A good article in Politico today quotes Bill Frist as saying that even if the healthcare mandate is declared unconstitutional, the majority of the law will remain intact.
If you listen to candidates on their stump speeches, one might think that "repealing Obamacare" will be an easy thing to do. In fact, repealing Obamacare is impossible without a republican supermajority in the House and Senate.
I work for a non-profit, locally supported hospital in my community.
ReplyDeleteRecently a brand new facility was built at a huge expense using bonds and other monetary advantages of a non-profit healthcare organization. When the contracts were all let, a 600 lb gorilla of a Health Insurance company decided that our local hospital was going to be out of network.
This was in 2009.
They did this to several other hospitals who were closer to a large medical conglomerate that is almost miles away in the capital of our state.
Having gathered up all of the 'evidence' collusion that I could muster, I called the Federal Trade Commission and I filed a complaint.
Then, after the FTC filed the case with the U.S. Department of Justice to file a lawsuit in our behalf, the FTC contacted me and told me that Medical Insurance Companies were immune to anti-trust legislation and had been since 1945 and that the case would go nowhere.
I called my REPUBLICAN senator. Long story short...the hospital was NOT made out of network and in February of 2010 Anti-trust immunity for Health Insurance Companies was repealed by Congress, (yes, the tea Party bunch) and it had been on the books since the mid 1940's.
This was done AFTER Obamacare was made the law.
See http://www.huliq.com/9502/90986/antitrust-immunity-health-insurance-providers-ending-soon
Healthcare insurance companies operate not on what may be afforded and needed, they operate on the principle of how they can make the most profit.
They DO not care about anybody. They give big, fat bonuses to employees who find a legal way to remove the chronically ill from their coverage because it saves them money.
They are immoral robber barons of today that FORCE the sick and the disabled on Medicaid AFTER they have to liquidate their assets, or homes, and pay the money to the healthcare organizations.
This "free market" principle is a sham. There had never been unregulated business in America since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, the heydays of the robber barons of business, until the Reagan era when it was decided that Medical Insurance companies could shape healthcare with payment schedules.
Don't get me started about Phil Gramm and the DE-regulation of banks and insurance companies so that the Wall Street calamity might be possible. Nedless to say,. Phil Gramm, a former Senator form Texas, is NOW the President of a SWISS BANK. (no kidding! look it up)
This country does a very poor job of taking care of its sick, not due to the competence of medical care practitioners, but instead due to money and healthcare availability.
What amazes me is how the special interest groups use talk radio and certain "NEWS NETWORKS" to fire up the ignorant to shoot themselves in the feet.
See this site... http://rackjite.com/graphics/nosecarlson.jpg
John, thanks for sharing your experience. I totally agree with you. It has always amazed me how health insurance companies can manipulate the public into supporting something that is bad for the public. Romney has spoken many times of trying to change the insurance market so that it acts more like a true market, and not like the twisted monopoly they have now. Thanks for sharing!
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