tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4924392915564296358.post7513587628957951263..comments2023-08-21T02:29:21.326-05:00Comments on St. Louis Activist Hub: An open letter to progressives: ideology kills peopleUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4924392915564296358.post-31294750586359060532010-01-05T17:57:07.221-06:002010-01-05T17:57:07.221-06:00The Senate bill does not do what President Barack ...The Senate bill does not do what President Barack Obama promised. It does not provide universal health care; it forces Americans, many of whom already cannot afford insurance, to purchase it from private insurers, thus enriching the insurers, who are the source of the problem. It does not lower health care costs or make health care more affordable; "bending" a cost curve is not the same as lowering health care costs. The US already spends more than double per person what other industrialized countries do on health care, with equal or worse outcomes. The President repeatedly promised a public option or something similar to create competition and help drive down costs, but then in a concession to the insurance industry, which was dead-set against such a thing, he and the Democrats caved. THERE IS AND WILL BE NO PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION IN THIS BILL, AND THAT IS A MAJOR PROBLEM. This bill incentivizes employers to provide weaker health care insurance because they will bear less of a cost burden. This bill includes extremist anti-choice and anti-immigrant provisions. This bill does not permit the main mechanism to lower drug costs, which is reimportation or government negotiation of prices. It is a SHAM bill written by health care lobbyists. Comparing people who critique this sham bill to right-wing conservatives is really a bad faith gesture, and utterly unfair. The Democrats and Obama could have done a lot better, but neither the Congressional leadership, nor the White House, which promised transparent negotiations to be televised in CSPAN but instead cut deals with Billy Tauzin, Tom Daschle, and the health care lobbyists, wanted a truly extraordinary bill, just as they didn't want single payer health care, which would dramatically improve the US's health care landscape and Americans' lives. Nope. They wanted to enrich the private market, and we'll all going to suffer from it, Amy S. I hope you're happy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com