Dec 16, 2009

Kill It

MoveOn raised $650,000 in less than 24 hours to send Joe Lieberman home. Howard Dean just laid out the reasons for killing health care reform that enriches insurance companies while allowing skyrocketing rates and forcing Americans into new, sick system.

One can hope against that the end result will offer real reform. Presumably President Obama will very soon issue a statement and visibly get behind reform (and against the health insurance industry) before he loses his base ... completely.

For now, Obama needs to offer a compelling reason to keep this legislative process moving, or progressives should just kill it.

Dean is making the talk-show circuit to spur change in the dynamic health care legislation floating around. From the Post:
Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

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