Blue Cross is only about Green Bills...

The following is the prepared testimony of Wendell Potter before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation delivered on June 24, 2009. Potter, a former executive in the "health" insurance industry, puts the dirty little secret of health insurance companies under the high beams - health has nothing to do with it, only profits.

Testimony of Wendell Potter, Philadelphia, PA
Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
June 24, 2009

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon.

My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick – all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.

I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand—or even to obtain—information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted.

When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country’s largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry’s charm offensive—which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns—may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.

A few months after I joined the health insurer CIGNA Corp. in 1993, just as the last national health care reform debate was underway, the president of CIGNA’s health care division was one of three industry executives who came here to assure members of Congress that they would help lawmakers pass meaningful reform. While they expressed concerns about some of President Clinton’s proposals, they said they enthusiastically supported several specific goals.

Those goals included covering all Americans; eliminating underwriting practices like pre-existing condition exclusions and cherry-picking; the use of community rating; and the creation of a standard benefit plan. Had the industry followed through on its commitment to those goals, I wouldn’t be here today.

Today we are hearing industry executives saying the same things and making the same assurances. This time, though, the industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our health care system than ever before. In the 15 years since insurance companies killed the Clinton plan, the industry has consolidated to the point that it is now dominated by a cartel of large for-profit insurers.

The average family doesn’t understand how Wall Street’s dictates determine whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they’ll be charged for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock. Stocks fluctuate based on companies’ quarterly reports, which are discussed every three months in conference calls with investors and analysts. On these calls, Wall Street looks investors and analysts look for two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical ―benefit‖ ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.

To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling. Even very profitable companies can see sharp declines in stock prices moments after admitting they’ve failed to trim medical costs. I have seen an insurer’s stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period. The smoking gun was the company’s first-quarter medical loss ratio, which had increased from 77.9% to 79.4% a year later.

To help meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment. Asked directly about this practice just last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, executives of three of the nation’s largest health insurers refused to end the practice of cancelling policies for sick enrollees. Why? Because dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line. Ten percent of the population accounts for two-thirds of all health care spending. (Samuel Zuvekas and Joel Cohen, “Prescription Drugs And The Changing Concentration Of Health Care Expenditures,” Health Affairs, 26 (1) (January/February 2007): 249-257). The Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigation into three insurers found that they canceled the coverage of roughly 20,000 people in a five-year period, allowing the companies to avoid paying $300 million in claims.

They also dump small businesses whose employees’ medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year’s premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether – leaving workers uninsured. The practice is known in the industry as "purging." The purging of less profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has fallen from 61 percent to 38 percent since 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. Once an insurer purges a business, there are often no other viable choices in the health insurance market because of rampant industry consolidation.

An account purge so eye-popping that it caught the attention of reporters occurred in October 2006 when CIGNA notified the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust that many of the Trust’s members in California and New Jersey would have to pay more than some of them earned in a year if they wanted to continue their coverage. The rate increase CIGNA planned to implement, according to USA Today, would have meant that some family-plan premiums would exceed $44,000 a year. CIGNA gave the enrollees less than three months to pay the new premiums or go elsewhere.

Purging through pricing games is not limited to letting go of an isolated number of unprofitable accounts. It is endemic in the industry. For instance, between 1996 and 1999, Aetna initiated a series of company acquisitions and became the nation’s largest health insurer with 21 million members. The company spent more than $20 million that it received in fees and premiums from customers to revamp its computer systems, enabling the company to "identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts," as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004. (“Behind Aetna’s Turnaround: Small Steps to Pare Cost of Care,” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2004). Armed with a stockpile of new information on policyholders, new management and a shift in strategy, in 2000, Aetna sharply raised premiums on less profitable accounts. Within a few years, Aetna lost 8 million covered lives due to strategic and other factors.

While strategically initiating these cost hikes, insurers have professed to be the victims of rising health costs while taking no responsibility for their share of America’s health care affordability crisis. Yet, all the while, health-plan operating margins have increased as sick people are forced to scramble for insurance.

Unless required by state law, insurers often refuse to tell customers how much of their premiums are actually being paid out in claims. A Houston employer could not get that information until the Texas legislature passed a law a few years ago requiring insurers to disclose it. That Houston employer discovered that its insurer was demanding a 22 percent rate increase in 2006 even though it had paid out only 9 percent of the employer’s premium dollars for care the year before.

It’s little wonder that insurers try to hide information like that from its customers. Many people fall victim to these industry tactics, but the Houston employer might have known better – it was the Harris County Medical Society, the county doctors’ association.

