You may not believe what you are about to read, but it is true. What you will read is taken from the House GOP Solutions Group. This is their proposed plan–really.
First, they say they will make health care “more affordable.” Let’s just take one minute. These are the guys backed by the huge health care lobby. Never forget–you are on one side of the health care debate and the health care lobby is on the other. Get it? They ain’t…trust us..working to help you and put themselves out of business.
How will the House Republicans do this miraculous thing after doing the opposite for twenty five years? First, you’ll get one of them there tax credits, Lem. (“I’m from the GOP in the House and I’m here to help…with another tax credit.”) There will also be something called “refundable and advanceable tax credits.” Apparently simply more tax credits. Next thing they will do is allow small businesses and business associations to band together to get better prices. Duh! They could have done this for the last 30 years and didn’t.
This only proves what we have all said for a long time…the ten people in ten small businesses are no different from the 100 people at a larger business. The idea that it costs insurance companies more is a shell game. The health insurance people have been playing it because the Republicans were in power for 25 years and let them screw small business. Of course, if small businessmen weren’t so busy being officious and arrogant and stupid they would have figured out they were being played. So they deserved it.
Next, they will make medicine more affordable through giving you, the citizen, less legal protection from drunk, drugged, dumb or distracted MDs who would cut off the wrong leg and expect you to pay the bill. Liability reform, ah yes, the last best hope of that group of 5 percenters who barely made it through med school in St. Bart’s and are defended by the other 95%. By the way, included in that group from the AMA who vote to restrict the number of seats in medical schools and who look the other way to allow these dopes to continue to malpractice are those MDs we import from foreign countries.
We import 6,000 docs from abroad each year so that the AMA can control the number of doctors and see to it that your ability to see your doc is RATIONED. You can see him or her in a couple of months. Don’t get me wrong. These Import Docs are probably smarter and better than our own docs. But we have 5,000 kids who are very bright turned away for each U.S. doc who is admitted. So, you can ignore the comments from the GOP and the AMA on rationing. The AMA knows how to ration health care and they’ve been doing it longer than anyone else.
How else are the little GOP elves going to make health care affordable for you, the citizen, their chief concern in life, after…apparently…sexual deviance? They are going to take care of wealthy and middle class young people by spending a lot of time investigating poor and elderly on Medicare and Medicaid. They intend to “reform” these plans and investigate them for waste, fraud and abuse. I know that there are a lot of elderly poor ladies hanging out at the Single-light-bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling Clinic where they organize into a little-old-lady gang and try to steal and sell disposable hospital gloves.
You must read this next one for you to believe that it really is in their plan. They will make health care more affordable by “improving health savings accounts and flexible spending arrangements as well as creating new tax benefits to offset the cost of long-term care premiums.” OK. So the people who can save $500 a month or more towards their health care savings account…but don’t they need some kind of health insurance just in case? So that has to be at least another $500. Now you are up to $12,000 per year, with $6,000, which is the cost of several hours in an emergency room in a savings account. And then…yippee…more tax cuts.
To whom is the GOP going to give all these tax deductions? Not you and me. McCain says it is the rich and wealthy, the top 1%, who pay 90% of the taxes…so they must be the ones getting these tax breaks. In addition, what does “flexible spending arrangements” mean? It must mean that if grandma is in long term care, they will take her life savings in an easy payment plan rather than all at once.
Now here is what we did not see in the plan. We didn’t see a guarantee of coverage. Even if we did, do you remember Medicare Plus? That was a private initiative added on to Medicare. When the going got tough, Medicare Plus got going…and disappeared. Over two million Medicare patients were left without access to medical services. Bush Administration is not too popular with the elderly over that one.
We don’t see a government-backed cost containment program. Simply promises from the health insurance companies that they will cut costs won’t get the job done. Will they? The health insurance companies make money by cherry-picking young, healthy individuals and denying services to people who get sick. They make you fight for every dollar. Because it is their income, their bonuses, their percs. Your savings is their profit. And they aren’t in business to give profit away.
We don’t seen a guarantee that everyone will be covered. It doesn’t matter what the health care companies do or do not do to reduce costs, if you can not get insurance coverage for a pre-existing condition. Let’s face it…these companies are not in business to insure those who might get sick. They are in business to insure those who will probably not get sick.
They are going to “make it easier to” and “encourage states to” and “encourage employers” and “provide patients with the tools” and “eliminate bureaucratic red tape” and more and better tax credits, tax credits tax credits. They even want to make it easier for young people to stay on their parents’ health care program to age 25!
The Neocon Republican Plan is the same old watered-down version of everything that they always trot out when anything relates to the average American family. They say that they care about “hardworking American families” but what they do is legislate in favor of rich American families and rich American corporations.
You cannot merely ignore the Republican plan. You need to call your House member or call your Senator’s office or other Senators offices and tell them that you want universal public-sponsored and backed and run health care. And learn about the European plans. The more you know the more you will want what they have. None of them, including Canada and Great Britain would even consider going to private health care. In Italy, Berlusconi is trying to substitute private health care for their very good public plan. Berlusconi owns almost all the radio, television and newspaper media in Italy. And yet with his stations bombarding the public about private care, the people don’t want it. They have a government program and they intend to keep it.
And we don’t want totally private health care either. At the very least, we want the option of a public health care plan.