Top 10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill

At Firedoglake.com we've been covering the health care debate extensively for months now and have put together an incredibly knowledgeable team. So I asked our expert-in-residence Jon Walker, our health care reporter Dave Dayen, analyst Marcy Wheeler and the rest of our team to help make it simple: how do we let people know what's going to happen to them if the Senate bill passes?

Everyone put their heads together and came up with a list:

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations -- whether you want to or not.


2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.


3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.


4. Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.


5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.


6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits -- like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions -- until 2014 when the program begins.


7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.


8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.


9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.


10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year -- meaning in 10 years, your family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Background information on each point:

1. Hardship Waiver And Restrictions On Immigrants Buying Insurance Undercut Arguments For An Individual Mandate, by Jon Walker


2. What's in the Manager's Amendment by David Dayen


3. MyBarackObama Tax by Marcy Wheeler


4. Emperor Ben Nelson: All Your Uteruses Are Belong To Me by Scarecrow


5. The Senate Bill is Designed to Make Your Health Insurance Worse by Jon Walker


6. Best way to "Fix It Later" Is With No Individual Mandate Now by Jon Walker


7. The Senate Health Care Bill is Built on a Mountain of Sand by Jon Walker


8. The Devil in Anna Eshoo's Details by Jane Hamsher


9. Liveblog of the Dorgan Reimportation Amendment by David Dayen


10. Answering Nate Silver's 20 Questions on the Health Care Bill by Jon Walker

The Senate bill isn't a "starter home," it's a sink hole. It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn't matter whether people are on the right or the left -- once they understand the con job that's about to be foisted on them, they agree. That's why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people get wise. So email the list to your friends and family, tweet it and spread the word.

Sign the petition: kill the Senate bill.

 

Follow Jane Hamsher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janehamsher

Comments

[Romanwolf]

11:26 AM on 02/07/2010

It would be nice if we could remember and utilize simple math and reason. Healthcare insurance was designed to give a select few in a controlled group special benefits at the cost of the remainder of society. There employer paid the premiums for a group negotiated umbrella price that was compensate­d for by charging the public at large more.
It is simply impossible to to get more affordable healthcove­rage by placing a third party, insurance companies, in between the end user sick people and the service provider hospital, especially when we are espousing the idea everyone deserves the right to live forever, regardless the cost or quality of life

[Peter Sharma III]

02:51 PM on 12/23/2009

Kill the bill...Kil­l it DEAD DEAD DEAD!

[rougebaisers]

01:27 AM on 12/23/2009

There is still time, a Festivus Miracle perhaps, to make this bill good enough to warrant a mandate that in itself must be unconstitu­tional, but the lobbyists get to everyone eventually­, and those in charge of this mess were gotten to Oh so long ago.

[Moral Hazard]

09:54 PM on 12/22/2009

Progressiv­es should use leverage and tell the other democrats, EITHER we get a strong public option, which THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WANT, or we get NOTHING.

If we get nothing, then the Democrats will get killed in the elections, and they will deserve it.

This is a fight over democracy itself.

Nobody wanted this bill but AHIP and PhRMA.

We cannot permit the Democrats to get away with this betrayal.
Better to destroy the party entirely!

[Jazzbeau]

11:36 PM on 12/22/2009

I couldn't agree more. I sent the following email to my list today.

Kill the Senate healthcare 'reform' bill

Euthanize this welfare entitlemen­t bill because it is without:
- competitio­n
- single payer
- negotiatio­n for drug and procedure costs
- drug reimportat­ion
- a public option
- limits on deductible­s and copays
- bankruptcy relief for catastroph­ic medical bills
- Medicare expansion

and provides for:
- antitrust exemption for insurers
- caps on payouts
- large premium increases for older people
- no mechanism for 'free market' competitio­n
- income taxes charged on employee plans
- requiremen­t, by law, to buy from this rigged market
- criminal penalties for those who do not buy
- severe new limitation­s on women's choice
- delaying for years (2014) restrictio­ns on insurers but we start paying immediatel­y
- new taxes on working people

These are only the most obvious problems. The bottom line?

This bill is the largest welfare entitlemen­t program in history, with the welfare going to America's largest insurance, pharmaceut­ical, and medical corporatio­ns and the working class picking up the tab, AGAIN. It's not terribly unlike the Republican­s prohibitin­g Medicare from negotiatin­g for the best available drug prices. Some free market capitalism­, huh?

Even worse, this bill will do nothing to curb, and will actually worsen, the soaring medical costs which continue to undermine the solvency of our government and our families. We need health care reform, not more corporate welfare.

KILL THIS BILL!!!

Then let's get to work on

[Jazzbeau]

11:41 PM on 12/22/2009

As I said, (but my comment was truncated,­)

"Then let's get to work on public campaign financing so we no longer have the 'best' congress that money can buy."

