A war on the weak continues. Legislators insist that ignoring the remaining problems in the bill will not hurt them in 2010 or 2012. They're also still refusing to consider that the price hikes in Massachusetts's "connector", used as the model for 2014, may expose systemic problems of lack of cost control. Responsible approaches practiced by Canada, the UK, Taiwan and other nations don't exist to them. Outcome research is irrelevant. They WANT TO KEEP INSURANCE's INSULATION SHIELD FOR POLITICIANS no-matter what."
22 Big Problems that remain in the bill..
"Improvements On These Areas Urgently Needed To Address America's Needs"
Version 0.3a January 18. 2010 - please post your additions in comments
1.) Intimidating sick workers out of accessing health care, through fear of layoffs due to arbitrary premium hikes (sometimes as high as $1M for a single workers illness), that they have (soon) (been forced to) pay for, also by prolonging the charging of wholly unsustainable prices, prolonging the death grip of the insurance industry and
2.) creating a situation which deceives science and the world into seeing an artificially rosy picture of the nation's health, particularly work-related illness - by preventing doctors from having accurate epidemiological data on working or poor Americans, because while employed, employees often can't use their benefits out of fear, and so their illnesses exist off the map, indefinitely. (Causing an extremely large number of deaths that are clearly preventable)
3.) Keeping healthcare, drug, etc. prices unaffordably, artificially high in the midst of a full blown depression employment wise. (US drug prices average 400% higher than prices charged Western European nationals)
4.) Keeping the health insurance companies as deniers of health care, and as paid partners in the deceit, in return for their insulating the government from responsibility for millions of deaths caused by bad "government" policy. REPEAL ERISA Sec. 514
5.) Insuring that the poor get bad care and that the rich get barely adequate (cadillac) to good (indemnity) care and insuring that the various castes remain separated and segregated in "separate but unequal" facilities, testing, etc. (some facilities are being built with separate poor and non poor entrances, just like in the old south) This prevents class mixing and people comparing medical care, preventing legal problems.
6.) "Saving money" on Social Security by Malthusian methods. (See Rafael Lemkin, 1934)
7.) Maintaining the government's ability to raise and lower subsidy levels arbitrarily, allowing the government to lower subsidies or dump them when budgets are tight.
8.) Delaying any actual changes in the healthcare system for potentially decades, potentially killing millions, by legislating a delay until 2014, in the hopes that Republicans will win in 2010 or 2012 and repeal them.
9.) Maintaining a national "job lock" for those in group plans by maintaining their discriminatory practices, so that American workers are prevented by fear of lack of healthcare access that they would not encounter elsewhere, from changing jobs... (below)
10.)...stifling the creation of new businesses that could revitalize the economy and hire the millions of unemployed.
11.) Maintaining discrimination on age and health status for the 80% of Americans who have job-based group, plans, while creating misleading propaganda implying that this discrimination was in some way ending for them. (instead, its pricing depends on it)
12.) Keeping the younger worker, more likely to be outspoken, off the streets by incentivizing jobs AWAY from the over-35-40 employee TO them. also making it impossible for those who have survived any major illness, and their families, and those over 50 to find work-
13.) forcing early retirement, homelessness, divorce and destruction of the above, without having to pay the millione effected any compensation.
14.) Maintaining a separate, private denial infrastructure that can maintain members only practices, maintain health databases on employees and potential hires, and siphon away the lives of those who have fallen prey to bad healthcare away from demands of honesty or transparency and accountability by virtue of its private and inherently secretive nature.
15.) Assisting the power elite in their maintenance of the illusion of democracy without actual change in any real measure of same.
16.) Creating a system that subjects some earnings of the working poor to "marginal tax rates" far in excess of 100% if their earnings exceed the 3xFPL cutoff by as little as one dollar.
17.) Creating an ADDITIONAL unjust system that makes healthcare deliberately unaffordable for those who need it.
18.) making the health care system so Byzantine and NEEDLESSLY complicated that almost nobody can understand it in their attempt to drive the poor deeper into poverty and increase stratification of wealth and speed the destruction of the middle class and the export of jobs elsewhere.
19.) Encouraging the development of huge "diasporas" of American refugees trapped overseas unable to return home because of their health.
20.) Forcing on a nation that clearly wants single payer healthcare the continuation of a utterly criminal, morally bankrupt system that kills 100,000 (preventable deaths) plus 80,000 (careless preventable medical mistakes) Americans annually.
21.) Allowing Insurers To Sell Over State Lines Is A Potential Trap That Could Lock-In Unaffordable Healthcare Forever. WTO GATS Article XXI requires compensation to other affected WTO signatories when a service sector is withdrawn from WTO jurisdiction.
22.) The Senate Bill's Basing Subsidy and Exchange Eligibility On One's Previous Years Annual Income Is Wrong As It Will Prevent Millions Who Need Subsidies From Getting Help. The real time approach in the House bill is better, but still ignores the reality that millions will still not be able to afford health insurance because they make more than the system allows and cannot afford premiums. The system should be paid for by taxes, not allow the working poor and middle class to go uncovered. The 52% spent on the military budget should be reduced and that money used to make this work if the politicians insist on insulating themselves and spending 50% of every healthcare dollar needlessly. Single Payer would solve this problem and make high quality, not bare minimal healthcare affordable saving AT LEAST 60,000 American lives, probably far more, if prices keep rising, each year, people who cannot and still will not be able to afford underinsurance, many of whom would otherwise die.
What is the REAL reason for the bizarre behavior?
Basically, the responsible (politicians and insurance industry) insistence on keeping themselves co-dependent, and hence insulated from prosecution for those already dead is perhaps a crucial, hidden factor dooming this whole nation to an eternity of bad AND unaffordable healthcare.
This is the same trap the GOP fell into under Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, (and the reason they devoted so much energy to helping Obama in the early primaries, after he proposed an amnesty, you will recall.)