Independent News and Politics

Congress keeps compromising and tweaking their “healthcare reform overhaul” legislation, and every step it gets toward the number of needed votes is a disaster for the actual American people.

By last count, the public option is completely gone, but all U.S. citizens will still be forced by the threat of penalty to buy a private insurance plan. Although there are some regulations in how these private providers can set prices and make their services available, the biggest change for private insurance companies will be that the government is magically coming in to swoop up all the 55 and older folks.

As Medicare absorbs all the older people, the real risk of the insurance companies will drop close to zero – at the same time they have a captive market of 18-55 year olds with little choice in whether or not they want to participate. Fundamentally, the young will subsidize corporate insurance profits, while also paying the taxes necessary to take care of the 55 and older crowd.

Unfortunately, all of the good jobs are still being held by the 50-60 year olds!

Unemployment is a nightmare for the under 30 crowd, and so many people have never officially become a part of the work force because they never got a job after finishing college.

I’ve had enough of this messing around – I’m ready to see Congress come up with a plan for universal coverage that doesn’t simply put pressure on those who haven’t yet bought coverage. If you want everyone under the government’s protection, go ahead and do it.

Just don’t dare force us into supporting private profitability under the guise of doing some great social charity…

Max Baucus has a plan for healthcare, but it is as bad or worse as doing nothing.

As if to prove what is wrong with the corporate and political environment in America, Baucus wants us to believe that using public force to enforce private profitability is a key to staying healthy and wealthy.

This plan would mandate health insurance to all Americans without providing a non-profit public option.  It also wouldn’t address the costs of becoming a doctor, the legal costs of fighting frivolous lawsuits and malpractice insurance, or the health costs of all of the crap the FDA approves as food and medicine.

What it would do, is add millions of new customers to the health insurance rolls.

Good job, Max!  Way to earn those corporate contributions.

Will Obama support this plan or fire back with a new media offensive and round of speeches?  The campaign version of Obama opposed mandates and the issue has become quite a topic for debate between limo liberals and their blue-collared minions.  Despite the theoretical macro-benefits of mandated insurance, the move alone won’t do much if anything to address the affordability of the insurance coverage for those individuals who couldn’t afford it in the first place.

So we have to wonder.  Is the problem that Americans can’t afford insurance, or is the problem just that they’re choosing to buy something else?  The facts show we spend more per capita than plenty of places with universal coverage, so I think the big problem is on the cost end.

Maybe if there was a health coverage product that Americans felt was a good value, there would be more of us signing up for it.