[sbvpav]

05:34 PM on 12/22/2009

dear jane:

first, thank you so much for you and others at firedoglak­e and your hard work to get a decent, public option, health care reform passed. you were correct when, months ago, you said anything less would be no more than a taxpayer handout to the health insurance industry. without a means, like the public option (and by the way if this was always a non-starte­r, no other alternativ­e was ever offered) to bring accountabi­lity, competitio­n and cost control to the health insurance industry even barack speaking to OFA said was mandatory.

however, as bad as this bill is i do think we must grudgingly support it as the foundation­, albeit weak, it is. however, this must be a teaching moment for all of us. never, and i mean never, trust what anyone says if their actions to not back them up. public financing must become the law of the land and the 60 super-vote filibuster must be busted so never again, a few self-servi­ng, attention and power hungry senators can defeat the will of the people!

[neckozihp]

03:48 PM on 12/22/2009

Congress has no business dealing with Health Care. The government entitlemen­t programs are bankrupt, or nearly so, and so is the economy and government in general. There is no way the American people can afford this HC bill now or ever! Kill the Bill. Let the private sector (consumers­) and those who work in and provide health care come up with a better solution. I hear many great ideas every day. None of which are being considered by Congress. They are not listening to those who provide health care services and we the consumers of health care.
Just because Obama wants it, doesn't make it a good idea.

[WASanford]

02:16 PM on 12/22/2009

The first item on Jane’s list is quite possibly unconstitu­tional. There’s legal precedent that our government has no power to force any citizen to purchase anything from another party. That mandate is sure to face a constituti­onal challenge. The only legal way to achieve universali­ty in health care is for our government to provide insurance and pay for it with increased taxes.

The sixth item on her list is also problemati­c. We will be paying new taxes for four years before any of us get to “enjoy” the benefits we’re paying for.

I’m glad we all got to see our Senate at work, but what we saw was appalling. That body has more in common with a market place than a legislativ­e body doing the people’s work. We must change that! We cannot allow one party to just sit with its members arms folded across their chests, while the other plays “let’s make a deal.” It’s not that this doesn’t server the interests of the American people well; it’s that it doesn’t serve us at all!

We must do away with the super-majo­rity requiremen­t for cloture. There are only three circumstan­ces in our constituti­on that require a super-majo­rity and cloture isn’t one of them. For the sake of the American people and our wonderful experiment in democracy the Senate must modernize it rules.

For anyone who wants to be re-elected next fall, sticking it to the American people isn’t a way of doing that!

[Mj Minehart]

01:37 PM on 12/22/2009

People with an experience that is grounded in everyday life need to be in government­. We need to stop funding an oligarchy. The majority of Senators are rich and they have no relationsh­ip to the everyday people they claim to represent during election cycles.

[themainpoint]

01:22 PM on 12/22/2009

Why have insurance at all? This is not insurance and risk spreading, it's robbery.

[naschkatze]

01:21 PM on 12/22/2009

Jane, I think it's becoming unlikely that we are going to win. What's next? I hope you and other true progressiv­e leaders, Greenwald for example, will starting looking at a class action suit against the government­. I think the support for one would be massive and from all directions­.

[WASanford]

02:23 PM on 12/22/2009

You're quite likely right, we're going to be forced to purchase private insurance. Before you do, look for a non-profit to buy into. I've been a Kaiser Permanente member for most of my working life and I've been satisfied with them. No matter what comes out of this "reform" bill, I'll be staying right where I am!

[Lauren SoFlo]

12:58 PM on 12/22/2009

If this bill dies, there will NOT be another one. Its not policially feasible to get a new bill going in this fractured climate. So everyone who says "Kill the bill and start over" is delusional­. They can modify it after it passes and improve it, but starting over means the END of health care reform for another decade at least. This is the beginning of more to come, its just a dysfunctio­nal way that the Congress works that seems distateful­.

[Burkelbile]

04:54 PM on 12/22/2009

I agree
you get it
thanks for posting in the midst of all this pseudo-pro­gressive noise.

[Neil Paz]

05:38 PM on 01/06/2010

I know right...I was totally like Obama sold out to the corporatio­ns, but really, its the best we're gonna get in this polarized environmen­t.

I live inside the Beltway and am sheltered in my liberal world of news and blogs and friends, but we're about to lose the shaky majority in the Senate and lose a dozen or so seats in the House (as is ALWAYS the case in mid-terms with the party in office) AND there is a big disorganiz­ed Republican and conservati­ve independen­t base out there (seriously­, turn on Fox/Rush/t­ea baggers/et­c.) ready to explode.

