Mandate without ROBUST Public Option (no opt out) is a tax payable to corporations

[havocmom]

(This is a reposting of a reply to another thread. I figure it might be fodder for discussion on its own)

No ROBUST Public Option? Then no mandate to purchase!

Remember when Wall Street and Big Biz (with GOP & some DLC) pushed 'Privatizing' Social Security? Remember how relieved we were that it didn't fly when we realized what would have happened to working class's security pension when Wall Street crashed and stocks fell mightily? It was bad enough that people of moderate means lost so much of the value they were counting on from their personal investments. The same could have happened to workers' Social Security, the last wall against abject poverty for many in their old age. Phew, we really dodged the bullet!

Or did we?

Without the shot of Social Security money, Wall Street fell. And merged, shuffled a lot of paper, pretended things were fine, paid out mega bonuses. And fell again, taking down giants this time.

Seems The Street really needed those forced payroll deductions that would have come from Privatizing Social Security. Hmmmm. Did anybody notice?

Health Care Reform comes along. Yes, indeedy, reform is needed, in so many of the facets of health care:
The paying for it.
The delivery of it.

The law suits driving doctors out of business and the fact that only a few doctors seem to be driving the quantity of malpractice suits but getting them out of medicine isn't done often enough, so all doctors end up paying career ending premium increases.


Insurers forcing providers to deliver less real health care to patients by setting up systems where quantity rules over quality of care and we end up with McMedicine.

Insurers who are exempt from laws against collusion, making sure 'competition' is a farce.

Insurers who take payments for years, then let bookkeepers and lawyers decide who gets what care.

Insurers who hire doctors (who probably couldn't keep their own practices going) to give their bookkeepers and lawyers cover from being charged with practicing medicine without license.

Drug companies marketing directly to patients who then demand expensive meds they saw on TV, whether they are appropriate for the individual or not......

oh, so much reform needed

And, yes, covering more people would help with costs as ER as primary care is expensive. Plus, we might be a much healthier population if people could actually get the care they needed (that goes for the uninsured as well as those paying for insurance, but not actually getting what they paid for).

But the mandate.... ah, that is the monster offspring of the marriage of politics and Wall Street. Let me rant a bit more here on this mandate.

Wall Street didn't get to have payroll taxes (Social Security payments) mailed directly to it and they floundered for lack of new stone added to hold their pyramid up. But, if everybody HAS to buy insurance, by golly, payroll tax to Wall Street accomplished! Ok, through a side door, but accomplished none the less.

What does your insurance company (if you can afford one) do with the dollars you (and your employer, if you have a group policy) pay? It doesn't go into bandages and iodine. It gets invested on Wall Street. See where this is going?

Mandate that everyone buy insurance and insurance companies have more money to play with at the casino on the Street. The Street gets those new stones to hold up the pyramid a bit longer. Bonuses are safe and everybody gets to go out to swanky watering holes to celebrate.

Everybody but the middle class, working class, working poor, and flat-out-unable-to-eat-and-pay-rent-poor. They get a legal obligation to give money to the guys at the top, arguably the same guys who set up all the financial failures they so desperately need to camouflage in hopes of maintaining the lifestyle to which they think they are entitled. They get a government enforced bill, whether they can afford it or not; whether it actually gets them real care or not.

The folks working for wages or salaries (that are not subsidized by the massive bonuses like the Fat Cats get) have been losing economic ground for almost two generations now. Pay has not kept up. Job security is a myth from a bygone era. People are becoming homeless at a rather unnerving pace. And THEY get the bill for health care? THEY have to pay the tab or face penalties?

Wow.

The wage earner gets another tax, whether they have a roof over their head or not. They get a mandate to pay up and the money will end up going to Wall Street. Yep, mission accomplished.

Fuck this shit. If there is gonna be a mandate, there had better be a ROBUST public option, no opt out where the whims of state pols would put workers at financial risk, and the end of legal protections for insurers to be racketeers. There had better be some kick ass regulations of pay on the Street. There had better be some rules separating the banking, stocks, insurance industries again, and they by god better be seriously enforced.

