Insurance Companies Say Public Option Not Covered

Insist it must be killed to save patient

A Humor Times special report


AHIP's Karen Ignagni: ‘Pre-existing condition.’
Lobbyists for private health care insurance companies say that the public option in the Obama plan is no longer needed – they have miraculously found ways to save trillions that would normally have been added to pad their profits in coming years.

The only problem, they say, is that Obama “must first eradicate his proposal for a public health care option,” according to America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the nation’s largest health insurance lobbying group. Such an option would “rise like an alien beast from the chest of America’s body politic,” they insist, should it be allowed to “infest consumer consciousness at this early stage.”

“This country was founded on private enterprise,” said Harold Fairington, lobbyist for Health Net, “and introducing a foreign concept like a public insurance provider could be dangerous to our national health. Luckily, our timing is serendipitous, and we just happened to come up with some great ideas right now on slowing down our regularly scheduled price increases. At least, until we’ve exterminated this health threat.”

“It’s basically a pre-existing condition,” explained Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of AHIP. “Single-payer type systems have already infected nearly every other industrialized country in the world, and you can see what havoc they have wrought. We need to quarantine our nation’s pristine health care system from this menace.”

While the insurance lobby is basically saying “if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” other views are being expressed in an increasingly contentious debate over health care, not least by doctors and nurses themselves.

“The insurance companies deny access to care to even those with insurance, by shoddy practices,” said Dr. Claudia Fegan, president of the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). “Over 12,000 physicians support a national health insurance program that will cover everyone with the money we would save from the administrative waste of our current system.”

“That’s fine,” Ignagni replied when told of Fegan’s comment, “if you want elitist doctors and nurses deciding your fate. We’re more in touch with the little guy. And besides, do you really want to be like France, England, Canada and the rest of the world? Case closed. Coverage denied. Next patient please.”