I found this at Firedoglake, and thought it was a great take on how the hundreds of millions spent by lobbyists trying to influence legislators in order to maintain the status quo could have been put to much better use:
"In an article at CNN.com we learn how much money is being spent in an attempt to prevent real health care reform:
"The health care sector has spent $263 million this year lobbying Congress for changes to reform plans, a government watchdog group estimates."
According to USA Today, the average health insurance premium for an individual is $4824. Dividing $263 million by $4824 tells us that 54,500 individuals could have purchased health insurance with the funds spent by the health care sector in their lobbying effort this year.
Last month, we learned that 45,000 people a year die in the US due to lack of health insurance. Think about that for just a minute. The amount of money being spent in an attempt to prevent health care reform is more than enough to purchase insurance for all of those who die due to lack of coverage."
Oh, now there you go bringing math into it. We're not supposed to worry our pretty little heads about things like that, darlin'. We've got all those fine politicians to take care of it for us, and they all have that special math in Washington.
recently i've started paying more attention to corporate welfare, which is shamefully out of control while people who need safety net programs are kicked to the curb. most tiring is the three biggest lies spread by anti healthcare reform lobby. #1 is "over half of the 47mil uninsured are illegals. #2 magic bullet of "across state line portability will solve it (after illegals are weeded out?) and #3 "tort reform". malpractice is nearly impossible to study as few if any suits every see the light of day. that is not to say doctors are not being squeezed by insurance industry with high "defensive medicine" premiums. basically insurance does it to ALL sides because they CAN! reminds me of ma bell back in the late 70's, charge me to caller id you, charge you to caller id block me, laughing all the way to the bank. i like the idea emerging to tackle the insurance fraud being perpetrated against america under anti-trust statues.
It's a shame we can't "Book 'em Dano".
Amen, my brother...that's the name of dat tune!
The free enterprise system, the for profit system, works fine.... except when it becomes... instead of a for profit system.... a system of greed.
That's what the health insurance companies are driven by... in this country.
I don't care what your qualifications for holding a job.... no CEO is worth the millions that are paid by shareholders... to a corporation's executives, and that those executives designate to lobbyists.
Not to mention the fact that it's the money they're taking from the averaage worker as premiums and denied service that is being spent lobbying against their customer's interests.