Note to the health insurance industry:

[AndyA]

You've brought all this attention on yourselves. For decades, you've called all the shots. You determined who you wanted to insure. You raised premiums to cover internal costs, and ensure a very nice profit for yourselves. You've cut back on coverage, made policies so complicated people didn't really know what insurance they had until they needed it and found out they weren't covered.

You built huge, luxurious office buildings for yourselves, paid your executives a fortune in salary and perks, and continued to take advantage of the fact that you were calling all the shots. Even anti-trust laws couldn't touch you. In short, you had it made.

But you can only go so far with that. Public scrutiny has been growing over the years, and instead of realizing you've had a deal better than almost any other industry ever, you got even greedier and wanted more, more, more. You figured you were entitled to it, I guess, because it's been that way for so long.

You've spent millions paying lobbyists to bribe Congress so you could continue your scheme. Millions that could have saved how many lives if it had been spent on patient care?

You paid to have studies created that ignored facts and emphasized other things out of proportion to your benefit, all to convince Congress they should not reform health care. After all, it's been working so well for you, hasn't it?

Even health insurers can't afford to offer their own employees good health care benefits. Just in the last week, a major insurer announced cut backs to coverage and increases in premiums for its own employees.

You've made all the rules. Pre-existing condition? Not covered. You can't see your doctor, you must see one of ours. That test won't be covered by your insurance, even though it's critical to your diagnosis. Talk about death panels...we've had health insurance death panels for many years now. Every day, they've decided which of our friends and relatives would live or die by whether or not the insurance company wanted to spend the money on them.

Here's the moral to this story: A for-profit industry cannot be depended upon to regulate itself. It must be regulated by a governmental authority that ensures patient care comes first, not profit. No executive is worth $24 million a year when patients are dying every day because they can't afford health care.

The time has come to stop the abuse and provide health care to EVERYONE. The American people pay the bills in this country, and we have a right to access affordable health care. And that means health care that isn't determined by corporate profits.

It's been a long run for you, health insurers. But the end of the road lies ahead. Enough is enough.

[eridani]

1. +10

I'd add "eat shit and die" to that.