Sign This Official Ballot Petition
To Stop Outrageous Health Insurance Rate Hikes
Dear T R,
I am proud to tell you that I was the first person to sign a new ballot initiative petition that will reform the health insurance industry in California. Consumer Watchdog’s ballot measure would require health insurance companies to publicly justify their rates before rate hikes take effect.
If you want to join the fight to prevent exorbitant premium rate increases on your health insurance, I encourage you to:
- Click on this link: Justify Rates.org.
- Follow the instructions to print out the ballot initiative petition on that page.
- Sign, date and return it to the address provided as soon as you possibly can.
Why is your signature so important?
If we can gather the signatures of 505,000 registered voters, the measure will qualify for the November 2012 ballot and give voters the right to stop price gouging by health insurance companies.
This is a volunteer qualification campaign, so we can only accomplish this big task with your help. At the JustifyRates.org website, you can print out, sign, date and return the ballot initiative petition, or request copies of the petition in the mail.
Why is this campaign so important?
Here’s why:
The five largest health insurance companies made a combined profit of $11.7 billion in 2010. That was a 17% increase over the 2009 profit of $9.9 billion and a 51% increase over the $7.8 billion made in 2008. [SOURCE: California Department of Insurance.]
California is one of the few states that does not require health insurance companies to get approval before raising rates. That’s why I am supporting this vital ballot measure.
From 2002 to 2011, inflation in California rose about 29%… health insurance premiums went up 153%. [SOURCE: California HealthCare Foundation] At the same time, insurance companies were making you pay higher deductibles, co-pays, and prescription prices.
If you want to change this out-of-control profit structure, join our effort. Please print out, sign, date and return this short ballot initiative petition as soon as you possibly can. We must gather all signatures in just a few short weeks in order to get this measure on the ballot. Give Californians the right to vote to lower their outrageous health insurance premiums.
Many thanks,
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein
We respect your privacy. Please be assured that the information you provide on the ballot petition, by law, cannot and will not be used for any other purpose.
Dear U.S. Senator Feinstein,
Thank you so much for thinking of me and most importantly, for spelling my first name correctly, something many of my dearest, oldest friends, and even my lifelong sister can’t seem to get right. I know in today’s rush-rush world, full of texting, twittering, tweeting twats, it is tough to concentrate on inconsequential details like someone’s first name, and I know they mean well, so I always let them do it, without consequence. Which makes your attention to detail, in this personal letter, all the more impressive, especially considering, as I can only imagine, your crushingly time-consuming schedule being inundated with lobbyists now that their numbers have reached 12,633 and the amount of money spent, 3.3 billion (not including campaign contributions) on K Street alone.
With that understanding, I am so glad to see you down in the trenches with us average, or in my case, below average, citizens. For someone with your financial abundance and first-rate healthcare provided by the taxpayer, to feel our pain is emphatically empathetic, no matter how ephemeral. I am ecstatic by your concern.
However, I have a few concerns of my own. I wasn’t able to ascertain any information about your campaign to provide single-payer healthcare for all Americans, not just for politicians and the elderly (redundant, in your case). Instead, we got lobbyist-approved, bi-partisan ObamaCare, something moderate Republicans like yourself (in deed and lifestyle, if not by political affiliation) and President Obama seem to embrace. This lazy legislation left the doors open for abuse, just like the rate-hikes you mention in this alarming letter.
Your involvement in this ballot campaign strikes me as an afterthought, though, considering your lack of effort in developing a sensible, ethical plan in the first place. Instead of pleading with the over-taxed electorate to spend their time and resources doing your job, while clogging the California ballot with more needless, ineffectual nonsense (what have you done to stem the tide of federal DEA goons from harassing Californians in carrying out the citizen-approved proposition 215?) by asking insurance companies to justify their rates, why not ask them to justify their VERY EXISTENCE in the “heath industry?”
