remember the bush tax cut bill, with its much-hyped $300 credit for "everybody"?

[unblock]

it was really a HUGE gift to the rich, especially the very rich, but they knew they had to throw the lower end of the spectrum to get it passed and to appear "fair". so they threw a pretty small bone to the lower end of the income tax paying spectrum and spent much of the airtime on that small sop for the rest of us. ignore the fleets of lexuses we're handing out to billionaires.


well, that's pretty much the senate bill at this point. a right-wing bill with a small sop for the left. the health insurance business, which has been raking in money hand over fist for decades, get millions of non-customers FORCED to buy their defective product, amounting to a subsidy in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

in exchange, all they appear to have given up is a few odious practices, such as recission, which they might well have been forced to give up simply because of the terrible press they were getting because of it. in any event, the price of the subsidies is WAY too high for the little that we're getting back from the insurance mafia.

what MOST people want is cost control. coverage for more people is certainly great, too, but even more people want heath care / insurance to be cheaper and less of a racket. make it affordable and guess what, you'll find more people covered as well. a bill without any form of cost control COMPLETELY MISSES THE POINT.

and i can't even begin to tell you what i think of the person who, when asked, "what about the people who don't want to buy insurance because it sucks?" responded, "let's make them buy it against their will"





if the senate passes the bill as it stands, i can only hope that the house-senate reconciliation process produces something that's 90% house and 10% senate, and even that would be a disappointment.

[sandnsea]

1. Cost control - just what Republicans said

And subsidized private insurance, just what Kerry and Dean proposed in 2004.

This place is insane.

[Hello_Kitty]

2. I didn't like what Dean and Kerry proposed in 2004.

I'm not for handing billions in tax dollars to private corporations and forcing people to buy their product with no guarantee that they'll get the service when they need it.

[sandnsea]

3. I've had it for 3 years

My husband and I are alive because of it. But my point is proven. I can't find anybody to admit they supported Dean's plan in 2004, when so many argued that Dean was better on health care at the time.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. I wanted to get rid of for profit insurance cos. back then and still do.

Good for you and your husband for getting decent health care, but in the meantime thousands of others have died or gone bankrupt because of greedy insurance vultures that the current bill protects.

[sandnsea]

5. I would have died without the subsidies

and thousands more would continue to if we wait around for your utopian world.

[Hello_Kitty]

6. Apparently now a weak public option is "utopia". eom

[sandnsea]

9. People seeing the doctor is real health care

As I've said a cazillion times, I don't give a crap how we make it happen. Utopia is waiting for YOUR way and nothing else. And it's selfish and heartless to boot.

[old guy]

7. Utopia???????

WELL, you are taken care of so to hell with the people who aren't.

[sandnsea]

8. I want everyone to have subsidized insurance

I pay $65.00 a month for my husband and myself, and we have pre-existing conditions. How's your health care? You want to wait for single payer - or do you want what I have? This is the exact plan that Dean supported in 2004, subsidized insurance.

[old guy]

10. Who pays the subsidies for you? State, county?

[sandnsea]

11. Oregon has waivers

and uses federal medicaid funds, and state taxes, to provide a variety of programs. It's not fully funded, which it would be if health care reform passes. Oregon couldn't even get a public option passed and we tried. I don't know why people think it is so damn easy. People need to see the doctor, we can't wait any longer.

[hfojvt]

12. because we are armchair quarterbacks

the other days somebody posted that Obama could have pushed this through if he had visited the states and had the voters put pressure on the waivering Senators.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7232932&mesg_id=7233690