A study conducted last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed just how successful the insurers’ expense management and purging actions have been over the last decade in meeting Wall Street’s expectations. The accounting firm found that the collective medical-loss ratios of the seven largest for-profit insurers fell from an average of 85.3 percent in 1998 to 81.6 percent in 2008. That translates into a difference of several billion dollars in favor of insurance company shareholders and executives and at the expense of health care providers and their patients.

There are many ways insurers keep their customers in the dark and purposely mislead them – especially now that insurers have started to aggressively market health plans that charge relatively low premiums for a new brand of policies that often offer only the illusion of comprehensive coverage.

An estimated 25 million Americans are now underinsured for two principle reasons. First, the high deductible plans many of them have been forced to accept – like I was forced to accept at CIGNA – require them to pay more out of their own pockets for medical care, whether they can afford it or not. The trend toward these high-deductible plans alarms many health care experts and state insurance commissioners. As California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi told the Associated Press in 2005 when he was serving as the state’s insurance commissioner, the movement toward consumer-driven coverage will eventually result in a "death spiral" for managed care plans. This will happen, he said, as consumer-driven plans "cherry-pick" the youngest, healthiest and richest customers while forcing managed care plans to charge more to cover the sickest patients. The result, he predicted, will be more uninsured people.

In selling consumer-driven plans, insurers often try to persuade employers to go "full replacement," which means forcing all of their employees out of their current plans and into a consumer-driven plan. At least two of the biggest insurers have done just that, to the dismay of many employees who would have preferred to stay in their HMOs and PPOs. Those options were abruptly taken away from them.

Secondly, the number of uninsured people has increased as more have fallen victim to deceptive marketing practices and bought what essentially is fake insurance. The industry is insistent on being able to retain so-called "benefit design flexibility" so they can continue to market these kinds of often worthless policies. The big insurers have spent millions acquiring companies that specialize in what they call "limited-benefit" plans. An example of such a plan is marketed by one of the big insurers under the name of Starbridge Select. Not only are the benefits extremely limited but the underwriting criteria established by the insurer essentially guarantee big profits. Pre-existing conditions are not covered during the first six months, and the employer must have an annual employee turnover rate of 70 percent or more, so most of the workers don’t even stay on the payroll long enough to use their benefits. The average age of employees must not be higher than 40, and no more than 65 percent of the workforce can be female. Employers don’t pay any of the premiums—the employees pay for everything. As Consumer Reports noted in May, many people who buy limited-benefit policies, which often provide little or no hospitalization, are misled by marketing materials and think they are buying more comprehensive care. In many cases it is not until they actually try to use the policies that they find out they will get little help from the insurer in paying the bills.

The lack of candor and transparency is not limited to sales and marketing. Notices that insurers are required to send to policyholders—those explanation-of-benefit documents that are supposed to explain how the insurance company calculated its payments to providers and how much is left for the policyholder to pay—are notoriously incomprehensible. Insurers know that policyholders are so baffled by those notices they usually just ignore them or throw them away. And that’s exactly the point. If they were more understandable, more consumers might realize that they are being ripped off.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for beginning this conversation on transparency and for making this such a priority. S. 1050, your legislation to require insurance companies to be more honest and transparent in how they communicate with consumers, is essential. So, too, is S.1278, the Consumers Choice Health Plan, which would create a strong public health insurance option as a benchmark in transparency and quality. Americans need and overwhelmingly support the option of obtaining coverage from a public plan. The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent, publicly-accountable health care option as a "government-run system." But what we have today, Mr. Chairman, is a Wall Street-run system that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care, and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.



Blue Cross has no interest in you unless you are Benjamin Franklin smiling at them from the frontside of a certain denomination of United States Currency.

so you think you can tell heaven from hell?

another round of exploring the expanses of my wandering mind...

best. republican. affair. story. ever.

seriously...disappearing to argentina for a (supposedly) secret rendevous with some quote "piece of ass"...utterly brilliant. this tops all. this is better than doing a tap dance in the shitter for some twig and berries. this is better than drunkenly throwing stones at the windows of the interns dorms. this is better than $4,000 romps. this is pure gold. wow.

when it comes to whether or not an affair counts, I have pushed the ocean rule. but the hemisphere rule - that is a whole new level of fun.

wondering how much tax-payer dollars were spent on his love trysts in the past. what with him refusing to take federal dollars so his people could starve.

