Here’s the latest news out of our elected whores Senators. Some sell-out DINOs have come to an agreement with some Repugs. The short version:
- Employers don’t have to buy coverage
- You still have to get coverage somewhere, but where is not their problem
- No public option
- No such thing as a pre-existing condition
Seriously, the only good point is the last one, and they could have handled that in a 2 page item tacked on the end of any random bit of legislation. It’s not a “reform”, its just how things need to be.
Get real, DINOs, the Republicans want to kill reform, and they will do whatever it takes to do so. They have said this in public! Are you not listening? Do I have to tear up my membership card in the Democratic Party and start sending all my donations to Democracy for America? So help me I will do just that if this Congress with its elected filibuster-proof majority of Democrats screws We The People.
Insurance companies are doing everything they can to keep from having a real reform go through. They are providing distortions of data to Congressmice, they are running a huge PR campaign, and there will be no sleep for lobbyists on any side of the issue before Christmas. Gee, Big Tobacco and Big Insurance have lobbyists, and feminists want to focus on how porn and prostitution exploit people.
The fact of the matter is that normal people can’t afford coverage — the cost of which sometimes exceeds their paycheck. When they do have coverage, their out of pocket health care costs still often exceed 10% of their annual income. Low wage individuals are unlikely to have access to employer provided coverage, and unlikely to be able to afford individual coverage. The result is kids without coverage ending up with chronic problems, people dying because they can’t afford coverage, people going bankrupt over medical bills, people being sued over the medical bills of relatives in other states.
Businesses can’t afford coverage, and this is making American products and services uncompetitive on a price basis. Because of a combination of health insurance issues and financing issues, it is almost impossible to start a new business right now. And that means no new jobs out of small business, of the kind we saw in decades past. It used to be that unemployment could be an opportunity to take a flier on the next big thing, but who can afford to do that now?
Doctors can’t afford to do business with insurance companies, who often arbitrarily determine what they will pay and what they will cover. A new study says that medical facilities spend “at least $23 billion to $31 billion each year” just in the amount of salary they pay while employees deal with the insurance people. That’s $23-31 thousand million that doesn’t provide any care whatsoever. And it doesn’t even count what it costs the insurance company on the other end to process the claim.
Meanwhile, insurance companies are making obscene profits — which again provides no care whatsoever — doing morally reprehensible things, and Congress fiddles while our system drowns. We keep talking and talking, and those in power keep trying to move the discussion on out to Right Field, which is the only place it makes sense that the for-profit model of health insurance that got us here can somehow get us out. Health care is really too important to be profitable.
The center — the real center, not the made up one they seem to worship in Washington — wants real reform. They want it now. Our Senators need to get up off their worthless rumps and do what the people sent them to do instead of what a few wildly profitable businesses want.
Remember this when the primaries come around.
In closing: externalities; Anti-Abortion Terrorist links himself with Operation Rescue and can’t honestly imagine why they would distance themselves from a bona-fide “hero” like himself; let your fingers do the walking through the state of the economy (what the yellow pages can tell you); I wonder what the Dalai Lama was trying to show President Bush; CSI meets reality; and using unpaid interns to do the work of people who were laid off.