The Health Insurance Industry Giveaway Act of 2009

AKA Health Care Reform

This one is so stunningly wrong headed that it's hard to know where to start.  Now the Senate is close to passing a bill.  The principal provision is that virtually all Americans have to buy health insurance!  The bill does essentially nothing to address the underlying issue of health care cost.  On a positive note it does restrict some of the most agregious health insurance industry practices.  But on balance calling this Health Care Reform is, well,  just dumb.  I'm forced to believe that Congress has decided that American citizens have no common sense at all!

In this regard there was a news item on PBS today where a young woman reporter for the Christian Science Monitor offered the opinion that come January after the non-reform health insurance giveaway bill passes that Congress would expand the coverage to include some provisions that might actually reduce health care cost.  She offered the argument that the original Social Security Act was very limited in scope (it was) and that it was subsequently extended to provide a wide variety of benefits (it has).  Common sense, however, notes that there is a very essential difference in Social Security and Health Care.  In the case of Social Security the act established the essential principal that we as a society have an obligation to our retired people.  That's not the case with the pending Health Care bill.  All they do is to require that individuals buy health care insurance.  No where do they go in any way to the notion that we as a society have an obligation to individual citizens to see that they get health care regardless of their ability to pay.  Common sense argues that this essential difference is fundamental.  Common sense argues that we do not have any obligation to one another concerning health given a bill that establishes a compulsion on individuals to buy health care insurance!

Disgusting.

Want some change?  Change Congress.  It's gotten beyond any sense of fair play.