Does it prioritize the needs of the poor and working class ahead of the needs of the financial elite? Of course it does not.
And given the actual details between both the Senate and House bills - given the huge decrease in subsidies for the poor to even buy insurance at all in the house bill, given the change of subisidies to the form of tax credits in the Senate - further going against the best interests of the poor, given that no prexisting condition denials will be banned if the Senate bill became law, but rather only a promise that they would
eventually be banned in 2014 (of course a new congress and massive, massive lobbying against it after all public attention has turned away will threaten its chance of ever happening)
Given the severe weakening of any public option, to the point that it does not even serve its purpose of providing substantive competition to private insruance, given the multi-billion dollar giveaway to pharmacuitcals and health insurance contined in the bill...... just as a few examples.....
Both House and Senate versions of this Bill fail poor and working Americans.
- It does not have sufficient benefits (for ordinary Americans)
- It has critical problems (for ordinary Americans)
- The benefits do not effectively outweigh any remaining non-critical problems (for ordinary Americans)
- All things being equal, further effort to produce different or better policy on this issue would be more helpful(to ordinary Americans) than harmful.
These bills as they stand, do not help poor and working class Americans even a little bit over the long run. There are no protections against rising costs, no guaranteed banning of denial based on preexisting conditions, no guaranteed protections capping out of pocket experiences or yearly or lifetime caps on coverage.
It pains me that the bills are so broken that Republicans can make an actual really point, but it is correct that premiums will rise, because there are no strong, concrete restrictions on private insurers keeping them form raising prices after getting millions of new mandated customers.
Covering 97% of American doesn't matter if the subsidies for the poor are weak and insufficient, primium costs are not resitricted, preexisting condition denial is not banned (only the promise of banning in 2014) and on and on and on.
That's what's tragic. These bills don't help poor and working Americans
AT ALL. It's not a debate about purity or perfection vs. good. It's about whether or not we back national Democrats as the pass a bill that acutually does more harm than good long term to ordinary Americans
so that they can have a political victory of their party.
These are sad, sad days.