Despite overwhelming
public support for a public plan like Medicare available to younger Americans, a plan that addresses the root cause - - -
wasteful, out-of-control COSTS resulting from the opaque & discriminatory pricing by the predatory cartels of the medical industrial complex - - - the Democratic Party is on the verge of passing HC “reform” which perversely
mandates that all Americans purchase the product they are increasingly unable to afford.Rather than using control of both houses of Congress & the White House to do the difficult job of taking on the cartels, our leaders have chosen to hand the industry a mandate to purchase overpriced insurance for wasteful, inefficient care.
The fact that some of the most vulnerable will be subsidized cannot excuse us from the crippling damage inflicted upon the shrinking middle class & domestic industry.
The shallowness of the argument for taxing so-called “Cadillac” plans is transparent: If, as the White House insists, the tax forces Americans into lower priced plans to avoid the tax, then the tax will NOT be an effective revenue source to finance the bill. Many of these “Cadillac” plans are, in fact, both overpriced & inadequate, at times the only option for high risk Americans in their 50’s and 60’s.
High cost plans are the
symptom of the crisis caused by
out of control medical costs.
Moreover, while those plans that have low or no deductibles may encourage over-utilization, they do so because the providers get paid. Thinking that eliminating a source of easy revenue for providers is going to bring DOWN prices is fantasy. The truth is clear: to the extent that such action influences prices, it will encourage providers to look for alternative means to “enhance” revenue.
(This does not even mention another reality: that some plans classified as “Cadillac” are, in fact, high deductible, inadequate plans which charge high premiums to older, sicker Americans.)
One does not need to look far into the future to see the real results of the plan we are on the verge of passing:
When only a few years of price increases result in virtually ALL insurance bearing the “Cadillac” tax, we will have created a situation when the only beneficiaries to “reform” are the cartels and those who receive subsidies.
After never letting Single Payer have a seat at the table, after compromising to a “public option”, now gone, after the false hope of a Medicare Buy-In, and now with the taxing of the middle class under the false “Cadillac” label,
what exactly is left? ? ? . . . . . little more than a massive
transfer of wealth from the shrinking middle class to corporate interests, (with the benefit, and cover, of crumbs to the poor, who deserve better).
The middle class and much of American industry and small business, sick of 8 years of Republican lies and mismanagement, supported Democrats in 2006, and Obama in 2008.
But,
betrayed by an administration that lacked the courage to do the difficult task of taking on the vested interests, the millions of middle class voters will feel they have
little alternative than turn to the entreaties of Republican pseudo-populist demagogues.:kick:
In fact,
is there anything that the Democratic Party could have done to confirm decades of Republican stereotyping of Democrats, and to
drive middle class voters into the waiting arms of the GOP, than to pass, in the name of “reform”, a bill that does NOT address the wasteful, predatory medical pricing that is strangling both the middle class and domestic industry, but instead MANDATE its purchase, financed by a massive middle class tax (collected by & for a cartel) thinly mislabeled as a “Cadillac” tax?
:kick: