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I look at this differently, and I disagree with Fred. Obama's health care bill was bad legislation, and it just got worse the closer it came to passage. The fundamental problem is this: people like me need help. We are being bankrupted by just day-to-day health maintenance, let alone serious or catastrophic illnesses or injuries. Our employer- provided health insurance does not pay for what we need, and our employers are paying through the nose for it. I work for a very small company (under a dozen employees). I saw what my boss was paying just to provide health insurance to me and my family (I doubt if I was meant to see it), and my jaw dropped to the floor. I have never been able to bring myself to ask for a raise ever since then! Of course, since I'm a cancer survivor, and now 60 y.o., it costs that much more to insure me. And what do I get for the huge amount (I'm not kidding) that my boss is laying out, and for which I'm paying $100 every two weeks? Look at it this way: my wife needed several eye surgeries in 2007 and 2008, first to correct a detached retina and later to remove a cataract (which was accelerated by the retina surgery). The insurance company (I'll name names: it was Aetna) denied coverage. The reason? The doctor was in Aetna's network, but his OFFICE was not! The doctor owns the office, and he insists on doing the surgery there because he has better and more up-to-date equipment than the local hospital has. But it's not part of the network (I'm still trying to figure out this logic), and so payment was denied. We tried fighting it, and the doctor has tried to fight it with many other patients. We lost. That's just one egregious example. My deductible is $4000. My boss (he's not a bad guy) picks up $2000 of that with an additional plan (Choice Care Card). Well, I spend nearly that much in half a year on my cholesterol and BP meds! I tried generics, but the side effects were so bad, I had the doctor take me off them right away. And do you know what? A lot of people are in worse shape than I am! I am not atypical at all. I suspect that a very high percentage, if not a majority, of working people have no better coverage than I have, if not worse. And for this we're paying massive money. What pisses me off to no end about Obama's "reform" is that it does nothing for the millions of families like mine. "If you like the health insurance you already have, you can keep it," says Obama. Well, in the real world, that's not my decision, now is it? If the company is providing the health insurance, it's the COMPANY that decides whether it likes the health insurance we already have. That means that unless Aetna or a competitor offers a better plan for less money, I'm stuck with what I've got. Yeah, I could get insurance on my own, but I would be paying more per month than my boss already is, and it would bankrupt me within three months. My daughter graduates from college in May (she's 20). I can keep her own my plan until she's 26 (federal law) or 29 (NJ law), BUT my boss doesn't have to pay for her. I do. God only knows how I'm going to do that. Obama's bill doesn't help me. Was there a realistic alternative? Yes, there was. HR676/S701 was introduced into the House by John Conyers of Michigan and into the Senate by Bernie Sanders of Vermont. All this bill did was open the Medicare system to all ages. Jesus Christ, Medicare's been there for forty-five years. It's a known quantity! It's not perfect, but it works well enough that even Ronald Reagan, who called it "creeping socialism" in 1964, did not dare suggest repealing it when he was running for president or serving in that office. It would have been cheaper than Obama's plan, and it would probably not have generated the hysterical opposition that his plan generated. Imagine over-65 y.o. teabaggers calling it "socialism" when they are enjoying its benefits! But it would have been a direct blow to the insurance industry and a less direct but still serious blow to Big Pharma. And we have to point this out. We're going to spend more to get a lot less, when Congress could have passed a 37-page bill that would have in one stroke provided health insurance for everyone. Am I angry at Kucinich, Sanders, Conyers, Weiner, and the others for caving on this? I'm fucking furious! They could have helped to bring this down and then start over with a strong campaign for HR676. But no, they checked their principles at the door. And working people like me get shoved under the bus. Look: Obama won this fight, and he won it big. And all the Republicans have done is just sputter a lot of lies, and in three months the media is going to stop talking about it. The right wing's repeal efforts will get nowhere, and unfortunately, the campaign for single-payer has also probably been derailed for the foreseeable future. Obama won big. The only consolation for me is that I will be eligible for Medicare soon, for what that's worth. Tom On Mar 24, 2010, at 1:17 PM, Fred Feldman wrote: > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > > I think the very small and powerless far left in this country went > way off > the deep end in calling for the defeat of the health care bill. > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
