OPINION
The attempts to demonize the insurance industry and its executives to gather support for health-care reform are disgraceful. This demagoguery and ignorance is emanating from the White House and a President who knows better.
He promised to bring us together through intelligent action and dialogue, which makes it yet more disturbing.Much opposition to the Democratic proposals for policies such as "mandatory coverage"that this publication has supported comes from citizens who do not see the benefits outweighing their concerns about a changed system and the costs of that change.
The opposition is not coming significantly from the insurance industry, which will mostly benefit from the plan.
The demagoguery demonstrates that those opposed to this brand of health-care reform are correct in assuming that the goal is neither universal coverage nor lower costs, but the intrusion of government into the health-care economy, support for health-care unions and the redistribution of income.We remind our readers that Massachusetts voters rejected Obama's health-care reform by choosing Republican Scott Brown, who campaigned against the proposal, for U.S. Senate. More important, Massachusetts political leaders had earlier demonstrated that a conservative Republican governor and a mostly liberal Democratic legislature could come together in a quiet, bipartisan way to provide nearly universal coverage (97.5 percent). Connecticut's health insurance companies are among the largest employers in this state. Its employees are your neighbors and friends, and they are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues here.We need more innovation from health insurance companies to reshape delivery and better address costs, but it is intentionally ignorant to pin the problems of our health-care system on them. Why Connecticut's political leaders aren't standing up for these employees, we can't say. But we're certain that, regardless of the success or failure of the health-care bill, voters will make demagogues pay at the polls later this year.
