On the way home from work tonight listening to the radio in the car, I heard some interviews of corporate and insurance company people who were going to participate in the President's health care forum.

I already had established a real loathing for the private for-profit health insurance industry, which I understand consumes about a third of all the excessive costs of our disgraceful health care mess. I did a quick scan of health care insurance executive compensation at the AFL/CIO executive salary website, and it looks like most of them draw compensation of between five and twenty-five million dollars a year. Meanwhile, President Obama advises that every thirty seconds someone is bankrupted by exorbitant health care costs, and 45 million Americans are unable to afford any health insurance at all.

Proponents of single-payer universal health care were not even invited to the summit until the threat of noisy protests by their populist supporters outside the Whitehouse gates became known.



One interview I found to be especially chilling, and it brought to mind something I had never considered. A corporate executive was describing why he and his peers would oppose universal health care. I can't remember exactly how he framed this, but it was my impression that his real problem with it was that if everyone had access to affordable health care, how would his kind of company recruit and retain workers? Wasn't this something they could dangle in front of otherwise deserate and vulnerable people, and induce them to come and toil and stay for whatever wages were being offered? God forbid people should have other options.

Good luck, White House crew. You're going to need it.

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