always going to run for the hills when there is a problem, and it is guaranteed they are going to blame capitalist greed for their failed policies.
It is very interesting the difference in the attitude of small business and big business. Almost universally, small business people loathe government. They see governments as troublesome and invasive. Small business owners want the government as far away as possible. But big business is different. I am reminded of the conversation I had with a big businessman in September, 2010. He told me his cronies were leaning toward supporting Jerry Brown for Governor of California over Meg Whitman (former CEO of EBay, now CEO of HP) because Brown would be better for business (i.e. their business). We were in a social situation so I was unable to ask “Are you out of your mind?” No, they were just greedy.
The proposed change by President Obama cannot work; and, if it were able to work, it would only last until after his comrades in Congress miss the chopping block in 2014. When it does not work Obama, Queen Kathleen, the Undertaker and Ms. Nancy will blame the insurance companies, and we will be one step closer to socialized medicine.
Thus, Ms. Ignagni -- please ask your board: is being in bed with Obama on this worth it to you and the American people? I would suggest it is now time to come clean on what a mess the government has made of the health insurance situation and help to salvage a free America.
The necessary reforms should address the monopolies in the Health Care System first!
Until then, we’re screwed.
Good go right ahead and screw big business. I Have always been a supporter of them, but since they, Aunt Lindsey and uncle Mitch began screwing us on amnesty they can take it and shove it. Screw them some more. Their media is anti business so why not stick it to them just for that as well? We conservatives have rolled over for big business too often thinking they were somehow on our side.Either they are not on our side or they are just plain feckless, treacherous and duplicitous.
Obamacare is actually a 2 part plan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HnkxIh62dQ&feature=player_embedded
If you sign up for 0care your HIPPA rights are null and void. You then have NO right to privacy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOk0vOup4yA
Big Business is screwed? Just Big Business? Uh, no we are all screwed! The hardest screwed will be the middle income person who looses coverage and makes “too much” to get a subsidy thus can’t afford coverage.
Funny thing though, this was intended to reduce costs, yet now people who used to be able to afford coverage on their own now cannot without a subsidy.
If your path is taking you farther from your goal you are probably going in the wrong direction.
They got in the bed in the first place.
Why would anyone want to sign up? Only idiots do
Big business is in bed with big politics like Obama and Romney, Christie and other non-conservatives.
The suffering imposed by a more socialistic society hurts the “little people” before the “big people” that sit in corporate board rooms and do interviews with Neil Cavuto.
Grassroots conservatives will have to do what they see fit to do without anger or bitterness.
Here in Pennsylvania, a Republican led legislature, the Democrats, BUSINESS and labor unions along with the Republican governor have come together to impose 10 billion plus dollars in new taxes on us. The second largest tax increase in Pennsylvania history.
That’s business for you. Its doing what it sees fit to do and its not identifying with the Constitutional, limited government position of the founders of this country.
When the people decided they wanted a federal medicare program they determined it was ok for health insurance companies to remove themselves from free markets. Thus we live with the results of that today. That was the people’s choice not big business’.
We need to eliminate the overregulation and taxation that encourages business to get in bed with politics. We also need to harshly punish those who attempt to use government to crush the competition.
EPA and OSHA would be out of business totally to save money with decisions on workplace safety and environmental rules left strictly to the states if I had a say in it.
‘Big Business’ is the problem I’m talking about. They use their positions, wealth, and power to extract benefits from government to the detriment of the rest of us. Those Monopolies are the problem. This is the fundamental transformation of this nation into the Ruling Class and the Dumb masses (say it fast).
What amazes me is that BB get in bed with those who want a single payer system that doesn’t need them. Do they think they will be the lone survivor that will manage what’s left after this?
Obamacare is the ultimate knock-out punch to the USA economy. Obama knows this. It doesn’t matter to him if Obamcare works or not: The punch has already been thrown. Democrats stand around and laugh at our wounded nation.
It starts with the tax system.
I, personally like the ‘Fair Tax’.
These businesses are not capitalists. Capitalism means competition and they abhor competition. They are Facists who make faustian bargains with the government, who then choose the economic winners. Much better outcome from a business perspective. That why business sides with the Democrats and signs up for their socialist schemes. That’s why they allow the Democrats to paint them as the bad guy. When the shouting is over, the businesses rake in the cash and go on their way.
I keep relating what is happening in our country to Genesis 47.
Why can’t we and businesses store and save for ourselves? Why must we trade off all for government to manage this and become government slaves?
We are living fear centered lives. If we could only trust and depend on God more.
There is shelter and food for the sparrow, so surely with more personal responsibility and dependance on God we would flourish with the freedom of the sparrow and not as a helpless pet canary in a cage.
Big business clamors and gives away much to government from greed, just as we do out of fear. Government needs to be put in a cage and made the slave. We care for the govenment, not the other way around.
The insurance companies were more than happy to sell out the American public as long as they saw the guaranteed size of their market growing.
Do they think they will be the lone survivor that will manage what’s left after this?
Much like “journalists” many in business who support “liberalism” wrongly believe that they will be part of the ruling class rather than be dumped into the slave class.
But, NOT ALL business, even big ones support the libs; really only the ones that find it easier to make a profit off the taxpayers than off legitimate sales do.
“It goes even deeper than that. The insurance companies have known for a long time that they were going to be cancelling the policies of just about one in the individual insurance marketplace. If they were honest with their customers and they were not in cahoots with Obama and his cronies, they would have warned Americans about this looming disaster ages ago. They knew this before the election last year, but kept their mouths shut. The only rationale for such behavior is they saw that they were going to line their own pockets; i.e., greed.”
Insurance companies were in this from the get go because they saw the potential for far more policies and higher rates. IMO, they helped design the law. The did not argue against it. F em. Now they are out there with their hats out hoping the public will save them albeit they continue to lick the boots of his majesty and grovel for “subsidies”. F em again. Frankly if this continues along, more G money is pumped into it underwriting the insurance companies I’d just as soon see single payor and the Insurance Companies go away F em again.
The name for businessmen who deal with Obama should properly be “NEP-men”. In the Soviet Union, after the unparalleled disaster of collectivization, Lenin decided to create what he called “state capitalism”. The businessmen who worked hard to restore their country in the New Economic Policy under Lenin were called the “NEP-men”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
The reason that this should be the label of businessmen who deal with Obama today, concerns the fate of the NEP-men.
While what they had been doing was working, and restoring the Soviet economy, when Stalin came to power, he re-instituted collectivism, and ordered all the NEP-men to be arrested and shot.
While this is unlikely to happen to businessmen today “literally”, it is quite likely to happen to them figuratively. Because, like Stalin, Obama owes them nothing.
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