Health Care for Christmas?
Readers of my blog have probably noticed that I’ve been a little quiet on the health care bill as it has gone through the Senate meat-grinder. This is because I find the process depressing. Watching the will of the people get twisted, watered-down, thrown out, or outright replaced with opposite legislation takes its toll.
What the final bill will look like at this point is still anyone’s guess. But, it’s not looking good for the public option. With no public option, I believe the mandate for insurance coverage has to be thrown out as well, or we will just end up with a forced giveaway to a near-monopoly private industry. The public option and the mandate for coverage should be a package deal — lose one and lose the other.
Whatever the case may be with the public option and the mandate for coverage, we will most likely be getting some real reform out of this bill. No more preexisting conditions. No more dropped coverage when you get sick. An insurance exchange that could offer insurance across state lines and follow you from job to job. These are nothing to sneeze at.
But the Senate debate has made it crystal clear: the real danger all along was not that the government would “take over health care,” but that corporate interests would find a way to lock in a nation of customers at rip-off prices. Republicans locking in their opposition from the beginning has allowed a handful of conservative Democrats (and Joe Lieberman) to drag their knuckles and nearly derail the whole process on behalf of the interests of the insurance industry.
If we end up with a turd of a health care bill, I know right where to place the blame.
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January 2nd, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Kenny, I encourage you and all readers of this blog to go to Andy Wilson’s web site and sign up for his newsletter to get his positions on this and other issues of interest to voters in U.S. Congressional District TX-19 (includes Lubbock, Abilene, Plainview and other communities in the South Plains and Big Country as well). The web location as you have noted before is:
http://istandwithandy.com
and there are links there to volunteer, sign up to receive Andy’s newsletter - the last issue of which dealt explicitly with health care and insurance reform and why they are needed - as well as to contact the campaign, contribute, etc.
Some news: we have in hand more than enough signatures to get Andy onto the primary ballot now, so in less than 60 days our current Representative Neugebauer will have his hands full with a full-on, full-bore challenge by someone determined to replace his biased policy positions and one-sided lack of representation with a fair, true and equal approach for all Americans here in West Texas.
If you want change **for the better** and an end to imperfect representatives like Neugebauer that take their Congressional salary money and donations but do nothing for West Texas, then visit the web site, sign up for the newsletters, contribute and see what else you can do!
Thanks and all the best in the New Year!