Obamacare Insurance Rebates start appearing in the mail. Bwahahaha…

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Crab with his Obamacare insurance rebate!

My brother Crab just got his Obamacare rebate in the mail, and it got us thinking, like most things do.

You’ll probably get one too if you haven’t already.

My brother’s was only forty bucks, but many people will get back hundreds.  Some businesses that hire and insure hundreds or thousands of employees should be getting back tens of thousands in insurance rebates.  Nationwide, American ratepayers and businesses will be getting back $1.3 billion from their greedy insurers

This is all due to the “80/20 rule” in  Obamacare that requires your insurance company to spend at least 80% of your premium dollars on health care, and no more than 20% on their administrative expenses, marketing, advertising, CEO pay and profits.

One of the first things we thought is that, any minute, Republicans will start squawking, “Obama purposely timed this to help his re-election!”

To which the correct response is … how do you spell that again?  “Bwahahaha!!!!!!!”

Me and Crab think a lot, granted,
but most Americans think AT LEAST a little bit…
and…

They’re bound – even the ones who don’t generally vote Democrat – to think to themselves, “Wow, my insurance company was spending more than 20% of my money on administrative costs, marketing, advertising, CEO pay and profits?”

And a little later they might think to themselves, “Wait – why are they even allowed to spend TWENTY PERCENT of my money on administrative costs, marketing, advertising, CEO pay, profits?  That’s actually a lot.”

And also, if they’ve been paying attention at all, “Doesn’t Medicare, the VA, etc, only spend THREE PERCENT on administrative costs, and NOTHING on marketing, advertising, CEO pay, or profits?”  (And they’d be right, and doing themselves credit as thinking Americans, to think that.)

And then they might wonder HOW MUCH, counting profits, insurance companies have generally been spending out of their premium dollars that has nothing to do with their health.  And there I can help them – I remember this figure from back when I used to agitate for single payer in California – 35% of the average private insurance company’s  money went to administration, marketing, advertising and PROFITS, before Obamacare kicked in.  35%.

And they had a name for that other 65%, the money they wasted on getting you medical care when you needed it (if you were lucky.)  They called that “medical losses.”

Yes, medical losses.  That’s what they called it.  In the bad old days before Obamacare. 

Some other things thinking Americans will go on to think,
during this election season:

“Wow.  And Mitt Romney swears he’ll get rid of this Obamacare on his first day in office?   And we’ll be going right back to being unceremoniously reamed by the big insurance companies like we were before?  Maybe Obama’s not all that bad after all.”

And if they think even just a little bit more, they’ll realize that, even though it’s called Obamacare, it was passed purely by Democrats in the Congress … In fact, BARELY passed by Democrats, over every possible howl, scream and tactic of the Republicans, during that TINY space in 2009 where Democrats actually had control of the Senate – the space between when Al Franken finally escaped from Recount Limbo and when Ted Kennedy died and got replaced by some Naked Guy With A Truck.

And they might remember, seeing on the teevee, that the Republican Asshats in Congress have just recently “repealed” Obamacare for the 33rd time, thinking their knuckle-dragging base will be real impressed by that.  And over in the Senate, sad tortoise-like Mitch McConnell has been asking for permission to do his own little ceremonial Obamacare repeal too.  And didn’t Obamacare just barely survive a Supreme Court challenge brought by the nation’s Republican Attorneys General?  Yeah it did…

And they might start saying to themselves, if they’re thinking Americans who aren’t used to voting Democratic, “Damn, today’s Republicans REALLY DO like to see us all get swindled by big insurance companies.   Honey, maybe we should think of NOT voting Republican this year.”

And now that they’re on that slippery slope,
they just might CONTINUE thinking…

Why do we need to be wasting 20% of our money on insurance companies’ profits and advertising anyway?

Didn’t I hear somewhere that Medicare spends only 3% on administrative costs, and all the rest on health care?

Didn’t I hear somewhere that every other civilized nation HAS Medicare For All its citizens?

What’s wrong with America?  I want that here!

And once enough Americans start thinking that and insisting that, we can make that happen.  Single-payer, now known as Medicare For All.  Cut out the greedy parasitic middleman because our health and OUR wealth are more important.  We can even get that started HERE in California first!


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.