Bleeding us with more leeches: Big Insurance parasites dig deeper -- Oregon reaches for the salt

Here in Washington State, amidst the port shutdown and the Great War Debate, a different story slipped through the news last week: Premera Blue Cross wants to become a for-profit company.
Uh-oh.

Our state's largest health insurer wants to raise money by selling shares, and the state government is salivating at the chance to collect extra taxes (back and future) from a for-profit corporation. Democratic Gov. Gary Locke and lots of Olympia legislators love the idea, just like they did when the state's second-largest insurer, Regence Blue Shield, proposed the same thing a few months back. Nobody will suffer but us customers -- which is to say, everyone who needs health care at one time or another -- which is to say, most everyone.

That's not the official line, of course, which enthuses about improved service and rates and blah blah blah. Bullfeathers. As with most privatization schemes, this has been a trend sweeping the country, and it's been a disaster everywhere it's been tried. On this score, consider those flaming Bolshies, the Washington State Medical Association. WSMA's CEO, Tom Curry, notes dryly of the idea that "We're not aware of any place in the country where these conversions have improved things for plan subscribers, patients, doctors, or hospitals... The experience nationally is that plans that convert to investor-based operations use their capital to acquire other plans."