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The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Nov 05, 2009 07:53pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Author | Norman Solomon |
| News Date | Friday, November 6, 2009 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | 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 [on October 29], 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.
What remains is a Rube Goldberg contraption that will launch this country into a new phase of healthcare apartheid.
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, we were told that the Obama administration was aiming for a public option that could provide coverage to one out of every four Americans. Now the figure is around one out of every fifty. |
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