Sucking It Up While the Sucking Is Good

Health insurance companies are whacking small business owners with a whopping increase in premiums. This is not solely due to rises in the cost of health care, but is, in large measure, due to the prospect of health insurance reform.

The health insurers are making one last rapacious pass through the wallets of small businesses and their workers, many of whom have to pay a significant share of the premiums.

Health insurers are turning out to be the true villains of the reform debate. The GOP is just a set of reflexive villains; they'd be against a proposal to cure cancer if the current administration sought to fund a project in that regard.

To be fair, other industries are doing the same thing. The consumer price index has slid, but colleges are on their march to put the cost of a college education back where it was 100 years ago: Affordable only to the wealthy. Higher education needs to re-think its operation and reducing costs, which they haven't done. But they are still not the single-minded greedy swine that the insurance industry is. I can think of one insurance company that touts its "low rates", which they can offer because if you ever have to press a claim against them, they will fight you bitterly to the last nickel, you may have to sue them and that is if you are one of their customers.