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Health Means Life; Health Means Freedom
Life and Freedom are moral issues. It is time for Democrats to talk about health in those terms, beyond just policy terms like health insurance reform, bending the cost curve, types of exchanges, etc.
Health means life. If you get a major illness or injury and cannot get it treated adequately, you could die. And tens of thousands do.
Health means freedom. If you have a serious illness or injury and cannot get it treated, your freedom will be limited in many ways. Your physical freedom: you may no longer have the freedom to move around. Your economic freedom: you may not be able to work or your medical bills may impoverish you. Your emotional freedom: you will not be free to live a happy life.
Health is therefore a moral issue of the highest order. And it is a patriotic issue. Health security is a problem for far more Americans than military security. Your security is far more likely to be threatened by the lack of treatment for illness and injury than by any likely terrorist attack.
Real terror is seen in the thousands of letters sent to the White House and Congress by people whose lives have been shattered or threatened by the behavior of the health insurance corporations. Wellpoint, which made $2.7 billion in fourth quarter profits in 2009, tried to raise its Anthem/Blue Cross premiums 39% in California. Wellpoint made its profits by NOT giving health care. It treated 2.2million fewer people. It found a way NOT to treat people who needed treatment, either by refusing to insure them, or dropping them as clients, or denying authorizations. If you are sick or injured and that happens to you, you face terror — very real terror.
That’s when “health maintenance organizations” (HMOs) become health terror organizations.
The Obama administration has been missing the moral arguments in the health care debate, while conservatives always hit their moral targets. Where the conservatives argue loss of freedom (“government takeover”) and life (“death panels” and abortion), the administration has been giving policy wonk arguments about economic and pragmatic policy details that the public cannot understand: health exchanges, percentages of the poverty line (133% vs. 150%), and so on. They are real enough. But they do not communicate the moral issues.
Morality and Policy
Why should Congress move to reconciliation? Because it is moral. It is the right thing to do, because it will enhance life and freedom.
Why should the public option be in the reconciliation bill? Because it is right and practical: it allows the market to police the insurance companies — to keep their greed from overwhelming the life and freedom of tens of millions of Americans. And a public plan— an American Plan!— gives you an your doctor much more freedom to determine your treatment, with no profit incentives for insurance companies to deny you care.
Why should national exchanges, not state exchanges, be in the reconciliation bill? Because they provides greater economic freedom — through bigger pools, which means much more affordable insurance for all. Affordability means economic freedom!
Why cover folks up to 150%, not just 133%, of the poverty line. To offer life and freedom to many more of our fellow Americans.
Why should anti-trust exemptions be ended for health insurance companies? Economic freedom! Anti-trust exemptions function like corporate bailouts. They transfer the money from ordinary people into corporate coffers. By reducing or eliminating competition, corporations can charge more for less treatment to fewer people. Those extra charges, plus out of pocket costs when we are denied care under the plans, come out of our pockets. Anti-trust exemptions take money out our pockets and put it into corporate profits. They threaten our economic freedom.
And how should we be thinking about the passage of a health plan that makes progress but falls short of what is needed? We should be taking it as a national commitment — a moral commitment — to health for Americans. It is a commitment to doing what is right, to life, freedom, and health security, a first step of many steps to come.
It is time to return to the moral fundamentals. Health security is deeply patriotic — perhaps our most important form of security. Health means life. Health means freedom. Everyone can understand that.
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Show All-"Life and Freedom are moral issues. It is time for Democrats to talk about health in those terms,"
It's time for the Republicans to talk about health in those terms too, but I'm not expecting them to do that either.
In any case, you don't need talk from your government. The Democrats have a majority, they can pass any law they want to... and Obama could sign it,... if he wanted to.
Our country has no moral convictions - aren't we busy now killing hundreds of innocent people in the middle east even as you're reading this?
That's right -- you have no moral convictions, I have none, and the millions of folks who protested the invasion of Iraq have none. No wonder a genuine Leftist has no chance of being elected to the White House: his followers are always telling the rest of the country how immoral they are. Not a winning strategy, is it? -- By the way, we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people during World WarII -- many times fewer than our foes did. The moral purity you seek is not to be found on planet Earth.
