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Because affordable, and shall I say reliable, health insurance is such a missed necessity for solo practitioners and small firm lawyers, I think that insurance reform is necessary.  I believe that the public option is necessary.  Co-Ops sound nice, but I doubt they can do the job that is needed to bring real competition to the health care industry.  For example, one co-op-like health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, just got caught using necessary premiums for extravagant parties and millions of dollars in inappropriate bonuses.  The one failing of the Third Wave practice of law is the lack of lower deductible health care insurance that the practitioner knows cannot be canceled when they or their family needs it, denied coverage based on rescission, and which allows him or her to cover pre-existing conditions for both the practitioner and his or her family.  The latter is what keeps many practitioners from going out on their own or even practicing law in the first place.  And then, if you do get sick and cannot work as you must, you will lose coverage because you cannot pay for it.  The truth of the matter is that many solos and small firm attorneys pay many thousands of dollars each year for what is essentially fake insurance.  Insurance that will not survive the very high deductibles, the pre-existing conditions, the always present rescission after the fact and the diagnosis, and the loss of income.  The truth of the matter is that the solo or small firm lawyer cannot trust that they will actually have coverage when they need it, no matter how diligent they are in maintaining insurance.

Now in reality, we really need a single payer system in which the money is collected to insure everyone, and then payments are made regardless of income, illness, or desire to the private insurance company of the persons choice.  This requires tighter regulation of the health insurance company preventing them from doing what is wrong.  The money is there for that with cost savings, but the distribution of the insurance dollar cannot be hoarded.  The truth of the matter, however, is that Washington does the political will to do this.

Therefore, the public option is necessary if we do not want health insurance reform to not be a fraud.  If there are not market conditions put in place to help nothing will stop the insurance companies from the outrageous greed and obscene profits that are harming and killing people in this country -- self employed people like attorneys.  As seen in the video, below, one insurance company executive alone, Stephen Hemsley, paid himself 1 out of every $700 health care dollars spent in this country in one year.

The public option is not government controlled medicine.  The hate and the hype to the contrary is simply not supported by facts.  Robert Reich explains the simple public option in the video below.

I do not know what the president has to say tonight, but I would encourage each of you to actually write your representatives and tell them reform is well overdue.

As for big company employees, during the Bush Administration, it was argued that real wages for workers did not increase during his term.  Well, that is not entirely correct.  What did not increase was take home pay of the workers, and this was despite some tax cuts.  Pay actually increased 25% during the Bush Administration for the average worker.  The problem was that most of it, along with the tax cuts to ordinary workers, went to pay for increased health insurance cost.  By all measures, this amount is escalating.  If the trend is not reversed, health insurance coverage will increase to the point that even the large companies will not be able to provide it.  More people will have to go without.  More people will be uninsured.  More will be under insured. The more  and under insured there are, the higher medical costs and rates will be for all of us.

It is for this reason that a public option is so vitally important.

I hope for the best.  I would ask your to help.

Thank you.

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