Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) sent a letter to the heads of several insurance companies Monday inquiring about their executive pay, retreats, and other business practices. The letter comes at a time when the Democrats, eager to push their reform legislation through, are seeking to highlight waste and abuse in the insurance industry. TPInsurance companies should be happy to explain what value they add to American health care. I'm surprised they haven't already volunteered to give that information. I'm more surprised Congress hasn't already asked for it. Racking up hundreds of billions in profits and paying their executives multi-million dollar salaries could be a hard sell though. But there must be some kind of explanation.
Talk about the ultimate useless middle-guys. Why is it again that we pay private insurance companies hundreds of billions a year to see our doctors?
Single-payer health insurance would save hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Congressional Democrats should just scrap everything they have compromised on up to this point. Tell Republicans there is going to be a vote on single-payer health care, not the watered-down Obamacare-Lite version, but real insurance reform, and its passage will be with 51 votes, not 60.
After all, history has proven unequivocally that good legislative policy can be accomplished without Republican votes. The bill that gave us our best economy in the last 60 years, the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, was passed without a single Congressional Republican vote, and its success is indisputable.
Move on. This country doesn't need Republican support to thrive. In fact, the opposite has been proven true.
