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Ratigan: Why would we let them rig the game?
Some lawmakers want a continued monopoly of the health care system
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Public option or no option? Sept. 29: While Senators debate the public option, it seems lawmakers are shying away from a bill that would subject the health insurance companies to anti-trust laws, and break their hold on the health care system. A Morning Meeting panel discusses. Morning Meeting |
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 | Focus on public option Sept. 29: As the Senate Finance Committee heads back to work on the health care bill, their main objective is to find a compromise on the public option. A Morning Meeting panel discusses. Morning Meeting |
 | INTERACTIVE |
 | Who's who in the health care debate A look at the key players shaping the national debate over health care — including the legislators and policymakers at the center of it all. |
| INTERACTIVE |
 | Have your say on health care reform As the government ponders health care reform, what are your top concerns? |
Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:
- Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market
- North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market
- Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market
- Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market
This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.
I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?
Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems — industries like health insurance and big Pharma.
While we clearly have the ability as a group of 305 million to update the system that is American Health Care and move our country into the 21st century in the process, it's becoming clear that we may not have the leaders to do it.
Instead of seeking answers to the problem of paying for and providing medicine, we are doing the exact opposite. Taxpayers' money is being played with by politicians who are desperately trying to protect the competition-stifling, false security of the monopolistic employer-based health care system and its outdated, over-charging, under-delivering ways. Given the least consideration are those affected the most — the patients and the doctors who care for them.
This country's founders built an ingenious system of checks and balances for a reason: to ensure that no special interest or group could use government power to commandeer the creative and economic wealth of our nation to their own ends. How much longer must we live in a country where the citizens are subservient to the banks, health insurance companies and any other special interest able to control our government at the expense of our the most basic principles of fairness, our future as a nation and, as a result, our freedom?
Morning Meeting airs Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. ET to 11 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
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