Based on our many discussions about health care reform, I think all who blog here can agree single-payer is the solution, with Medicare for all coming in second. Those are the solutions if Congress actually addresses the many challenges regarding our country’s health care dilemma.
From there, we diverge.
Simply put, our opinions range from those who want everything currently on the table killed (just about as badly as do the Republicans, albeit for totally different reasons!), to those who hope the first step will be improved (as quickly as possible!), so we’re advocating don’t make perfect the enemy of good (even tho we readily admit there isn’t very much good there).
If a health-care reform bill passes Congress it looks like it will be through reconciliation, although even that method of passage is in question. Those of us who view this as a first and necessary step see the tweaking beginning immediately. Some 40 million Americans who currently don’t have any health care coverage will be provided some options with taxpayers footing the bill. This changes only the fact that taxpayers will be paying for insurance coverage instead of paying for emergency care. But, maybe those Americans will actually get health care instead of only emergency care. Still, the big winner is insurance companies who get more people on their rolls.
We continue to hope that some of the regulations, and those to come with the tweaking, will control how badly the insurance companies are allowed to abuse us.
Democrats have made it clear they intend to cover the uninsured before another lifetime or two elapses; the Republicans make it equally clear they do not. Further, it appears Republicans will regain majorities in upcoming elections, and unless health care is addressed before that happens, we’re stuck with the alternative of nothing.
Nothing shouldn’t be an option!
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
Yes single payer! But I am afraid what we are getting is just another way the people are ending up the losers.
I keep thinking if only the entire focus had been on either single payer or the lesser but equally effective Public opinion. The defense would have been more solid and less easy to distort.
I don’t know about that to be honest though, I keep coming back to the “Kill Granny” amendment.
Spelled out and easy enough to understand and hardly anything objectionable.
OMG how successful they were at spinning it in to something so sinister!
The closest this is coming is a collective, I guess better then nothing. But still without something to be a benchmark as to what it is that is covered and the prices to be charged.
I dislike this based on a percentage idea, far too often I have encountered such concepts.
Often those deciding what the percentage is seem to live in a different reality.
Well for sure, TSTB, there isnt anything in the Senate plan that is going to help you and I. I’m glad more people will be covered, but they are still at the mercy of the insurance companies, as are we all. I’m not sure it’s worth covering the rest of those folks when their coverage will still not be that great, and the rest of us are just sucking eggs. Yes, people will die if we dont pass this bill. But I think we could wait and do it right so the rest of us as well dont die from lack of care.
And let’s not even talk about medical bankruptcy. Comfortable people dont believe it, but most Americans are one major illness away from it.
This bill does NOTHING to help them.
Too much of it is like simply telling the hungry to go eat at McDonalds!
There the problem of the hungry in the United States is solved.
Uninsured well go buy insurance then! Problem solved and now no one is uninsured.
But yes there is too much is mindless as the above then calling it a reform.
The mandate is taking care of some of the uninsured so there is a win.
But it also forces people into the hands of the very same big insurance companies that have been said to be soul-less and heartless.
A fist full of free money but they will have to cover the pre-existing conditioned!!!!
That will cost the insurance companies to do causing a loss of profit no fair huh?
BUT there is also no real cap on what they can charge the client with a pre-existing condition.
other then the cap based on a percentage of their income that can be up to three times as much for the same insurance.
Big insurance will now be double paid for the single and same service.
I keep going back to every important social issue — Social Security, Medicare, racial equality…, and I think about how imperfect the solutions began, how much they eventually improved life for Americans, how the first step was the hardest. I know we can’t take the second step until the first one is reality.
I also know Republicans won’t make any positive changes for Americans. They never have and so I believe their track record speaks for itself. They’ll regain the majority and bow at the alter of tax cuts and big business — making bigger problems for our country and her citizens.
Nothing good happens when Republicans are in the majority. Name me one, just one, ever. Yeah, there aren’t any.
So we can’t wait for perfect, we must take the first step!
This C-Span site is a great source of information about the health care reform debate taking place this week in Congress.
http://www.c-span.org/Topics/Health-Care-Insurance-Reform-Legislation-Town-Hall.aspx