Senator Jim DeMint, R SC, succinctly laid out what is important to the Republican Party on a conference call to fellow conservatives[ without conscience (CWCs)]. He said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this (health care) it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.†For them it isn’t about health care or fixing the economy or representing their constituents; it’s all about breaking the President, forcing him to fail and with him the entire country.
The other shoe is the claim that everybody is happy with health care as it is. True, most people who have health care are happy because their employer, at little or no cost to them, provides it. If you’re happy with the health care provided by your employer, don’t get too comfortable with it. As of now only 60% of employers provide health care and that number is falling fast. For small businesses, the engine that drives our economy, the number is much lower and many are dropping insurance as rates increase at the rate of doubling every five years. There are 50 million Americas currently without any health insurance of any kind. Of those upward of 18,000 die every year as a direct result of not having health insurance.
Okay, so you’re already out of the employer provided insurance pool, so what? Well there are fifty states and fifty sets of rules for insurance providers. Even if you can afford to purchase your own insurance it may or may not be a very good deal. The cost of covering a family of four can run as much as $2000 a month even with ridiculously high deductibles.
Fine, you’re not one of the 50 million uninsured either by dent of having employer provided insurance or purchasing your own. Half of all bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical bills and 70% of them actually have insurance. See, you or your employer pay through the nose for insurance but the company limits your coverage with one-time and lifetime limits on payments.
Then there’s rescission. Rescission is the practice of canceling insurance coverage for obscure reasons usually un-related to the illness suffered by the patient. For instance, should you be diagnosed with colon cancer and the treatment promises to be long and expensive the insurer will go over every bit of your medical history they can find. If they find something not listed on your original application like the acne treatment you got at age 16 they can cancel your coverage. In testimony before the Senate the CEOs of our largest insurance companies said flatly that they would not cease that practice as part of reform.
Finally, for all the teeth gnashing, ashes and sackcloth from the conservative right about the cost of public coverage, America is drowning in health care costs. If you total Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance premiums plus out of pocket expenses we spend $2.2 Trillion a year on health care. That’s more than four times the cost of national defense. $2.2 Trillion and there are 37 industrialized nations that have better health care than we do at less than half the cost.
I’ve got an idea. Confiscate every dime spent by the Insurance and Pharma companies on lobbying and use it to pay for universal health care. Since Obama took office those industries have hired 350 lobbyists (there are only 435 congress people) at the cost of $1.4 Million a day to defeat health care reform. $1.4 MILLION A DAY. Senator Baucus (D Mont), leader of health care reform, has six (count ‘em SIX) lobbyists assigned to him. They have spent $225 billion in six months, almost half of what the CBO says a public insurance option would cost over ten years. Those numbers should give you some idea of how much money these companies are making off human misery.
For a summery of what the public insurance option might look like go here:
The debate is going on right now. Call your Senator and Representative, even if they are Republican, and tell them how you feel.
Andy Hailey