A few days ago I got an email spam from Sen. Leahy asking me to support his new bill to remove the antitrust exemption from insurance companies.

You know, the thing that allows them to create monopolies in most American cities so that you either pay whatever they ask, or just die in the street like a dog.

I agree with the bill, but I know those standard form emails don’t impress a lot of people, so I amended the one he has autogenerated to express a more personal message, and it was supposed to be sent on to my Congresswoman and two Senators.

Here’s my version:

I know you probably get a lot of these form emails, so I’m writing this part myself.

Not that I disagree with anything in the standard Leahy form email, but I think you get the background on the issue. Insurance companies are evil. Evil by design. I can’t imagine who thought, back in the dawn of time, that creating a system whose incentives drive companies to kill people for profit was a good idea. Honestly.

At the very least, we should force them to compete for the right to deny us basic lifesaving care. Perhaps that way we can cut the death toll, which currently stands at 45 thousand per year in this country.

Number of people who die in the rest of the industrialized world due to lack of health insurance? Basically zero. God bless America.

That’s why I really, truly do urge you to support the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, S. 1681 and H.R. 3596.

If we must live our lives in a health insurance version of The Running Man, let’s at least try to keep the judges honest.

PS: Single-payer would make supporting this legislation unnecessary, as well as save the lives of 15 9/11s worth of innocent people a year. Just a thought.