Having insurance bureaucrats involved with healthcare makes as much sense as having cops with high school level educations going to schools to speak to students (many of whom have far higher I.Q.s and broader knowledge bases) about drugs (D.A.R.E.). Their involvement is 100% waste. They are nothing but meddling middlemen. For-profit “healthcare” is an oxymoron and flies in the face of “first, do no harm.” Of course, you know all of this. Far more knowledgeable experts than I have had your ear on this issue, I am sure.
Since you know the score, and you know that we know that you have flexible ethics, why this facade in demonstrating your “outrage” at health insurance CORPORATIONS, who are people, too (even though the purpose of incorporating is to protect the individuals (people) involved from any liability the entity (not them) might incur)? Like people, corporations got to eat. You know that, right? Your Supreme Court certainly does.
Look at all the facts and statistics you present in this letter. Yet, your critical thinking skills inform you that ANY of this is OK? That it is just a matter of ambiguous terms like, “too much profit” and “out-of-control” rate hikes? Don’t these facts tell you; ENOUGH, already? Your weak-kneed plan/ballot is meaningless. Develop a program to re-educate insurance bureaucrats into doing productive work, in areas like green energy or building mass transit. The U.S. government needs to catch up to other industrial nations and take over the administration of healthcare in this country. Insurance corporations are not the cure to our health-related problems, anymore than D.A.R.E. helps mitigate the unhealthy consumption of crap by physically underdeveloped kids.
So my advice to you, Senator, swallow your pride and wake up. If you want to be first in line to sign something of import, be the first to have the gumption and integrity to write, sponsor and sign a bill to outlaw the participation of private insurance companies in the administration of primary healthcare (there is still a place for them in the realm of cosmetic surgery, as the Kardashians and the Oscar telecast can attest), and demand single-payer for all Americans. Once this country regains its health, maybe we can become world leaders again.
And, while he is in Washington, you might want to speak with your colleague and friend, California Governor Jerry Brown, who is in the process of trying to make the poor pay their “fair” share of health costs within Medi-Cal. That flies in the face of even ObamaCare. Outrageous!
In the meantime, I don’t have time to work on your campaign, unfortunately. Even though I am on food stamps, I am having a heck of a time attaining MSI (which I had for 8 years awhile back) because they think I was born in Kenya, or some such place. I am still working on it, though I am not as fit to climb over stonewalls as I was in my youth.
Recently, it was suggested I go to the Emergency Room at UCI (since no one will insure me – heart condition) for a painful foot ailment. I was treated very well. It took the doc less than a few minutes to determine that I had gout and I was given a low-cost prescription, which worked. The bill for this was less than $4,000, but not much less. Three months later, the same symptoms erupted in my other foot. I sent the ER doc a copy of my release form, the script and the card of my pharmacist via email (no cost). All she had to do was make a quick call to refill my original prescription. She refused, saying it was “illegal,” but she did say that I could come back to the ER (for another $3600, who cares, it’s only government money) I called around and was told the same – come into our ER, the law requires an exam. Instead, I went to my local free clinic, where my car is ten years older than the oldest in the lot. They wanted money, not MSI-pending. I offered the $33 left on my EBT card, but they said no. Finally, out of pity, and because it was the Christian thing to do at the Rescue Mission, a very nice nurse-practitioner saw me, and in five minutes determined that I indeed had another bout with gout and gave me a prescription which cost $5 and worked effectively in mere hours.
Regretfully, I sense that I am but a microcosm of the entire system. It is not healthy. When you can cure this corpulent, wasteful, illogical, failed, cancerous system, please let me know and I will sign whatever your want. Except a check to the Susan G. Komen outfit.
Respectfully, your faithful California Constituent,
T R Black
p.s. Personally, I don’t expect other citizens to financially support my health problems. In fact, I have offered to donate my organs to pay for care already received, and my body, which is big enough to feed a hungry family of four for at least a month. But, as yet, there are no takers, not even on Craig’s List or by Republican physicians. I have heard that a collective of Serbians may be interested, but who really knows about those people.
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