Health Insurance Companies = GREED

As the debate in Washington DC drags on about the BROKEN health care system, perhaps it would be useful to remind everyone why the current Health care system is not working, and perhaps even remind everyone of one of the root causes of the current recession.

Is everyone paying attention? This may have gone unnoticed by some, given the news flowing from Wall Street, large corporations, and major banks. And the various antics of "Overpaid Imbeciles" pretending to be politicians that "care" about us.

We got to where we are because of a human trait, something that I have noticed is not being labeled properly when the various "experts" offer their opinions on the matter.

GREED. Human greed helped push us to where we are.

Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying "Two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." I tend to agree on the stupidity, I witness things everyday that seem to affirm that human stupidity is expanding at an exponential rate.

I would like to propose an expansion of that quote, a "Dredwolfism", if you will. I highly doubt I will ever be in "Quotable Quotes", but you never know. So here it goes....

"Three things are infinite. The universe, human stupidity, and human greed; and I'm not sure about the universe. Natural selection can nullify stupidity with a little time, but greed? It is eternal."

Those that have been "victims of the current economic downturn" and are trying to find some type of health insurance coverage for their families while looking for work know what I am talking about. COBRA coverage is ludicrous...In my case, for +$1310/month, I could have health coverage for my family...but my unemployment benefit (which I had never used before) could not cover the COBRA premium. Nor could I choose to reduce benefits. And spare me the whole "You are just now covering what your employer paid for your health insurance" argument, please. If such is truly the case, then many companies would be losing money at an astronomical rate, which should have reduced those executive bonuses quite a bit. Unless all companies simply variants of AIG and we simply have not noticed yet.

The company administering COBRA for my former employer had a "take it or leave it" attitude when I tried to ask about options, it did not take a calculator to determine that COBRA coverage would take my ENTIRE unemployment check, plus a few dollars more. If I could afford over $1300/month for health insurance, I would not consider myself in need of a job OR unemployment funds!
And COBRA is supposed to be a program to HELP those that lose their jobs? This "help" is putting me in a situation trying to choose what is most important for my family's survival, how is any of this actually HELPING?

How is putting someone into a position trying to choose if health insurance should be more important than food, shelter, power, water, or transportation to look for a new job any help at all?
"Let's see, honey, during the summer, the kids are more likely to get hurt, so we won't eat in June, we'll skip the mortgage payment for July, and turn the utilities off in August so the kids can go to the doctor.."

How is being forced into decisions like that helpful in any way? Simply put, they are not. But because we have COBRA, some people in the past, who decided that it was a solution, were able to convince themselves enough that what they were doing was helping the less fortunate, and therefore were able to sleep with their decisions...after all, they were helping.