I find the quandary Baucus is now in to be more than a little ironic.
He seemed so confident in his monumental success as he attempted to serve up a load of tripe to the American public all the while shilling for the insurance industry under the guise of working hard for John Q.
He must now be wondering if he’s been selling his… ahem, “wares” to Jack the Ripper.
I could take a swipe at the political prostitution he’s been engaging in, but why aim for the low hanging fruit?
Really, there are bigger issues to tackle, such as the ludicrous claims made by the AHIP in this fundamentally flawed study.
If prior trends are the best predictor of future trends, then what does this say about the future cost of premiums, with or without insurance reform? At least with insurance reform, we get more Americans covered, and hospitals and providers aren’t forced to resort to padding the bill of the insured to pay for the uninsured.
I will say once again, the more we learn about Baucus’s bill, the more it seems to argue for a comprehensive public option. This bill as it stands now scares the living $4!# out of me. All I can see is greater expenditures, and no means of reining in cost. Maintaining the status quo, and amping it up on speed by insuring more people under the same broken system without any checks or balances, no increased regulation or enforcement, is the definition of a recipe for disaster.
It’s a bit scary, the lengths the insurance industry will go to manipulate us. More frightening is that we seem to believe them. They played on our fears with Harry and Louise, and then proceeded to steal every last chicken from every last hen house. They seem to have realized hens require hen houses and are hoping to distract us long enough to steal those too. How do we go from a majority of Americans being in favor of a public option to the heated melee the many Town Hall meetings became? It couldn’t possibly be the work of the AHIP, right? Nah. Crazy conspiracy theories…
At this point all I can do is foresee a future where the insurance industry coffers are overflowing with all this mandated coverage, that much wealthier, and able to funnel more of our premiums into fending off any legislation in the future that might require them to behave in an ethical manner.
It’s not a pleasant future to contemplate. All those fiscal conservatives, on either side of the aisle, when we’re spending most of our GDP on health care, how will we fund the military? Infrastructure? Reduce the debt? Balance the budget? Pay for education?
Wake up, America. We’re losing our edge. One only needs a cursory look at world history to know that’s a dangerous position. We can be the promise that lures people from around the globe to our shores, in search of a brighter future. We won’t get there by being the school-yard bully. Our only hope is to remember the qualities that have driven the greatest moments in our young history: compassion, innovation, negotiation. It’s time to stop special interests from derailing our country for the sake of flooding their coffers.
