According to a new Harvard study, health insurers own $4.5 billion in tobacco company stock. Does that seem odd? David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study, calls it “the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back.” The Consumerist has a good write up on it.

One line I find particularly funny is at the end of the article: “It’s just another thing to keep in mind this summer as Congress debates whether we can continue trusting our private health insurers to look out for our best interests.” Debate? Seriously? Private health insurers have never looked out for our best interests anymore than GM or Microsoft or Kellogg’s has. They aren’t supposed to. They’re businesses and if you expect them to look out for anybody’s interests but their own you’re going to be really disappointed. What I find interesting is that they are so arrogant that they’re willing to hold them in their own name in the open.

If people (and by people I mean politicians) would stop endlessly ruminating over whether or not we should have socialized medicine and come to the realization that we already do, they could start doing something to fix the situation. Realistically, we have it already in the form of corporate syndicalist socialism (is he going to use the national socialist word, hmmmm?). Insurance companies have been making your medical decisions for at least a decade and probably more.  And that, my friends, is the essence of socialized medicine. It makes no difference at all whether the bureaucrat making the decision for your doctor gets a check that says US Treasury on the top of it or Prudential–it’s all the same thing. And healthcare in this country won’t get better until it’s fixed.

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