If they're going to name the final healthcare reform bill after Senator Kennedy, we ought to be demanding with voices as powerful and booming as the late senator's...
The bill must not suck.
But if it does, perhaps they should name it after Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley. The Blame Baucus and Grassley for This Sucky Act. Or maybe borrow the name of the House bill, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act, which, by the way, reminds me more of a frozen diet meal than a robust healthcare reform bill (the final House bill is actually pretty robust -- it's just a ridiculous name).
On this day of national mourning, we're reminded that Senator Kennedy's political legacy has been inextricably bound to the cause of universal healthcare. Affordable, portable, reliable healthcare.
It's difficult to know for sure, but I can't imagine, had he not been stricken with cancer, that the senator would be lending his unmistakable baritone to the awfulness, equivocation and bipartisan hackery that's on display within the ranks of the Max Baucus 'Gang of Six'. It goes without saying that left to their own spineless and corrupt devices, these six senators will absolutely deliver a terrible healthcare reform bill, one that would only serve to besmirch the Kennedy legacy.
So what exactly does a sucky healthcare bill look like?
Naturally, without a beefy public health insurance plan, healthcare reform would be an utter disaster -- or worse. To refer to the public option as just a "sliver" of the bill, or to push for eliminating it altogether is almost as bad as having no reform at all. Journalists, writers and bloggers who I otherwise respect have been damning the public option with faint praise lately. Let's not sabotage healthcare reform with partisan ultimatums, they say. We can have a great bill without it, they say.
No, sirs. No we can't.
They're not seeing the big picture here. I get it, though. There are many other meaningful aspects to healthcare reform. Banning exclusions for pre-existing conditions, setting caps on out of pocket expenses, bans on rescission. These are all excellent and historic.
But tossed into the mix with these items is the necessity for individual and employer mandates which, like car insurance, would require everyone to buy health insurance. Simply put, mandates will spread out the risk and help to control costs by making sure everyone can pay for medical treatment. So if your 1040 shows that you can afford it (around $88,000 per year for a family of four), you'd have to purchase insurance by law, though there are proposals on the table for allowing government subsidies to help families earning up to $110,000 annually.
However, as I've been writing about on my daily blog for the last week or so, without the public option, such mandates would be nothing less than an ongoing financial endorsement of corporate crime.
In other words, the public option is an option of good conscience.
Without a public plan, mandates would transform what would otherwise be a landmark reform bill into a massive and perpetual handout to the healthcare industry. You and I would have no choice but to pay a monthly tribute to the worthless bastards at UnitedHealth, CIGNA, Aetna and Blue Cross every month until we died, went broke or reached the age of 65.
Put another way: either we're forced to financially support an industry that has knowingly allowed thousands of Americans to die by denying them healthcare when they need it most , or we operate without a safety net while also paying a hefty annual penalty to the federal government. Nice. I'm not sure which is more punitive. A solid public option, on the other hand, solves this wicked catch-22. It will allow many of us to both purchase affordable, portable and reliable health insurance, while also serving as an expression of our disgust with the Mafioso-style business practices of the private insurers.
The former scenario -- the mandates but no public option scenario -- is practically unthinkable (with or without Senator Kennedy's name). Wrapping my conscience around a being legally forced to buy private health insurance, regardless of new regulations and knowing everything I know about how the private insurance industry has operated all these years, would be almost impossible for me. I honestly don't know what I'd do. In a political sense, the president and the Democratic Party will have succeeded in authoring and passing a bill that would boil down to nothing less than a massive, almost unprecedented subsidy to the private health insurance oligarchy.
And we'd have no way out. In fact, you and I would've spent years of our lives mobilizing and activating for healthcare reform only to wind up with a bill that sanctions us to subsidize the very enemy we've been fighting all this time. Senator Kennedy would've spent his career fighting for what will have devolved into an enormous corporate giveaway disguised as "universal healthcare."
That's what a sucky bill looks like.
Regardless of the name of the bill, I can think of no greater way to honor Senator Kennedy's legacy of activism for this cause than for us to stand up and, in his place, to vigorously fight for a bill that includes an option of good conscience -- a bill that provides a real public insurance option.
Rick Horowitz: Kennedy: The Lion at Rest
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, dead at 77 -- and thank goodness for that. None of his three brothers -- his three older brothers -- made it to 70. Or 60. Or even 50.
My Father served in Vietnam & was poisoned with Agent Orange. Later, diagnosed with cancer caused by the carcinogen, he had to pay out of pocket even with insurance. My Mother, diagnosed with Breast Cancer, had a mastectomy and chemo destroying her endocrine system. Then diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. We created a new lifestyle to balance sugars & build her immunity... resulting in WBC stability & loss of 40+ lbs (with DR. support, so apologies to those who practice beyond Industry, Western Medicine & School of Thought).
I am disappointed and have nothing good to say about Health Insurance or any Insurance. It is nothing but a RACKET.... and I DONT WANT TO BE FORCED TO PAY FOR IT!!!
