Many if not most of the poor in the republican party are focused more on the ethical, religious aspects of the party which quite capably demonizes urban America, which for its purposes are neither ethical nor religious. This also demonstrates how the message of hatred is so pervasive because being ethical and religious, hardworking, hardy, and honest makes you better right. If you believe that those traits are beholden to geography or one political party vs. another, sadly it might. Politics obviously is the only place this distinction matters, because business and wealth in this country have nothing to do with origination.

Everyone might not get into heaven, but corporations will take money from anyone. A neighbor of mine, staunch republican that he is, is always complaining about his insurance and the cost of prescriptions as though he is unaware that his vaunted political party has no issues with this whatsoever. Keeping America for Americans is also a big priority for him, so perhaps the possibility of being recised is less important to him than say illegal immigration. That the republican party maintains its status as standard bearer for all things moral and good despite the clear, public and seemingly regular failings of some of its most heralded makes clear the ‘we’re not the same and so its not the same when we do it’ thing the have going on in that party.

For this reason, I believe a Consumer Protection agenda is imperative. The most basic and yet powerful action possible would be to force insurers to publish their recision statistics. Who’d want an insurer who is likely to cancel them just when they really need them. What is an even more powerful statistic is the recision numbers paired with the anticipated cost of continued coverage. The amount of information that doctors, insurers and the financial establishment require of the public says just how powerful information about people you do business with is. The buying public has so little information about doctors and insurers and reversing this is a good beginning.

The reason I wonder is that I have an individual insurance policy which provides that “Two years after this Contract is issued, no false statements which might have been in your Application can be used to void the Contract. Also, after these same two years no claim can be denied because of any false statement on your Application.”

My insurance is with a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate in Georgia. I do not know if the above provision is a matter of insurer contract policy or state regulation, or how widespread its use is. This provision would appear to take a balanced approach to the issue and greatly limit scope for abusive recission.

But I thought I’d point out a consequence of making rescissions illegal. Either #1, it becomes the Insurer’s responsibility to identify preexisting conditions.(although denial of a new policy for pre-existing conditions might become illegal, as well). or #2 Health insurance coverage becomes mandatory.

#2 is probably a necessary consequence of making rescission illegal. But enforcing mandatory health insurance is actually quite tricky. Assumedly, the government would track people’s insurance(or lack thereof) and a fine would be issued.

Therein lies the rub. If the fine is lower than the insurance premium, it is in by interests to not get insurance, pay the fine, and then sign up for a policy when I get sick.

But selecting the appropriate fine is tricky business, in some senses, it is equivalent to insurance underwriting. At the same time, legislators are under pressure to make the fine as small as possible, to prevent alienating their constituents. Moreover, the tendency of government, is to specify the fines in the legislation itself. This means that an appropriate fine at the time of passage, even if it is initially significantly larger than the cost of an insurance premium at the time, will eventually become less valuable than the premium due to dollar inflation and health cost inflation.

I don’t mean to imply this is a bad idea. In fact, if we’re lucky, the legislation is written poorly, it kills health insurers, and we end up with the public option. But I just think it is important to understand how making practical legislation to make rescission illegal, is actually quite tricky.

I’m guessing the egregious examples of recisions for trivial omissions (e.g. not disclosing acne treatment) were made in states with more insurance company-friendly statutes on the books.

If by the “intellectuals” you mean intellectual mercenaries who latch onto rising political trends and dress them up with fancy academic finery, you’re right about them. They’re an ineradicable part of political change.

But they’re really an epiphenomenon, and speak mostly to one another. They don’t represent the vital forces which really drive events.

E.g. the Global War on Terror is a brute power and resource grab, driven by oil fundamentals, the disaster capitalism which is a basic part of any crisis, the elemental fears 9/11 stoked among the masses, and the basic power greed of American politicians.

There’s nothing intellectual about those, the true fundamental factors.

But it’s not a “naked” power grab because it was dressed up in neocon ideology.

Enough to keep electing republicans, and to scare many democrats into acting republican.

You’re certainly right about the repulsive MSM, but that doesn’t change the fact of the existence of these elected politicians, or that George Bush has a hard core 20% support base. That would be 19% over the 1% who actually monopolize the wealth.

As far as the rest of “insurance” it is ridiculous. Everybody is out to get their share of benefits. They paid for them, right? Like Rush, you will go to the top cancer specialist to have a look and a bi-op on that pimple on your arse, why, because you are “covered” ….

It will obviously stay as it is, because you have the POWER but my remark that insurance is a Suckers Game and economically retarded will always be true. Mr. Alcoholics Anomoyous…. sort of like the Stock Market of Ownership Equities in Corporate America. Hold your nose while you repeat that one.

“But lumpenproletariat reactionaries, historically fascism’s base, are worthless for this.”

without also carefully looking at the role of the intellectuals who always tend to get right from the start very enthusiastic if somebody comes up with a new idea to create better or even ideal human beings

What this means in practice is that they really, in contradiction of reality, cling to their sense of themselves as “middle class”, but see this as a cultural rather than an economic status. If they can define themselves that way, they can still cling to all their delusions about the “American dream”, the benevolence of capitalism and organized religion, patriotism and the rest of it.

Meanwhile they furiously resist any realization that they are factually “sinking into” (as they would see it) the “poor”, or that they are part of the “proletariat”. They reject this way of seeing themselves, and by way of compensation join in with right-wing bashing of workers and the poor. It’s the standard phenomenon of bullying to cover up for one’s own inadequacies.

So in these ways they deal with their increasingly hopeless economic plight by escaping into an alternate culture war reality. The pathetic and ironic thing is that things are only hopeless to the extent that people refuse to recognize the class war being waged upon them. If they did confront this reality and fight back against it, it could be changed.

But lumpenproletariat reactionaries, historically fascism’s base, are worthless for this.