It's not like these corporate leaders of benevolence and greater good ration healthcare in the first place for greater profits and CEO bonuses or anything. Nope. All great caring corporate citizens.

The industry argues that creating a public insurance program will undermine the marketplace and eventually lead to a single-payer style system.

How is that an argument against reform? Sounds good to me.

Stupid industry.

I don't get it. Why doesn't some PAC who is in favor of a Public Plan just call out the GOP dorks , one at a time, and ask them why they think they should have such great coverage and that their constituents shouldn't? One by one. A differen TV add each day featuring each of these blowhards. Show a picture of them. Show the plan they have and how great it is. Then show footage of some of their constituents sitting in an emergency room waiting for a doctor, or outside a facility that takes-in indegents and the poor.

Rinse and repeat. All of them including the Democratic sleaze who think the poor should remain unhealthy.

What a half-baked counrty. It's always amazing to me how the constituents of these class warfare pols continue to vote for them. America is chuck full of stupid people. Nauseating...

No one seems to have pointed out the total breakdown of the conservative argument over this point.

The conservative argument used to be that the free market was innately superior to the government, and could do a better job because it was efficient while government bureaucrats aren't.

Now they're saying that they're afraid the Federal government can do a better job than the free market, but it shouldn't be allowed to. Because free markets are better, even when they're worse. Or something.

This just begs for a parody ad, doesn't it?

In reality, they're just corporate shills, and all the free-market BS has been just that all along. But it's rarely been so blatantly obvious.

the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors

Fuck you, assholes. My current "market based free enterprise bullshit" insurance won't let me choose out-of-network doctors unless I pay ridiculous percentages anyway.

I used to have Blue Cross several years ago, but eventually dropped it when the premiums doubled in just two years time. I saw it as a bait a switch in which they lured me in with reasonable rates to start, only to increase the premium every 4 months or so. I never once even used the damn insurance, and after it reached the double point, I just became disgusted and decided gambling with no insurance was a risk I'd take.

I'm with Doubtful. If all those horrible things they say about the government plan are true, why would anyone switch? It's a self-defeating argument.

But of course there is the truth: the government plan, without the 15% profit requirement, will likely offer coverage (per premium dollar) equal to or greater than any private carrier can provide.

It's time for the healthcare insurance industry to die.

We didn't have this problem with Blue Cross-Blue Shield when they were nonprofit companies. I'm not sure that this public-private debate isn't just a diversion when the real emphasis should be on going back to the pre-Reagan era when the financials got totally screwed up- when health care was a nonprofit operation. Private companies are fine by me in health care as long as they are operated mutually and not for profit. We had mutual insurance companies for 150 years until the Reagan era and we can see how well their conversion to for profit has worked.

I once had a "gold plated" private health insurance plan through the movie industry (back when such plans were affordable by anyone), and even it was "rationed", with very restrictive rules about how one qualified for it. And then it was rationed by what they would pay for or not.

And today, that same plan is a mere shadow of its former self, with even more "rationing" in the form of higher and higher co-pays and exclusions, etc.

I'll take my government-run single-payer health system (the Veterans Administration) any day over that gold-plated system 20 years ago.

Blue Cruss/Blue Shield, who have been pigs nationally since they led the way to piggery 30 years ago, can come up with all the lies and baloney they want. Everyone watching their lies knows the system doesn't work and is broken.

Actually, I think the Blue Cross of NC is exactly right. A well run government will put them out of business and lead to a single payer system in the long run. Them lying about it and trying to keep it from happening should more or less be expected and, hopefully, someone is taking it into account.

Next I would expect litigation to keep it from happening, then an effort to change/modify the government plan to make it unworkable and finally more litigation to keep the insurance companies in business.

Lots and lots of hurtles in this race.

The industry argues that creating a public insurance program will undermine the marketplace and eventually lead to a single-payer style system.

Since this is exactly what I want, I guess I should be greatful to them for pointing this out.

I'm with Stevio. I want every member of Congress who oppose a public option to explain publicly why he or she has not rejected the public plan they have. Or they can explain why they should have an option available to them that is not available to the people who elected them.

We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Obama's held out the easy way to healthcare reform, and the Gopers have bitten that hand once too often. It is now time to take off the gloves and give them a taste of the clenched fist---via some serious single-payer smackdown targeted directly against BCBS.

