As if it weren't bad enough that the right-wing nuts have made a crusade out of bashing Obama and his efforts to get healthcare reform enacted, now the insurance industry has begun funding studies to show that healthcare reform would cost Americans more money in higher insurance costs. This comes from the industry that has made massive amounts of money over the past decade and still takes every opportunity to raise costs even more.
So on the eve of a vote in the Senate Finance Committee on a really mediocre healthcare reform bill that would not include a public option, and would still leave millions of Americans uninsured, the insurance industry released a study that showed, guess what? That this healthcare reform bill would result in higher insurance costs for Americans. Who paid for this study? The insurance industry. What did it show? A result that the insurance industry wanted. Most thinking individuals have dismissed this study as simple "pay em to say what we want." And frankly, insurance costs are going up anyway, if we don't do something about it. Can you say healthcare reform? I bet you can. Write and/or call your Congressman and your Senators. We all need to get behind this or lobbyists and idiots in Congress will make it go away, like it has a bunch of times before.
Anyway, today the Senate Finance Committee bill on healthcare reform passed out of committee when a majority, including one lone Republican voted for it. This is the bill that has been pursued by Senator Baucus and which does not include a public insurance option. Now this bill will be combined with a more liberal version from the health committee and the fighting and compromising on the Senate floor will begin. This 15 round heavyweight bout is scheduled to begin sometime next week. How long will that take? Who knows?
Of course the eventual passage of some healthcare reform in the Senate only means that it then passes over to the House of Representatives and Congressmen in the House will spend an inordinate amount of time arguing over reconciliation of their version of the bill with the Senate version, and some eventual compromises will be reached this decade hopefully, this century surely. Meanwhile the insurance companies will continue to put out as much propaganda as they possibly can to obfuscate the issue and make it seem like we need to keep things the way they are. Of course they want things to stay the way they are. They're making money hand over fist. Who cares about the public and their petty little healthcare needs? This is the land of the free and the home of the profit. Capitalism rules dude! Get the government out of my profits! (Oops, sorry. I was channeling a Blue Cross executive for a moment there.)
Meanwhile the public will continue to pay through the nose for their healthcare. Meanwhile millions upon millions of Americans will continue to have no health insurance and will not be able to get any healthcare except emergency care. Meanwhile the cost of healthcare in America will continue to spiral upwards. Meanwhile the average citizen of most every other advanced industrial nation in the world will continue to get better healthcare than we do in the U.S. and will enjoy better health as a result. Isn't there somebody out there who wants to get pissed about this? Isn't there somebody out there who wants to start a citizens' movement? Isn't there somebody out there who remembers what the public at large can do when it mobilizes, as it did against the Vietnam War? This is our country. This is our health. This is our issue. For God's sake, let's see that a reasonable reform of our current system is reached. Let's see that all Americans have equal access to healthcare. I think it's a Constitutional right. (Equal protection under the law.)
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