Senate Votes Down Public Option

Two amendments aimed at providing a public healthcare option were shot down in the Senate Tuesday.

A large minority of Democratic senators are are caving in to insurance pressure, and just a few of the most corrupt Senators have taken up as champions of a public option.  Perhaps they’re trying to reclaim some credibility as blue working-class heros, but the party’s Senate leadership seems dead-set on selling out their constituency.

Blue collar democrats are stuck in an abusive and financially draining relationship – but if they leave, where can they go?

Healthcare – Private profits, public mandate

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.