Bye Bye Norma Rae

By Capt. Fogg

You remember Norma Rae, although her name was Crystal Lee. Sally Field played the Union Organizer from Burlington, North Carolina in 1979 and won an Academy Award for the performance. Ms. Field, who presumably is financially secure, is still with us, but Crystal Lee, who wasn't, isn't. She got brain cancer she couldn't afford to treat, she had to battle her insurance company to live up to its contractual obligation, it stalled, and she died last Friday.

Sarah Palin is right, Death Panels are real and the health insurance companies all have them, practising "delay and deny" tactics that resulted -- intentionally -- in the death of the 68-year old Crystal Lee Sutton. Her insurance company interfered between her and her doctor, she couldn't afford chemo on her own, and some employee likely got a bonus for saving the company money.

Like most Republican arguments, the Death Panel idea illustrates the principle of projective accusation. If your president was guilty of more lies than any other in history, you start accusing the opposition of lying, and if you're lucky you can find a mote in his eye and gleefully use it to deny the giant sequoia in your own. Thus, to protect the insurance companies that profit by interfering in the doctor-patient relationship, dictate and deny treatment, and let people die unnecessarily, they accuse a system designed to stop it of doing the same thing. Americans are stupid enough to buy it.

Death Panels are real and Death Panels are inevitable because corporations are beholden to their stockholders, not to their insured clients. Actual panels of actual people get salaries and bonuses for obfuscating and delaying claims until it's too late, or for scouring your life for some unreported case of acne or the flu to justify denying your cancer claim. A large part of your premiums go, in fact, to pay for these Death Panels and to keep the stockholders happy.

Perhaps someone will chime in here and deny it. I hope so because I'm dying to say, You lie! I can't wait to tell the inevitable troll who will insist that just like public schools, public libraries, national parks, and the National Guard, government claims administration is socialism! You lie!

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)