Crush one profit-scarfing player; crush that player beyond any conceivable recognition and beyond any imaginable hope of resurrection, and the rest will fall back into line. When the Republikanner Beast begins to howl and whine, the only answer they'll deserve is this:

Payback's a bitch....

the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors

Uh, the main reason my wife and I held off switching to the Blue Shield plan that we have now for several years, despite the fact that it is superior in most other ways to the plan we had previously (which kept getting worse), is that our long-time doctor, the best doctor we'd found, is someone we can't see under our current Blue Shield plan.

So I am having trouble taking BCBS seriously when they try to use that as something we're supposed to fear in a government plan.

Hmmm, if this public option is really so bad, it would certainly fail quickly in competition with the vastly superior private insurers. What are they afraid of? Could it be that the nightmares they predict with a public option already occur 100fold with the private insurers? Naah, people who seek profit from the illness of others can always be trusted.

Actually, I think the Blue Cross of NC is exactly right. A well run government will put them out of business and lead to a single payer system in the long run. Them lying about it and trying to keep it from happening should more or less be expected and, hopefully, someone is taking it into account.

Bingo

I have a chronic condition which means I can only get insurance in the open market through the high risk pool. The insurance companies have already rejected me as a customer but they don't want to allow the government to insure me. Their scare senario is utopia compared to the coverage I can get from the high risk pool.

May they rot in hell.

Private insurers have been undermining the healthy and economy of the American people for decades. It's about time they learned the true meaning of "undermine" -- through personal experience.

Good riddance, I say.

About 100 years ago, cities were lit by gaslight and hired men to light and dowse the lamps. When electricity became the choice for streetlights, the lamplighters were out of work. Maybe it's time for insurance companies to go the way of the lamplighters. It's called progress.

I have lived with government run healthcare in the UK for most of my life, I can say that it is superb, when compared with what we have over here. My husband, when in the UK had an aortic annurism, he went to a British doctor, who sent him to the finest specialist in Cambridge, he had surgery in Cambridge, the finest aftercare - a none on one specialist nurse for 48 hours after surgery, a total of 10 days in hospital, the total cost of his stay & doctors, nurses, medicine etc was zero - bear in mind he had never paid a cent towards the system, but had lived in the UK for 1 year.

I meant to say one on one - also that the French system is thought to be even better.

Funny, when I had government-run health care under Tricare while on active duty, I was able to get an appointment for urgent care within 24 hours, and routine appointments within two weeks. If I didn't like the doctor who was my assigned PCM, all I had to do was request to be re-assigned to someone else, preferably female. Not a problem.

I've been out of the military for three years, I just tried to make an appointment for my annual with my GYN, and was told I'd have to wait three months. This is after my first two appointments were rescheduled.

My current insurer is a subsidiary of BCBS. They can bite me.

In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors

As a BCBS "customer", I have to ask ... how would this be any different than what I have now? (I mean, aside from costing a lot less than BCBS...)

the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors,

and this is different from being covered by Blue-Cross/Blue Sheild how?

I have a "gold plated" plan with a public agency, and my carrier is Aetna HMO. Two years ago I had an acute and painful condition, and it took me two months to see a specialist and another two months after that to have a procedure done.

And, of course, government funded health care would be portable, not tied to one's job -- which would improve the employment market, since people wouldn't have to stick with crappy jobs due to health care concerns.

My favorite of the laughable arguments against a single-payer or government-run healthcare system is the preposterous claim that it would be mired in bureaucracy.

That's like Burger King saying we shouldn't eat at Chipolte because it's a chain and they might serve fast food.

Or like R J Reynolds describing chewing gum as exceedingly unhealthy.

Or Republicans saying that Democrats are responsible for the current economic crisis.

Waiting months for an appointment? Like I was told today re my 17yo's annual physical. It used to be in early July, but over the years has moved to mid August, as the insurance won't cover two within a year's time, and it is always scheduled a little later. So I'm told they can schedule him the end of Sept!! That's a problem - he leaves for college August 22nd! But they say I can schedule it for sometime in the fall when I know he will be coming home - isn't that helpful?! Certainly happy to live in a country where the insurance industry runs health care - it would be terrible to have to wait months for an appointment!!

That's what these scumbags are doing with the premiums I pay them?

This is why we need to go to single payer. It works in Medicare, it can work for the rest.

My Goodness, the doomsday scenario, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is advertising is a fact of life for a large majority of people in this country. There are hundreds of people who don't have medical procedures and operations, are put on waiting list and die waiting for physicians who won't take their insurance. COBRA premiums cost more than a mortgage and most adults are happy to get Medicaid even though their is a shortage of doctors who will accept it because it pays for meds. For the vast majority of people in this country we already have rationed care. So the doomsday scenario won't work if the universal health care people call their bluff and ridicule this nonsense as out of touch.