Published on Saturday, September 5, 2009 by Rolling Stone
How Washington is Screwing Up Health Care Reform – and Why It May Take a Revolt to Fix It
by Matt Taibbi
(Yep, once again he breaks it down into digestible chunks)
...Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world...
...Almost every single one of the main players - from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Blue Dog turncoat Max Baucus - found some unforeseeable, unique-to-them way to fuck this thing up...
...The only committee that didn't finish a bill is the one that's likely to matter most: the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by the infamous obfuscating dick Max Baucus, a right-leaning Democrat from Montana who has received $2,880,631 in campaign contributions from the health care industry...
...In the real world, nothing except a single-payer system makes any sense. There are currently more than 1,300 private insurers in this country, forcing doctors to fill out different forms and follow different reimbursement procedures for each and every one. This drowns medical facilities in idiotic paperwork and jacks up prices: Nearly a third of all health care costs in America are associated with wasteful administration. Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system - more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so...
(Yeesh sometimes I wonder how many times the Democrats will play Charlie Brown to the Lucy-with-the-football Republicans/Lobbyists/Moneyed Interests? And I did not know the following when I listened to Darrell Issa go on and on bitching about Obama's czars. )
...Many of the health care advisers in Obama's inner circle, meanwhile, are industry hacks - people like Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president's health care czar, who has served on the boards of for-profit companies like Medco Health Solutions and Triad Hospitals. DeParle is so unthreatening to the status quo that Karen Ignagni, the insurance industry's leading lobbyist-gorgon, praised her "extensive experience" and "strong track record."...
...employers who currently offer sub-par coverage will have their shitty plans protected by a grandfather clause. Which means ...
"If you have coverage you like, you can keep it," says Sen. Sanders. "But if you have coverage you don't like, you gotta keep it."
This grandfather clause has potentially wide-ranging consequences. One of the biggest health care problems we have in this country is the technique used by large employers - Walmart is the most notorious example - of offering dogshit, bare-bones health insurance that forces employees to take on steep co-pays and other massive charges. Low-wage workers currently offered these plans often reject them and join Medicaid, effectively shifting the health care burden for Walmart employees on to the taxpayer. If the HELP committee's grandfather clause survives to the final bill, those workers who did the sensible thing in rejecting Walmart's crap employer plan and taking the comparatively awesome insurance offered via Medicaid will now be rebuffed by the state and forced to take the dogshit Walmart offering...
...If the public option is the sine qua non for progressives, then the "individual mandate" is the counterpart must-have requirement for the insurance industry....
And Buzzflash nails it again.
Health Care "Reform" that Will Enrich For-Profit Insurance Companies and Big Pharma is What the WH is Fighting For Now
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