Reply #18: Why wait for the business community?

[OzarkDem]

Most of them are shedding health care plans and dumping their employees and retirees on the publicly funded health care programs.

The only businesses that the DLC'ers are concerned about when it comes to health care are the insurance companies themselves.
The insurance companies can read the handwriting on the wall and have begun giving lots of money to Dem candidates. So far, the policy that has resulted from this marriage has been less than stellar and transparently so.

The proposals they're coming up with only provide health care coverage when you're employed (what happens when you get sick and can't work for a while?);

they don't have any consumer protections built in;

they have poor tools for promoting quality care (what's the point in rewarding doctors and hospitals that perform well? How do you plan to fix the ones that don't and how do you care for the people who don't have a choice about using another provider?)

they have little or no mechanism for cost controls

Most employers would like to have government take over the job of providing basic health care plans for their employees. Its time to get on with reforming the system instead of catering to the health insurance industry.