Congress & Obama in cahoots with the insurance companies

I've been listening to the news about the latest blah-blah in Congress and from the White House about the supposed health care "reform" they plan to foist on the public. "We'll have a great new plan by July!" gushes Speaker Pelosi. "Coverage for everyone!" promises Obama.

Well, who gives a flying fuck, huh, really?

"Congressional leaders on health care have taken single payer off the table as politically impractical." Um, yeah, the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry might not fund their campaigns next time. "Coverage" and "insurance plans" just arent' going to cut it. The proposals seem to be headed straight to a private-profit, public-cost type of plan. Single-payer advocates have to disrupt the hearings to even get the phrase mentioned in Baucus' hearing rooms, although that isn't helping it get addressed, exactly.

Last time, says Catherine Arnt of Business Week, the Clinton adminstration botched health care reform because they didn't engage all the players:

The Administration apparently learned its lesson from the Clinton experience, which hammered out its bill behind closed doors, with little to no industry input. By bringing the insurance and hospital executives to the table, it makes it that much harder for them to derail the effort altogether. At a White House press conference, Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters: "Let's not minimize the impact of the difference between being at the table working constructively for comprehensive health-care reform that cuts costs for the American people, vs. campaign-style ads to derail it. I think today represents, in many ways, a big shift in the ground underneath people that have been working on health-care reform for decades."

So, apparently the Obama administration plans to botch this attempt too, by excluding the single-payer players, which represent better than 60% of the public. John Conyers bill, HR 676, is ALREADY prepared and ready to go.

So really, it's quite clear that they JUST DON'T CARE. Obama might possibly care, but he's not listening to the science, or the facts, or the people who could tell him the facts. Nope. It's 'politically inexpedient.'

This is really, really, foul. Senator Baucus knows there's a problem, but if it's the crisis he says it is, why isn't he willing to even consider a possible solution, one that is working in almost every other industrialized nation? Why is he supporting a model like Massachusetts' plan, which, as Neil Davis points out in his upcoming Dose of Reality, is failing miserably?

The fundraiser phenomenon

This year, I've noticed far more fundraisers to pay medical expenses than ever before. Three fundraisers for kids with cancer (no insurance or not enough) right around the beginning of March. Then a couple more. The latest one is for Evan Phillips of the Whipsaws, who is having surgery for an old injury that damaged his hip years ago and lately has been causing him so much pain that he couldn't participate in the planned tour this winter of Tim Easton, Leeroy Stagger, and him.

So now there's a fundraiser in Anchorage, featuring all kinds of musical types. He travels in musical circles, and has friends who are great at graphic design and publicity, so he's likely to be able to raise enough to pay a good bit of the bill.

Doesn't something strike you as horribly wrong with this picture?

While Obama and the Democrats in Congress are moving together on supposed health care "reform," the Republicans are plotting To-Hell-With-The-People obstructionism. But that obstructionism may just save the public's bacon--all the Democrats seem to be talking about is health insurance. Story after story talks about "coverage", "benefits packages," and "insurance". THIS ISN'T HEALTH CARE, you BOZOS!

The REAL health care reform proposal, HR 676, sponsored by John Conyers, is barely mentioned, even in articles that propose things like an expansion of Medicare. Hell, Conyers barely got into the roundtable Obama held earlier this year on the subject of health care reform, and it was only after an e-mail barrage and deluge of protests that they let him in the doors.

So Congress is talking about health insurance and Obama is talking about providing "health insurance to every American that they can afford and that provides them high quality." That's still not the same thing as health care, Mr. President, and I think your route is a mistake.

In the meantime, sick people get to rely on the charity of their friends. Again and again, until their friends and neighbors are tapped out.

What a stupid way to run a country.