One of the reform law's most important provisions -- the one that that insurance firms and Wall Street despise most -- is the one that sets the minimum allowable medical loss ratio, effective last year, at 80 percent for policies sold to individuals and small businesses.

Nearly 16 million health insurance consumers will get rebates totaling an estimated $1.3 billion beginning Aug. 1 because Obamacare limits the profits that insurance companies can make off of illness, injury and pain. This is what Republicans are trying to take away from health insurance consumers.

Chances are that many of the people eligible for an insurance rebate are among those demanding that ObamaCare be repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court. Getting a check in the mail because of ObamaCare might make some of them reconsider.

A recent poll found that the American public still doesn't know what is in the health reform law and what is not. Here's the list of health reform "gifts" available this year.

The administration should pay far more attention to what they have to say than to executives and lobbyists for Aetna and the rest of the industry who, take it from me, are more interested in their own best interests than in their customers.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to cheat the families of his state out of $140 million in health insurance rebates. If Scott gets his way, it could harm consumers across the country.

While the Republican candidates for President made it clear in their debate this week that they are happy to let uninsured people die if they have a serious illness, the Republicans in Congress are plotting to make people with insurance pay even more.

The reaction of health insurers to the Obama administration's requirement that they start justifying rate increases of 10 percent or more was quick and predictable: "Not fair!"

The lobbying to change the medical-loss ratio provision in the new health care law is just one example of how special interests are working to gut the reform law while preserving the portions they like.

The Republicans will say and do anything to help their rich friends. In the world of post-shame politics, they're the poster children -- they just don't seem to care how extreme and unconscionable their hypocrisy is.

A key provision has slipped through that threatens both the effectiveness of the Medical Loss Ratio and the integrity of public health departments.

The only way to reform the health care system is to blow it up and start over. I believe that we are going to see something close to a "blow up" this fall.

I need not tell you that we are in the red zone with less than one minute to go in the game. What you need to do is get mad, get angry, even pissed off, at what you see not occurring.

In 2002, that more than 18,000 Americans between the ages of 19 and 64 were dying each year as a result of being uninsured. The new number is two and a half times that figure.

Republicans have fought against Medicare from the very beginning. But in their strategy to kill health care reform, they are all of a sudden sounding like defenders of Medicare against the evils of big government.

Organized medicine has become so fragmented that no one group speaks for the profession. In fact, some groups have endorsed major health care reform.

Likely rewards to the hospital industry from health care reform? If events continue in direction they are now, hospitals will thrive, with more insured people and generous accommodations from government.

The drug industry's agenda is crystal-clear: expand its markets through wider insurance coverage, avoid price controls, and gain maximal patent protection.

Why this incredible disconnect among our elected representatives shaping the future of one-sixth of our economy and future health care of all 310 million of us?

Despite some useful provisions, it is wishful thinking to believe that health care "reform", as projected by current proposals being considered in Congress, can actually make health insurance more affordable and make a real difference to people already burdened by their spiraling costs.