The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid: "healthcare reform has degenerated into a sick joke"

[Better Believe It]

The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid
by Norman Solomon
November 5, 2009

In Washington, "healthcare reform" has degenerated into a sick joke. At this point, only spinners who've succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word "robust" to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.

"A main argument was that a public plan would save people money," the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry -- claiming to want a level playing field -- has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. "After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill , the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up."

At its best, "the public option" was a weak remedy for the disastrous ailments of the healthcare system in the United States. But whatever virtues the public option may have offered were stripped from the bill en route to the House floor.

People who scrape together enough money to buy health insurance will discover that they're riding in the back of the nation's healthcare bus. The most "affordable" policies will be the ones with the highest deductibles and the worst coverage.

We're hearing that large numbers of lower-income Americans will be provided with Medicaid coverage in the next decade. Translation: If funding holds up, they'll get to hang onto a bottom rung of the healthcare ladder. Many will not be able to get the medical help they need, from primary care providers or specialists.

Not long ago, the idea was that taxpayer-funded subsidies were to be used only for the public option. But now the entire concept has been hijacked by and for the private insurance industry. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it on October 8, private insurance companies "are going to get 50 million new consumers, many of them subsidized by the taxpayers."

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/05

[John Q. Citizen]

1. American don't deserve health care reform. We deserve to either not get sick or to die fast if we

do.

We are willing to take any crumbs that the health care industrial complex and their bought and paid for congress will give us, and to be grateful for that.

"It's a start" is a synonym for "You can roll me for a song."

[eridani]

2. Yep. All spelled out in the four levels the difference between those who deserve health care

--and the rest of us disposable human garbage. Not to mention legal age discrimination.

[geek tragedy]

3. Spam. You posted this yesterday.

And 'apartheid?'

Nelson Mandela would not approve of your bullshit.

[HamdenRice]

4. Apartheid? Where's the part where they destroy millions of people's homes and villages & move them

into the bleak homelands and deserts?

It is a measure of how inarticulate we've become that every form of social hierarchy is "slavery", every form of distinction is "apartheid," every injury to social well being is "The Holocaust," and every bad person is "Hitler."

[Monk06]

5. This is why Americans will never get anything close to fair-care

I live in British Columbia. We have universal
health care mandated by the Canadian government
and managed by the provincial (state) gov't.

The provincial governments cannot opt out of
universal health care without giving up federal
funding for health care under the CHCA

That is the secret of the Canadian system Provinces
cannot opt out without paying a very high fiscal
penalty. Plus universal health care is universally
supported by the majority of Canadians that is why
even Harper's gov't has to tow the line even though
they would like to destroy the 'socialist' Canadian
health care system.

The result is a 'Liberal' BC government that is actually
a corrupt right wing gov't bought and paid for by real
estate developers has to hold it's nose and sing the
praises of universal health care.

I live in this contentious environment where the provincial
medical associations are once again trying to destroy
universal coverage.

But while they struggle to turn back the clock the majority
of Canadians 84% are happy with the present system with its
problems delivering adequate service and will not give it
up for anything like the situation in the US.

My case is a good example of what you can expect under
Canadian health care

I am 58 years old, I have emphysema and brochiactisis, (severe COPD)
I am on permanent disability paid for by the govt. I receive $664 per
month disability payments, I pay no medical premiums and have unlimited
access to primary and specialty care and all my emergency hospital costs
are free. In addition all of my medictations (Advair and Spireva) as well
as other drugs, Xrays, CT scans, Blood and other tests are free and available
within five blocks of my house in Downtown Vancouver.

I have not paid a dime for medical coverage or drugs, treatment or consultations
in my life and I am 58 years old. Furthermore as my health diminishes, as it will
with my disease, I will pay nothing.

You folks in the US will never experience this unless you make it illegal for insurance
companies to be involved in health care. Insurance companies are not in the health care
business they are in the,"thanks for the cash now fuck you" business.