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How do you know the health care bill won't pass with a public option? 76 percent of Americans want the bill to pass; that means Obama's under a huge amount of pressure to get the bill passed. He knows that if there's no public option, he can say goodbye to Democratic control of Congress, and hello to impeachment followed by a Republican president and World War III in 2013.
That's not to say that passing the bill will be easy. Senator Reid is only one of several people who might torpedo a public option! So do everything you can to help--call or email your representatives and the White House, donate if you can afford it, anything you can do to keep the pressure on Congress to pass the public option!
Yes, if they're as crazy as they were in the Clinton years....
Actually, at the rate the Republican Party is going, I wouldn't be surprised if they do try to impeach him for, say, lying about his birth certificate.
Well, you have more confidence in Obama and the system than I do. I know Obama has said that he would support a single-payer option no matter what, but his administration has also toyed around with a "trigger" option - which would only create a single-payer option if the insurance industry failed to meet certain criteria, in which case they might as well not offer the option at all - and the Senate, along with Harry "Spineless Jackass" Reid, is right now pushing hard for the "just force everyone to have insurance" plan.
But, yeah, maybe I'm wrong and Obama is trying to subtly push single-payer health care through without exciting the health care and insurance industries' puppets in Congress; after all, I do believe he's smart enough to have learned from Bill Clinton's mistakes. Still, it's depressing seeing the so-called "liberals" in Congress once again allowing conservatives to completely define the terms and the parameters of the debate - even letting them get away with throwing around the "private insurers will go bankrupt" and "people will be forced to give up their insurance" arguments, both of which are built on transparent lies - and yet again confusing "total surrender at the first sign of opposition" with "compromise."
Ugh, this entire situation really depresses me, especially living here in Australia, having seen how a basic government funded health care system can work. And if they tried to take this system away from the people it would be political suicide.
It's enraging more than any political issue except gay rights and gay marriage. There just aren't any sustainable, intellectually honest arguments, even cold economic ones, for not offering a public option; indeed, some of the arguments you hear are quite blunt that it's all about protecting the health insurance companies' profits and monopoly, not what's best for the public weal. It really does show how much the government's relationship with the public has deteriorated and how deep into a Reaganite-Libertarian ideology - and into corporations' pockets - both parties have gone.
I know "I'm moving to Canada!" is the cliched insincere cry of American liberals, but I am seriously considering looking into emigrating to a country with public health care, because honestly just the thought of developing a severe medical condition under the current system, even one that receives any of the half-assed "reforms" Congress is discussing, terrifies me.
Does Canada's system cover all health costs? Here, it's basic stuff - GP visits, x-rays, and then if you need something specialist or more in depth you pay the full fee yourself. I'm fairly certain that if it's life-threatening and you can't afford it, it's covered. It's not perfect, but it's wonderful compared to the US. Just making basic doctor's visits alone a non-cost would help out so many families.
I believe it does, but I do know that if you emigrate you have to have been a citizen for two years or so before you get the full benefits.
They must have changed something recently then. Although my father lived there for almost 40 years, he never took out citizenship. In his final illness (COPD) he spent almost six months in the hospital. Didn't cost him a dime.
Canada covers about 70% of costs on average, but don't cover vision, dentistry, or prescriptions. A lot of people buy private insurance on top of that through their employers.
The place you really want to be for public healthcare is France. They have both public and private insurance.
The public plan covers everyone, and you're reimbursed some percentage of your cost by the government, usually around 70%. However, they actually have an ethically-designed system where the sicker you are, the less you pay. People with serious, chronic, or terminal conditions pay nothing.
Ah, thanks! I wasn't sure, obviously, but was too lazy at the time to even use Google (somebody give me a job blogging for The Atlantic!).
I lived in Canada for 30 years and never shelled out for anything but prescription drugs and dentistry. Everything else (doctor visits, specialists, surgery, physiotherapy, 13 years of psychotherapy etc.) was fully covered.
I could have bought private ddental insurance for dentistry and "supplemental coverage" for prescriptions, but never felt the need. The annual premiums for dental insurance were more than my annual cleaning cost out of pocket (I never get cavities) and prescription drug costs were negligable, about one thirs what I pay here. If I'd developed some kind of condition that demanded expensive scripts I would have just bought the extra insurance as needed. Unlike here, the rest of the world does not deliberately structure it's health care delivery systems to fuck you.
I think the bill likely will pass with a 'public option.' However since people in this country rarely have any experience or knowlege of how 'public' health care works in the rest of the world, it'll be very easy to pass off as a 'public option' some piece-of-shit swiss cheese "plan" like I get through my job from United "health care," namely an overpriced swindle wherein you pay big premiums (I pay almost four times what I did in Canada) for "coverage' that doesn't really cover much. I have $25 co-pays for doctor visits, a $500 annual deductable for hospital stays, and a vast, confusing array of "options' which inevitably mean I wind up paying for at least part of anything my doctor does (most recently my doc removed a basal cel carcinoma from my face, and the initial "patient responsibility" portion of the bill was $284. I managed to talk them down to 80, but only after wasting hours of my time on the phone, and the whole process took so long that the bill actually went to a collection agency).
Oh, and if you get really sick (and start costing them money) they sic their team of adjusters on your file looking for ways to cancel you policy on a technicality. It's called "recission."
This is apparently "good" insurance in this country. People have been so indoctrinated here into this concept of "choice," which really only means a bunch of insanely complex bullshit designed to confuse you sufficiently that they can suck unlimited amounts of money out of you, that it'll be easy to pass some fucked up "public option" only marginally better than the mess most people have with private insurance, and everybody's happy. Especially insurance companies.
The proplem is, a lot of Americans actually believe this "best health care system in the world' nonsense. Anybody who's actually lived elsewhere knows better of course, but we're not steering the debate.
Word.
I wish I'd thought of this.
*blush* Thanks. It had been building up for quite some time.
Like other empires, ours will be killed through an idiotic devotion to our ideology over obvious necessities.
What I don't get is why the supposedly "innovative" and "efficient" businesses in this country can't see that their lobbying practices have actually hurt them over the long haul by gutting their core customers, the middle class. By doing what they're doing, the business community is only making its long-term survival less likely. | |
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