December 22, 2009 6:17 AM

Neither health, nor care...and certainly not reform

(thanks to Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake)

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.

If you can read through that list and STILL believe that the bill about to be passed in the Senate is real, legitimate health care reform...well, you either work for a health insurance or pharmaceutical company or you own large amounts of stock in one. How this bill can be viewed as anything but a HUGE Christmas gift to the health insurance industry and Big Pharma is difficult to comprehend. Let's review, shall we? No single payer. No public option. No Medicare buy-in. Nothing that enforces anything resembling competition in the health insurance marketplace. No re-importation of prescription drugs. Rising insurance premiums. A barely camouflaged end run around Roe v. Wade. An assault on a woman's right to control her own reproductive functions. A de facto tax which will transfers wealth from the middle class to health insurance companies.

I could go on, but you the point. What else could you reasonably expect from a Congress bought and paid for by the health care industry? How could we have possibly expected reform from people like Joe LIEberman, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson? How could we have expected anything resembling principled leadership and REAL reform from elected representatives whose campaign war chests have over the years been heavily subsidized by lobbyists? No one seems to want to or be willing to call this what it is, but I will. It's corruption, pure and simple. It may, strictly speaking, be legal, but it's neither moral nor ethical. How this sort of behavior isn't defined and prosecuted as common, garden-variety bribery is beyond me. It's difficult not to feel as if large numbers of Congresscritters shouldn't be doing a very public perp walk for sacrificing the public interest for 40 pieces of silver.

If nothing else, this travesty should provide conclusive proof of just how dysfunctional Congress is. And we have only ourselves to blame. Teabaggers and others on the Right may piss and moan about the ineptitude of government, but the reality is that we put them there. Americans, most of whom have proven themselves easy to propagandize and frighten, have created the system currently in place. Many may whine and complain, but when presented with the opportunity to make changes, Americans have consistently and reliably voted against their own interests. This is what happens when you refuse to pay attention and THINK for yourself.

We have the power to change things in Washington...and yet, when presented with the opportunity at the ballot box, we re-elect the status quo. This is how we get health care "reform" that benefits the health care industry while simultaneously screwing over the middle class.

WE DESERVE BETTER...but it's own damn fault that we're not going to get it.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on December 22, 2009 6:17 AM.

We're smug, we flaunt our self-righteous arrogance and ignorance...and we vote was the previous entry in this blog.

Health care reform? Who brought the s'mores?? is the next entry in this blog.

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