Save Our Profits

[Today, I'm turning the blog over to the biggest potential victim of a healthcare bill that includes a public option: an insurance company CEO. I've granted him anonymity to protect him from facing Obama's death panel.
--Gen. JC Christian, patriot]

Thank you, General, and thanks to all of you who have been doing our bidding at the townhalls. I won't offer you anything of value in return--that would violate my most basic beliefs. But I can offer you the satisfaction of knowing that you have achieved a momentary blip in the thoughts of a very grateful economic elite. You are engaged in the greatest of all civic actions, the defense of our profit margins. For that we thank you.

Today, we are threatened with the possibility that a public option will be included in the final healthcare reform bill. It's a fairly remote possibility--we pay our Congressmen well--but one that will yield disastrous consequences on our profit margins should it pass.

You see, a public option would represent a competitive force that would compel us to cut costs. Our compensation is likely one of the places where such cost cutting would occur. Take a look at what some of us are making now:

Let's say the public option forces us to cut our pay by 10%. That would mean our average annual pay would decrease by $1.54 million. We'd have to settle for a vacation estate in Provence rather than a townhouse on the Seine, and poor Junior would suffer the humiliation of driving to Andover in a Corvette rather than a Maserati.

It gets even worse if Congress changes it's focus from defending us to providing the most affordable kind of healthcare reform: single payer. It's a long shot, but once the greedy working class learns that they can get comprehensive health care for as little as $56 Canadian a month, you know they'll be demanding it. I mean, my God, in Canada, you can get a bad kidney removed and pay only 18 Loonies out of pocket. That's how cheap healthcare becomes without all the administrative costs of private health insurance, but then, I'm out of a job and may never make that second billion.

That's why we're spending so much to convince you the Canadian system is horrible. You've seen our ads, the ones where the Canadians have to come to the US to get a treatment their government deems to be experimental. Sure, we deny the same things and more, but hey, if we covered everything, I might be reduced to flying in a rented jet.

So please keep up the good work, and for God's sake, don't call your congressmen and demand a public option--that's like taking caviar out of my family's mouth.