but maybe the best part of it all...sarah palin seriously is going to be the "best" option for the GOP in 2012. at least the democrats held it pretty much together for a few generations before imploding. the republicans seem to do it with every administration they get.

or maybe the best part is that she is in argentina. what? good ol' american girls aren't good enough for you? if you don't like south carolina girls mr. sanford you can just get out!

was watching the news last night. they called the plan for a public insurance option "controversial." how the fuck do they get away with this? something that is favored by 75 percent of the population is "controversial" now? why didn't we have the "controversial" patriot act when it was being "debated"? what's next? "controversial" constitutional democracy?

in flipping through channels over the weekend looking for updates on happenings in iran I came across geraldo on fox news. he had a guy out at the gathering near columbia university to find a young iranian grad student to put on the air - no doubt for a pep talk and "solidarity" and all the rah ree kick em in the knee bullshit. only the kid didn't capitulate. instead he went on a rant about how it is bullshit for the GOP to turn this into an american political football game and the people of iran don't trust us for shit and mccain is a fucking idiot and obama is doing everything right on the matter. they cut him off. but it made me smile.

the boys were scared of sotomayor's relationship with powerful women. so she quit her group. not sure who I am more embarrassed for.

thomas friedman is still a complete fucking idiot.

the insurance industry has an anti-trust exemption along with major league baseball. (that's right...the insurance industry has a license to break the law and jack up prices on you). tickets for bleacher seats at wrigley are somewhere near the federal deficit this year. nobody can afford insurance. coincidence?

and for "free" market advocates...damn are they scared of competition.

then again, who ever thought it was a good fucking idea to leave your health in the hands of an entity that exists for one sole reason - to turn as much profit as possible. seriously, under the american health care system the folks in charge of providing health care are actually legally required to make as much money for stock-holders as possible or they get sued. and how do they make as much money as possible? deny coverage, over charge, kick out anyone that might remotely need health care. yup...that's a jim dandy of a system.

mr. president and democratic senators, I am well aware that you take pride in bipartisan efforts. but when the other side is telling you that there is no way they will agree to anything that resembles what the vast majority of the population wants...fuck them. step up to the plate for us for once goddamnit. we don't need it to get 70 votes...we need it to get 51. if they want to filibuster...let them eat the political fallout.

they are going to crush the protests in iran for the time being. but man did they overplay their hand. going to be an interesting year over there.

the new mexico attorney general indicted an attorney on corruption charges because some old fucks that weren't paying attention thought he was telling them they could misuse government funds in violation of the documents that they signed. not that he actually told them they could...but they thought it was what he meant. lesson to lawyers in new mexico...don't ever do any work for the government.

don't look now but they are going to wait us out in iraq and just keep fucking with us whenever it is time to leave. thanks g.w. can't say enough about how glad I am for that.

the amusing (if you have a fucked up sense of humor like myself) part of all of it. in the end, the neo cons will have succeeded in creating an iran in iraq while the iranian people will create a stable democracy in iran. not that we will remember that in 20 years.

best stimulus plan for the economy I have heard yet (and yes I am biased)...erase student loan debt. an army of educated persons that can finally take advantage of their earning potential rather than shipping it into the coffers of bonehead banks that can't make any decent decisions. hell, for me alone that would be an extra $7,000 a year spent on goods and services. multiply that by a few and we may be back in business.

some guy was pissed at neighborhood kids for playing in his yard. to remove them he played porn...very loudly. call me old fashioned...but I find this particularly hilarious.

who are these people that are satisfied with their insurance that they are genuinely worried that they would have to swap in their $10,000 a year health insurance with a $5,000 deductable and routine denials of coverage?

thanks to gun nuts the ban on such wonderful hunting tools as AK-47s expired. since then there has been a glut of these weapons flooding into the united states. and now they are popping up in arizona as the cartels move northward. yay for the second amendment.

one of our drones killed a group of people at a funeral for others killed by one of our drones. when war becomes a caricature you know you are fucked up.

you can all rest peacefully tonight. the missing white girl was found.

burque I love you, but you're dragging me down...

on one of the morning shows that all blend together as the same sham journalistic ventures there was an attorney representing that mother accused of killing her pretty little daughter and wrapping her in a carpet (for the life of me I can't remember her name...but that comforts me). she had with her a forensic pathologist (ignore that forensic pathology is uber voodoo science...somehow it passes muster in the courts...I will never understand how). even though it had nothing to do with nothing the "anchor" (or whatever they call themselves on those morning shows) asked the pathologist about a certain kung fu star found hanging in thailand. why is this still news?

