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Photo: Steve Rhodes
The level of evil from corporate America seems limitless.
From New Times Broward-Palm Beach 10/22/09:
Christina Turner, a 45-year-old Fort Lauderdale woman, was downtown, letting men at the bar by her drinks. The next thing she remembers is waking up on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she may have been raped. As a safety precaution, she visited her doctor, who prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine. And that's about when things went from horrible to unbelievably fucked.
When Turner went to change health insurance companies a few months later, she learned she was essentially uninsurable. Turner, a former health insurance underwriter, told the Huffington Post that the AIDS meds raised too many health questions, and that even after she repeatedly explained the assault (that doesn't sound fun) insurers wouldn't sell her a policy.
The way things work right now, in a time history might well refer to as "the sick centuries," it doesn't matter if you have AIDS or not. If you've had anti-AIDS treatment, most insurance companies write you off as uncoverable. "It's basically an automatic no," one insurance agent told HP.
Sounds like: "Sorry 'bout that, friend. Hope the treatment worked out for you. Either way, get the fuck out of our office and have a nice death."
Having recently written about HMOs denying life saving HIV medications, I'm in no position to express surprise. I can definitely express horror. How can corrupt politicians like Mitch McConnell, Blanche Lincoln, John "Keating Five" McCain, Max Baucus, and Olympia Snowe sleep at night after trying to keep these evil companies in business at the expense of our healthcare, our economy, and our very humanity?
Nothing illustrates the need for real campaign finance reform than the corruption, mendacity, and insanity we have seen during the healthcare debate. Some might compare the Senate to a whorehouse, but prostitution is honest work, and prostitutes own their bodies. Senators do not own their Senate seats and have no right to put them up for sale.
Was there ever a point in this country when politicians (esp. Republicans) put people ahead of corporations? These are cold and heartless people whose only interest in holding on to a seat so they can continue to get the health care they would like to deny millions of Americans.
The American people understand that bribery is illegal, yet we accept it in our politics in the form of soft money. And the fact that the bribers have the gaul to claim freedom of speech is a further insult.