President Barack Obama recently wrote a note excusing a fourth grader missing school to attend a town-hall style meeting after her dad asked Obama about health care. I wonder if this was possibly a note to actually mitigate the fact that Obama, despite a Democratic majority in the house and senate, is not actually "going to town" on health care himself as he promised in his campaign and earlier in his presidency.

First of all, as I understand it, his plan centers on keeping insurance for the the people that have it already. The US health care industry now accounts for 18% of the the United States' GDP. Supposedly, this is not only to protect the industry giants, but to protect insurers from losing their already-good coverage. Unfortunately, enabling the health insurance industry to continue "competing" means that  the health insurers will still refuse to pay for treatment for their policy-holders.

In fact, "An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period."

This is unconscionable. Since when does the free market have anything to do with providing actual health care to the people? The practice of "rescission"  (or denying coverage to policy-holders after the fact) was exposed about three years ago by The Times and appears largely to be about maintaining profits for the corporate giants. According to the same article, patients have been refused treatment for expensive illnesses because of failure to disclose treatment for acne or other minor illnesses, more than likely through error more than for willful ommission.

In some cases, performance bonuses have been linked to the practice of rescission. Yet, none of the three industry giants was willing to go on record stating that they would "limit rescissions to only policy-holders who intentionally lie or commit fraud in order to obtain coverage." 

Why do we continually reward corporations for their focus on profits at the detriment of the American people? Why do we let the fear-mongering Republican party dictate who gets insurance coverage and from whom? I know the issue of health care is complex and that it may be difficult to get a single-payer system on the table in the current economic climate, but I wish, for the love of God, that somebody, (if not Obama himself) would get some Cajones. (capital C definitely intended.)