Crystal Ball

Or — Back to the Future Part 3962

Or — How to Confirm that We’ve Been Screwed.

Ok. By now we all know that the House passed a health insurance reform turd — I mean bill — last night. While it still needs to get through the Senate (and there are signs that might be difficult), it’s being hailed as historic. It squeaked through on a 2 vote margin, and apparently to get that they had to insert something called the Stupak Amendment which effectively prevents health insurance from covering abortions.

Now, don’t start thinking this is about sluts. Sure, it’s easy to support this if you are thinking “dirty sluts can pay for their own abortions.” The overwhelming majority of women seeking abortions are not sluts who need retro-active birth control. The vast majority of abortions are sought because either birth control failed, the pregnancy is the result of rape (after all, good girls wouldn’t need to use the pill, now would they??), the fetus is too deformed to live, or the mother will DIE if she tries to carry the pregnancy to term. And follow me on this for just a moment, women living in poverty are more likely to be the victim of crime and less likely to have access to the very best pre-natal care. This puts the women who can least afford an abortion without financial assistance at risk of 3 out of 4 of the above.

This isn’t about sluts. This is about life saving surgery.

And now it won’t be covered by insurance. Thanks a whole bunch, Congress.

To be brutally honest, that’s not really even the worst of it. This turd is littered with gifts to highly profitable insurance companies, highly profitable drug companies, and other highly profitable health care companies at the expense of the voter and taxpayer. I left hospitals off the list of corporate beneficiaries for now because many hospitals, [Diety] bless them, are still not for profit entities. In fact, in Michigan, hospitals are non-profits by law. This is why Dennis Kucinich couldn’t bring himself to vote in favor of the bill — I highly encourage you to read his complete statement, because it is informed and eloquent.

Tomorrow is Monday, and we will find out who really benefits from this bill. I predict that the real winners will be apparent on CNBC tomorrow. Keep an eye on company stocks like these:

• Health insurance companies: Aetna, Wellpoint, Unitedhealth, Humana, etc.
• Drug companies: Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, etc.
• Hospital companies: Tenet, Lifepoint, Universal Health, etc.
• Biotech companies: Amgen, Genzyme, Gilead, etc.
• Other healthcare companies.

I bet the majority of them will be up tomorrow on news of the “reform” bill passing. Maybe if there were a large, profitable corporation that represented the American people, we could get Congress to listen to what we want. In the meantime, I’m with Susie: the party gets no more money if they continue to treat us like crap and then make us stories about how that’s a good thing.