Countdown: Rockefeller on Health Insurance Cos. - 'They've Been Ripping Off American Consumers.'

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 04:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8rNSUVgQsM   Posted on YouTube: October 01, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 01, 2009 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 841

 
MSNBC Countdown w/ KEITH OLBERMANN -30 Sept. 2009: Interview with Sen. Jay Rockefeller about public option, his amendment.

OLBERMANN: And two Democratic senators have today come up with new tacts to take on health care reform, one of them inside the Senate Finance Committee, as promised - let's turn to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia and a member of that Senate Finance Committee.

Let's start with your news. Sen. Franken introduced something he has titled the Fairness in Health Insurance Act of 2009. You have adapted it into the form of an amendment. Tell me what it is and what you're trying to do.

ROCKEFELLER: It's very simple. I really don't believe that all of this is about politics and process. I think it's about how people are treated. Do they get health care through their insurance or do they not. Do the insurance companies make so much money that they are not giving health care to the people. The answer to that is 'Yes.'

So my amendment will be very simple, along with Franken, Al Franken. And that is: Over half of the health care bill in the Senate is spent on subsidies for the health insurance companies. Over half. $485 billion. So that they can take in more customers, and presumably do more business and make more profits.

I think it's gotta be about people and not about profits. And, therefore, my amendment - which I may offer tonight, because we're still in session - is gonna say that 90 percent of all the money that the insurance companies get from these subsidies, four hundred and eighty-five billion dollars in the Senate finance mark, that they have to spend that on health care, and that the Secretary of Health & Human Services will monitor that. They have to spend it on health care. They can't spend it on administrative expenditures and salaries... Don't worry about them. That's ten percent they've got left over. That's $49 billion dollars. That's not so bad.

But they have been ripping off the American consumers. And they've been puttting profits before consumers, and in West Virginia, you just don't do that.

- snip -

OLBERMANN: Back to the public option. Sen. Harkin said yesterday that the votes are still there in the full Senate to pass it. Do you agree with that assessment?

ROCKEFELLER: I do. I do. We had our meeting of all the people that voted for it last night and had a little press conference, and people kind of laughed at it. We didn't. I mean, we do feel a sense of momentum. It's the only time in the history of the Senate that anybody's ever talked about this. We debated this one public option, my amendment, for four and a half hours. That's never happened.

So a lot of people now are looking at the Democrats who DID vote for it - we're not going to get a lot of Republican votes for it, we're accustomed to that.

I think we can get this. And I think the President needs to help, and I think, you know, everyone needs to pitch in and work harder than they have been. And I look forward to it because it's the only way people can be really sure to be able to afford to get health care in the future. The only way. Otherwise they are at the mercy of the insurance companies.

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[Sherman A1]

1. Thanks for posting.

[eilen]

2. Why the hell are they getting any subsidy at all?

Last I heard they were making runaway profits.
WTF

[BREMPRO]

3. Franken is proving his worth already. He may be the best thing that has happened to the senate

in years. THis is a VERY clever amendment that Rockefeller adapted from Franken's idea: SO if the blue dogs and repukes vote against it- they are showing who they work for. It's a brilliant trap. No public option? OK then- we are going to legislate how much must be spent on actual health care, Thereby limiting the amount of profit health insurance companies can make of the back of sick people. This will force the incentives in the right place- putting it into health care rather than obscene profits at the expense of a good system and the American public. If they don't vote for it, they are political toast. Just brilliant.

[eagertolearn]

4. Doesn't Switzerland do something like this? They still have private

insurance companies but what they can make is limited. I recently heard something about this on OPB.

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. I am sickened that we are reduced to this.

Guarantee them $50bn in profits on the backs of the US taxpayer?

Stockholm Syndrome at its finest.

[BREMPRO]

6. Sure that's bad, but we would save $100 billion from what we are paying now.

Give em just enought to survive, but not enough to make an obscene profit machine.
Eventually wall street will find them not profitable enough to invest in and they will slowly, but surely f a d e a w a Y.....

this is brilliant politics.

[Ruby the Liberal]

7. I will give you that.

I have to keep reminding myself that it is a sausage factory. Sometimes its better not to know all of the details.

These insurance companies can't wither and die on the vine soon enough for me.