Houston: The Health System has now Reached the Point of Total Failure, Over and Out

This was in response to this article, which was more or less a news story about how key non-right Democrats who had spoken in favor of a single payer health care system were folding their tents and giving up on true reform so that they could obediently fall in line behind their party leaders, like good little boys and girls.

The abomination that the Democrats are ramming through, in a just world, will lead to their just end as a political party within 30 years, to be replaced (in my preference) by the New Democratic Party, which will genuinely be for the common people, and will get a single payer system up and running very quickly, with the speed of enactment reflecting the need to rescue the country from health care system failure AND economic devastation.

You can not possibly get your money's worth by buying American health insurance and then paying deductibles, co pays, and prescription costs if and when you get actual health care. This is already overwhelmingly true and will be even more and more "extremely true" in each and every year ahead for the foreseeable future. The Democrat's bill will provide very few cost controls, so the hell that is the American health care system will only deepen in the years ahead.

If to the present you have arranged, through your own conscious efforts, your health, your health care participation, and your finances in opposition to the grossly overpriced health insurance, and when this bill passes you now succumb to the dictates of the traitorous, disgusting, and useless to say the least Democrats, you will very likely be economically defeated by the fat cats in that party and in the massive health insurance companies. You will most likely lose out economically. You will be fleeced. You will be played like a violin.

True, you might possibly get some health care if you become a slave to the insurance fat cats and write them very large checks often and on time, but you will be financially and economically devastated, or at least heavily damaged. Your health insurance company may or may not stand with you should you really need real assistance; that depends on specific circumstances.

If you are by nature a more gentle, compliant soul and you feel you have to bow down to the politicians and the health insurance moguls, then you will write those checks and not worry about the financial wreckage you are causing yourself, which of course could easily lead to your bankruptcy and could possibly lead to your homelessness. which would devastate your health regardless of any insurance you have.

But I respect you if you will not fight being a slave to the multimillionaire health insurance executives and their death dealing, incompetent employees in their claims denial departments. The fight against greed and tyranny is always optional; it's always for those of strong beliefs.

In fact, there is no real right thing to do once this pathetic excuse for legislation passes. The American system has now failed to the point where every course of action that a common citizen can take with respect to health care will actually do more harm than good overall, if a complete and total accounting of every factor is done. In other words, the system has reached the point of Total Failure, the point where almost everyone is losing almost all of the time.

Until real rescue comes to us, I wish everyone all the best as they confront the deepening devastation of what was once a promising country.

The Democrats Throw Their Supporters Overboard into the Churning Sea

On the eve of the House approving their dead on arrival health care reform, there was an article on Common Dreams by Tom Gallagher. Specifically, Gallagher demanded the restoration of the Kucinich amendment, which was stripped out by Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel. This amendment had been approved in a committee (shows you how much that's worth, Dennis and everyone else, laugh out loud) and would have cleared the way for states to phase out the failed US health system and phase in a cost-effective, community-based, single payer system in particular states.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTARY
Not only was the Kucinich amendment never restored, but a nasty anti-abortion amendment WAS inserted, so that when all was said and done when the House bill was passed by a tiny margin on Saturday, November 7, basically all of Obama's voters had been thrown overboard into the churning sea.

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, indeed.

You are definitely not a bona fide progressive if you vote in favor of this bill. Instead, you have been played like Grandma's violin; you are nothing more than a sad song, laugh out loud.

Further, arguably, anyone who simply remains in the Democratic Party going forward, even if they vote no on this one, can not be considered a true progressive.

In Canada, VIRTUALLY NO ONE would vote for this American garbage to replace the current Canadian system: no one in the NDP, no Liberal, no Bloc Quebecois, and very few Conservatives.

Deaths Caused by a Thousand Cuts, and the Coming Advent of the Zombie Customers

Trust me, this guy, Sandy LeonVest, was very on point in this great and thorough article about the demise of health care reform in general and especially the public option in particular, both of which died a death caused by a thousand cuts during 2009. This is to my way of thinking a must read article.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
All I had to add to the article was a relatively minor complaint about a quote made by Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates:

"According to Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, the current House proposal works pretty well for families making $20,000 or $30,000 a year. "A family making $27,000 a year will pay about $1,000 (annually) toward their health insurance," he told Jim Lehrer on PBS' News Hour."

Um, what about the co pays and the deductibles? The House bill does NOT work for families in that $20,000 to $30,000 income bracket, except for those who don't get any actual health care. It doesn't work positively for any income brackets except for those under 133% and for, you guessed it, those with high incomes, say 8 or 10 times the poverty threshold and up. High income people are always, to one extent or another, immune from suffering from the effects of public policy failure.

The huge health insurance corporations are counting on a large number of people to be too tapped out after paying the health insurance premiums and from paying all the other taxes and basic costs of living to actually dare to get health care and to face paying the deductibles and co pays under the policies they were forced to buy by the American right wing government.

These captive customers will be like "zombie customers". They will pay their premiums but won't access health care except under full scale emergencies. So we are talking about a lot of new cash cows for the mega health insurance companies, which will, at the least, roughly offset the costs to the health insurance companies of having to actually pay for care for the really sick who somehow get insurance for the first time.