Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
Let us make no mistake about it. The only good things in the healthcare bill have been viciously buried alive in a shallow grave. Single-Payer was the real solution that would have guaranteed fair, across the board coverage for all Americans. It met a slow, and tortured death buried alive. The Public Option was then our only hope to keep insurers honest, and it met with a long, torturous death buried alive with malice while the American people virtually begged for it. The employer mandate, like single-payer appears to have been buried alive. Yes, everything good that could have come from reform seems to be somewhere near Jimmy Hoffa, dead and buried never to be found.
But the one thing that lives, and indeed thrives in this bill is the individual mandate. You know, the part that forces Americans to deal with the insurance companies who had such a hand in causing the problem. For many folks like me, they have already tried to deal with these folks, reaching out for coverage and pulling back a bloody nub we could not afford to go to the hospital to have sewn back on.
In fact, this mandate with no public option does fulfill an Obama campaign pledge, to bring America together in bi-partisan fashion. You see, Progressives, Conservatives and Independents have finally all come together. We all hate this bill being shoved down our throats to placate Corporate Democrats who have poisoned healthcare, our party, and indeed our country:
The death of the public option left the individual mandate exposed. Disappointed liberals now confront in the cold light of day a provision that will, by force of law, make people hand over money — and a lot of it, as a percentage of their total income — to the insurance companies. Should they fail to do so, they face fines that could total billions of dollars a year, or even jail time.
Outside of the income and payroll taxes and Prohibition, the individual mandate might be the most intrusive peacetime measure ever undertaken by the federal government. It will require people to buy a private good or service as a basic condition of living in the United States. If the Constitution weren’t all but a dead letter on such questions, there’d be a roiling debate over what authority the federal government has for this coercive extravagance.
We’ll have to settle for a right-left pincer movement against it. The right hates the governmental fiat and thinks — given the regulations and taxes that add to the cost of insurance — the mandate’s a bad deal.
The left hates that the insurance companies get the proceeds. Instead of cutting out the dastardly "middle man," the bill ensures that the middle man scoops up even more customers. In his usual carefully reasoned style, Olbermann thundered against "the legally mandated delivery of the middle class into a kind of Chicago stockyards of insurance." He vowed to defy it, even if he must become the country’s most famous insurance criminal.
http://newsok.com/...
So all of us have come together to hate this bill. Of course, Republicans hate it because they wanted no reform whatsoever. Progressives and Independents hate it because we thought we had elected a real leader who would fight for real reforms, but instead decided to cower to Corporate Democrats in poisoning all that was good in the bill. With less fame and fanfare, I myself will be joining Keith Olberman in being one American who will defy this bill. Whatever the fine may be I know it will be less than having to deal with the insurance companies with a pre-existing condition, Type 1 Diabetes which came about by no fault of my own and got me thrown off the insurance I did have, and now it will cost me over twice my house payment to acquire that elusive coverage once more.
If I were to go see my doctor twice a month, take my medicine as scheduled it still would not come up to even close to what insurance coverage would cost me. Of course, I have learned to control my sugar on my own because I cannot afford to go to the doctor. I have scaled back my insulin in favor of exercise, doing twenty minutes of stepups when I eat to try and burn off the sugar instead of taking the expensive insulin shot. To add insult to injury, this bill allows the insurance companies to continue to discriminate against me for five more years. Worse yet, if I did keep my scheduled doctors appointments and took my insulin on the recommended schedule it would cost much less than the insurance companies would charge me monthly in premiums.
I trusted my party in the Congress and my President would fight for me. As a since disgraced primary candidate in the Presidential election put it last year, "We simply cannot replace corporate Republicans with Corporate Democrats and expect real change". No sex scandal can nullify the very real and prophetic statement made by him, and that is what we have done. All along in the last two election cycles Progressives are now facing the painful truth that it was always heads they win, tails we lose.
Now we are put in the horrible position of agreeing with the folks we have fought against so long in the political arena. For the first time ever I have agreed with someone I completely loathe, Mitch McConnell. Of course I do not agree with him on the reasons, but I do agree that this bill is being rushed through the Congress and the best thing for it is to be killed. All across the political spectrum, folks like myself find themselves in a similar, uncomfortable position due to the pandering to Corporate Democrats who should be Republicans because that is where their heart lies, with the Republicans and their beloved Corporations.
Now it is time for justice to be served if these junk reforms are to be shoved down the bi-partisan bloc of opposition created by an un-caring Congress and a President too timid to fight for what he long ago stated that he believed in. The only thing that can redeem these junk reforms is if the individual mandate is dropped, and buried alive in a shallow grave with the single-payer system and the public option, the only real solutions that amounted to anything but Corporate Welfare. To me, it is simply un-American for me to be forced to deal with the very people who have shown me already that I mean nothing to them, and as Alan Grayson stated would rather me just "die quickly" because I am sick instead of having to waste any of their precious profits on me.
This bill was written to force the middle-class and those aspiring to achieve it to pay for junk reforms that will benefit them little. If our Congress is really intent on forcing us to deal with crooks, this bill needs other improvements added. The minimum wage in this country needs to be raised to at least $10.50 an hour so that middle, and under middle-class folks can afford to pay what they are mandated to pay with no protections. Employers should be mandated also, to help the folks whose wages they have stagnated to buy into the policies that will grow worse once coverage is mandated for the individual only.
The sad part is that Democratic leaders still want to insist we are stupid. They think the American people will buy this garbage when it is enacted and that soon their sagging poll numbers will rise:
But an official predicted to me the other day that Obama's numbers would hit 60 after the health care bill passes, and Chuck Schumer seems to think roughly the same thing: that the public polling on the Democratic reform bill will turn around "soon."
When people see what is in this bill and when people see what it does, they will come around," Schumer said. "The reason people are negative is not the substance of the bill, but the fears that the opponents have laid out. When those fears don't materialize, and people see the good in the bill, the numbers are going to go up."
http://www.politico.com/...
Are these folks just in denial, or are they really so out of touch with the American people it is embarrassing?? Can they not read?? Have they not seen the polls?? I have news for them, I know when I have been bent over and violated. I will not come around to "favoring" this bill because quite obviously it leaves me out for at least five years, and only God knows how much money I do not have it will cost me to be covered or pay the fine. Something tells me the fine will be cheaper and I will be joining Keith Olberman in paying it.
So here is an honest request of our lawmakers. Actually in lieu of requesting, I am BEGGING. Please drop the individual mandate from this bill. Insurance companies have been allowed to discriminate against me for five more years and I simply cannot afford their greed. The only redeeming grace to this bill will be to remove the individual mandate and require employers to help cover their employees instead. If not, all they have done here is give a huge boon of Corporate Welfare to the Health Insurers and made criminals of those of us who are poor and sick.