It seems to me we are stuck between two options and I'll use a little of the inflammatory rhetoric from both sides.

Choice #1: Leave things the way they are and let corporations run our lives and cut us off as soon as we're not profitable for them.

Choice #2: Turn our lives over to the government. At least nobody has told us we can't vote when we're no longer profitable.

I'm dismayed, but not surprised that the bill that came out of Washington wasn't as much health care reform (which would require attacking every issue I've raised in the past and a few more - and do it simultaneously) as some incomprehensible committe-designed ******* child.

Yes, most people are happy with their insurance. or so they say. Ask anyone who's been cut off when they needed benefits. When they've paid into 'the system' for so long only for it to leave them high and dry.

I've had two bad run-ins with insurance companies - fortunately nothing I couldn't solve.

First was a doctor for an HMO who wrote down in my file that I'd had polio when I'd never had any such thing. I told him why I had adhesions in my ankle and he just didn't listen. (Which surprised another doctor reading my file later on)

Second was the insurance company telling me that my vasectomy would be covered. So I went and had it, then they rejected paying for it, saying it was elective. When I protested, they asked for the name rank and serial number of the representative who told me it would be covered. Of course I didn't have that so I paid for it myself (around $650).

When the insurance companies know that the vast majority of subscribers are 'happy' because they still make a profit for the company and therefore still think they'll be covered in the event of catastrophic illness, they can keep cutting off the 2% and call it "isolated incidents".

$300B in profits. *PROFITS* (Not the cost of the care - the PROFITS) Somehow it's ok to give that money to a CEO and the Board of Directors, but it's not ok to give that to the doctors and nurses that would be providing the additional care under a public option?

Like I said, I'm no fan of a public option. But I find it less offensive than the "sick people are a growth industry and profit center" mentality that has overtaken the insurance companies over the last 20 years. ...just don't get TOO sick.