Indeed.
It IS a moral issue. Treating others as we would be treated. Promoting personal freedom. Freedom form crushing medical bills; freedom from illness in the first place with proper diet, exercise, and toxic-free foods. Wellness should be a moral right.
Gary
“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing”
-- Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
My question continues to be why are we rewarding the insurance cartel by keeping it as part of the plan? Everything in this article, and too many others to count, cries out against this. I know the answer -- talk about greed. They're remaining in power because of greed -- the greed of a certain cadre of Dems, almost all of the Repubs, and most of all because of Obama and his sidekick Rahm.
Let's say Obama had kept single-payer at the table, let's say he spoke of the imperative of health care reform in the terms stated in the first four paragraphs of this article, and then explained Medicare for All -- do you really think the majority of Americans wouldn't be clamoring to kick the insurance cartel to the curb and cutting Pharma down to size?
Of course this is fantasy. Obama is a low-down creep of the highest order. I have no respect for this man. I respect him less than Bush because he is so incredibly dishonest on so many levels. I can't stand to look at his face anymore. When I look at him all I see is death. All this man brings is continued misery and death.
Hi Samalabear!
I agree.
Your fan Chelsea.
S.I.N.G.L.E. - P.A.Y.E.R.
You can't have health without health freedom.
The latest episode in the ongoing saga of the FDA "protecting" us in the name of Big Ag and Big Pharma is unfolding. They are now going after the Amish.
They went to a farm, demanded to inspect, were turned away while threatening the farmer they would be back. Then they followed a visitor for over 40 miles and demanded to look in his truck for raw milk. These are bureaucrats with far too much time on their hands and Congress is trying to increase their budget and power.
Unless FDA power is limited, any national health care system will institutionalize sickness in ways many of you cannot imagine.
http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2010/01/19/fda
katrine: My sympathies are with you. I've been following the thyroid attack through Dr. Wright's newsletter. Are you familiar with it? There are hundreds of examples of treatments like Armour Thyroid that are lower in cost and more effective than comparable expensive pharmaceuticals and the FDA has been waging this war for over 20 years. We have to fight for and demand health freedom before any "health reform" is enacted.
Cassandra got that right!! Someone wants to "institutionalize sickeness in many ways". There is a bill in Congress to say that only pharmaceudicals may treat or cure any illness as they outlaw nutritional supplements. Don't take Vitamin C if you feel a cold coming on---get some substance that can be patented instead. After all, the most important thing is profit for the corporations---not good health for the people.
Dr. Lakeoff has been writing for some time about how conservatives control political discourse by by controlling the terms of the debate. He has cited endless examples of how this process works and has made a multitude of suggestions about how others can re-frame the major debates in a more favorable way. His message has not gotten through. This latest attempt by Dr. Lakeoff is a testament both to his perseverance and to the obduracy of the liberals and centrists who insist on ignoring the fact that they are talking about something other than what people care about.
Whether we like it or not, people in the USA are moved to political action by moral issues and moral principles. Many of the principles that the conservatives have tapped into and exploited may be questionable, but they are moral principles nonetheless and therefore useful as political weapons. An eye for an eye, for example, may be weak link in the chain of judeo-christian morality, but it works exceptionally well as a political rallying point for military invasions. The reason-bearing opponents of military invasion would have armed their efforts more effectively with a bit of do unto others.
I have no doubt that a concerted campaign for health freedom as Dr. Lakeoff suggests would rally many more people to the side of health care reform. Even some legislators would be inspired to change their positions if they thought that their constituents (the people who keep buying their biennial ticket on the public gravy train) saw it as a moral issue. I doubt, however, that this will happen.
Liberals do not want to engage in any process to change the moral terms of public debate for two reasons. First, many see the conservative setting of political terms and agendas as a crass manipulation of the public mentality. They do not want to debase themselves and the public debate by stooping to the same strategies that are so effective for conservatives. Secondly, the overriding moral issue for liberals is honesty, telling the truth as it is perceived without prejudice. Truth telling, however, is often uncomfortable and even more often at odds with other precepts of judeo christian morality. Thus the neurologist who says that Terry Schiavo was an unconscious lump of flesh that would benefit from having the plug pulled is no hero for telling a bereaved family the truth. Rather he is, in the conservative way of thinking, a villain for violating the all life is sacred moral principle.
As much as Dr. Lakeoff would like to change the terms of political debate, it won't happen. Fox News, AIPAC, Christian evangelicals, and the various Republican party information agencies hold the keys to the debates on all big political issues. The others who participate in those debates have no desire to change the system and seek only to change the result of the debate. With a political system that is gamed so thoroughly in the ways that Dr. Lakeoff has pointed out in his books and essays, it is impossible to gain any result other than the ones that are pre-ordained by the terms dictated by those who hold the keys. Since liberals consistently refuse to get down in the muck and play dirty like their conservative brethren, the only way out of the current mess is outside the system altogether. It's simply a question of how bad things have to get before liberals give up being liberals and turn themselves into revolutionaries.
Hear, hear El Polaco Argentino.
You put it so elegantly what I've been saying, progressives have to get down and dirty and appeal to emotions instead of trying to convince the masses with cold, soulless, logic. I mean who would the public rather have as President -- Kirk or Spock? The answer of course is James T. Kirk.
How we discuss matters HERE is not how we can communicate with the majority of the population. And it has always been thus -- those that can appeal to the moral side of the public best win the arguments, and the prize. Shakespeare moves people not through statistics and critical reasoning but by the emotional power of his words. Thus was true for Abe Lincoln -- though he also managed to include much truth in his words.
It is a matter of reading the audience and figuring what will play with them.
And then putting the facts into truthful and moral terms that the average schmoo can relate to...
Gary
“The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.”
-- Edgar Quinet
In 2008, if we voted for a Congressional candidate who did not support single-payer, we may be part of the problem. To become part of the solution, we make sure we have candidates who support single-payer and work like crazy to get them elected.
More than likely that means running an independent and exposing ourselves to the wrath of the two major political parties ---- do we have those reserves of moral courage?
I'd like to broaden Sherry's concern about health care to include the issues of more wars and the theft of our tax funds and retirement funds by the bankster bailout. Sherry says we may have to run the wrath of the two major political parties and I agree it is a good idea to urge independents to run and no longer support the two corporate parties. I suggest that we never again vote for a candidate that does not support health care for all, an end to the wars as well as raising the taxes on the banksters to get our money back. Those white collar criminals belong in Jail, not going off to the bank to cash their big bonus checks for bankrupting the nation and stealing our investments for retirement. We need to regulate those greedy bastards to prevent it happening again. If you want to look for morals or ethics, you can skip Wall Street. None there at all.
"Whenever the country denies almost any version of its humanity, something very important is lost in the national soul." Stanley Crouch, 2010
Soulfully, morally, mournfully yours,
Jack Chase
Lakoff is a typical, hopelessly compromised, bourgeois liberal.
And you're an idiot. How about addressing the points of the discussion instead of lame name-calling. You flaming conservative tool.
I seriously doubt that pjd is a conservative tool having come across his posts these past 6 months. Most of the commentators from other Lakoff articles share pjd's bitter sentiment of Lakoff. I don't completely share pjd's views but here is what I object to in this article. Lakoff wants Democrats to simply talk about it but he says absolutely nothing about their writing off single payer. What real actions on health care reform does Lakoff really want then?
Words can speak louder than actions but when there is no action to match those words, then speeches are useless. Democrats and Republicans can always talk about problems but what the majority of them do about them is often inconsistent and causes more problems then solved.
Only someone who is pretty ignorant of what leftism is would think "bourgeois liberal" is a conservative epithet. An old German by the name of Marx coined the phrase.
At least those labeled "liberal" have the capacity to engage in meaningful thought and discourse. You conservaties can be best summed up by the fact that "you are like a bull with one horn and one testicle. You can't procreate or fight, all you can do is bluster and defecate."
Have a good day.
I think that a strong case can hence should be made that a healthy nation is far more crucial for our so-called "Homeland Security" than all our wars and military bases abroad combined. I am not kidding. I am not sarcastic. I mean what I wrote.
Imagine the economic system as the house we all live in.
It can no longer provide gainful employment to millions of people who have worked hard their whole lives.
It can no longer provide shelter for millions who once owned their own homes.
It can no longer provide access to health care for millions.
It can no longer provide clean air to breathe nor clean water to drink for millions.
Millions of its children are undernourished and malnourished and depend on food stamps for survival.
It can no longer care for millions of its elderly.
It is a house that deserves to catch on fire.
It is a house that should burn down.
I concur, mm. The economic system never wanted to do what's on this list. I've sited this elsewhere (paraphrasing) :
"Capitalism is the preposterous idea that the meanest of men, with the nastiest of motives, will work for the common good."
John Maynard Keynes
Peace.
Jack Chase
The sort of freedoms Lakoff invokes were denied US citizens when the Senate REFUSED to ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 after the almost super-human efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt. Today, the UDHR is a cornerstone of international law and its violation provides the foundation for becoming guilty of crimes against humanity, which the US Empire has done with impunity since 1945. It is his seemingly willful ignorance of this Root of the Problem that so totally annoys me about Lakoff. If the UDHR had been ratified, it would be required learning in school--like it is in almost every other country on the planet--and the ability of the US federal, state and local governments to violate it on a daily basis would be greatly hindered. There certainly wouldn't be an issue of universal health care or wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Here's a link to Wikipedia's UDHR page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
When you read it, you can see just how uncivilized and barbaric the US Empire truely is. It's the key to unlocking the freedoms Lakoff mentions but makes no attempt at realizing.
my living body, as every other living thing, is composed of this very planet's raw materials...
when industrializing humans poison their own environment to the detriment of their own life form and every other, and then want to be cured of the ensuing diseases, that is illogical...
if you want health, you must maintain a healthy environment...
jobs don't...
Dubet, Thank you for drawing that circle for us. You might appreciate this, from Rob Breszny's 17 Feb 10 column:
"You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one
on Earth is any further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murchie also
describes our kinship through an analysis of how deeply we share the air.
With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and --
owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation -- over a year's time you have
intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as
well as by everyone who ever lived."
-Guy Murchie, *The Seven Mysteries of Life*
Abstractly and idealistically,
Jack Chase
I think Lakoff's discussions about framing are interesting and even important. But it seems he wants to use his insights to help Democrats get over, as in this article. He wants Dems to use better framing to support a morally indefensible smoke-screen of a health care "reform" proposal, a composite bill that serves to funnel more wealth to insurance and pharma giants without coming anywhere close to providing universal coverage or controlling costs.
Framing issues in moral terms has worked for the Republicans and it can work for the Democrats. But if neither party is actually offering solutions with moral integrity, then the frames are all just part of the illusion that we have been presented with real choices.
Dig this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
Lets deconstruct Dr. Lakoff while we're at it. I'm sure he won't mind getting a bit of his own medicine:
"Why should the public option be in the reconciliation bill? Because it is right and practical--it allows the market to police the insurance companies."
Surely I am a member of the public right? Therefore the "public" option will be available to me if I don't like the private insurance option. Actually the public option will be available to less than 2 % and the rest of us will be mandated to buy private insurance. That's sure going to police the market place. But for those who can get a "public" plan they will certainly get a better deal because the public plan doesn't have to generate profits. Actually since the public plan enrollees who work for small businesses will tend to be older and less optimally employed people whose health is likely to be poorer. The public option with the logic of the marketplace will reflect that. It will isolate them, charge them more for the same coverage or offer them poorer coverage in terms of copays and deductables to make up for their higher costs. Very effective "policing" It dumps the sicker people in a separate pool and makes sure the private insurers will generally have healthier people to insure.
