Fw: OT Make changes to the HC reform Bill

[Guest guest]

Please feel free to cut and paste this and send it to your sentors if you agree with its contents. Dear [your Senator's

Name]:

The health care reform bill needs to be modified to include a public option. This will provide competition to the insurance companies and force down premiums. In its current form, the bill is essentially a "sweetheart deal" for the insurance companies. The mandate that requires people to purchase health insurance does not have controls that mandates that health insurance company premiums remain affordable. Even if the government subsidizes the premiums to keep the price low for consumers, the tax payers will be "fleeced" because the insurance companies will raise the price of the premiums as high as they can (refer to the case of Anthem Blue Cross in California that just willfully raised prices by 40%) to make profits and pay hefty bonuses to sr. management.

I also understand that the insurance companies will only be penalized a paltry $5,000 if they deny a person with a pre-existing condition coverage. This means that they will still be able to legally deny coverage! I think that this type of denial of coverage should be made ILLEGAL. It should be outlawed. The only way financial services firms will do the right thing is through threat of going to jail. In other words: stringent regulation and laws. Companies will not do the right thing. The mentality for corporations is to 'do whatever you can get away with.'

I also think that it is dangerous for the Democratic party to have a health care bill that lacks controls and does not fully satisfy the progressive Democratic agenda. The current bill is basically like Medicare Part 'D' in which the big pharmaceutical firms make a lot of money but the government will increase the deficit because there are not cost controls built in to control the price of subsidized prescription medicines. Another example is that of California during the Enron-lead energy crisis, in which Enron drove up the price of electricity indiscriminately; there were no price controls so california went through its budget surplus and ran into deficits that they never recovered from and are still suffering from today.

We still have time to make changes to the bill. We still have a Democratic majority. We need to create the single-payer public option modeled after France, so that we can have a real comprehensive health care reform. We would also be better off if we had several bills rather than one large one. Because should the current bill be passed, we are going to have to amend it until we get to the single-payer public option and have adequate controls to cut down costs and prices. I think that having a large bill is more difficult to amend in the future. Please, please get the other Democrats and Independents to postpone passage so that they can really change the content to suit public needs.

Also (the following is written in the vernacular and is somewhat impassioned):

I thought I had a pretty good grasp on things

but there's lots of little things that don't make sense about the Health Care Reform Bill.

What would a politician "sell out" in the content of the bill for?

I would have to say "reelection." Isn't that why they do favors for corporate special interests? They get campaign financing, and perhaps later on cushy jobs as lobbyists or board members? But in this case, Democratic behavior just doesn't make any sense from that perspective. The Democrats are going to get KILLED in 2010 and 2012 if they don't pass something good. Fact is, a strong majority of the country favors Health Care Reform. But enough people can see that this particular bill is a piece of "crap" that a majority opposes it. If they tell the Health Insurance companies to "stick it", their party would be in good shape in November. Instead they're self-destructing. So why are they doing this?