Having second thoughts about this health care bill.....

[poltr1]

This evening, one of my friends received a call from Rep. John Boehner's office. It was an automated survey about the health care bill. She relayed the questions to me, and it seemed like a set of loaded questions to me. Such as, "Do you expect your taxes to go up should this health care bill pass?"

That caused me to wonder. Would our taxes really go up if this health care bill passes? And if so, by how much? And is this bill being passed the right way, or ramrodded through the system? Horse-trading and deal-making and pressure tactics by Democrats to make sure the bill passes? This sounds like something I'd accuse the Republicans of doing.

I totally agree that our current health care system is broken. What is the right way to fix it? Doing nothing about it is not an option. But neither is playing political hardball.

From what I read about a single-payer system, the more I agree with it. The public option is still somewhat murky to me, though.

To recap my situation, I'm currently unemployed, with no health insurance. My last employer didn't offer health insurance to their employees until they rached 6 months of service. I was laid off after 3 months, so I wasn't eligible for their plan. There should be some type of plan available to me that I can purchase or be provided to me, until I'm able to get employment again.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

There should be some type of plan available to me that I can purchase or be provided to me, until I'm able to get employment again.

In a nutshell, that's the "public option". It's a government-run health care plan that competes with private insurers. Its advantages are scale and accessibility.

The current bill isn't nearly good enough, but it's a lot better than the status quo. In particular, there are two things it does that need doing immediately: (1) it prevents insurers from refusing coverage on the basis of prior conditions and (2) it precludes recission, or the practice of dropping someone who develops a health problem, from coverage.

Boehner, like every single Republican who talks about health care reform, is lying with almost every word he says on the subject. Urge Congress to pass the bill now, especially with momentum growing to pass decent reforms on the Senate side through reconciliation (which means that a 51-vote majority, not a supermajority of 60 votes, will do).

I recommend http://www.balloon-juice.com and http://digbysblog.blogspot.com as good starting points for reading about this. While I agree in principle with the folks over at Firedoglake that the bill is inadequate, if it doesn't get passed, a better one won't, so I disagree with them about opposing this one.

The answer to "will my taxes go up?" is "probably not." Any public option will be self-supporting (people will buy in). It's just Republican FUD, as usual.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I should add that if you look at the Republicans' record over the past year (better, three years), they don't deal in good faith at all. Their MO is to whine about being left out of the process, not be listened to -- then propose nothing substantive (or possibly a set of tax cuts slanted toward benefiting the wealthy). They lead the Dems on, letting them think they might actually vote for a compromise (defined as "everything the Republicans want"), and then vote "no" anyway. I keep meaning to comb C-SPAN footage and put together two or three minutes of Republican "No"s and "Nay"s.

[zorya-thinks.livejournal.com]

What Redaxe said. :-)

Personally, I wouldn't give Boehner the time of day if I were the only one in the room with a watch.

[patoadam]

What everybody else said. I think it's sad that the Republicans are spreading so many lies about health care reform that even people without health insurance are not sure whether it's a good idea.

My favorite source of information about health care reform, and other economic and political topics, is Paul Krugman's blog: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/.