First of all–although it is probably not necessary to put it on this blog–no one in the Democratic leadership in Congress, nor is the President taking away anyone’s freedom, nor are we suddenly becoming a Socialist country. If you have Medicare, you will continue it as it is, with no changes. If you have private insurance, you will continue as is, with no changes. There is now a Republican (Neocon-Obstructionist) plan…but, as you will see, it is by and for the health insurance industry.
The reckless Right Wing group Americans for Prosperity and its horrid signs assailing health care reform, by holding up signs with images of piles of emaciated dead bodies in concentration camps. What kind of crude, vicious mind creates an image like this in protest to a health care plan designed to help tens of millions of average Americans obtain health care? The Neocon Obstructionists had their opportunity to present their case, but instead they ranted against government, worried about losing their “freedom” and some, when asked, said that they were in Washington to protest and complain that they did not have–health care! These people are simply–apparently–crazy. We have lunatics parading in Washington, following after other lunatics like Michelle Bachmann.
Despite their ranting, your new health care opportunities will not cost jobs. Yes, we have lost jobs. We will not soon be out of this recession. That is a sad fact of life that has to do with years of Bush Administration inattention to government and lax regulation of our mortgage and financial markets that led to an economic crash of enormous proportions. Jobs will continue to be lost for a while, then they will come back. But they will not be lost because of your new health care program. The American people, while we are creating new jobs, will now have access to affordable health care.
There will not..not…be hundreds of millions of dollars of new taxes on the average citizen. We can hope that common sense will prevail and those who have been making huge amounts of money from the Bush tax cuts, apparently those with incomes of $500,000 and over will, in fact, now pay some of that huge bonus back to the public. The rich got richer, measurably and enormously richer under the Bush regime. One can hope that President Obama will come to his senses and demand that Congress retire these tax cuts for the very wealth in 2010.
The Democratic health care bill will realize a number of goals Democrats have long sought. Americans will have increased competition to help lower cost and increase quality of service. It is guaranteed and mandated in the law. We will all be guaranteed access to health insurance and we will be guaranteed that we cannot lose it. Pre-existing conditions We will have some kind of fall-back government guaranteed insurance, similar to Medicare, so that if there is no private insurance individuals will be able to obtain health care for themselves and their families. No one will be bankrupt ever again from medical costs once the new health care program is instituted in this country. And this is only the beginning.Because it is a major program, and because it will cut health care costs in half,
What we are going through right now is an annoying and embarrassing (as American citizens with reasonable amounts of education) set of innocuous attacks by undisciplined, uncaring, lobbyist-pandering, health industry pandering, greedy, foolish Neoconservative Obstructionist representatives and the simple-minded sheep who follow them. The kinds of signs they carry make us all shudder at how crude and mindless they are and the kinds of statements they make leave us speechless with curiosity at their ignorance of just about everything. These morons never bother to challenge their paid-representatives, the spear carriers for the Chamber of Commerce, big corporations, Wall Street, the big pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance barons and the spokesmen for the super-rich, like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. They doubtless take the words of these crooks at face value and never read any of the bills. They simply wander around with signs, accomplishing nothing…simply embarrassing other Americans in the eyes of the rest of the world.
If they bothered to read the Republican (Neoconservative Obstructionist Party) health care bill they would know that it pales in comparison. In fact, the two should not be compared. The Democratic bill is a serious new government-sponsored program that regulates the private health care system to make it work for the People. The Neconservative Obstructionist plan works for the health insurance industry. A mere two hundred pages, it covers medical liability in about 35 of those pages. Another large chunk of the bill is in setting up the ability of private health care companies to insure associations, which they could be doing right now, and could have done for twenty or even thirty years, but in this bill the majority of the legislation merely sets out how associations must work in order for their members to obtain insurance and how they can be sued or imprisoned if they do it the wrong way.
The new bill has no public option. It spends another 30 to 40 pages discussing how the new biological drugs…very expensive…will be handled. Not how the patients will get them, but who will make the money on them.
Yes, there is some constraint on cost and there are local markets that reach across state lines that can possibly reduce health care costs. But when you read the bill, you see quickly that the language is set up for…and probably written by…the health insurance industry. The bill is weak and allows for much interpretation, very loose controls, complicated formulas, and yet still spends a great deal of money to reach, so it seems to be rated, about 30 million fewer people. It still relies on health savings accounts and high-deductible insurance with caps. This is no change whatsoever. No wonder that the CBO says that it will be very expensive and yet will still leave 30 million people uninsured.
We can do better. We should trust the people who have voted for Children’s health care, higher minimum wages, extended unemployment benefits, made certain that George W. Bush did not take Social Security–as he tried to–into the devastation of the stock market.Who did those things? The Democrats. We need to stick with the people who are for the People. We need to let our representatives know how we feel. That way, people who march on Washington with grotesque signs, doing their best to disrespect our President and our government institutions.