I’m not a particular fan of Los Angeles Times Journalist Michael Hiltzik. I admit it. I find him to be a whiner, a would be snake charmer who is in fact more snake bit and who snake bites his readership, spending too much time preaching to his choir instead of using his columns more effectively.
Take for example, Hiltzik’s Saturday May 26 column:
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=0333b1a4-984e-42a1-995a-1e94e0ceb366
Hiltzik is complaining (whining) that drug insurers are surreptitiously raising their Part D drug premiums by purporting to hold those premiums at government mandated levels but in actuality effectively increasing premiums by increasing co-pays when corresponding drug costs being charged to the insurers are not rising and do not require an increase in co-pays. That may be true (it is), but that’s not the root cause of the problem.
You remember the classic fable about the woman who comes upon a snake near death lying by the side of the road. She takes the snake home and nurses it back to health. Strength regained, the snake bites and kills his benefactor. As she lay dying, she asks the snake how he could do that to her. Answers the snake, “What do you expect, stupid woman. I’m a snake. That’s what snakes do.”
Analogous to snakes, insurance companies are in business to make money, to be kind to their shareholders, not their insureds. Trying to snake charm his audience when, like the woman who saved the snake, he is smart enough to know better, he has been snake bit by the real culprits and is in turn snake biting himself and his readership.
The culprits here–sort of–are our political leaders who are bribed by insurance company lobbyists to allow their insurance company clients to behave like snakes. In fact, the REAL culprits here are Hiltzik’s snake bit readers–the VOTERS who, like the woman who foolishly saved the snake, passively allow their political representatives to accept those bribes instead of protecting their constituents’ interests. They should be using their voting authority to replace their political representatives with more honest ones.
As long as Hiltzik continues to focus on the wrong culprits, he fails to serve either his employer or his audience, all of whom remain snake bit by the snake charmer. Just too many snakes out there!
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