50,000 Insurance Employees Work Against Health Care Reform & How Lockerbie Bomber Appeal Threatened Everybody

As if this was hard to guess. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Memo Tells Employees To Keep a Low Profile

A spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s trade group, admitted in an article published Monday that as many as 50,000 industry employees are involved in an effort to fight back against aggressive healthcare reform.

The admission, published in the last sentence of a Wall Street Journal article, highlights the stakes of potential healthcare reform for the private health insurance industry. Insurers and investors alike are terrified at the prospect of a so-called “public option,” which would create a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers. Because the government plan wouldn’t have to earn a profit, the plan would be able to undercut the premiums of private firms, pressuring profit margins.

“The health-insurance industry is sending thousands of its employees to town-hall meetings and other forums during Congress’s August recess to try to counter a tide of criticism directed at the insurers and remain a player — and not an outsider — in the debate over the future of the health-care system,” the Journal’s Vanessa Fuhrmans and Avery Johnson wrote Monday.

Employees of the health insurers have also been given talking points that encourage them to keep a low profile and avoid taking “the bait” when the industry is criticized in public, the reporters say. The industry’s trade group drafted a “Town Hall Tips” memo that instructs employees to stay calm and not to yell at members of Congress.

The industry’s staff have also been encouraged to write their local representatives. Health insurers are trying to reshape the debate over the public option by fighting back against charges that they’re enjoying record profits at consumers’ expense. Most private insurers enjoy a four to six percent profit margin, which is less than many other industries, but, all told, amounts to billions and billions of dollars.

Karen Ignagni, America’s Health Insurance Plans’ chief lobbyist, says that town hall meetings are a chance for employees “to strongly push back against charges that we have very high profits.”

“It’s very important that our men and women . . . calmly provide the facts and for members of Congress to hear what these people do every day,” Ignagni added.

Insurers have also been trying to convince the public that they’re well-intentioned. They’ve agreed to dispense with policies that prevent patients with pre-existing conditions from getting coverage and stop marking up policies based on gender. But they’ve agreed to this only on the condition that Congress mandate health insurance coverage for all Americans, which would add tens of millions of new customers to insurers’ pools.

And didn't you just know already that the reason the Lockerbie bomber was so humanely allowed to go home to die was that he was our guy from the start (or somebody's guy who would become our guy after the blackmail card was played)? Those CIA schemers are good (although it would be a higher level of schemer who helped Madoff for soooo long (who also has cancer now - sniff! - we hear) wouldn't it?)! (I swear I heard that the fix was in there from the get-go.) Will we ever know the truth about the Lockerbie massacre?

The government is likely to portray the meeting as unexceptional because relations between the UK and Libya have normalised in recent years.

Mandelson met Gaddafi's son at Rothschild villa before Lockerbie bomber move

The Financial Times

Lord Mandelson met Colonel Gaddafi's son at a Corfu villa only a week before the announcement that the perpetrator of the Lockerbie bombing could be released from prison, the Financial Times has learnt. Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, widely seen as the Libyan leader's most likely successor, was a fellow guest of the Rothschild family at its Greek property a fortnight ago in a wider annual gathering of powerful friends. Stays by the two men overlapped by only one night, according to Lord Mandelson's spokesman.

He said the pair spoke only briefly but they did discuss Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrah. "There was a fleeting conversation about the prisoner; Peter was completely unsighted on the subject," he said. It was only one week later that news emerged that Mr Megrah could get an early release on compassionate grounds because he is suffering from terminal cancer. Lord Mandelson said through his spokesman that he had had no involvement in the decision and only learnt of it through the BBC. Mr Megrah's possible release was a decision entirely for the Scottish government rather than London.

"It was entirely coincidental," the spokesman said.

The government is likely to portray the meeting as unexceptional because relations between the UK and Libya have normalised in recent years.

It was in 2003 that Muammer Gaddafi surrendered his weapons of mass destruction programmes and helped deliver the Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial. In November 2008 he agreed a $1.8bn (£1.1bn) compensation package for bomb victims.

Libya's role as a large oil producer, with the potential for much greater mineral discoveries in the future, has made it a magnet for international business - including British oil companies.

"Libya is . . . very much back in the mainstream of international affairs," the British ambassador to Libya, Sir Vincent Fean, said this summer.

However, news of the meeting could renew questions about Lord Mandelson's affinity for rich and powerful individuals and his ability to create controversy. Seif Gaddafi antagonised relatives of some of the 270 Lockerbie victims last year when he said in a BBC interview that they were "very greedy" and "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters". Global Research Articles by Jim Pickard

And then there's always a new essay (every day or so) to titillate the masses further:

$2m Witness Payment, Bogus Forensic Evidence and Pentagon Memo Blaming Iran: How Lockerbie Bomber Appeal Threatened Scottish Justice

By ANTONIA HOYLE and FIDELMA COOK

August 25, 2009 "The Daily Mail" -- As the political furore over the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi engulfs three countries in bitter recriminations, The Mail on Sunday can now reveal the new and compelling evidence which he says would have proved his innocence.

In a submission to the Court of Appeal running to thousands of words, Megrahi’s lawyers list 20 grounds of appeal which include:

- Details of a catalogue of deliberately undisclosed evidence at the original trial. - Allegations of ‘tampering’ with evidence. - A summary of how American intelligence agencies were convinced that Iran, not Libya, was involved but that their reports were not open to the 2001 trial.

The closely guarded submission was obtained by Ian Ferguson, an investigative journalist and co-author of the book Cover-up of Convenience - The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie.

But the evidence will never be tested in open court after the dying Libyan abandoned it last week to spend his final days with his family.

Read all about it here.

Suzan ________________________