not that I don't care deeply if the death of an old actor was accidental, suicide or murder...I just wonder if maybe a string of right-wing nutjob murders, the implosion of the most powerful country in the middle east that isn't hiding a nuclear arsenal, the AMA and the insurance industry ramping up to make sure that we all die of preventable causes in the future and cops stopping paramedics on the way to drop off a patient at the hospital in a "my dick is bigger contest" might warrant more coverage...that's all.

the gay rights community is pretty fucking pissed off at the obama administration...and rightfully so. apparently they recently filed a brief defending the defense of marriage act and making a rather unsightly comparison of homosexual families to bad touch uncles. and while I share the disgust at the administration for doing next to nothing about gay rights (including refusing to quit enforcing don't ask don't tell...one of the all-time dumbest pieces of legislation ever created) I don't quite understand the shock. he was never very friendly to the gay rights movement...and even for the most liberal of heterosexual men, homosexual men still scare the bejesus out of them.

on that note...I have to chuckle at the crazies that are still crying that we cannot get rid of don't ask don't tell (side note - pbs has a new documentary on it coming out this week) because it will hurt moral, cohesion and combat readiness. I don't know about you, but if I'm stuck in a foxhole and bullets are flying around, I don't give a shit if you are scarlett johanssen in a threesome with briana and jrm...chances are I'm not thinking about sticking my dick in you at the moment. and no matter how gay you are and how utterly spectacular my ass is...I am fairly confident that you are more concerned with survival than anal sex.

unless you're canadian of course...that bit from brain candy still cracks me up...

once again we are hearing the false choice from the insurance industries and the hippocratic-oath ignoring AMA...if you want health care you have to pay more, even in a publically funded option. they point to all these polls which show people aren't willing to pay more in premiums or taxes to ensure access to doctors. nevermind that it has been ingrained in our national identity not to prepare for the unexpected (afterall...when disaster struck eight years ago our supreme leader told us to go buy shit we don't need)...the question is purposefully worded to get the response they desire. it isn't a matter of paying more...never has been. folks like me will likely pay more...but that is because I am horribly underinsured - the reason I am horribly underinsured? thanks to my crushing student debt I can't throw $400 bucks a month to an insurance company. so I, like so many others, just hope I don't get sick. of course, I would gladly pay another hundred bucks a month in taxes if it meant I got actual access to health care.

and in the same token...all those people that don't want to pay more because they are already getting raped by their insurance premiums aren't asked whether they would rather keep more of their money, send none of it to the insurance company, but send a portion of what used to go to the insurance company ceo to expanded medicare. chances are...they are all more than willing to pay less overall for the health care.

not that I think we necessarily need a public option. you want to keep your private insurance companies? fine. treat it like car insurance. you have to have it and regulate the fuck out of what they can charge you. bet health care costs plummet.

apparently some senators are concerned that nominee sotomayor is in a woman's group. concerned enough that she had to defend it and declare how men are involved. are you serious? are you fucking serious? members of the united states senate are worried about a girl's club? apparently the irony is lost on them...

guilty pleasure as of late - I'm a celebrity. the reason? patti blagojevich. she comes across as a nice woman, concerned for her family and more than capable outside of it. she could be anyone you know. and she slams the us attorney...rightfully so. it is so refreshing to have someone saying what everyone in the business knows...they lie, cheat and steal to get a conviction. they are not concerned with justice, they are concerned with adding another pelt to their belt. they squeeze the balls of people that are in a shit ton of trouble until they say anything the government wants to hear. they purposely drag up repeated media coverage and hold press conferences and release evidence that may or may not be admissible in a trial to the public not because they are concerned with "the public's right to know" but because they know it taints the jury pool against an accused. you ever want to find the least ethical slimiest attorneys in your city...forget the creepy guy on the billboard, take a trip to your local DA's office.

speaking of blagojevich...turns out that illinois is just dirty. seriously...even if the man did what they claim, it would put him in the bottom half of corrupt politicians in that state.

homeland security (god that sounds so amusingly commie) puts out a report showing concern about right-wing nutjobs. the right-wing talking heads go nuts. homeland security withdraws the report. right-wing nutjobs commit terroristic acts of murder. discuss.

is anyone else sick of not being able to find actual news? say what you will about fox news, but they accomplished what they set out to do. turn all of reporting into bullshit.

letterman makes a joke about impregnating an underage daughter of palin. the former chair of the republican party in south carolina tells people not to be concerned over an escaped guerrilla because it is probably just one of michelle's relatives. thank god for productive political discourse in this country.

jean-pierre bemba will be tried at the hague. not that you would know. afterall, a former leader facing charges of crimes against humanity doesn't involve a 70 yr old actors genitals in a knot.

a roomful of sorrow...a spoonful of joy...

let's get back to what matters...

with iran on the verge of explosion (or implosion) and american medical association worried more about their paychecks than their patients health I am taking a vacation from important events to focus on really important events...

thus, without further delay. the cubs are tanking and sweet lou is severely disappointing.


