Here Comes Trouble

We’ve been reading for weeks about politicians and health execs resisting true reform of the way we pay for health care. Remember, relatively few of us want care itself reformed, but most of us want the way we pay for things reformed.

Businesses are experiencing a 9% rise in health insurance costs alone. In these hard times they have no choice but to either pass along the gouge or reduce the level of insurance they purchase. We’ve had people try to scare us with “rationing” of care, which we already do with money. We’ve had people try to scare us by telling us that the government wants to tell your doctor what to do, when insurance companies already do that by telling them what they’ll cover — and the government plan they fear merely wants to figure out what works and stop your doctor from doing stuff that doesn’t work (too scientific, I suppose). We’ve had the Republicans try to dress up the same old nonsense in new clothes with no details and call it “reform”. We’ve been reading about how insurance companies actively try to cut people who need services — and have the gall to say it’s the only way they can be profitable.

But now it looks bad. Ezra warned us of trouble, and then he delivered it. The Senate has been negotiating themselves right out into the cornfield. It’s a stinking political deal that lets Senators prenend they are helping, but it’s nothing more than a mandatory insurance plan with some fancy ribbons to give the illusion that everybody can afford it.

How can you have mandatory coverage when insurance companies can cancel your policy for no reason?

How can you have mandatory coverage in a time of high unemployment, high foreclosures, high bankruptcies, and high credit card defaults? Don’t you suppose that these things indicate that there is no money to buy insurance?

How can you have mandatory coverage of children in a system where most coverage is still through employers? Don’t they know there are child labor laws?

How can we support mandatory coverage from the same people who brought us the most expensive care without bringing us the most effective care?

How can they offer We The People a mandatory plan when there is increasing support for true universal coverage or at the very least a “public option“?

How can anyone support this plan when we can’t even have Senate discourse about the idea of Medicare for All? Are they that completely 0wned by the insurance companies that are bleeding America dry?

And the question the 100 Senators should really ask themselves: how can we send them back to Washington if they sell their voters down the financial river?

Let them know what you think. Do it today. Feel free to use any points you like from above.

It’s ridiculous.

In Closing: unseen Chapter 11 wave; anti-stab knives (how British); Will high speed rail kill the airlines? (answer — not if the TSA does it first); “get used to tighter credit“; highest unemployment rate since 1983 (say, you don’t suppose that true universal healthcare might make it easier to hire people, do you?) including record unemployment in my state, and many are too discouraged to even look for work; I would have gotten fired and probably fined by the feds if I had sent this from my office email account; essentials of financial freedom probably should be applied to the health insurance industry too; recession tracks Great Depression; Boomers rethinking [the existence of] retirement (my favorite part is the guy with 35 years IT experience going back for a degree in IT so he can be even more completely priced out of IT jobs); “new” financial regulation program has support of the ******* who brought us the current crisis so it must be good, right?; on double-standards and really good mascara; The American Tribe; and Zach the Cat.