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Today’s Health Care News |
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Here’s the latest news from the battle for health care reform:
• While much of the media focuses on the Senate, the House bill is expected to be released tomorrow, with a vote coming soon. Call your members of Congress and ask them to support real reform.
• In the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson writes that a health care excise tax could hurt middle-class families because companies
have the power to impose health care costs and cutbacks on workers, who have little or no power to resist. if employers opt for cheaper policies to avoid the excise taxes on more expensive plans, their savings may not be passed on to workers as higher wages but simply kept by the employers. Out-of-pocket health costs for workers would rise, but into-pocket wage increases to cover those costs might not be forthcoming.
The senators’ version of health care finance assumes that workers will pocket the benefits of a cost-conscious system. The senators assume wrong.
• As a small number of senators threaten to withhold votes when the Republicans try to filibuster health care reform, it was reassuring to hear yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would use the budget reconciliation process to pass it with a simple majority vote. The restrictive rules of the process would enable opponents to strip significant provisions from the legislation, so it is a way second-best option. But it still beats acceding to the threats and demands of those who want to gut the bill.
• Anna Turner of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says the House bills, with a small surtax on top earners, offer a better way to pay for health care.
• Check out, and vote on, 20 short videos with real-life health care stories submitted to Organizing for America.
• The CEOs who make up the Business Roundtable—many from health insurance companies—are trying to scare people away from a public health insurance option.
• Workers, students and activists from around the country are rallying for health care in Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and other states.
• And, finally, great moments in timing: One North Carolina insurance company sent its customers a letter telling them their premiums were going up 11 percent—then sent those same customers a flier asking them to contact their senators and oppose health care reform. Stay classy, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina!
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Under the proposed legislation for “health care reform”, legal immigrants are not allowed to be covered under the new “health care” reform act for FIVE YEARS.
Millions of undocumented and most exploited and impoverished working people, their children and families, some of who have lived and worked for years generating profit, will never be eligible for health care.
In other words, in this time of “swine flu” and other highly contagious diseaseas, millions of working people are now made potentially carriers of these diseases.
Many of these people will be preparing and serving us food in restaurants, cleaning our homes, taking care of our children, who are going to be the most likely carriers of diseases. But they will not be able to buy preventative health care because it will be so incredibly expensive.
This kind of barbaric legislation is perhaps a “dream” bill for corporate profit maximization but it is going to be a nightmare for the rest of society.
Only an single-payer “Medicare for All” universal health care coverage, that eliminates corporate greed, will be affordable and that can genuinely increase the health and well-being of the entire society.
Polemics against the insanity of the Republican and fascist right, with their opposition to the “public option”, does not constitute therefore a reason to support this terrible “health care reform” legislation of the corporate lackeys Obama and the Democrats.
That the AFL-CIO continually supports Obama’s health care “reform”, in opposition to it’s own membership recent convention support of “single payer”, once again demonstrates what side the AFL-CIO “leadership” is ready on.
ITS TIME THAT WE STOP PLAYING POLITICS AND GET A HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL PASSED. IF THE POLITICIANS THINK THEY ARE FOOING US, THEY ARE NOT…ITS ALL ABOUT POLITICS, WHICH PARTY WILL GET IN , AND HOW MUCH MONEY THE INSURANCE ARE PAYING TO KEEP CONGRESS FROM PASSING A HEALTH CARE REFORM THAT WILL HELP ALL AMERICANS. THE INSURANCE HAVE HAD THEIR WAY FAR TOO LONG. ITS TIME NOW THAT THE POLICIANS WORK FOR THOSE WHO THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE REPRENSENTING. AND ITS NOT THE INSURANCE COMPANIES. WANDA EVANS 102 3RD AVE SW AUSTIN. MN 55912