The following blog entry was posted by Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune on today's date...

Piniella admitted he had no answers, but he still has a job -- for now

No converter box required . . .

Lou Piniella said he was out of answers. The Cubs manager admitted he didn’t know what to do, what to say, nothing. So, the hitting-challenged Cubs managed by a hitting-centric manager fired the hitting coach.

But the hitting-centric manager didn’t fire the hitting coach. No, that act was done by the general manager who failed to supply the team with a respectable offensive backup at third base in case the clean-up hitter got hurt. I guess Aramis Ramirez’s injury was Gerald Perry’s fault.

Mark DeRosa was traded. That’s Gerald Perry’s fault.

Alfonso Soriano is gimpy and unable to hit anywhere in the lineup that requires discipline. He was a free-swinger before the Cubs paid $136 million and he remains a free-swinger, only hobbled, which has made him a worse outfielder than ever, if you can believe that. That’s Gerald Perry’s fault.

Geovany Soto showed up fat and bad. That’s Gerald Perry’s fault.

Kosuke Fukudome looked awful in spring training, started the season great, then began his batting average death spiral, all of it for the second straight year. That’s Gerald Perry’s fault.

Milton Bradley got hurt and angry the way everybody except the Cubs knew he would. That’s Gerald Perry’s fault.

The surprise is that the Cubs didn’t blame Gerald Perry for the parking meter disaster in the city, too.

Yeah, I know, Perry was made a scapegoat. Can’t fire 25 players, so you fire a coach or manager, blah, blah, blah.

Thing is, you wouldn’t have to fire 25 players. Just bench a couple of them. Hold them accountable. That would be the manager’s job. Piniella said Perry’s firing was tough on him because he worked with the guy for six years on two teams, but apparently it wasn’t worth sitting down Soriano, for instance, until he got healthy. Nor was it worth benching Fukudome until he proved in batting practice that he could stop that silly spinning thing that Piniella even commented on -- commented on but didn’t send a message. Nope, Piniella’s players don’t seem to be held accountable. Not enough, anyway.

And whether Piniella knows or cares, he’s coming off as someone who’s just counting days until the Steinbrenner family files adoption papers.

Here’s some utter lack of urgency from the manager in Rick Morrissey’s column today:

"Just relax and let it happen," Piniella said of his players. "It's not the end of the world if you don't. You're still going to get a paycheck. Your dog will still like you."

Yeah, get that paycheck. Not the end of the world if you’re stealing money. Nice message.

But wait. There was more: "Three years from now, nobody's going to give a damn anyway."

How precious. The franchise whose fans deal with the 100-year itch everyday hear the manager say no one will “give a damn’’ in three years. Yeah, 1969, 1984, 2003 -- who in Wrigleyville remembers that? Who gives a damn about those seasons? [colin side note - although I was ten years from birth, I remember 1969's tragedy. my first childhood memory involves mom's spaghetti sauce, bad tv trays, a gatorade soaked glove, fucking steve garvey, and a ground ball between the legs of leon durham leading to a crushing defeat. 2003 I remember for the best few months of my life...brought quickly to a halt by a disastrous 8 run 8th inning. I went home and cried that night - we knew game seven was lost.]

It was obvious from the start that Piniella wasn’t in touch with the concept of Cubaholism. He often commented with surprise on the intensity and fatalism and regular recitation of history. He tried to distance his current team from the franchise’s legendary failures. Fine. But now he looks and sounds as if he’s distancing himself from the urgency to win. There are a lot of people who think he doesn’t care enough.

If Piniella wanted to make it clear that every pitch of the season matters and that nothing less will be acceptable, then he had a chance to make a point by yanking Bradley when he lost focus and lost track of outs and threw that ball into the stands in the eighth inning Friday.

But no. Bradley stayed in the game. Afterward, Piniella made a joke about learning how to count. All I know is that almost a year ago to the day, Philadelphia’s Charlie Manuel benched then-reigning MVP Jimmy Rollins in the middle of a game for not hustling. Manuel made a point.