Peace.
The" Republic-In-The-Can Party" has no shame.
The Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines terrorism as: "the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion." This is exactly what the Republic-In-The-Can Party is practicing by terrorizing the elderly with these phony “death panel” charges. This IS domestic terrorism. The Republic-In-The-Can Party has no shame, how dare they frighten older Americans without the slightest pang of conscience! How low will they go, and how long are we going to allow this? rainjustice.com
But it will and it does.
I only speak for one primary care clinic but we are preparing to move to Canada with all of our employees within 3 years. And I know of 20 other clinics that have similar plans.
The reason is simple, we are tired of playing the insurance game where we don't get paid, our patients don't get the care they need, and everyone except the CEO's, big investors, and execs get screwed.
STAY AND FIGHT FOR HEALTHCARE REFORM instead of running off to Canada, eh?
The current, alarmingly shriveled HR3200 version of the public option is nothing like Medicare. Unlike Medicare, it will be self-sustaining, not publicly funded; unlike Medicare, it will charge premiums and impose deductibles, making it unaffordable for the tens of millions most in need of help; unlike Medicare, it will have to negotiate provider fees on the same footing as HMOs--so no cost saving there, no cost savings of the single risk pool of single payer--according to the CBO, no cost savings period.
And no significant expansion of coverage, because it will be open only to those not already covered by employers, and even for them not until 2013! This is a gift to the HMO lobby, pure consumer fraud-- a public option that is neither really public nor an option for most people!
Even Dr. David Scheiner — a single-payer advocate and Obama’s personal physician for 22 years — said, “It’s a bad bill. No bill is better than this bill."
See this article from Physicians for a National Health Plan:
"Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold"
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/
No, not sanction, (if only), but MANDATE!!! Like we're MANDATED to purchase drivers' insurance, even having a perfect driving record.
Because the Republicats are sooooo honest they NEVER emotionally manipulate the people . . .
Thank you Bob Cresca for authoring a so truly precise, concise and tersely informative a document about the most important issue of the moment - and of the conceivably intolerable future should this most personally visceral and collectively crucial legislation be mangled irreparably...
You've corrected and encapsulated with the economy and consummate relevance of an artist the murky notions and representations, myths and calumnies revolving around this overdue reform of the existing cesspool called 'private health insurance' and its nefarious, mephistophelean purveyors...
Yes, I've also 'seen' them as crime syndicate type operations - the machinations and impunitive activities of the 'Health Insurance Industry'.
People I speak with can't believe that - yes - Big Business - and even when lives and health are at stake - are prone to take unfair advantage of devestating and vulnerable patient situations without compunction...Big Business has no conscience - only an addiction for bottom-line augmentation of the most banal and heartless sort...We can't afford to allow continuance of this inordinate power over peoples' health and lives by greed-motivated, insensitive petty tyrants...Once again, the fruits of 'deregulation and privatization' show themselves rotten for the diseased tree from which they issue.
Please don't think that pulling on people's "heart strings" after the death of a well-known Senator will change anyone's mind about what drastic and far-reaching negative effects public health care would have on our nation.
If I cared about Ted Kennedy -- I wouldn't want his name tied to what will certainly be looked at by history as a step DOWN the path of destruction for our country -- if it passes.
Gosh, some people can be really callous.
Destruction...
How do you call corporate crookery and abuse? Freedom?
I bet you do.
And you'll be crying if you happen to win this battle. I'm praying to the aliens that you lose, and you'll be thanking us.
"Choice?' Besides being a heartless comment... and pretty vapid... The only choice these 25 Million Americans that you mention have, is wether to pay exorbitant rates to the Health Care Mega Mafia or eat.
And the Tea Bagging Morons are right about there being a Death Panel... it's not in the Bill, but is is there now in the form of the Health Care Mega Mafia's Death Panels who decide who gets refused Care.
People like you want to live, willfully ignorant, in your FOX Fantasy Land and Pretend that America is the best at [Fill in the Blank]... You and I are different... I don't live in your FOX Fantasy land. I want America to actually BE the Best... not pretend it is.
Click here to sign: http://bit.ly/1MOpFS
I know just as many people who sign petitions reminding the Fed. that they have no constitutional right to meddle in health care (or education, medicare, social security, etc, etc...) and I advise them the same way....petitions are a waste of time....
No one in the U.S.A. is currently being denied CARE. Of the 46 million people who are uninsured (and at least 25 million of them by CHOICE) they are ALL receiving CARE.
Dont' confuse un-insured -- with un-cared for....USA has the BEST health care in the world -- let's keep it that way! [and fix the few problems with PRIVATE solutions, not more gov't meddling].
What planet would that be? what country? what reality?
You gotta be delirious, mad or st*upid to belive this.
sorry, but this is beyond comprehension for any sentient human being.
People going against their own interests... Must be a product of faith, I guess