Fire, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

January 14, 2012 Martha Thomases 9 Comments

Last week, Mitt Romney created somewhat of a kerfuffle when he said he “liked to fire people.”  When quoted, he immediately claimed that he was quoted out of context.

Which he was.

The news media has assigned a slot to Romney, which is that he’s an out-of-touch rich guy who ran a venture capital fund that fired lots of people.  Therefore, when he says something in public with the word “fire” in it, they pounce.

In context, he was talking about his opposition to Obama’s health care laws, and saying that he wanted to be able to choose his own insurance company.  If the insurance company he had didn’t provide him with good service, he wanted to be able to fire them.

He’s still wrong, and he’s wrong precisely because he’s so out of touch.

The vast majority of people in this country get their health insurance through their place of employment.  For example, if you work for Time Warner (as I did for a decade), you get the health insurance selected offered by the human resources department after being selected by the money guys, the HR guys, and the CEO.  If your company is offering Cut-Rate Al’s Band-Aid and an Aspirin Insurance, and you want something else, you’re out of luck.

True, you could decide to buy an individual policy, instead of being part of the group at your job.  In order to do this, you must first find a company that offers an individual policy.  That’s not easy.  And then you have to pay for it.

As a freelance writer, I’ve had this experience.  If I can show that I make a living, companies will allow me to pay $3,000 a month for my husband and myself.  That’s $36,000 a year.  If I don’t show a paycheck, it’s more like $6,000 a month, even if I have income from other sources.  All these policies are high-deductible.

So, if I don’t like my insurance company, I suppose I could fire them.  However, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to find another company willing to take my money.

You know who gets to fire his insurance company and select another one?  A CEO with a net worth estimated at $250 million.  

So the media was right even though they were wrong.  And I’m guessing that they were wrong 1) because they’re lazy and 2) they didn’t want to bad-mouth insurance companies.  There’s a lot of commercials for insurance, and nobody wants to get them mad.  They’re job creators, after all.

In any case, Mittens has a lot of nerve complaining about being quoted out of context.  As Stephen Colbert said here, he’s run campaign commercials in which he quotes Obama out of context, and then defends his actions by saying, essentially, “Well, it’s out there.  He said it.”  I suppose that some people might be okay with our Commander-in-Chief using that as a moral guidepost when negotiating with foreign powers, or even Congress.

I’m not.

But then, I’m not a big fan of firing people either.  Even people who offer me sub-standard goods and services.  First, I’d like to find a way for us all to be happy.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, may have to admit to being a socialist after that last paragraph.