Can we please stop calling this a "health care reform" bill?

[Truth2Tell]

This is an insurance industry bailout bill, not a health care reform bill.

From now on I will only refer to this as "the insurance industry bailout bill."

Quacks like a duck...

[Desertrose]

1. Thanks....insurance bailout bill. Yup.

I agree with that.

[Go2Peace]

11. It is more like a few good regulations combined with weasly social program

It would have been better to pass the regulation seperately, and create a sperate bill to allow more poor into medicare.

[Sparkly]

2. Well, not a "bailout" -- that would imply the industry was about to collapse.

Insurance Industry Windfall Bill.

With the Set Women's Heath Back by Decades provision.

[Truth2Tell]

3. Good point. Or "giveaway bill" maybe. nt

[dflprincess]

6. And the Campaign Contribution Protection provision

Though, I'm not so sure it isn't a bailout.

I don't really see how the industry can survive much longer without a bailout. If it were left to go along on it's own, it would collapse when it finally prices its products out of the reach of most Americans or their employers. The forced payments to them will keep the industry going longer.

[ipaint]

19. They are also looking at a loss of 80+ million baby boomers to medicare in the next 15 years

That's why we are getting a mandate. Without it the ins. companies would be less than half their size today. Wall street won't let that happen.

[timtom]

24. OMG!!

There it is, right there!

I knew there was a connection. Thanks, ipaint. It almost slipped under my radar.

My God! What a major sellout by our "representatives."

[ThomCat]

8. Right on both points.

[Richard Steele]

17. Right you are. nm

[emulatorloo]

4. Let me know as soon as the insurance industry stops pumping out $$$$ trying to kill it

They are still spending big buck trying to stop it.

[provis99]

7. they don't want to kill the whole bill; some parts they love.

Its not an either/or situation for the insurance companies on this bill. They had considerable input into it. The Senate versions are even friendlier to the insurance companies, and whatever good in the House bill will be wiped out in conference.

[provis99]

5. its a private insurance requirement bill.

Complete with tax punishment for those who don't buy private insurance, and possible fines and prison time (up to five years!).

[slipslidingaway]

9. knr - insurance companies stand to lose a good amount of customers...

for a couple of reasons.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

...But this time, it turns out, the health insurance industry has good reason to support at least some change: It needs it. Private health insurance faces a bleak future if the proposal they champion most vigorously -- a requirement that everyone buy medical coverage -- is not adopted.

...Insurers do not embrace all of the healthcare restructuring proposals. But they are fighting hard for a purchase requirement, sweetened with taxpayer-funded subsidies for customers who can't afford to buy it on their own, and enforced with fines.


...The industry's real trouble begins in 2011, when 79 million baby boomers begin turning 65. Health insurers stand to lose a huge slice of their commercially insured enrollment (estimated at 162 million to 172 million people) over the next two decades to Medicare, the government-funded health insurance program for seniors..."


For insurers, getting "run over" would be the adoption of a so-called single-payer plan, where the government pays all medical bills. Such a plan would wreak havoc on the private insurance market, and is widely viewed as politically unfeasible this year. So the best way for the industry to preserve the private insurance market -- and derail the campaign for a single-payer system -- may be to go along with more palatable proposals on the table now, said Jeffrey Miles, a healthcare analyst and president of the Miles Organization, a Los Angeles insurance brokerage firm..."

[OneBlueSky]

10. yup . . . classic case of passing something -- anything -- to say . . .

"we passed healthcare reform," when this bill is nothing of the sort . . . it's a windfall for insurance companies, as if they didn't already make enough money . . . the so-called "public option" is a joke, and requiring private citizens to purchase insurance from private corporations is very likely unconstitutional . . .

this is not the kind of change I thought we'd be getting when we elected Obama . . . he should have gone balls-out for extending Medicare to everyone . . . THAT would have been healthcare reform . . . this is not . . .

[blues90]

18. It is a damn joke.

It's just a feather in the hat of this admin and to make some sort of history , but beyond that it's a damn joke. All they talk about is how much might be saved but give a projection as a figure and never define affordable.

To me affordable is I know damn well I can't buy a new or used car so I drive my 1973 and repair it myself.

[leftstreet]

12. They didn't even wait for the Bubble before doing the Bailout

Wall Street must be jealous

[Autumn]

13. "The Insurance Industry Profit Protection Act of 2009"

is just awesome.


Special thanks to MNDemNY

[greennina]

14. Requiring me to give money for nothing to a private company...

is wrong! I am ashamed of the Party right now.

[quiller4]

15. No. It is a reform bill -- a bill I'd do cartwheels about if I didn't suffer

from several chronic conditions.

[autorank]

16. k*r Truth, do tell

What a load of you know what this bill is. :hurl:

[earth mom]

20. How about "The Insurance Industry Taxpayer Extortion Bill"?

[Sebastian Doyle]

21. The Monica Lewinsky Memorial Corporate Fellation Act of 2009

Sponsored by United Health Care, Cigna, Blue Cross, and the DLC.

[New Dawn]

22. "Individual Mandate" = Fascism

Forcing people to buy a product or service (such as health insurance) from a private company is fascist economics.

[Kansas Wyatt]

23. Insurance Industry Giveaway

Federal Government assumes responsibility for imprisoning anyone who refuses to buy overpriced worthless health insurance from the Insurance Industry.