"doing business another way"

So, I got an email from "Levana - Health Care for America Now". It had this in it:

These companies - Cigna, WellPoint and UnitedHealth - insure millions of people, but they make their money by denying us care when we need it. Next week, all three companies' CEOs will be in D.C. to congratulate themselves on making record-breaking salaries and tell our Members of Congress to oppose health care reform. We can't let their visit go unchallenged, and you can help us send a message.

Our signatures make a simple demand: that the CEOs who make billions of dollars and deny us care meet the people they've hurt and consider doing business another way.

I don't think that's going to happen. Insurance companies are doing business the 'right' way - they're for-profit, publicly-owned and -traded companies, after all. Making the most money they can is what they're supposed to do, under the free-market, capitalist way of operating.

They won't change. And a CEO who tried to change might well find their shareholders rising up against them.

Which is why we need a public option.

Because when you don't have to, then leaving your health care decisions in the hands of people whose salaries and bonuses depend on giving you as little money as possible is not only way scarier than leaving it to government bureaucrats whose salaries only depend on how efficiently they move money from one account to another, it's just dumb.