D'oh!!!!

You know, when you are an insurance company, like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, it is not a good idea for you to include a request for your customers to contact their Congressman to oppose the public option along with a notice of a rate increase:

First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year.

Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan. The so-called public option is likely to be considered by Congress in the health-care overhaul debate.

"No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it's a slippery slope to a single-payer system," the BCBS flier read. "Who wants that?"

Plenty of people, it turns out.

Indignant Blue Cross customers have rebelled against the insurer's message, complaining that their premium dollars have funded such a campaign.

They've hit the Internet in a flurry of e-mails to friends and neighbors throughout the state. They've called Hagan's office to voice support for a public option. They've marked through the Blue Cross message on their postcards to instead vouch support, then dropped them in the mail -- in at least one case taped to a brick -- to be paid on Blue Cross' dime. Or dimes.

(emphasis mine)

As the saying goes, "ない愚かさはない薬です".<sup>*

*</sup>Pronounced in Japanese, "baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai", which means, "There is no medicine for stupidity."