Health-Care Reform Around the Web

I really hope for a public option! Blue Cross just informed us that premiums will be going up 32% for next year. They can push all they want to get everyone insured, but oligarchic structures throughout the health care industry need to be countered. I for one think a monopsonic buyer similar to Medicare could force some changes in industry practices.

Yes, by all means, lets put the health care system in the hands of the largest and most inefficient entity in the nation. Go to the GAO web site some day and read the dozens of reports about the waste, fraud, mismanagement, abuse, and otehr chicanery that goes on in government every day. The government is no better than the insurance companies when it comes to integrity. Low pay and no real opportunity for advancement make theft very tempting to people who developed the system, and thus know how to game it. Consider also, you expect the same system that created the Internal Revenue Code to SIMPLIFY health insurance. Are you mad? A government-run, single payor system will make Social Security look like pocket change. Like the IRS, it will set the rules and do whatever it wants, and to hell with the needs of the individual. A hundred thousand new government employees will have to be hired. Claims management and payment systems and facilities already built and amortized by the private sector will have to be rebuilt at taxpayer expense. It will be too huge to police so the fraud already endemic in Medicare and Medicaid will explode. Sadly, the least informed people are the ones who are pushing single payor because they lack the intellect or foresight to see the disaster that lies with a government plan. Free health insurance for people who make $110,000 a year. Insanity

I feel sad for all the Americans, especially all the American Kids, that needlessly suffer and die, way before their time, because of the limitless greed of the Insurance industry and their Republican lackys. I don't know how long its been since you've visited someone in the hospitial, but try to make some time to go if someone you know is sick. Being sick and being in a hospital is a horrible experience. You get manhandled, pushed, poked, and prodded, all while you're feeling really, really sick, and death in hospitals in America, especially for people with terminal Cancer, makes the worst descriptions you've seen of Hell loook like a picnic. Now imagine going through the Hell that is Cancer, without painkillers, without a Hospital, without a Doctor. Ok, now imagine how all that would feel to a child. Repubicans worked day and night to block SCHIP and stop those kids from getting medical treatment, even painkillers. Republicans want everyone inconvenient to quietly curl up and die. People don't do that. They suffer. Beyond imagination. If we are more than pigs, if we are more than selfish greedy animals that snarl and fight and tear each other apart, then we are morally commanded to do everything we can for American Kids Dying of Cancer. If we don't either God, Darwin or Karma will get us and even the score. Republicans can be cruel, but they've hit a new low and a new level of evil by first blocking medical care for American Kids With Cancer by blocking SCHIP, and now by again "pulling out all the stops" to stop Americans of all ages with common managable conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol from having the ability to buy health insurance, at any price. Medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the USA? Getting really sick is bad enough. Being told you're going to die is even worse. Having to fight with your insurance company while you're sick and dying, like the President's mother had to do, is totally insane and to put people through that is cold and cruel beyond belief. If we can afford Bush/Cheney's war for ego, gold plated flying turkeys like the F22, and a "defense" department that spends more than the entire rest of the world combined, we can afford to pay for medical treatment and pain killers for American Kids Dying of Cancer. We aren't animals. We don't abandon the sick and dying. We're Americans. America and Americans are a lot better than that. Its Time For Universal Health Care. Its the AMERICAN thing to do!!!

Please sign these petitions on single payer health care. http://bit.ly/single_payer_baucus http://bit.ly/single_payer

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