DeMediacratic Nation: Healthcare in Every Pot

Obama has a plan:

“Senator Barack Obama proposed a major overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Tuesday, aimed at covering the nearly 45 million uninsured Americans and reducing premium costs for everyone else.”

Joining in the health industry boogeyman attack is The NY Times with its level, unbiased, and “objective” reporting:

“Throwing down a challenge to a powerful industry, Mr. Obama pledged new scrutiny and new limits on the profits of the biggest insurance companies, declaring it was simply “the right thing to do.”’

Ah, yes…the right thing to do. If it’s not the oil company screwing us it is the health industry. The only reason healthcare or insurance is not more affordable is because these monsters of the industry must have huge profits. Obama’s plan will be paid for:

“by not renewing President Bush’s tax cuts for the most affluent Americans — those making more than $250,000 a year — when they expire at the end of 2010.”

Another boogeyman; the wealthy and their undeserved tax cuts…they don’t need them.

Similar plans have crashed and burned in the past, which the Senator acknowledged:

‘“crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying. This cannot be one of those years.”’

One of the requirements of his plan is that (italics mine):

“employers either provide coverage to their employees or pay the government a set percentage of their payroll to provide it. Similar requirements have proven intensely controversial, notably in 1993-94, when the Clinton health care plan went down in large measure because of a small-business backlash."

Don’t worry though because no one will be hurt in Obamas plan, as advisers to the candidate said:

“the smallest businesses would be exempt from this requirement.”

Phew! Close one! The creation of a “public plan for individuals who cannot obtain group coverage through their employers or the existing government programs, like Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.” And subsidies will be provided to those that cannot pay the costs of coverage.

The real clunker will be his proposed National Health Insurance Exchange which will be:

“a regulated marketplace of competing private health plans intended to give individuals other, more affordable options for coverage. The public plan would compete in that Insurance Exchange.”

So rather than open it all up to competition and not requiring employers to cover the costs of insurance and perhaps including what they pay for the cost of coverage to the employee to look for competing companies; he’ll create additional bureaucratic red tape piece and regulate further. Good idea…

In closing, quotes regarding the boogeyman from Senators Obama and Clinton:

Obama: “It is simply not right that the skyrocketing profits of the drug and insurance industries are paid for by the skyrocketing premiums that come from the pockets of the American people. This is not who we are. And this is not who we have to be.”

Clinton: “While productivity and corporate profits are up, the fruits of that success just haven’t reached many of our families. It’s like trickle-down economics without the trickle.”

It’s so helpful to have a bad guy, isn’t it?

Healthcare reform from The Heritage Foundation

Trackback for this post: http://haloscan.com/tb/blandlyurbane/5093087149585867424

DeMediacratic Nation Blogrolls

Please give this Post/Blog a Vote -