{"id":190753,"date":"2009-10-29T09:27:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T14:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/29\/doh-5\/"},"modified":"2009-10-29T09:27:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T14:27:00","slug":"doh-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/29\/doh-5\/","title":{"rendered":"D’oh!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, when you are an insurance company, like Blue Cross\/Blue Shield, it is not a good idea for you to include a request for your customers to contact their Congressman to oppose the public option along with a notice of a rate increase<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year.<\/p>\n

Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan. The so-called public option is likely to be considered by Congress in the health-care overhaul debate.<\/p>\n

“No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it’s a slippery slope to a single-payer system,” the BCBS flier read. “Who wants that?”<\/p>\n

Plenty of people, it turns out.<\/p>\n

Indignant Blue Cross customers have rebelled against the insurer’s message, complaining that their premium dollars have funded such a campaign.<\/p>\n

They’ve hit the Internet in a flurry of e-mails to friends and neighbors throughout the state. They’ve called Hagan’s office to voice support for a public option. They’ve marked through the Blue Cross message on their postcards to instead vouch support, then dropped them in the mail — in at least one case taped to a brick<\/span> — to be paid on Blue Cross’ dime. Or dimes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, “\u306a\u3044\u611a\u304b\u3055\u306f\u306a\u3044\u85ac\u3067\u3059”.*<\/sup><\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, when you are an insurance company, like Blue Cross\/Blue Shield, it is not a good idea for you to include a request for your customers to contact their Congressman to oppose the public option along with a notice of a rate increase: First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1046,1045,978,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-healthcare","category-insurance","category-politics","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}