Maybe we have to eat this one, big time, we and all of our fellow citizens.
Maybe such teabagging chaos will erupt that restoring civil order will become more important. Or, perhaps we'll get an HCR bill passed, but one which makes the insurance corporations, the health, hospital, and nursing home corporations, makes all of the industry happy, as they hold a scalpel to our throat.
But either way, what is most likely is that we will be saddled with an insurer based system, one which works counter to our best interests, and which will continue to bring more and more rate increases.
After we get whatever half-assed milktoast pseudo-reform our masters grant us, why should we think anything else will change?
As the recession drags on, on top of thirty years of stagnating wages for the middle class, and health care costs keep rising, the floundering middle will be ever more hammered down. How much have rising employer-based health insurance costs done to keep workers from getting the rate of income increase that the top 5% have taken for granted for the last 30 years?
Funny thing about greed is, in the history of mankind, greed has never been self-limiting. Whatever rate of insane executive profitability increase the lords of the health industry have grown used to, they will expect something similar to keep making them more and more wealthy. It seems, you make a million, and ten million starts to look better. You make 10mil, and 100 mil starts to look like what God ordained for you. And that quaint $1 million now looks, puny, humiliating, more appropriate for a carny than a master of the universe.
So, given the continuing voraciousness of the wealth-obsessed, profits and premiums must continue to rise, and coverage shall continue to slip. Premiums continue to rise, 7%, 10%, more annually. Oh, the HCR bill as passed might throw a few feints on our behalf, but the policy loopholes will grow, and the recissions will increase from only 0.5% to maybe 1%, or 3% - hell, it still doesn't sound like much, does it?
What happens next brings the tragic pivot point. While we are still clawing our way through the recession/"recovery":
Even more people find they can't afford health insurance.
More dropped insurance.
More medically driven bankruptcies, even for people with insurance.
More businesses increase the employee cost of health insurance.
More small businesses close as they can't offer wages or benefits to sustain the quality of employees they need - the bigs get to cherry pick the workforce.
Other nations, progressive enough to guarantee their citizens' health care, are more than happy to compete for our outsourced industries.
Finally,
Just like it took us over 50,00 dead GIs to start to get a clue on Vietnam...
Just as it took 9/11 to even eventually make us start to reflect on how we've dealt with the Muslim world and the MidEast...
Just, as Churchill (or Yogi Berra, or Twain) said, we can count on America to do the right thing after they've tried everything else...
Just as we let the economic toothpaste tube be squeezed entirely towards the top...
Shit. Will. Happen..
Maybe eco-disaster. Probably another pandemic. Or a new variant of an STD or bacterial infection. Something with nationwide health implications for our vast peasant class will strike.
Then America will demand Single Payer Universal National Health as a matter of survival. As we bury our dead, as desperation informs more of the public's behavior, maybe we'll finally get it.
After we've tried everything else.
Victory, bitchez.