Health Care "Reform" (wink wink)

UpDate 12/20/09: Nebraska NeoCon "Democrat" (wink wink) Senator Ben Nelson has flip-flopped and will be voting for approval of the Senate's currently watered-down version of the House's Healthcare Reform Bill (but only after raping and abusing the process for concessions of pure self-interest). Nelson's vote gives the Good Guys (we Dems) a filibuster-proof 60 votes. So by Christmas Eve, both the House and the Senate will have passed a Healthcare Reform bill-- an amazing achievement for President Obama. After the Holidays, the process of "merging" both bills begins. This is where we kick all the obstructionist GOP ass off the playing field and reconfigure and pass the Healthcare Reform Bill America wants.

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Right now, it looks like the majority of our elected leaders in Washington are traitors and shills on the take for the health insurance companies. Congress is awash in greed and corruption, and the current/mutated healthcare "reform" bill is an endless paid vacation for the powerful and profit obsessed health insurance companies. We're enraged that there are elected Democrats who are not working for the good of the common people-- the people who want and need true healthcare reform. The Voice of the People is being quashed (for now) and it doesn't seem to matter that thousands of Americans are dying every year due to a lack of affordable health insurance. A mandate that everyone must sign up for health insurance, without a public option, is not going to guarantee that healthcare will be affordable to everyone. But it will guarantee future corporate ownership of the USA, because corporate greed has no limits. And the Democrats (so far) are too pussified to stand up to these bully crooks.

Howard Dean says we should kill the Health Care Reform Bill and start all over again. We have a lot of respect for Howard Dean, and we are leaning his way, although not totally convinced that we should "kill" the bill. Even without a public option and Medicare buy-in there are some benefits to the bill, and advocating a total kill of the bill would mean killing all progressive progress. This bill needs to change-- big time. And get passed. If HCR does not get passed now, we don't think it will be revived any time soon, thanks to an incredibly effective lunatic fringe minority in Congress. It needs to happen now due to the urgency of the crisis. And the rightness of the mission. Come on. How can we reduce health insurance costs without the healthy (and long overdue) competition of some form of public option? If this lousy bill is passed close to "as is," it will benefit only the health insurance companies and continue to stick it to the consumer w/ no health insurance affordability anywhere on the horizon.

Here are some of the meager benefits of the current bill, let's start building on this stuff:

* Insurers can't turn you down for a pre-existing condition or cut you off when you get sick

* Expansion of Medicaid

* Subsidies for low and middle income people

* Caps on out of pocket expenses

* Cost containment measures

... and there are more ...

But if insurance companies "can't turn you down" ... but can just charge you lots more for coverage ... how is this delivering the "affordable healthcare for everyone" that Obama campaigned on? And subsidies won't help if rates keep getting jacked up higher and higher.

The Democrats must grow a set and stop caving to mega douchebag traitor/shills like Joe Lieberman and others in Congress who have been bought by the insurance companies. No way we should settle for this crappy bill while hoping for future improvements. A public option is already a compromise. What we want and need is a single payer plan. Universal Healthcare. For all Americans. We, the majority of the people, need to grab Washington by the suit collar and overpower these idiotic teabaggers and obstructionist whack jobs.

Where are the liberal activists who advocated for a single payer plan?

GET BACK ON THE FIELD.

KICK ALL THE NIHILIST GOP ASS OFF THE FIELD.

AND GET THIS BILL RIGHT.

[Mr. Dottie contributed to this post]