Piniella apparently just made another tally mark on the wall.

some day we'll go all the way...

it isn't about you john q. victim, real competition in health care, and the prison asylum...

recently the self-styled "victims' rights movement" has decided that absolute regression is the way to go and have convinced many legislators that it is necessary to add a "victims' bill of rights" to the law books. (ironically, the movement gathered steam right around the time that the republican party decided it was time to scare the crap out of white america that the brown and black boogey man was going to come into their home and rape their daughters and shoot their sons...coincidence?). they have honed what they put out as a stable argument that victims need to have significant roles in the criminal process...and they base it all on devolution of the criminal justice system back hundreds of years. they claim victims always had a significant role in prosecutions, including privately prosecuting crime, and that it is only returning to the way things should be from what they claim to be only a very recent abberation of public prosecutions wherein the victim is relegated to witness status. they want you to believe that until very recently the trend in the anglo-american legal tradition was for greater participation by victims. they lie. their arguments are at best profound misunderstandings of the historical significance and evolution of the criminal justice system and at worst complete intellectual dishonesty. what they don't want you to know is that about 1000 years ago public prosecution (i.e. the sovereign prosecutes based on the theory that crimes are a wrong against the public) for the worst offenses was already strongly established in the anglo tradition while victims' were basically relegated to seeking redress privately in civil courts (apparently they are the only lawyers in america that don't know blackstone). connecticut made it official right around the turn of the 18th century and by the time the american revolution happened public prosecutions were dominant. as soon as the revolution was over the victim (alleged) quickly became nothing more than a witness...afterall, punishment of crime was designed based upon redressing wrongs to society, not the individual. within a few generations, private prosecutions were anomolies.

but the victims rights movement wants us to ignore how the law has evolved. they want to ignore that the bill of rights was concerned more with protecting persons accused of crime than anything else. they want to ignore that they retain the ability to seek redress in civil courts for private wrongs. they want to ignore that a system with a personal interest in the prosecution of another for a crime is a frightening prospect (afterall...how many "terrorists" were turned over because their neighbor was pissed at them?). they want to ignore that the framers got it right and that we have worked over a couple centuries since towards perfecting their system to ensure that the government does not overstep its bounds. and some of their lawyers just want money because they got canned at the district attorneys office after being popped for DWI (cough, cough...barbara romo...cough, cough). but then maybe they have something right...because recently nothing says "american" like historical ignorance and regression. my only request is that if we are going to regress...let's get fucking serious about it. trial by ordeal.

somebody has to help me out on the health care thing because I am having trouble understanding how it is that more competition in the marketplace scares the free-market crowd. ok...that was a fib. I am well aware that what they are scared of is actual competition and they really don't give a shit about "freedom" in the marketplace, they just want freedom to rape, pillage and extort. me...I want an actual choice in health care, and I would prefer that one of those choices be efficient and as inexpensive as possible while providing better customer satisfaction than others. wait...that already exists in the government run health care program of medicare and medicaid? I'll be damned. and why the hell should I not be allowed the choice to opt into such a program that would undoubtedly be more responsive, cheaper and better than the crap I get from blue cross? oh yes, that's right...because as a corporation blue cross is concerned with only one thing...making money. they don't give two shits about healthy populations and preventing and curing illness...they care about making money. if they cared about anything else they would be breaking the law. which is probably why my premium just jumped about 30 percent for my 30th birthday. never mind that I am in better shape now than I ever was during my 20's. but god forbid my choice be limited by someone that does not have a financial interest in denying me care. that would just be awful. (side note - don't be fooled by the AMA coming out against a public plan...they are one of the most conservative groups in the nation and tend to be rightfully villified by AMSA (medical students) - the ones that still have a heart).

a teenage kid in texas just got sentenced to 100 years for kiddie diddling after pleading guilty to five counts. yea yea yea...we all hate kiddie diddlers and they deserve no rights (I have heard it all before and it is all paranoid crap). here's the thing about the kid that just got 100 years...his IQ is 47. no, I did not forget a digit...his IQ is 47. that pretty much means he has the mental capacity of a preschooler. now imagine a preschooler diddling kids...not nearly as horrifically blame-worthy is it. but we have left ourselves with no option because prison has replaced every other program for the mentally disabled. maybe it's just me, but there is something very uncomfortable about giving 100 years to someone that cannot possibly understand their conduct, let alone the system. but hell...as long as we are regressing the criminal system, might as well I guess...

when the sixth veil falls, the desensitizing, corrupting illusion of bullet-train history and its apocalyptic destination will surely dissolve...