Senate Healthcare Bill Leads to Convulsions of Yawning

Our friend Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) came out with the bill that we had long been anticipating that Judas traitor and bed partner of healthcare industry “stakeholders” would come out with, namely dumping public option healthcare insurance and eliminating the chance that the government could negotiate prices of prescription medications. His plan calls for an expansion of Medicaid and financial penalties to induce individuals and their employers to sign up for healthcare insurance. This will be paid for by cutting Medicare spending to hospitals, taxing family healthcare insurance plans that cost over $21,000 a year, and getting some concessions from industry. This continues his pattern of serving up the grub for his industry partners who contributed so handsomely to his campaign. Too bad for us little guys.

Max Baucus is keeping the industry guys well fed.

This development caused the stock in insurance companies to rise and led to the comment that the insurance companies had “ducked a bullet”. I thought that was an interesting choice of, well, animals, since we had previously noticed that a congressman had observed that introducing a public health insurance option into the health insurance mix would be like having an “alligator compete with a duck.”

Karen Ignagni (AHIP). If it walks like a duck...

And Billy Tauzin of PhRMA negotiated supposedly negotiated an 80 billion “payment” from drug companies which is essentially the “doughnut hole” between when Medicare stops paying for prescription drugs and when it kicks in again for super high bills. In concession the government gives up the right to negotiate prices, so it really isn’t much of a concession to give up the doughnut hole for drugs that are way overpriced anyway.

Those healthcare industry guys must all be high fiving each other right now. Without a public option and without the government retaining the right to negotiate prices the costs of healthcare will only continue to rise and there will continue to be individuals who are not covered, perpetuating an inhumane and immoral system, that will eventually lead to an implosion of the economy.