Excerpt: " The first year the legislation would take effect, people getting subsidized coverage would be required to pay from 2 to 12 percent of their incomes for insurance. The government would pick up the rest of the tab. People with lower incomes would pay less and those with higher incomes more. But in the second year, it changes. From then on, it is based on a percentage of the premium that was paid the first year, no matter how far premiums rise. For years, health insurance premiums have risen faster than wages, and the trend is expected to continue. "People are going to have to keep paying more and more,” says Judith Solomon, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington research group that looked at the effect in a recent paper. " http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/October/29/Premiums.aspx
So here's how it is suppose to play out ~ Obama gets his severely depleted Health Care Reform Bill , which doesn't take effect until 2013, but just in time for the mid-term and Presidential elections and the Insurance Industrial Complex gets its pound of flesh bailout but the American taxpayers don't get what they really wanted ~ Single Pay Health Insurance.
Dennis Kucinich summed up this injustice on the House floor yesterday ~ as he fought for the right of States to secure a single payer plan.
" Even though insurance companies make money not providing health care, the so-called reform bill gives so much power and money to the insurance companies that we are giving far too much for the few benefits which the bill may confer ... For example ~ The Insurance companies get at least another 26 million customers, they will receive at least an extra $ 50 billion in new revenue and, get this, they will be able to raise premiums 25%, even though in each of the last four consecutive years the industry has raised premiums by double digits."
So here we go again, Wall Street got bailed out by TARP and the Insurance weasels will be bailed out by the Health Care Reform Plan HCRP and who, once again, did not get what they wanted but is footing the bill ~ the American taxpayer. Once again, it will be a victory for Wall Street's too big to fail and a defeat for Main Street's too small to matter.
Read the fine print and support the Kucinich Amendment (H.R. 676) which must be put back in the health care bill, not just to protect the rights of states to pursue single payer, but to protect the rights of consumers to be free of the economic death grip of the insurance companies.
You can also urge your Senators and Representatives to support the Single Payer Health Plan (H.R. 676) by signing this petition:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/11/04.html
