What a buzz kill!

Actually, we can't quite say we couldn't see THIS coming.

At the very start of this latest effort to reform our health care system, the Obama Team made it very clear that the number one priority was to make certain that the big players in the industry kept a seat at the table and that nothing would be allowed to come between them and their profits. A side deal was made with Big Pharma and the health providers. The Insurance Industry was assured there would be no substantial move toward anything like a single-payer system, even though this is an important feature of nearly every other universal health care plan in other industrialized countries; plans that provide health care in nearly every instance at a much less cost per capita and with better health outcomes for their citizens than our present system.

Until now, everyone in the health insurance industry has been playing nice in this effort to pursue this wonderful exercise that might best be described as "Impact Free Health Care Reform." They've even managed to play by the Washington rules - hell, Max Baucus alone has received millions of dollars in health insurance industry funds (OUR health care dollars at work!) to wear the uniform of the insurance lobbyists' goalkeeper throughout this game.

Through it all, however, there has been a surprisingly persistent chatter from a public who understands that reform doesn't come without changes being made. (What a concept!) These people have no particular affiliation with the insurance industry and most certainly do not receive benefit of the corporate profits that are skimmed from their health care dollars paid as "premiums." These people can quite logically look at the present system and see it is broken and unsustainable. They also see a need for competition in the industry of the kind that can only be provided by a government managed health care program.

Whereas it became necessary for the reformists to compromise away any discussion of a single-payer plan, the "common sense" nature of a public option has been so pervasive and resilient that reformists have persisted in declaring the plan to be dead without it. It has appropriately become a line in the sand between a sliver of true reform and a virtual "Health Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Improvement Act," and it remains very much in play as this effort moves toward resolution in Congress.

The good news is that the release of this report and the follow-up campaign to scuttle the entire bill shows that the insurance industry considers the public option to be very much alive in the negotiations. The bad news is that the status quo works quite well for them, and so they've apparently decided to pack up and go home with their golden goose firmly held within their hands and to leave for a later date another effort at "reform" that will provide to them at no cost an additional 50 million customers. And so we now have this effort apparently underway to sucker-punch Obama and cast their lot with the GOP "Party of NO!" in preserving the status quo.

The strategic commissioning and release of the insurance industry report at this time is designed to stick a stake into the heart of the present health reform movement, such as it exists after surviving the assault over months perpetrated by forces much better financed (Again, by OUR health care dollars!) than they.

"Game's over!" declares the owners and arbiters of our health. "Stick a fork in it! We're going home."

Yeah, we should have seen it coming. Many did, in fact.

Remember all this talk about how we reform advocates just didn't understand that it was important to lay down and play dead at the feet of the insurance industry if we were to ever achieve health care reform? Remember we were told that Obama knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he was getting so intimately in bed with the health care industry parasites who cause so much of our present problem in the first place? There was always that talk that we were unworthy participants in the discussion who were "playing checkers while Obama was playing chess."

Well, don't look now, but it seems that Obama just took a direct hit from a soccer ball to the face in his game of chess!

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!!" sayeth the health insurance industry.

Yeah, you shoulda' seen it coming, even as there's so little satisfaction in being able to say I told you so.