And the exchanges are another self evident example of the market place magic-- no conlusion among sellers here and certainly we can expect an absolute transparency and honesty in their claims of coverage so that we will be able to compare options fairly. Those of us who are younger, and healthier get better coverage for the same money because we are in lower risk pool. Those of us who are richer can then buy less comprehensive and higher deductable insurance because we can cover most routine costs with savings. Isn't that great that the market treats us so well. For those of us who are sicker and older and not so well off--the market tells us we will have to pay more. The market has no moral scrupple with that kind of setup. It's just there to see that people make money. And isn't that what the USA is really all about--making money. Those of us left behind, who cannot pay enough-- we're out. The market has no problem with that and neither does Dr. Lackof. For all the advantages that the exchanges give us we will have to tack on another 4-6% overhead to another entreprenuer who sets it up. That truly is market place magic
And don't worry if you can't afford the private insurer's rates. The government will subsidize you. And if that isn't enough well then you can rely on charity. Or even become a criminal. And if charity is not available you can die and "decrease the surplus population." Isn't it wonderful that we keep private insurers in the loop--in the name of freedom. Aren't we lucky that we have Dr. Lackof to explain why the public option is so good for us and to explain how Obamacare is going to make us freer. I know how much freer I'm going to feel as I am mandated by Obama's Health Care to pay increasing premiums for increasingly crappy insurance with higher and higher copays and deductables. I just love freedom--don't you.
Good work, tammons.
I personally am hopeless when it comes to numbers and technical or procedural hairsplitting; I simply glaze over when confronted with numbers and "inside politics" minutiae. I appreciate your ability to lucidly and straightforwardly demonstrate that there's no pig in this poke.
Even with my shortcomings, it seemed self-evident to me from the first that the phrase "public option" was merely a political marker or place-holder-- not even an actual CARROT, but an IDEA of something sorta carrot-y. As I've written previously, once Congress actually took up the matter, the rhetorical dimunition began IMMEDIATELY when "robust" or "strong" was decoupled from the phrase. This was followed by a serial bait-and-switch to successively more inferior knock-offs of the original concept.
Over the long months, we've seen that... blur... appear, disappear, and re-appear. The only clear aspect of the blur is that it gets smaller and scrawnier each time. Yet, as you state, Democratic pep squad cheerleaders like Lakoff encourage the delusion that something virtuous may yet be wrung from the "public option".
BTW, if you're up for it, you ought to be able to tackle the corollary delusion; here's the straw-man version: OK, maybe there isn't much of a pig in that poke; maybe the carrot is fake. But it behooves us to SUPPORT the prospect in order to support the PROCESS-- once it's established that progressives/liberals can indeed influence Elected Misrepresentatives to respond to their demand, "we" get momentum and can begin the long, hard slog to get a REAL carrot!
To me, this is an unfortunate amalgamation of Bugs Bunny's appetite for carrots and Elmer Fudd's logic and methods.
· Yr Obd't Servant
It's ridiculous that health care in this country is a for-profit enterprise. Corporate bottom line interests have a stranglehold on the Congress and US citizens, that is immoral.
However, there is much to be said about individual responsibility regarding health. Go anywhere in the US and you will see people of all ages gulping down giant super-sized cartons of soda causing the pancreas to wig out and wreak havoc on the body, eating antibiotic laced burgers and toxic hydrogenated fries.
Obesity is epidemic. The lifestyle of US citizens has created an illness crisis. Corporations feed us shit, we get sick, corporations charge us for health care. They like it that way. We need to step out of the vicious cycle. Maybe then we'll have the strength to fight the insanity.
Thats true. The government, owned and controlled by corporations, wants the general public to be fat, sick, stupid, lazy and in debt. Thats how you control the masses and use them for maximum profit. We are nothing more than cows that are expendable.
The key to freedom is to first make yourself healthy. You do this by only eating whole, organic foods, and dont tell me you can't afford organic food, when dandelion greens, lambsquarter, and plantain, common weeds growing in your own back yard, have more nutrition than you ever imagined. Look it up.
Once you are healthy, your mind will start working again. Once your mind starts working again you will start to smarten up and get wise to the bogus system that has you under its control. Then you will be able to figure out how to improve your quality of life for much less and get out of debt. It wont happen right away, but it will happen.
Yes, health is the key to your freedom. No, we won't eat cake, we will eat weeds!
It's not always in our control. Linda McCartney, a strict vegetarian with a healthy lifestyle, died of breast cancer. Besides, even with the healthiest diet and high level of fitness, many of us succumb to cancers with genetic links- or worse, that might be caused by our environments. How many people, for example, know whether or not they've been exposed to radon in their lifetimes?
