Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Obama Tonight - No Public Option?

According to those who speculate about these things, Obama will not speak out tonight in favor of health care reform with a robust public option, but rather in favor of a trigger - whatever that is. Why do we support and vote for Democrats? Right now, the best reason I can think of is that they are not Republicans.

Without the public option to reduce costs, the bill will mean more money for the health insurance industry. At the present time, the industry spends 30% on administrative costs, while Medicare spends around 4%.

I hope that the speculators are wrong, but I fear that they are right.

Read Robert Creamer on the health insurance industry at The Huffington Post - if you have the stomach for it.

6 comments:

  1. As a child of the British 1940's Welfare State, the American "health" system, with its catastrophic lack of coverage for the economically underprivileged, appalls me more and more each year. What I have only recently become aware of, and what also appalls me, is the opposition of many on the "Christian" right to pretty-well any reform that will guarantee effective medical coverage to those who currently lack it. Guess we know where they'll be placed in the sheep/goats stakes come Judgment Day.

    Ten days ago, at a public meeting in Columbia, SC, Senator "Waterloo" DeMint told Erin Massey, a medical student who suffers from a controlled form of epilepsy but "has trouble getting medical coverage through insurance companies", "Yeah, there will be some people who are turned down. [You] don’t build a system around those who can’t make good decisions."

    "[You] don’t build a system around those who can’t make good decisions." Scum!!

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  2. Yes, Lapin, I remember reading that stupid comment from Jim DeMint. If you make the bad decision to have epilepsy, then you don't deserve to be covered by a health care system. Did DeMint even hear the student's question, or did he just not care?

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  3. Why is it that American political parties, on being elected to office, suddenly lose the ability to govern?

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  4. Ormonde, it's the governing that gets them. The very thing that we elect them to do is the thing that they can't do.

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  5. I am disgusted at the whole lot of them.

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