Shortwoman.com

House DemocRATS have rolled out a Mandatory Insurance Plan, which does not appear to have a public option. Oh, it does have an “exchange” with a public plan among the options, for those few who qualify to get into the “exchange” in the first place.

The legislation calls for a 5.4% tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals. Employers who don’t provide coverage would be hit with a penalty equal to 8% of workers’ wages with an exemption for small businesses. Individuals who decline an offer of affordable coverage would pay 2.5% of their incomes as a penalty, up to the average cost of a health insurance plan.

The nicest thing I can say about it is that insurance companies aren’t wild about it either.

Here’s what happens when we have mandatory coverage: crap policies; real policies still unaffordable by anybody except large businesses that are insuring hundreds of people; denied and cancelled policies leaving people scrambling for coverage; insurance bureaucrats sentencing people to death; personal bankruptcy caused by medical debt.

Sure, something must be done, and done now. But this is the wrong thing to do. Think about it.

In Closing: businesses only pay taxes on profits; inflation and the fear thereof; 9th Circuit says pharmacists can have consciences, but pharmacies must fill prescriptions; job losses will trickle down through our economy in a bad way; how to disappear; Geeky Monticello; job offer scams (my tip, employers don’t ask you for money, they pay you money); whatchoo talkin bout Willis Tower?; immigration and crime; living on borrowed money; tax cuts don’t create jobs; and homeless in the suburbs.

At this point, there is a mysterious “agreement” between Senator Baucus, the White House, and hospitals. The fact that so little is known about a plan from someone who has historically been against any real public option is, in my opinion, suspicious. Since health insurance reform is the big topic for Congress this week, the timing is interesting to say the least.

Remember last week I said that Wal-Mart supporting an employer insurance mandate was suspicious? Well Greg Swann figured it out: an employer mandate for health insurance makes it harder for small businesses to compete with the behemoth. Small businesses are already being crushed under the cost of health care, being driven out of business at a time when our country desperately needs the innovation and jobs that entrepreneurs create.

Senator Schumer — wearing a green tie I might point out — says there will be “some sort” of public option available, but others point out it may be so hard to get into that it may as well not exist.

Thankfully, various groups are keeping pressure on the elected officials who have forgotten that they need our votes as much as industry’s money. They are continuing to pound despite friendly requests to shut the **** up by the Obama Administration.

There are a lot of problems with employer mandated coverage — or simply, mandatory coverage as I have called it for some years. The first problem is that coverage being purchased by employers is the root cause of our current mess! If costs hadn’t been invisible to Joe and Jane Average, change would have been forced years ago.

The second problem is that “we’ll pass a law making employers buy it” doesn’t solve the fact that coverage is too expensive for most small businesses. Fine them all you like, you’ll just put more small businesses — that our economy desperately needs — out of business. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say that while the banking crisis (caused in part by the foreclosure mess) is the first cause of our current economic woes, the health insurance crisis is the clear second cause. Not only are we spending too much of our GDP on too little care for too few people, it’s making it almost impossible for entrepreneurship to lead us out of this mess.

How does that work, you may ask. It works because small businesses can’t afford to hire the people they need, because the people they need require quality coverage. And unfortunately, Senator Grassley was both tone-deaf and correct when he pointed out that the best way to get good coverage was to get a job with a big company like Deere or the United States Government. If our economy is to be run by a few hundred large companies, that’s viable. However, our economy runs on innovation and growth of small business.

And I haven’t even mentioned the third and most tragic problem with mandatory insurance: children don’t have employers.

However, instead of trying to put together a plan that is what the American people want, we are still hearing scare stories about Canadians — but oddly enough not the French — falling through the cracks (apparently none of these people have tried to make an appointment with a gynecologist lately, that will be 6-8 weeks minimum, dear), we are still arguing about what needs to be done, and we have somehow or another turned this most important issue into an argument about abortion. Sorry, wingnuts, there are still situations where women — as in wives and mothers —  will die — as in become dead and not living anymore — without an abortion. The very idea that life-saving surgery shouldn’t be covered is a travesty. Stuff that in your so-called-pro-life pipe and smoke it.

Tell your Senators and your Congressman. Tell the President too. We need a public option, we don’t need mandated coverage, and we can afford Medicare For All. Heck, I don’t think we can afford not to have a public option that is open to everyone. If it drives our overpriced, for profit health insurance companies out of business, oh well. America’s children certainly can’t afford to maintain the status quo. Remind your elected officials that insurance companies, drug companies, and hospital groups don’t vote, but we do vote.

In Closing: I love this sign; most “crazy cat ladies” don’t have cheetahs, lions, and tigers (no bears, oh my); bank failures week by week (Friday and more takeovers will be here before you know it); speaking of which, why aren’t the Canadian banks having a crisis?; urban farming; more on modern victory gardens; h/t to Susie, real unemployment — when you count everybody instead of just the people taking an unemployment check — is up to 18.7% (um yeah, what was that people were saying about how you can’t possibly compare this to the Great Depression?); h/t to John, could you pass the Citizenship Test (yes, 95%, and congrats to a certain client of mine who recently passed it!!!); thank [diety], the possible end of “too big to fail”; Bank of America makes a mistake, resulting in them banning a customer for life because he had an “irregularity” in his accounts; and not the way you want to meet.

Sorry taking so long to post. It’s been nuts, and I hope to develop a more regular schedule.

Sometimes I wonder about Chuck Schumer. Today’s great quote is this:

“I’m sure the civil libertarians will object to some kind of biometric card — although . . . there’ll be all kinds of protections — but we’re going to have to do it. It’s the only way,” Schumer said. “The American people will never accept immigration reform unless they truly believe their government is committed to ending future illegal immigration.”

Now let me get this straight. The only way Americans will accept reform is if it looks like Congress will actually give it to them, and therefore we need a national ID card with fingerprints on it? What? I’m not terribly concerned since it looks like immigration reform is already a dead issue to this session of Congress.  However, the depth of this stupidity is breathtaking. Real immigration reform will need to have these components:

1. Severe penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. And those penalties should go far enough up the corporate ladder that executives will make sure that supervisors and managers follow the law. Some will complain that making employers follow the law will cause a shortage of workers who will work for very low pay. With our current unemployment levels, that’s not a valid argument.

2. A clear and understandable path to legal status for immigrants, coupled with sufficient INS staff to work through any existing backlog within 1 year. It should be simple enough that even a citizen can understand it. If people know they way it has to be and we have the means to make it work that way, there will be no excuse for illegal immigration.

That’s it. We don’t need a high-tech way to verify identity and work eligibility. Actually using the I-9 form as it is supposed to be used does that nicely. We don’t need fallible biometric identification that will leave many eligible workers unable to work. We don’t need a government database that will function as an expensive and error-prone green list of people who are allowed to have jobs. All we  need to do is enforce the law, and make it easier to follow the law.

In Closing: Penn Jillette (oh, and Teller too) asks “if two goofball magicians can slip this stuff by with full lights shining on them and the full attention of the audience, then what could a really bad person do?”; volcano punches hole in clouds; Supreme Court rules in favor of common sense; cracks in the Massachusetts Plan (do you remember I said it would fail and be used as “proof” that universal care doesn’t work?); why we need a public option; and Farrah Fawcett, RIP.

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.