Making my socialist heart go pitter-patter

When it comes to health care, John Edwards keeps saying the right things:

Nataline Sarkysian died last night at UCLA Medical Center after complications arose from a bone marrow transplant to treat her leukemia. Her insurance provider, CIGNA Healthcare, first denied the potentially lifesaving transplant, but relented after a loud public protest and outrage. By that time, though, Sarkysian passed away before the procedure could be performed.

"Are you telling me that we're gonna sit at a table and negotiate with those people?" asked a visibly angered Edwards, challenging the health care companies. "We're gonna take their power away and we're not gonna have this kind of problem again."

The insurance companies are the biggest (but not the only) obstacle to health care reform. The whole for-profit health care system is farcical, but the insurance companies stand out as especially parasitical. I'm sure whiny free-market apologists will get their undies in a bunch about creating a huge bureaucracy and usurping an important profit-generating center of the economy, but fuck them. Insurance companies are the problem, they can't be negotiated with in a way that will remove them as the problem, so let's get rid of them.

Other Dems need to take notice.