Nov 05 2009
USAction Calls on House to Pass Historic Health Care Reform Legislation
The Affordable Health Care for America Act will make health care more affordable for consumers, hold insurance companies accountable and increase access to health care for millions of Americans.
USAction today called on the House to approve the measure and not pass up the best opportunity in 100 years to pass comprehensive reform that guarantees quality, 
affordable health care for millions of Americans.
“If the House votes yes, Americans will be one step closer to having more affordable health coverage with good, comprehensive benefits and true choice and competition in the health insurance marketplace,” said USAction Program Director Alan Charney. “We must not pass up this opportunity.”
The House bill, in particular, makes health care much more affordable, ends egregious insurance industry abuse, and injects real choice and competition with the inclusion of a national public health insurance option. It also draws revenue from fair financing as opposed to taxation of middle-income Americans’ health care plans. Finally, it includes shared responsibility between individuals, employers and government.
On Saturday evening, the House of Representative will choose whether to stick with the status quo or take another step towards enacting quality, affordable for all.
NO! I’m not supporting any half assed bill that Speaker Pelosi has bargained the American People out of. I am not supporting a health INSURANCE bill. I could support a health care bill but this is a health INSURANCE care bill and I won’t support it and anyone who is really on top of things won’t either. There are enough Democrats in the house AND Senate to have gone with a single payer bill. Why pay billions to the insurance companies to run our health care for us? Excuse me. To run the business of health care for themselves and their stock holders. Insurance companies are just like Las Vegas gambling. They have the odds figured down to the nth degree and they WILL win. Not everyone will be insured, people with pre existing conditions will pay through the nose and people who are out of work will be out of luck. This is the biggest scam of the new century (Enron was last century and Madoff didn’t scam off as much money as the insurance companies do and will). It is clear that the fix was in and that Congress as a whole was on the take. The promise of the Obama administration is starting to fade and it is heartbreaking to see this administration not willing to twist congressional arms for a decent health bill but all too willing to twist arms to deregulate some of the provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley ["Rahm Emanuel is pushing lawmakers to back an amendment that would exempt smaller companies from audits of their internal controls, sources tell the Huffington Post. The stricter controls, established by Sarbanes-Oxley after the Enron scandal, are scheduled to kick in next year for companies with market caps under $75 million"--Newser 11/3/09] in order to APPEAR to support small business….but $75 million in publicly traded stock is not REALLY small, it’s potentially a lot of campaign contributions. This administration needs to show liberals some substance. The people contributed to the campaign and the people voted in this administration and now it’s time for some quid pro quo in the direction of THE PEOPLE instead of in the direction of insurance companies and Wall Street and thieving mortgage lenders.
I couldn’t agree more. This bill is a pathetic excuse for health care reform. Sure, there are a few good measures, but to hand over another 36 million people to the health insurance industry is ludicrous. In reality, this just looks like a shake-down of the health insurance industry, the result of which is more customers and profits for them, and more contributions for politicians. Maybe the Republicans are just jealous they didn’t think of it first.
I won’t be signing any more petitions to pass this corporate gift, and I am rooting for it to be killed. Disclosure: I would actually benefit on the face of it. In 2013 I’ll be 60 and eligible for subsidies, so that I wouldn’t have to pay more that 12% of a 43,000 income. This would actually be far less than having to pay for comparable insurance in 2009. But it does nothing to truly benefit all of us and to really bring down the costs of health CARE. It is HEALTH CARE that we should be providing, not INSURANCE.
What kind of equal opportunity can a country provide, when it can’t even provide health care for its citizens??