The Health Care Farce

It’s been well known that Americans want single payer health care. About 70% of Americans support health care reform that offers single payer. Labor unions support single payer, progressives support single payer, and even there is a bill known as HR 676, The US National Health Care Act that is introduced and is just waiting to be passed, with some 70-80 supporters. But despite the support for single payer, our representatives in Congress, the ones who vote for, along with Barack Obama (The Change President, who also supported single payer at one time), instead opted for an insurance reform bill with a “public option”. It’s called the Affordable Health Choices Act.

When I first read the bill, I just could not read it. It was too long and complicated at 615 pages, how does the average American read a bill this long. So I jumped towards the public option section of the bill. And it says “Public Health Insurance Option” on page 111. I was expecting all the detals of the public option, instead I got this “” This is not when the farce begun.

The farce truly begun when Republicans and insurance company Astroturf groups fill in the details of the public option. First is the classic public option equals socialism. It’s really amazing that to this day, most Americans do not know the actual meaning of the word “socialism”. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production. The public option does not mean they’ll take over hospitals, and while the US government or state and local governments can build public hospitals, they don’t have to. Then they build various arguments against “socialized medicine”, like “socialized medicine weakens competition”, or “socialized medicine results in waiting lists”, “death panels”, “government bureaucrats deciding your health care decisions.”

But seriously all of these are just obvious lies. We already have waiting lists with our current system, we already have death panels, we already have bureaucrats deciding your health care decisions. And the answer is right in your face: The insurance companies.

Oh yes, the teabaggers, the people who disrupt the health care town halls. You have to ask yourself, if these people do not support government run health insurance plan, even if it’s separate from the private health insurance plan, do these same teabaggers have health insurance? Because there are many Americans who work full time and still can’t afford health insurance. These teabaggers don’t care about others who need health insurance, and what are worse the teabaggers are average American people, which is really disgusting and possibly hypocritical as well. The pundits, who don’t support any kind of health care, possibly have health insurance. (American Individualism and social Darwinism hard at work, ladies and gentlemen.)

(If people do pull up their bootstraps and just work hard, they would still fall down by the plenty of barriers outside of their control.)

But the farce just gets worse, the public option is will not set to begin until five years when the law is signed by the President. Five years, that’s about 50,000 deaths that can be prevented by people without health insurance, and hundreds of thousands more bankruptcies that can be prevented. Currently, we don’t know what the public option even covers. But the cost, even though there are subsides for people 130% over the poverty level, you still have to pay if your income is over $45,000.

And the biggest farce of all in the health care “debate”: The bill is based on a already failed Massachusetts health insurance law, fines and all.

It’s really disgusting that the United States Congress has a solution that can end the problem of getting Americans affordable health insurance, but rather do it the easy way via compulsory private health insurance than single-payer insurance. Republicans, the Blue-Dog Democrats, the teabaggers, and the health insurance industry would rather see people die than allow any alternative to the current broken system of employer-based health insurance.

But there is a light in the tunnel. The Affordable Health Choices Act may be replaced by HR 676 anyway. Rep. Anthony Weiner already has plans to do that and Nancy Pelosi has promised him a single payer vote on the House of Representatives sometime during this session, hopefully before Christmas. It’s the best option to save health care reform. And probably the name “Affordable” in the bill will be truly affordable, as single-payer will allow many workers a raise because they will not have to spend any money for health insurance. The money would come from existing sources of government revenues for health care, increasing personal income taxes on the top 5% of income earners, instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income; and by instituting a small tax on stock and bond transactions.

Single-payer is the best option, all that Congress has to do is grow some spine and stand up against the insurance companies and their lobbyists, and pass this bill. America can’t wait any longer, the more time we lose; the more people will die just because they don’t have health insurance.

tl;dr: Pass Single-Payer health care and be done with it, this farce has gone long enough.

P.S. If you meet a teabagger who opposes any kind of health care reform, ask him/her this question: “Do you have health insurance other than Medicaid, Medicare, or VA (Veterans Affairs)?” If the teabagger says no: Then you oppose health care reform if you don’t have health insurance?

:kick:

you socialist you

...but I fear Health Care Reform was decided long before Obama put his hand on the Bible.

Health Care Reform WILL be a $Trillion Dollar gift to the Health Insurance Industry.
The rest has been Kabuki Theater.
We are being allowed to fight over the crumbs ("thin sliver"),
much to the amusement of The Big Money Class who will be laughing all the way to their Wall Street Banks.

HR 676 offers the ONLY real "Public Option".
That is why the Democratic Party Leadership refuses to even talk about it.