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Edited on Wed Dec-23-09 07:56 AM by mmonk
There are simply more reasons to oppose the Bill in current form than to support it to begin with. Obama campaigned on a public option to make private insurers honest (which by that definition alone, would mean robust). Obama campaigned against a mandated system but the bill is mandated through threats of fines imposed by the federal government. A public option was floated and later a Medicare buy in only to later be campaigned against by the Administration thereby causing anger among many who because of these ideas and provisions were for reform. Then those who became angry because it isn't what was originally proposed have been chastised and dismissed (as we have come all too often familiar with, the terminology "left"). They have been lied to directly by rhetoric and revision. Then Rahm brags he has the "liberals" in line.
Cigna whistle blower Wendell Potter has been going on television show after television show warning the American people that this bill is a disaster, one written by the insurance lobby (while any other group does not enjoy the power to write legislation in the United States except maybe Goldman Sachs), and that these Wall Street firms are getting just about everything they want. Can you get anymore definitive than that? We're not talking some radical "loony left" activist but someone who worked on the behalf of the big insurance industry and knows all the tactics used to lobby and scare and distort in order to win for Big Insurance.
Much like the bailout for the banks and the deal whereby they keep their tax breaks while they repay the loans in our massive debt situation and recession they have caused through their recklessness and favors of deregulation, default credit swaps, and derivatives, this is more wheeling and dealing with Wall Street interests and K Street to gain cash for campaign coffers at the expense of real reform. And not only did the insurance lobby declare victory in discovered emails in that there would be neither oversight nor administration by any government entity, now those in power now turn toward social security, medicare, and other contracts originally made with the people to provide a minimal safety net for "savings" (and we all, if honest, what that means). Not only will there not be an expansion of medicare (which is less costly and more efficient than the private sector), you can be sure you will be looking at this as an area they want to "trim" to make way for subsidizing the for profit insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry.
Kill this aberration somehow in the next session of Congress.
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