You Are Not Safe

From the ravages of medical care costs, even if you have health insurance. That's the thrust of this article in Salon. Now tell me . . . does this really surprise you?

The article reminds us all again of the really feeble bill that Obama got passed and called comprehensive health care reform. Progressives have not forgotten how as the process continued the health care bill was gradually diluted to a state where our masters, the health insurance industries, were happy. What we were left with was a bland bill--trumpeted by the administration as the greatest thing since the New Deal--that doesn't even protect people with health insurance from going bankrupt.

Here, in case you're not inclined to read the article, I'll summarize the main points for you:

• Obama, in concert with the health care insurance companies and big pharma, gutted the health care bill of any real reform that would threaten their interests. What got passed was, in fact, " a blank-check TARP-style bailout for the health industry"
• An Arizona report: "Health insurance is not protecting Arizonans from having problems paying medical bills, and having bill problems is keeping families from getting needed medical care and prescription medicines, a new study has found."
• "With 60 percent of all bankruptcies related to medical costs; with many of those medical-related bankruptcies occurring among those who have private insurance; and with the fear of medical bankruptcy encouraging the insured to unduly skimp on medical services, the Obama healthcare bill did purport to address the issue via caps on out-of-pocket expenses. But those weak caps -- and the bill's failure to achieve universal coverage -- promise to allow the medical debt problem to continue, just as they have in the state whose 'reforms' most closely mimic Obama's bill."
• Reduction in bankruptcies because of medical costs is not likely, despite the promises of the White House.
• American wages are still being eaten up by health insurance premiums which keep going up. "Events are proving that "real reform" and strengthening insurance industry power are mutually exclusive goals. That is, they are proving the veracity of progressives' original criticism of President Obama's healthcare legislation."

This is one of the many reasons I won't be voting for the neo-republican in the White House in 2012.