I missed this story on Thursday, but it is worth posting today because it shows the dangers the healthcare reform bill poses in its current form.
If, as the Times reports, the impact will be limited, leaving the vast majority of people to deal with an only modestly changed market:
Now that the Senate has caught up with the House by passing a sweeping health care bill, lawmakers are on the verge of extending coverage to the tens of millions of Americans who have no health insurance.
But what about the roughly 160 million workers and their dependents who already have health insurance through an employer? For many people, the result of the long, angry health care debate in Washington may be little more than more of the same.
As President Obama once promised, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.”
That may be true even if you don’t like your health plan. And no one seems to agree on whether the legislation will do much to reduce workers’ continually rising out-of-pocket costs.
Again, I am not arguing that the bill should be killed — I remain ambivalent, convinced that a better bill could have been crafted had progressive Senators and the president stood up to Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and the moderates and stopped reifying them, but also concerned with the political damage defeating the bill could cause.
What I think needs to happen is that bill supporters need to be honest. Stop painting the bill with such overheated language and just tell the public what it likely will do and how that is good for all. There is too great a danger that the hyperbole will backfire, that the millions who are unaffected by reforms, who find themselves at the mercy of the industry, will turn their back or worse — buy into the BS arguments coming from the GOP.
Hank Kalet 
How about some little L libertarian ideas?*** begin quote *** Clearly, lowering health care spending by doing away with wasteful practices should be at the top of our health care reform list. Such reforms include:1. Allowing individuals, as well as businesses, full tax credits/deductions for medical insurance and/or medical expenditures. In the interim, encourage the use of HSAs by increasing the amount of tax-deductible contributions (currently $3000) that a person can make each year.2. Ending insurance mandates that states impose. As an interim measure, allow insurance sales across state lines so that consumers can choose the insurance plan that best fits their needs, rather than be limited to what state legislatures allow.3. Making doctors and their insurers liable only for actual negligence and malpractice. We need to return to a system of strict liability. In the interim, caps on non-economic damages, such as those in California and Texas, lower insurance costs, but may prevent victims of actual malpractice from being appropriately compensated.4. Ending the regulation of medical professionals and employing a system of voluntary certification instead. Studies show that certification increases the amount of quality care delivered, especially to the poor. Since practitioners are usually certified on the basis of competence, rather than on politically-correct regulations, their number and quality increases, while prices decrease.5. Ending FDA regulation of pharmaceuticals and employing a system of third-party certification instead. The FDA doesn’t test any drugs, but simply looks over the data provided by manufacturers. Underwriters’ Laboratory (UL), which certifies electrical appliances, actually tests the products that bear its “Seal of Approval.” Such third-party testing is an excellent model for drug certification.In the interim, passing bills such as Congressman Ron Paul’s HR 3395 and HR 3394 removes the FDA’s jurisdiction over all nutrient-disease relationship claims and prevents the Federal Trade Commission from taking action against any advertiser that communicates a health benefit unless it can establish that the claim is false and harmful.Each of these measures by itself can decrease health care costs by at least 10%. Taken together, they can slash health care costs by 50% or more. This is true health care reform. Be sure to call your representatives and tell them to vote against health care rationing and for real health care reform. The life you save may be your own!Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D. is an At-Large Representative on the Libertarian National Committee, Inc.*** end quote ***
Oh please, Health savings Accounts (HSAs) are the biggest bunch of crap ever, a steaming pile of cow dung. They are great if you are wealthy (they are a tax shelter for the rich), healthy or young. They do absolutely nothing for the poor, the lower middle class, for working folks who live from paycheck to paycheck. HSAs are crapola pumped out by the right wing and libertarians so they don't have to think about all the people who are dying, suffering and going bankrupt from lack of health insurance or from being victims of greedy insurance companies.What the hell do tax credits do for the poor or for working folks who work from paycheck to paycheck, who can't save anything and who are in fear of going bankrupt from medical expenses, whether they are insured or not.Buying insurance across state lines is more garbage from the right wing and their libertarian lap dogs. Buying insurance across state lines will have no affect on anything worth mentioning.Single payer or Medicare for all would have been the way to go. This whole libertarian freak show is a cancer on any intelligent discussion about health care and is a total waste of oxygen.Why should there be caps on suits for medical malpractice? If hospitals, doctors, drug companies, medical equipment companies screw up, they should pay up, no damn caps. Right wingers love to protect the rich and the powerful against some poor schlub who has been maimed through medical malpractice.Ending FDA regulation of pharmaceuticals is just insane. If anything, the FDA and its regulations should be beefed up and strengthened. The drug companies have too much power and influence over our government as it is, the FDA must be insulated from undue influence and all this massive economic power of the drug companies.Dr. Mary J. Ruwart works for Cannabis Science Inc and previously worked for Upjohn. She's nothing more than a corporate shill for the drug companies who don't want any kind of regulations and the public be damned.
Mary J. Ruwart is nothing more than a corporate shill, corporate toady and a de facto lobbyist for the drug companies.