and i’m laughing at his rapidly dropping jowls and neck flap–he’s quickly earning the face he deserves

We are not impressed.

Why are the insurance companies even part of this discussion? When does America get to re-join the civilized world?

America is officially broken.

CORPORATE SERVITUDE UNDER THE COLOR OF LAW? Corporate Sodomy under the color of law!

I’m a huge Obama supporter, and I like to give him all the credit in the world for being 6 jumps ahead of everyone else, but isn’t that why we elected him? — to fight the good fight?

To say that I’m disappointed by the WH’s weenie-ism on this, is an understatement.

Let’s put that in perspective. We would need to build one new Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial on the Mall in Washington each year just to hold the names of the dead. They would quickly lead up the steps of the Capitol and into the pristine Rose Garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

None of those dead will work on Capitol Hill. For $503 a year, members of Congress and the Supreme Court have a fully staffed Naval hospital in the basement, preferential access to Washington area hospitals and a choice of 10, count ‘em, 10 premium, no questions asked full-coverage medical plans. All on the taxpayer’s dime (millions of them). A modest benefits plan for a family of four in this country costs twice that per month. And it’s not taxpayer financed.

It appears at times they would just be happy to take a blank piece of paper and write “Healthcare Reform of 2009″ on it and vote. Then they could take credit for passing ‘healthcare reform’.

I say that with some trepidation since they had done some good things leading up to the healthcare legislation work. They aren’t all disappointing all the time.

It’s just that the stimulus was required, but the healthcare reform, however important, might well have been ignored by many other presidents. The healthcare reform has been identified by Dems as their number one priority since 1992. How can there possibly be some senators who don’t care to really change things? How can they not see the current system is unsustainable no matter how they might want to support and build on it. Did they miss the healthcare debate among presidential candidates during 2007 and 2008? Do they think they get to decide all this by themselves?

How can a senator be so isolated that they don’t realize this is important to do NOW. The urgency of now is lost on them. Why? Because their own ideas of how the healthcare system/model should work has not been challenged and changed. Why? Because they have been isolated and have not engaged in the debate/discussion. They’re dinosaurs on this issue.

Are we back to square one? Do we have to begin the discussion of how the healthcare system should work and what principles have to be fundamental to it?

If you have a gov’t (or employer) run system you have control, but individuals lose their freedom. If you have individual freedom you have to release the great big rich hand of the corporations. If you have soaring costs you have to look at the pricing mechanism and see what’s wrong. We know our system lacks competition because it’s a health issue and individuals can’t do anything about it and the insurance market isn’t very competitive and is dominated by insurers dealing with corporations.

It’s corporate pricing which the healthcare insurers love. They soak up the dollars like a sponge. The more dollars in the pool the more they want. They would love the large stream of dollars from a gov’t able to put more and more in a system. They do very well with a corporate source that they’re draining to the point that we can’t compete internationally. They stay away from individual pricing because that doesn’t offer them much blood to suck.

The only way a gov’t system could avoid pouring endless dollars in the system is to control what it will pay directly to providers and that’s not a free market system. A great many Democrats and ALL Republicans would oppose that on principle, not to mention for political purposes.

The employer-based system Kerry wants to support is killing us. We need insurers to price to the individual and family, not corporations with deep pockets and not the gov’t treasury. And, we need them to compete with one another to get the individual’s business.

We need choice for individuals and competition for insurers.

The Exchange is good. Crossing state lines to buy insurance anywhere would be good. Ending anti-trust exemptions for insurers might make life a little tougher on them and better for everyone else. Many of the other reforms in the current legislation would also help consumers.

But, you get the competition when it’s individuals and not corporations the insurer has to sign up. You get competition when there are more sources of insurance. You get more competition when more people are enabled to buy insurance and the profits could be higher for the competitive winner.

You get more competition when there’s more plans for the individual to choose from. That might include (a) public option(s). It clearly happens when the individual, hundreds of millions, find what is best for them.

The employer-based system burdens employers (Ask GM and look at what’s happening to American Airlines today) and ties employees to jobs. That’s not good for the nation’s economy. Perhaps worst of all, it more-or-less condemns the unemployed to not having insurance because the rates are corporate rates that individuals, and particularly unemployed individuals, can’t afford.

Rep. Alan Grayson recently said over 40 thousand people die every year because they don’t have health insurance. How many of those were unemployed? Democrats can’t afford to be the party whose healthcare reform plan is: We’re not going to change anything because we must support the employer-based system, so 1. Get a job with insurance; 2. Don’t get sick; 3. If you get sick die quickly, so you won’t be a burden on anybody. That’s unacceptable.

They don’t want one. Not wanting to disrupt the elegant workings of unrestrained capitalism, they already negotiated it away. They now need a reason why they “can’t” get it.

Exactly. Robert Reich recently wrote that they had negotiated a deal with the hc industry early on so that the hc industry wouldn’t throw their full weight into crushing any reform. I suppose Obama wasn’t so interested in a war with the hc industry, which would include more than insurance companies, and maybe feels private insurance works well enough so long as people have it. So that became his goal, something the hc industry would obviously be quite happy about. “You cover the sick, and we’ll force the healthy who currently don’t pay to get insurance as well. Deal?”

So, though the hc industry is spending millions in their campaign, it’s more to keep politicians in line with the deal they’ve already made and not to stray into the public option or single payer, which would spoil the deal for both the president and the industry. They want to say they passed major “reform” and they don’t want to lose.