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it was really a HUGE gift to the rich, especially the very rich, but they knew they had to throw the lower end of the spectrum to get it passed and to appear "fair". so they threw a pretty small bone to the lower end of the income tax paying spectrum and spent much of the airtime on that small sop for the rest of us. ignore the fleets of lexuses we're handing out to billionaires.
well, that's pretty much the senate bill at this point. a right-wing bill with a small sop for the left. the health insurance business, which has been raking in money hand over fist for decades, get millions of non-customers FORCED to buy their defective product, amounting to a subsidy in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
in exchange, all they appear to have given up is a few odious practices, such as recission, which they might well have been forced to give up simply because of the terrible press they were getting because of it. in any event, the price of the subsidies is WAY too high for the little that we're getting back from the insurance mafia.
what MOST people want is cost control. coverage for more people is certainly great, too, but even more people want heath care / insurance to be cheaper and less of a racket. make it affordable and guess what, you'll find more people covered as well. a bill without any form of cost control COMPLETELY MISSES THE POINT.
and i can't even begin to tell you what i think of the person who, when asked, "what about the people who don't want to buy insurance because it sucks?" responded, "let's make them buy it against their will"
if the senate passes the bill as it stands, i can only hope that the house-senate reconciliation process produces something that's 90% house and 10% senate, and even that would be a disappointment.
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