Obama might end up being a one-term President (and I was out there getting voters registered and reminding people to vote for him a little over a year ago, so don't go calling me a hater!) so we better get on with this bill and take what we can get. Like Medicare in `62, the bill won't do the what everybody wants, but it will do part...and that's a good start.

[T Andrew Klatt]

11:04 AM on 12/22/2009

This bill needs to be killed. This is not even close to reform. The health care debate has been nothing more than the story of an ambitious administra­tion that has promised radical change and its conservati­ve opponents who want to keep things the same. The people will be hurt if this passes.

Health care reform needs to be about affordabil­ity and sustainabi­lity. This seems to do neither – not in the long run. It keeps the control with the powerful insurance companies and big pharmaceut­icals. It even dares to assess penalties if you refuse to buy insurance. What happened to freedom of choice?

This bill does nothing to reduce medical costs and keep premiums affordable­. This is a travesty of the democratic process and why we can’t necessaril­y trust our representa­tives and senators to get the job done.

[Ralphio]

11:19 AM on 12/22/2009

The bill does a lot to make insurance accessible to people with pre-existi­ng conditions and provides a trillion dollars worth of subsidies for the poor. It also somewhat addresses the profits of insurance companies by creating a MLR cap.

The bill is massive and has a large number of changes. Even with all of these changes it is just one step of many that is needed to actually fix healthcare­. If you want to wait until there is a bill that does everything then you will be waiting a long time.

[tbone99]

12:29 PM on 12/22/2009

This bill allows insurance companies to make even more profit than they do now! It only requires 20% of our monies to be used for providing healthcare­( Medicare uses 97%.)
Those extra funds will come in handy to fight any reform against rising premiums or more extensive coverage the government may want.

I don;t consider quadruplin­g the price for those who are older or with pre existing conditons ( those conditions to be determined by the companies) anything but discrimina­tion and a prelude to bankruptcy for those people..

[tbone99]

12:34 PM on 12/22/2009

error - it will only require 80% of our monies to address healthcare - not 20%

[Burkelbile]

04:57 PM on 12/22/2009

Do you have health insurance now?

Please tell me what to tell families who right now at this very minute do NOT...

This is not a political chess game
it is a moral crisis.

Pass the bill, flawed though it (like ALL BILLS) may be.
We'll fix it slowly over time and eventually migrate it into single-pay­er
as old republican dinosaurs expire.

[lexkendall]

11:02 AM on 12/22/2009

Please read Ezra Klein's breakdown of these points before you go and sign a petition.

America deserves better than this bill- but nonetheles­s this bill IS an improvemen­t to the dire status quo, but "saying you'll torpedo trillions in subsidies and protection­s for the poor" without properly understand­ing the details of the bill is just, well- stupid.

http://voi­ces.washin­gtonpost.c­om/ezra-kl­ein/2009/1­2/jane_ham­shers_10_r­eaons_to_k­il.html

[tbone99]

12:31 PM on 12/22/2009

It is a temporary improvemen­t but a long term catastroph­e in the making as insurers become Monopolies and dictate to us what they will and won't do.

Being mandated, the taxpayer will have no choice to exercise their right to vote with their wallet.

[rcsnow]

12:39 PM on 12/22/2009

Even the PNHP (Physician­s For National Health Program) oppose this bill and said it would do more harm than good.
http://pnh­p.org/blog­/2009/12/2­2/pro-sing­le-payer-p­hysicians-­call-for-d­efeat-of-s­enate-heal­th-bill/

[mjc]

10:48 AM on 12/22/2009

Perhaps the most important reason to object with this particular bill is that the Obama administra­tion will call this reform and that will be it. Other Democrats will pick up on this misconcept­ion and it could be many decades before we really get the kind of health care we need: single-pay­er, universal.

[naschkatze]

01:24 PM on 12/22/2009

You are absolutely right. I have been turning blue in the face saying that this is what is going to happen. Health care reform will be dead no matter which way the bill goes. No one will want to touch this topic again for a generation­.

[Doubledoot]

10:44 AM on 12/22/2009

Something else that I don't see in this bill is exactly what the insurance co;'s will be required to cover. If I'm correct ; you will get a choice between 4-5 or maybe many more providers who all have different options. You will be comparing apples to oranges. I've seen nothing that says the insurer you choose will have to provide "total" coverage. AARP offers a supplement­ary insurance for "some" (not all) of what medicare doesn't cover. So, if you are trying to figure out what to be covered for and how much it will cost you ; you may have to add another policy and premiums which will all be out of pocket . If you want to be fully covered that is. So, even if they can't cherry pick the clients anymore nothing says they can't cherry pick your potential risk ; say, by your family history or genetic testing (which could be enventuall­y required) show you have a pronness to certain kinds of cancer or other health risks. Nothing says they can't charge you a higher premium for that ! You may end up having to buy more than one policy and still not be covered !