Re- Healthcare Reform

As I understand, the current Senate bill would force us to pay up to 8% of our incomes to insurance cos. while leaving us on the hook for up to $11,900 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses, fail to end discrimination for most people based on preexisting conditions until 2014, and fail to limit increases in insurance premiums.

Most of the vaunted 30 million additional insureds will be those who need it least – young people likely to generate more profits than costs.

Let's repeat just part of that: 30 million new MANDATED payers of insurance premiums, and NO meaningful caps on what insurers can charge us.

We're being required to pay an awful lot for very little actual benefit to most of the people most in need.

It reminds me of when conservatives argued we had to keep funding the Iraq war or we wouldn't be able to afford to bring the troops home safely.

Our troops then were, and the few sick children who might actually be benefitted by this bill are now, being held for ransom by people who can't be trusted to fulfill any promises once we've paid up.

It also looks like another instance of the conservative strategy of causing us to spend way too much on the wrong things and later screaming to high heavens that we've got nothing left to spend on the right things.