Indiana farmer who wrote Obama: "I guess your voice can be heard"

[sabra]

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100323/NEWS03/100329804/1066/NEWS03

WASHINGTON -- "I guess your voice can be heard," Hoosier farmer Kenneth Scott said Tuesday as he rode in a taxicab in Washington after attending a celebration for the health insurance restructuring legislation that President Obama signed into law earlier in the day.

Scott faxed a letter to the White House 10 days before Christmas last year, never really expecting Obama would see it.

"I had selfish reasons to write," he said. "We needed help."

Health insurance premiums for Scott and his wife, Eileen, had just gone from $1,926 a month to $2,900.

...

Kenneth Scott, who supported Obama in the 2008 campaign, said he was "shocked" to find out the president read his letter.

And he said he was pleased the bill was signed into law.

"Doing nothing is not an option," he said.

[provis99]

1. guess what Scott? You insurance premiums are still going up!

There's no cost control in this law!

[FSogol]

2. No, but there is increased competition. That will bring the cost down. n/t

[Roland99]

3. What'll you give me for this ol' thing?

[PVnRT]

4. Doubtful

In practice, it will most resemble a Mexican standoff - the insurance companies all pointing guns at each other, ready to shoot the first fucker who starts trying to drop prices. All hail the oligopoly.

[FSogol]

5. Why haven't car insurance rates increased like health insurance?

Because of competition or are they just less greedy? Most States require it and use a pool to spread out the costs of insuring bad drivers and the rates have stayed reasonable.

[tridim]

6. The status quo insurance companies just lost all of that power

They can't collude any more at risk of corporate death.

Mark my words, there will be new companies popping up soon that will follow the new laws (as a marketing point). These companies will survive and thrive into the next decade. The dinosaurs will go extinct.

[ecstatic]

7. Before, once a pre-existing condition was established, people were stuck

and couldn't switch companies. That all changes now.

[gratuitous]

8. We shall see

But going forward, there's going to be a new factor in play that's never been there before. For over a century, the large rock of insurance company privilege has sat in the way of providing health care to America's citizens. That rock resisted every attempt to move it out of the way, and many a good program smashed itself to pieces on that rock. Well, now the rock has been moved. Certainly it's not out of the way. And it may (probably will) take another herculean legislative effort to move it again. But it's been moved, without question. And deep in the rock, immovable and irresistible for so many decades, a tremor stirs.

[jwirr]

9. Small farmers and family farmers have always been considered

small businesses and this bill will be a godsend to them. My parents had no health coverage at all when they were farming in Iowa and my mother's nervous breakdown made them lose their farm.