Joe Lieberman

The United States is possibly the only developed country in the world that doesn't have government funded health care. As a result, the last time the World Health Organization ranked countries for health care the U.S. came 37th, between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Everyone who's ever done an objective study of the U.S. health care system says it is at best a myth, and at worst a lie, that it's anywhere close to being the best in the world. The road to improving American health care lies in passing a Universal Health Care plan. And Joe Lieberman is doing everything in his power to stop that from happening.

Allow me to first explain part of how the American health insurance industry works. You pay them so they will cover your medical treatments, because being in a hospital is expensive and most people can't afford it themselves. Since health care and health insurance are for-profit industries in the U.S., hospitals won't do procedures unless they know someone's going to pay, and insurance companies make their money by not paying for procedures (money in > money out = profit).

This means it is in the insurance company's best interest to do everything they can not to pay for your treatment, and they employ people whose sole purpose is to find reasons not to pay. Further, they have something like 2 years in which to make up their minds, so if you die in the interim, it's no skin off their back since you were going to cost them a bunch of money anyway.

The only exception to this is emergency care. If you show up at a hospital with life threatening injuries, the hospital is legally obligated to treat you. They then bill you for it, and you can either pay and be bankrupt, or not pay. They assume most people won't pay, and make up for it by overcharging insurance companies, who pass on the expenses to their policy holders.

Now that we've established how the flow of money works for American health insurance companies, here is a realistic scenario that one might encounter. Suppose you've come down with a disease that requires care you can't ever hope to afford. You contact your insurance company, who proceeds to wait 8 months before deciding whether to cover the procedure. During those 8 months the disease reveals a problem you already had, which was until then benign and nobody knew about it. Upon discovering this new information, your insurance company decides it counts as a pre-existing condition and refuses to cover your necessary treatment. You are now going to suffer greatly before ultimately dying a preventable death.

The question is this: in the above situation, with you now fated to die painfully, are you at least happy the insurance company made more money by letting you die? If that wouldn't be a comfort to you, how the fuck can you possibly think health care as a for-profit industry is a good idea?

Fuck the insurance companies, and fuck anyone who thinks it's more important for them to make a profit than for Americans to be kept healthy. If you're against the idea of a "public option" for health care because it would hurt the profit mongering insurance companies who don't care if you live or die then fuck you too. I have no time for anyone who thinks profit is more important than health care.

Joe Lieberman holds that viewpoint for some reason, which is why Joe Lieberman is a bag of cocks. He's announced very publicly that he will filibuster (means it requires 60 ayes rather than 50) any health care bill that includes a public option. And nobody knows why. He actually ran for election in 2006 on a promise of providing universal health care, but I guess the health insurance companies got a hold of him somehow. Of the 3.5 million constituents he's supposed to be representing, the overwhelming majority want public health care, but apparently he's decided he only represents the minority vote.

But it gets better: Joe Lieberman is actually the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He's a Democrat who campaigned for McCain and refuses to toe the party line on the most important bill of the last 100 years, and any kind of bill that Lieberman would be willing to pass would be just a hollow shell of what it should be, with no public option and no real change. He was likely allowed to keep his Chairmanship after the election because his vote was needed on important issues like health care reform, and now he's trying to block it? Fuck Joe Lieberman, and I'm not the only person who thinks so.

I've never taken a stance against an individual on this website before, but right now the best thing that could possibly happen to the United States would be Joe Lieberman dying. The cockbag must be a hundred and fifty by now, so I'm sure his number will come up any day now. He is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with American politics and policy, and it's obvious that his own personal bank account is more important to him than anything to do with the good of the Country. The health care bill has been so perverted in attempts to get that asshole to bend that at this point, even if it passed it would be all but worthless. With that cockbag out of the way they could return it to a form that would actually be beneficial to the American people, and all the Democrats who removed their support because it wasn't strong any more will be able to sign back on.

Joe Lieberman, please go die, you massive bag of cocks.

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