Health Care Remarks 4

I once owned a small business I started while at university. I plowed all of what I made back in the business keeping only what I needed to pay my small bills at the time. In 1991 I hired my first “employee”, an intern from my university.

I was faced with my first dilemma. If I was going to pay someone who works for me a regular salary, shouldn’t I do the same for myself? Dilemma 2; health insurance.

It was a few years late with 8-10 employees that I revisited the health insurance question and ultimately offered a managed plan and picked up 80% of the cost for full time employees. It was the mid 90’s and the Clinton Administration put the fear of God into the rapidly growing and immensely profitable health care racket, I mean industry. The side benefit to this debate was slower increases in heath care cost.

Once the health care racket had sufficiently damaged the administration and rendered our legislators impotent, my insurance costs began to climb exponentially, from the low single digits to low double digits to 20-30% a year. Eventually I had to back down my percentage covered to as low as 50% of a monthly cost that rose nearly 150% in under 10 years. The costs became down right prohibitive for a company with fewer than 25 employees to cover.

Fortunately the state of MD, like many other states frustrated at the impotency of the Federal Government to get anything done, instituted reforms that forced insurers to allow new employees to opt in without restrictions and banned certain other discriminating practices by health care companies.

From the late 1990’s on the health care racket was going through mergers, buyouts, consolidations and making Billions of dollars in profits each quarter. They were paying their CEO’s Dotcom salaries and offering generous stock rewards. I knew something was amiss.

Well America, something is still amiss and the “corporate super citizens” are spending millions of dollars as we speak to convince YOU that universal health care is a “bad idea”. Any wonder why?

It is time you tune out the corporate funded, hyper subjective, emotionally charged and orchestrated “debate” and vote for universal health care today!

Watch video here.