Obama’s Speech Eases Concerns in Health Insurance Industry - NYTimes.comThe President is not the commander in chief, he is merely the top public relations face for corporate America. He is the one charged with keeping the people from revolting against the wealthy.
The reality may also be much more favorable to insurers, industry analysts said. Mr. Obama has already agreed to grant one of the industry’s dearest wishes: a requirement that everyone have coverage, which is reflected in the proposals in Congress.
“Under my plan,” said Mr. Obama in a departure from his position during the campaign, “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”
True, that means he must try to give the people enough of what they want to keep them happy. Sorry, not happy, but placated.
If it is required of every individual to have health insurance then the ONLY sensible way to do this is to either socialize health care or go to a single-payer system that is paid for with taxes. To require people to factor in one more financial obligation just because you won't own up and call it a tax is ridiculous.
And to tell people they MUST have insurance (but the government may help you pay for it) with the primary insurers still being private companies is yet another government handout to the wealthy.
The proposed bill is bullshit! Total unadulterated bullshit. They call it health care reform when it is just a reshuffle and they are stacking the deck.
I admit that I might be wrong. An alternative scenario would be that the public option they speak of, once up and running, will be so fantastic that more and more companies drop their employee coverage, add their previous costs of insurance to the payroll, and let individuals go on the public plan until it gets so huge and so popular that we end up with what is essentially a single payer system. It might happen. I'll be so bold as to say this will happen well before monkeys fly out of my butt.
5 comments:
Not only is it bullshit, I can't imagine Jefferson or Franklin knocking on peoples doors after the revolution demanding money for healthcare or threatening to fine (tax) them.
Very true. If we take a look at the attitudes of the framers of the Constitution towards the commoners, the people, they were more than delighted to let the rich have access to all of the best that modern medicine could provide. The rest of the people had to suffice with whatever medicine they could find available. This often meant disgraced doctors, local veterinarians or total quacks and costs would often have to be covered by a share of food. Even modern day midwives living in rural areas have learned that being paid with a few ducks or chickens is often what their clients can afford.
If we want to offer health care for all, then by its nature it has to be socialized. We can delude ourselves that the government is representative of the people, so money in to a public health care system is money being collected for the people to be used by the people. Or the United States takes a bold stand alone in the world and claims that it is okay for the poor to die from lack of treatment, which is what the founding fathers had envisioned.
The current proposal is theft. Your money or your life.
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -Ben Franklin
"Dependence begets subserviance and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -Thomas Jefferson
Still in agreement with ya. The Constitution was constructed by a bunch of wealthy white men who despised that they were not considered aristocrats just because they weren't born into the right family. At its inception it guaranteed certain inalienable rights to all white land owners. Those rights have been slowly chewed away to include people who didn't own land, then people who weren't white, and eventually people who weren't even men.
Our Constitution was designed to preserve the liberties of the elite few who worked damn hard to exploit enough people to deserve it. Get rich, get free. That's the American way.
The founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves.
(I was going to explain myself further but decided it should wait for a full on post)
At its inception it guaranteed certain inalienable rights to all white land owners.
Not exactly true. All men could own land, at least in the north, even black men.
Our Constitution was designed to preserve the liberties of the elite few who worked damn hard to exploit enough people to deserve it. Get rich, get free. That's the American way.
I'll admit the ideals spelled out in the constitution took time for our nation to grow into. But all men could realize those liberties. It took the entire colonies being sick of British exploitation to have the revolution. The sugar tax, tea tax, quartering act...
These fetters and many others were thrown off by the Revolution.
Most especially the fact that local assemblies could pass local laws with out the approval of the crown in England. Even if some of their rulings seem strange to us now they were local democratic rulings by and for the people. Now that doesn't make every ruling "right." But it did equal self determination.
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