This story is really educational. Who would sign up for a Walmart plan if they didn't have access to a Walmart?

You can just smell the foul stink of the red herring in the room. I enrolled in my plan only thirty days ago from another company, just to be told now, for the first time, as it was not disclosed to me when signing up, in a notice I just received of plan changes, that is as big as the plan booklet itself, that my plan does not meet the 2011 requirements and that I will have to select one of their other plans with a 100% increase in premium. A Classic bait and switch. I found the Walmart plan and will sign up. I have 3 Walmarts all within 10-15 minutes away. I realize others may not, and a careful reading of the plan features found other negatives like a much higher deductible but when you are healthy and taking no drugs and you can change plans every year, but must sign up for at least one or else be penalized, it makes way more sense for me. And while you hear the screams of "unfair competition", look where they are coming from, the lobbyists for the united pharm group that isn't thinking at all about the best interests of the seniors, but only their profit margins, the same way AARP pushed the prescription drug program in "the interests of its members" only to have them find out later there was another agenda, a profitable plan of their own. Why anyone would choose to be a member after that is puzzling to say the least.

The sound of the pharm and insurance industry trumpets are now blaring with dire predications of the slippery slope to lower quality health care, just like they did with predictions of death panels for granny if congress passed heath care. More stinking red herrings to get all of us insureds, and uninsureds, arguing about death panels killing granny while they secretly wrote and got passed what they really wanted in the first place, the mandate to be covered by insurance, meaning mo $$$$$$$$$$$ for insurers, or else a penalty later, which turned the midterm elections upside down so they can now finish the job they started like getting rid of having to insure folks and their children with pre-existing conditions. Health care, as passed, is now the subject of a great constitutional legal wangling debate, and will be for years to come, all at the same time diverting the attention of the electorate away from the real issues that should the topic of discussion. The divide and conquer approach. What they are really concerned about is that in order to bring back warm paying bodies into their plan they will have to begin offering plans to compete which may in fact help provide seniors quality health care at a lower cost at the expense of their profits.

And if anyone believes any differently, I welcome them to the game in which they have become the mere pawn of the lobbyists for the insurance and pharm industries and their 527 tax exempt political influence groups.