Tuesday, October 27, 2009

It's not over

$0.02

Initially, I was elated with the announcement made by the Majority Leader of the Senate, when he said a public option will be included; and the fact that Medicaid has always been opt-out, convinces me that not a single one of those silly governors will even pursue asking their state legislatures to back out - and I would hope that Democratic candidates in every election between now and 2014 would make clear the folly of that behavior. Additionally, once we make it past that date, states will be locked into the national public option; how many Republicans can we run from office by pointing out that their very presence is a threat to the health of their citizens?

So that is the good news.

But I will not join in the cavalcade of those seeking to shower our elected representatives with praise for this eminently pitiable act. This option does not tie premiums to Medicare rates (which no one is forced to take, by the way. If a single nurse, doctor or hospital does not know how to make money on Medicare rated - then they can elect not to take Medicare patients. I would hope we would run from providers do incompetent, rather than plead to keep them.); but this refusal to tie public option rates to Medicare shows the hollowness of this victory. Furthermore, it is the very definition of a partial victory, as only those without healthcare will even be eligible to elect to walk away from their more predatory policies with private insurers; the rest of us will be forced by our employers into paying more of our hard, earned money to private insurers - all for the privilege of them doing . . . ?

Nothing. It is just the government guaranteeing profit for industry, which I used to think we only did for utilities, but has now expanding like a virus across our financial sector - and make no mistake: in our modern, looking-glass world, health insurance is a function of the financial sector of our economy. We should set our timepieces so that we might observe the onset of a similiar CDS/CDO meltdown of the health insurers; who knows - perhaps they will pull the life insurers down with them!


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