Health Care Bill Does Not Fix Health Care System

[IndianaGreen]

Health Care Bill Does Not Fix Health Care System

By Peter Shapiro

4/12/2010

Passage of President Obama's health care reform in late March made for great political theater. Here was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skillfully maneuvering the bill through Congress after many had given it up for lost. Here was House minority leader and Republican point man John Boehner, reduced to ranting about 'Armageddon' and predicting the end of civilization as we know it if the bill passed. Here were Republican legislators egging on the mob of teabaggers who massed outside the Capitol, hurling racist and homophobic slurs at Representatives John Lewis and Barney Frank as they went inside.

I'll admit the scene worked on my emotions. The Republicans' tactics were ugly and cynical and I was happy to see them fail.

Now that the dust has settled, however, a hard look at the legislation that prompted all the fuss suggests that, far from 'fixing our broken health care system,' it merely reproduces some of its worst features.

The bill does nothing to lessen the grip of the private insurance industry on our health care system. It won't bring exploding health care costs under control. It does little to change the shameful disparities in access to treatment in a society that treats medical care as a commodity to be bought and sold, rather than as something all of us need and deserve.

What it will do is require everybody to buy health insurance, with federal subsidies for those who can't afford the premiums on their own. The price tag of these subsidies is $447 billion over the next ten years. That's money that could have gone to pay directly for medical treatment but which will, instead, wind up in the pockets of the insurance industry - one more corporate bailout at taxpayers' expense.

To help pay for it, public hospitals that treat the uninsured will have their federal funding slashed by $36 billion. Eight years down the road, union health plans and other job-based health insurance will be slapped with a 40% 'excise tax.' Protests from organized labor succeeded in getting this tax modified somewhat, but not eliminated from the bill.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/april/health-care-bill-does-not-fix-health-care-system

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. No kidding. Really? *sigh*

Some of us have been saying this all along.

Best we can hope for IMO, is that loopholes are ID'd quickly, made VERY public and resulting pressure on DC makes them address it.

[jtrockville]

8. Credit where credit is due: PNHP has been saying it all along too.

[Ruby the Liberal]

11. Yes they have, and they put up a good fight (when they were allowed into the ring)

[emilyg]

2. k/r

[Nite Owl]

3. It really is a waste of

taxpayer money to have it all go to insurance companies instead of to care. They aren't going to change their colors just because there is a bill that sounds good on the surface. It's sad to lose this opportunity. The dems could have done it right, listened to what people needed instead of the insurance companies and they would be elected forever.

[Cleita]

4. I'm trying to be positive.

First I don't think we will get to change things before the November elections, but after that, then it will be the time to push for getting a Medicare for all buy in that Alan Grayson is pushing for as part of the exchange. I hope he wins his seat back. Then when that's behind us we can start a new movement to push to get this insurance company life preserver fixed. I'm not waiting another fifteen years for a real universal national health care plan.

[ixion]

5. This was, of course, my primary objection: it enriched the insurance cos, while

not doing anything towards actual, real health CARE reform.

[jody]

6. It was theater but whether it was a comedy or tragedy remains for history to decide. n/t

[golddigger]

7. K&R

[salguine]

9. Why, why, WHY aren't we all out on the streets turning over cars and burning down

insurance company headquarters buildings and dragging their CEOs into the street by their hair and lopping off their heads, all the while telling our legislators that we'll spare their worthless lives if they leave town now and don't come back?

[fasttense]

13. Because our corporate media is spewing propaganda like that Icelandic volcano

that nobody could pronounce.

But let a racist bigot get conned into cutting his own throat and marching in support of the uber wealthy who have stolen from him and the media is right on it.

It would take some very serious rioting and protesting before the corporations will allow their new-reporters to cover anything that indicates we are NOT all fat old white guys happy playing with guns in the woods.

[bertman]

10. But my Congressman told me that we Democrats should be proud that we passed a

healthcare reform bill that means that all Americans will now have access to health care.

Surely he must be telling the truth.

[yurbud]

12. and if it did bring costs under control, the beneficiaries would be insurance companies, not us.