Anthem Blue Cross seeks to raise individual policyholders' rates (18% average)

[jtuck004]

16. Not my answers. History and human behavior.

People often don't win because they don't have a clear objective, no plan, or poor execution. And sometimes they fail because someone has an inflated, unsubstantiated, and ridiculous sense of the moral imperative of their rightness. Protests with no leverage and no ability to win anything are just PR, which, although not worthless, rarely rise above informational value and sometimes get people hurt for no reason. Frequently they seem responsible for the birth of egos can become as much a barrier as the object they were protesting in the first place.

No insurance = no care. Unless one promotes the Mi$$ Romney solution and thinks 311ish million people can just show up in the ER. (We are assuming they will continue to need care while "protesting", yes?).

Oh yeah, and for perhaps 35-50 million Americans (more?), you will have to cover their fine for not buying health insurance. I'm quite sure that will add to the popularity of the movement.

The suggestion above wants millions of people who have no other option to stand there in defiance, for what? The doctors and hospitals won't treat w/o insurance, so the protest continues as people drop out, dead? Because the greedy bastards at the insurance cos are never, ever, going to give a rat's ass about anything but their profit, and only a fool thinks they will change their behavior, and I suspect the same thing about being successfully regulated. They really no longer need us - there are other places, Bangladesh perhaps, where they can make money, places they can stash it outside of this country where you will never see it. Financial documents creating completely virtual entities that move real money into and out of other virtual entities.

A few people, even a few tens of thousands of people standing on a sidewalk means NOTHING to these people. Get a million, go ahead. Again, they don't really need Americans if they aren't paying them. So someone else comes in. Does anyone think more magnanimous people are just sitting around waiting to take over a dying business? That's near silly.

Think they haven't been practicing for this since 1935? These people are taught the beginnings of power, balance sheets, and foreign language in grade school, while everyone else is studying Dick and Jane and moving from one cubicle or task to another on command (the pre-conditioning for old-style factory jobs). (Note there is no sarcasm thingy here).

One may know or have done some reading about what is happening in the world of health insurance mergers and acquisitions. Among the big perks in becoming a multinational company is the ability to manipulate accounting and avoid taxes. (Check out the the junk bond funds that are masquerading as private equity firms if you want experts in this). And those same people work in the growing and consolidating (power?) insurance companies. Given that we have been able to watch other companies do this since the 1970's, what makes anyone think the outcome will be different this time?

They will never be anything but greedy bastards. They are making a profit from health care, and life has been structured so that most American will need to make payments to these swine. We will NEVER, EVER make that work. The costs will rise, and rise, and rise until that system fails, and then you will find you were there at the birth of another "Too Big To Fail" profit-seeking financial group, the 2 or 3 big co's that result from the acquisition stuff going on right now.

The only real way we will win is to walk away from the tyrants, not as a threat, but really walk away. Tens of millions of people who learn, through their own realization, that they are just pigeons on the menu as long as we continue like this. Create something outside, maybe a government-run system, (a country-wide expansion of Medicare?) and never go back. Pay whatever price to walk away from servitude.

Unfortunately, sales of Lazy Boys and TV Remotes have held up quite well. As long as people are more fond of those than they are the revolution, and the organizers aren't rabble rousing in sufficient numbers, the tyrants can sleep soundly in one of their many mansions.

So most likely we will see more income inequality, more people in poverty and a less educated nation that is slowly falling behind the nations where there is actually demand, the only thing that has ever created a job, for the foreseeable future.