Since this bill requires private health ins. companies to put health care before profit

[mdmc]

IT WILL FAIL.

If there was any interest in putting health before profit we wouldn't need reform. Obviously there is a need for reform.
Watch as this HCR bill destroys the private insurance companies.
The private companies will not be able to reduce their profits (that is just not how corporations operate), they will not be able to increase access to affordable health care (again, this is in direct competition to profits).

This bill has already failed in MA, USA (this is the Romney plan).
Eventually we will reach a point where people with health insurance cannot afford medical treatment (I am currently in this group - fully insured, but my coverage is so expensive I cannot use it to access medical treatment). In fact, this bill puts millions into this category.

Once we all realize that our access to affordable health treatment has not improved by access to for-profit health insurance, the call for reform will be overwhelming.

Then we will get health care reform.

[Cleita]

1. This is what many of us have been trying to get through to

the HRC cheerleaders. A simpler approach would be to split this bill into three separate bill. The first bill would reform Medicare. This would have been done with very few objections. The second bill be to regulate the insurance companies. This would have been a bigger fight but yet there would have been some concessions made to make the insurance companies more responsible. The third bill would have been for single payer or extending Medicare to all who wanted it. This could have been done quietly while the bill to regulate the insurers raged on occupying all their attention. Anyway, I think that might have been a better way to do it.

[laughingliberal]

2. Oh, no doubt the day will come when we must, once again, tackle this monster

as costs do not come down and Medicare continues to flounder requiring more cuts as it must cover more people. The problem is the insurance companies have enough Enron style accounting tricks up their sleeves to keep that boat propped up for quite a while as they drain enough out of the system to leave us without resources for future reform.

[OHdem10]

3. Have they changed the basic system of how Business operates???

Unless some change has take place and I missed IT--

This is the rule: Businesses have as their duty--please
Businesses are responible to their investors. This is the only group to which they are accountable. Now, the Investors and Elites crack the
whip, while yelling make us more profits. The businesses
therefore must increase profits.
How do Insurance Companies raise profits?? Either by denying
care (cutting costs) or by Increasing the fees or Premiums.


Every quarter Wall Street weighs in. If they have not increased
profits--they will be punished. The horror of Horrors is to
have Moody's or some other like company rip on you.

Unless this is structurally changed, there is no way
the Insurance Companies are going to do anything but increase
Premiums or Deny Care.

The Senate threw away any possible leverage by dropping the
Public Option which would have American Citizens a place to
go if they caught up in the Wall Street Game.

[clear eye]

4. This is backwards thinking., and terribly misinformed.

Romney-care didn't fail b/c the insurance cos. went bust, but b/c the state is going bust trying to pay the subsidies to keep skyrocketing premiums affordable as promised, and b/c 1000's of the state's citizens are still filing medical cost bankruptcies b/c they bought mandated insurance that covered next to nothing.

The Senate bill is slightly better about allowable coverage in plans but just as bad at containing premiums and other costs as the Mass. plan. It is the taxpayers who will go bust, not the private insurers. You can spare your sympathy for them.