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Have you signed the Senate Democratic Leadership's Support a Public Option petition yet?
Last year, Senator Mary Landrieu campaigned hard on the slogan:
But, ever since the election, she's been fighting for the health insurance companies and her allies in the business sector, rather than the people who actually VOTED to send her back to Washington.
Granted, she's done a fantastic job fighting for our interests when it comes to rebuilding our state from the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav, in addition to the destruction wreaked by the Federal Flood in the New Orleans region.
So she's making sure that we can continue to live in the state we all love. But how about making sure we can continue to LIVE, Senator?
The health care plan you're currently supporting will mandate that all Americans buy into private health insurance plan, and have government looking over us every time we interact with it. Not to mention that such a mandate will be a boon to the health insurance industry - more premiums they can stick in their pockets while denying individuals the care they need. On top of that, if the Wall Street Journal's opinion page - the paper for Wall Street - has anything good to say about that plan, then you can bet your bottom dollar, Senator, that it is NOT in the best interests of Louisianans, let alone the American people.
EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND (pdf alert) of your constituents, Senator, are currently living without health insurance, either because they are uninsurable due to being a survivor of a serious illness, or because they simply can't afford the premiums.
And yet you think some government regulations will squeeze enough savings out of the health insurance companies to lower the cost enough to ensure that all Louisianans will be able to afford to purchase a health care plan? We are talking about an industry that engages in despicable practices like rescission:
If you worked for a company that offered insurance, if you carried your family's insurance, next year your insurer would slap a million dollar surcharge on the company policy for carrying a leukemia patient. The company would get the bill and someone in accounting would question "what is this extra million dollars we are being billed?"
The insurance company would explain to them that the million is for you, and it is yearly, but is, ahem, "fixable." They will say "as long as she is on your insurance (wink, wink) this charge will be there. So what you have to ask yourself (more wink, wink) is whether this employee is worth a million dollar a year salary on top of what you are already paying her."
Social worker said she had seen small business owners go almost broke trying to cover this charge, and had even heard of one who defiantly did go broke, throwing all of the employees out of work. But more usually, she said, they just fire you.
"Wait, wait!" say you, "Isn't it illegal to fire someone for their health history? Suppose I'm all well and working?"
She looks at you with more pity, says yes, so of course they will have to find "cause" to fire you, which any employer can always do.
"But I am a very, very good employee!" you protest.
"Yes," she says, "but they can always find some cause." The real problem she goes on to explain, is that you will find a new job, that company's insurer will slap them with the surcharge, they will take their turn at firing you, until you've been through six or seven jobs in a year, fired "for cause" from all of them, which of course looks very, very bad to a prospective employer.
"So in a year or so of this, you will not just be uninsurable, you will also be unemployable."
She asks who your husband works for, since they'd probably try to do this to him too. You say he is a cop working for a municipality, which pleases her. "They have all sorts of layers of officials, elected and otherwise, to work their way through to get to the decision, then once they do they have to get past his union, so it will take much longer to get him fired." She also, though, offered sympathy for the fact that what with the police union and the municipality fighting out whatever "cause" they got him on in such a public profession, it was sure to end up in the local papers and disrupt all our lives - including the children's - when they did get that far.
You remind her you seem headed for divorce, and she says, well, okay then, just carry the COBRA to the limit and keep on working for small not-for-profits that don't offer insurance.
You ask her what you are supposed to do for health care and she says sooner or later the insurance companies would force you onto Medicaid - either by means of making you unemployable and broke, or by means of you being uninsured and going through any and all assets you have paying medical bills until you are broke and sick enough that you can't work, and end up on Medicaid.
Senator, you had the right idea back in April when you signed the Health Care For America NOW pledge, which included supporting a public health insurance option.
It's high time for you get back on that saddle. Perhaps then you won't be afraid to face your constituents. After all, you've canceled two appearances - one at The Healing Center's grand opening and two weeks ago when you didn't participate in a scheduled Q&A at a Small Business Committee field hearing in New Orleans. On top of that, it is comical that your staff seems intent on making sure that no bad press emerged from that event by tailing known provocateurs, one of whom just happens to be a former intern in your New Orleans office.
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