The mandate is a side door payroll tax given to the Street. Just like they tried to do with privatizing the money taken out for Social Security. Without the other parties to the mess being forced to change, pay, accept REAL regulation, the Street might consider the ugly alternatives that could have gone down in America if FDR had not taken such strong measures to help mend the social contract with the working class back in his day.

The mandate is a tax, being levied by, and paid to, businesses with whom the workers have no representation. Why the hell isn't there some tea being pitched about that little reality?

[whistler162]

1. Add a link to the article!

[havocmom]

4. This IS the link

I wrote it. Originally posted as a reply in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x11401 and tweaked ever so slightly.

Here's a little something about requests for links on personal opinion pieces ;)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6760345&mesg_id=6760345

[NYC_SKP]

2. Indeed, the P.O. should be available to any who suffer the mandate.

Anyone not already covered by their employer, Medicare, or Medicaid; anyone who finds themselves suddenly having to enroll in an insurance plan, should have access to the Public Option.

If it's only made available to the highest risk groups, it will be too costly and it will fail.

The PO needs to be open to ordinary citizens, and as many as possible, in order to be competitive.

Private Insurance companies should not benefit from this legislation.

[havocmom]

6. I disagree. P.O. should be available to EVERYONE

Otherwise, there is no real means to make Big Insurance behave as responsible economic citizens.

EVERYBODY can participate and no state opt out method to fuck consumers in some states every election cycle, or the mandate is a tax levied by private corporations with whom we do not have representatives! (Hell, even the reps we supposedly have work for Big Corporation more than they represent us)

[NYC_SKP]

8. Well, there *should* be a lot of things. I was thinking of a bare minimum standard to pass reform.

If it's only open to high-risk people and not a broader demographic, it will fail.

Of course I agree with you, it's a question of what's the bare minimum vs what's more ideal.

And what is possible at this point, with this Congress.

:donut:

[havocmom]

9. Understand, but don't think the lesser among us should have one more burden

without a simultaneous bit of real help. ;) The backs of workers have been bent too far already. Break them and leave them with nothing to lose and they become very powerful in their dangerousness.

[NYC_SKP]

10. If it gets a good start, if we "prime the pump", employers should be dropping Private Plans

in favor of the PO.

I think the battle, post passage, will be for the PO to actually work and become the better choice.

Isn't it hard to believe how common medical was automatically a part of practically any job back in the 70's, for example?

We need that back!

:toast:

[sixmile]

13. The mandate is "Corporate Welfare" not a tax

also, "available to everyone" and "mandated" are two very different roads.

[havocmom]

14. When it is an order from the government to pay, it sure quacks like a tax

[LibDemAlways]

3. People did not vote for "change" that involves separating them

from their hard-earned dollars and forcing them to turn the money over to insurance company crooks who have a greater incentive to deny their claims than to pay their bills. No decent public option means no option at all.

When the shit hits the fan on this, things are going to get ugly. And the Dems are going to held responsible.

[havocmom]

5. agree about ugly and who gets held responsible

The DEMs of today seem to be in need of history lessons much like the GOP pols and bleaters.

[LibDemAlways]

7. They are up to their asses in corporate donations. They should

have to wear the names of their donors on their foreheads so the public can see who is really writing this legislation.

The R's are even worse, of course, but because they have so adamantly opposed this thing, they won't be suffering the public backlash. For them any bill with a mandate and weak or non-existent public option is a two-way gift and a win-win. It benefits the insurance companies and it will turn voters against the Dems.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

11. Has "robust" ever been defined?

I complained to a health care advocacy group that since the House legislation wasn't "robust," it didn't go far enough, and I wasn't about to start to celebrate with them. The response wasn't what I expected. To them, "robust" was a technicality about some tax code or something. I always said "robust" means, I can opt in regardless (period)

[havocmom]

12. I take it to mean anybody can use and it would be stable

but am open to hearing other's defination

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

15. I think that's the problem. I don't think...

...we're reading from the same dictionary the politicians are.

This is what I've learned: real competition was never part of "robust" reform. As soon as this was spelled out, I felt like a (Republican) tool :(