NM, I cant worry about what might happen. We never know when our number is coming up. You could get killed crossing the street tomorrow.I have known of perfectly healthy people who have died in their sleep, for no good reason. Shit happens. My father, healthy all his life, now has advancing ALS and we have been told he has a year or less to live. Shit happens.
Change the things you can, and accept the things you cant change. To me there's a lot to be changed, and changed today.
Sorry George, they'll never allow you on the MSM
If Germans were threatening to invade our country and kill citizens, as in 1941, then the Federal Government has a duty to defend us.
It's the same if Germs are threatening us, invading us and killing us. The Federal Government defending us with Health Care isn't socialism. It's Defense. It's Patriotic. It's the American Way.
Where does the Federal Government get the authority to mandate Citizens to purchase a product/service from a for profit company?
Pelosi doesn't think it's a serious question. Then her spokesman says it's the Interstate Commerce Clause. The same justification for the Drug War. At least the Americans of the 1910's and 20's understood that the Constitution would have to be amended to make alcohol illegal. Our government employees are going to re-write the tax code, mandate the purchase of products/services from companies that pay their CEO's millions of dollars in bonuses, and alll of this is done without a single question of "how".
One might think *someone* in the mainstream media would ask. But there are no reporters anymore, just people that read press releases.
What a thing to behold. Franklin was so right.
Good point, commoner.00743. I'll be one of those mandated to purchase said product, which, as we all know, is a most defective one. No wonder a law must be made to buy it. Wish I could afford lobbyists to make a law that every citizen, or at least head of household, has to buy a piece of art a year. Exchanges within 30 days, in case it's too blue. Or too something.
I digress... so why stop now?...
"A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth." John Singer Sargent
Jack Chase
"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess that itself will need reforming" Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In short, a rabbit hole mentality......
Time for "Clean cups, Clean cups, Move down, Move down.........."
Dear annabelle, I now admit I've yet to read Mr. Dodgson's famous fiction. Nor his mathematics, for that matter. Thank you for referring me to the former, and I shall do so with gusto. His is an era whose (if corporations can be "persons" so can "eras") literature and music I really like. I could wax devotedly but this isn't the place. I'll do so in my mind.
Thanks for the cue,
Jack
To do so please check with ezmerelda57@live.com
This so called Healrh Reform is only another scam played on the American citizens by the Plutocracy that controls both political parties. We simply want to be healed when we are ill. Paying our taxes directly to the Big Insurance/Brokerage/Banking Companies is all this so called Reform is about. These parasites have sucked the Middle Classes dry with tax cuts for the filthy rich. The bottom 99% are losing this class war and only enraged mobs with a guillotine or immigration can save us now.
In the U.S. the rights of capital rule over all human rights, including U.S. Foreign Policy. The U.S. is in love with capitalism. Until Americans recognize the greed of corporate capitalism, nothing will change.
I agree with others who have said that the only people we need to convince are the Democrats in congress who could still do the right thing and pass Medicare For All through reconciliation, a term even Lakoff must like, but of course if they were going to do this they would have done it already.
Phrases like "healthcare not warfare" sum up the progressive position very well and are already the majority opinion. If we had any access to the media they would be the overwhelming majority opinion.
We need a new political party not sold out to corporations no matter how many professors try to frame the problem in a different way.
v
Why should Lakoff quit Berkeley? Because Yoo teaches at the Law School and has not been sanctioned for his part in writing the Bush torture memos.
But, Mr. Lakoff thinks the world revolves around himself, no doubt.
Lakoff is just another effete empty suit.
N/A
thanks george, for more of nothing.
now, back to the real world...
Health is freedom but this bill is not about health.
And most democrats have not read it or appreciate how much truly totalitarian stuff is buried in bills now. S 510, a "food safety" bill (who is opposed to food safety?) is a corporate take over of the food supply and according to a constitutional lawyer in Canada where they have a similarly draconian bill, an end of the Rule of Law - warrantless entry, surveillance, no judicial review over even the appropriateness and validity of the actions of the Administrator in dealing out penalties, etc.
So, what has the pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies buried in this bill?
Who is checking?