Healthcare companies rejoice today for the much needed reforms put into place that will ensure more customer's access to health care with generous government subsidies to pay for their product.
Even though their product's pricing has no controls and is over three times the cost of what similar goods and services cost in other countries. They negotiated this current bill with the Obama Administration and they got it.
This diary shows that the insurance company reform is going to lock in profits for a long time and that this bill is only a "cutting of milkteeth" for real reform that ABSOLUTELY MUST take place to save our democracy and the republic.
Make no mistake about it. If this bill is touted by the administration as their defining achievement and the media touts it as a "liberal-agenda reform" then real progressives will be worse than irrelevant. Real progressive voices and agendas will be non-existent.
Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors
The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor Index (HMO) is an equal dollar weighted index designed to measure the performance of companies involved in the business of managing the health care dollar, including HMOs (health maintenance organizations) and PBMs (pharmaceutical benefit managers). The HMO Index was established with a base value of 200.00 on December 16, 1994. To ensure that each component stock continues to represent approximately equal weight in the index, adjustments are made annually, based on closing prices on the third Friday in December.
here is what happened as soon as Joe Lieberman fought tooth and nail to kill the public option.
The only real way to rein in costs is by developing government controls on this predatory system. The very fact that we spend twice the amount for 1/3 of the access to health care is abominable. This bill, as it stands will push the U.S. total health care dollars spent out to four times what japan spends per person on health care.
The only real solution was said best by Warren Beatty in "Bullworth".