Highly Placed Source: "We'll go back to wooden legs and hook arms while the insurance companies behave like drunken, rampaging sailors on shore leave"

By Pablo Fanque,
National Affairs Editor

Pablo Fanque filed this story via a Gmail email this morning as he departed the country to trek in the Karakoram. He left this note: "I met ___________ at the White House just before President Obama left for his Martha's Vineyard vacation. This highly placed source asked a few reporters to breakfast for a colloquy on the national health care 'debate.'" [ed's note: When Fanque uses the phrase "highly placed source" he almost always refers to either the principal of the story (in this case, President Obama), or to a member of his closest inner circle. Inner circle in Obama's case means one of his top advisers--most likely either David Axelrod, or Rahm Emanuel.]

“It’s disturbing so see the very people this would help most storming town halls and congressional offices, pressing the agendas of the insurance lobby.

“What we do today will either break the system open or we will irrevocably lock ourselves into a two-tiered system—one for the wealthy, and another for the unfortunate rest of us. Sure, at this moment, the majority is insured. But five years down the road with medical care continuing its upward spiral and employers chiseling away at, or eliminating medical benefits? We are actually heading toward a single tier system.

“It is galling to me that even one Representative or Senator oppose any form or nationalized health care or a public option to the insurance companies. These people enjoy a Cadillac federal system of insurance. But what is good for the goose is apparently not so good for the gander when it comes time to pay the bill.

“Congress would bring back the days when you walked the streets and saw hundreds of people limping, walking with bent frames; when life expectancy was under fifty years of age. They can live with a country where once again people must live with glass eyes, wooden legs, cleft palates, and hook arms, and where almost any major illness is a virtual death sentence.

“These folk would lead you to believe we will not only have death panels, but giblet and joint panels where a board decides just who gets the livers and kidneys, and who gets a new hip or a cornea transplant. But they don’t mention those—they talk about government funded massages, breast implants, and Viagra prescriptions!

“The thing is we can’t let the insurance companies--and their co-conspirators, the medical profession--have their way. We tried that with The Banks and Wall Street. Look where it got us! And the insurance companies—if this is possible—have even less scruples. Almost completely unfettered since Bill Clinton left office, they have behaved like drunken, rampaging sailors on shore leave.”
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