Mr. Wagner credits the competitiveness of the health insurance marketplace as being responsible for keeping health care costs down. Really? As someone with a pre-existing condition of cancer, is annual premiums of $12,000 justified? Health care costs have risen 120 percent in the past eight years. Is this considered keeping costs down? Did the CEO of Aetna Insurance really deserve his $24 million compensation package last year? Could he not have gotten by on a measly $10 million?
The Charles Manson gang, Terry Nichols, Bernie Madoff and our most violent criminals receive free medical care in our prison system paid for by my tax dollars because it is the humane thing to do. Yet tens of millions of uninsured Americans are denied this basic human right. Perhaps sick and uninsured Americans should commit a crime to get the health care they so desperately need.
If only the ring-wing zealots could muster as much caring and compassion for the tens of thousands of Americans who will die this year because of a lack of health insurance as they did a few years ago for Ms. Terri Schiavo. Either Ms. Schiavo had insurance or she was the recipient of one of those evil "socialized medicine" programs. Had she been uninsured, she would have been dumped in the street to die and nobody would have given a damn.
