E!!

Whenever I point out to my leftist friends that this program (and all the others that have been forced upon us the past few months) has never ever worked in the history of civilizaton…that it always always always leads to depressions, oppression, war and slavery, well, “It’ll be different this time.” Good grief, sometimes I just want to screeeeeeammmmmm!!!!!

This is awful enough, but the real crime is we will not be able to purchase private insurance after this abhorent plan begins. This way GOV controls who gets what care and if he/she even gets care. Phase 2 will fold Medicare and Medicaid into this single payer system. Where is the ire of AARP? This is the GOV answer to the retiring Boomers…let them die, save on Soc. Sec. and sieze their assets through the death tax.

The situation you have described, or something like it is inevitible. It has been decades since elected officials have had the will or the good of the individual at heart. That situation will get worse as the vested interests simply have all the power. Insurance companies, drug companies, the AMA and lawyers are where elected officials look for financing elections. The mind set of the legislature is so entrenched in politics as usual that if one of them actually has a noble purpose he is treated as unworthy dirt. It would take an overwhelming outcry from the populace to even penetrate that thought structure.

My take on it, partly ok, partly worried, is that for POOR PEOPLE who jump on a basic plan (either public option or buyer’s pool) they will get something not much different than what they have now. The Insurer will LIMIT expensive health coverage.

For example, six top insurers in CA denied 21% of claims last year. That gives one little choice, esp with “pre-existing” conditions. Where do you turn? For those patients and families, public protest. Despite public protest and company embarrassment, leading in some cases to reversals, several people died, including two teens, due to insurer denial of benefits.

If anything, for BASIC plans, the methods used by the Insurer to deny claims and ration care, rather than being arbitrary and capricious, rather than being based on the “luck” of the ‘adjustors’ in finding some lame excuse to deny care, like an unreported yeast infection treated with OTC meds 10 years prior, the govt will set STANDARD and UNIFORM reasons to ration care, as well as STANDARD and UNIFORM reasons to NOT ration care.

Ruthless, but rational. Conservatives have long opposed unlimited and unrationed care for the poor. How dare they!!! It’s fiscally unsound!!

ON THE OTHER HAND, and this is the big one, moderately WEALTHY and extremely WEALTHY people who can afford fancy plans will ALWAYS be able to pay for their “covers everything” or “covers almost everything” plans, as always. No one will stop them from kicking in cash, if they wish. Affordable health care means all the medical care that YOU CAN AFFORD to pay for. Very conservative.

There will be no downside to being rich. Are you kidding me? The super-rich financed Obama.

Perhaps even better for some rich people, Insurers MAY be barred from capriciously denying claims of moderately wealthy customers, just because they think they can get away with it.

Of course the very very wealthy can simply threaten to sue any Insurer denying care, which would always be understood in advance by the Insurers. Some customers are not worth screwing over. The wealthy people buy Cadillacs (or Lexuses, etc) and they buy Cadillac-quality Insurance for good reasons. They can afford it. They want it.

What I see here so far is nothing as hysterically horrible as opponents claim (perhaps they underestimate the arbitraryness and viciousness of Insurers), but also no massive “liberal dream” giveaway.

Mostly, an expensive giveaway to Insurance Companies, similar to how the Bush Medicare Reform bill was a giant wet kiss to Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

Basically it’s Reaganomics morphing to Obamanomics, including O’s bailouts for Big Banks which is a re-run of Bush Senior’s bailouts for the bankrupted Savings & Loans, post fraud.