Let's get some things out of the way right up front. I did not vote for Joe Lieberman as President. I did not vote for Joe Lieberman for Senate Chair positions or anything. I also did not vote for President Obama as a "transformative" progressive. I knew whom I was voting for. Rather, I thought I was voting for a Democrat.
I don't care about the regulations Health Care Reform is supposed to have, they are at worst a paint job on a whorehouse and at best some force for reform of practices. There is no real harm done and even a possibility of progress, slim but there. My prognosis is that the insurance companies will do as they please with these reforms and the consumer be damned. That much is crystal ball stuff.
What I can tell you with no doubt whatever is that mandates with no options will force American consumers to take whatever crap is offered by the sharks that have set this course. Not only will it force Americans screwed by their system to buy the junk, it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for it. The States with the worst insurance systems will suck hell out of the public teat. Understand, the worst outcomes will be rewarded with the most money from taxpayers. All you have to do is look at the highest rates of uninsured in states and their version of health insurance to understand where the money will go and who will get it. That much is assured.
Right behind that inevitability is this, the sharks who already benefit from a monopolistic system will have the reward of federal dollars and enforced consumer expenditures to swell their influence and income. If you think the Senate outcomes in this debate were owned by these people wait and see how that plays once they aren't just taking advantage of their existing power, but have it multiplied.
I've been told how important mandates are to insure those excluded by decision or economics and (for some reason) start forcing the system in a positive direction. There is no doubt that the uninsured drive insurance costs up when their failures are spread back out into the system. I've been talking about this for years. What nobody has shown or is even willing to try to show is that HealthInc is the least responsive to market desires or in any way attempts to serve consumers. What has been demonstrated is that they use whatever means they can to avoid paying or to pay as little as they can. That is not immaterial.
Does somebody want to argue about whether the health insurance system in this country is a disaster? If exploding costs, denials, etc in the face of federal tax rewards is not a disaster, well - OK. Now the Senate is poised to reward that failure with federal money and the involuntary servitude of the public. I may be forced to buy auto insurance if I choose to own vehicles, but I do have a "choice" about owning one and I do have a hell of a lot of insurance companies to pick my mandated coverage from and those companies have varying reputations but certainly better than HealthInc. I will point out that people are actually not in a position of choice about owning a body and virtually no choice regarding health insurance providers.
I will not support mandates without choice and I will not support people who make this happen. I will repeat the words Halliburton and Blackwater, anybody notice these failures being removed from the system or their continuation as necessary - in the face of their behavior? I will not support a Party that goes there and I will not support a President who lies to my face about it. I don't in the least care what Ron Wyden or Jeff Merkley say about health care reform, if those mandates stay in without choice they are Liebercrats. It should be obvious to anybody that if one or two Democratic Senators stood up and said no choice/no mandates or no cloture that the mandates would go away. That isn't going to happen and they will pat themselves on their backs for not pulling a Lieberman and enabling Lieberman. They can try that in public and I (at least) will be standing right there calling Bullshit - in public. It is unfortunate that the House is going to suffer right along with Senators since they provided some version of choice, but they're going to get hammered. The goddam Senators seem to have forgotten that the House is part of Congress and the President gets to sign or not whatever crap comes out of Congress and the suffering for their bullshit gets spread around.
The Senate has proved how it will handle as important an issue as health care reform, still to come are issues around climate warming, jobs, banking regulation, and the rest of 30 years of fallout of Republican junk. I suppose you have optimism... Howard Dean versus Joe Lieberman? Ahahahaha...
Senator Tom Harker just got done lying on MSNBC by implying that Dean's support was predicated on single payer - odd since he's played booster right up until choice was removed... Damn, that crap sounds familiar.
2 comments:
President Obama lost the health care reform bill..
Your thoughts are widely shared, Chuck. They'd dedicated a ton of tax-payer dollars to private industry without doing a single thing to address the major problem of rising costs. And they intend to force us to subscribe. Unbelievable, though not unexpected.
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