Just the other day, Obama accurately pointed out that concentration of market share among insurance cartels is one of the biggest problems with American health care…yet his health bill does nothing, absolutely nothing, to address the problem.

Likewise, when Kathleen Sibelius laments:

“How many years in a row can we have the same discussion over and over?’’ Ms. Sebelius asked. “How many years can we look at a marketplace which is getting more segmented and more difficult? How much pressure can be put on the remaining customers before the business model collapses of its own weight?’’

The current health care bill does nothing, absolutely nothing, to solve the problem of current market segmentation, because the proposed insurance exchanges are so small (only 3 million people nationwide) that they will have less bargaining power than large employers, and thus the insurance premiums from exchanges will cost more than the already grossly unaffordable insurance premiums people must pay when they get insurance through work. And, yes, today’s insurance premiums are unaffordable, but most people don’t realize this because employers currently shoulder the primary burden of paying for employee health insurance. But that won’t continue for very long with 67% annual rate hikes, as we’re seeing now in California (that’s not 6.7%, that’s sixty-seven percent in one year). Five years or so of those kinds of skyrocketing insurance premium hikes, and most employers will find themselves forced to drop employee insurance entirely just so they can stay in business.

When Sibelius accurately asks “How much pressure can be put on the remaining customers before the business model collapses of its own weight?” she neglects to mention that the current HCR bills (house or Senate, take your pick) do nothing, absolutely nothing, to control costs because they absolutely nothing to break up the collusive corrupt doctor-hospital-insurance-medical devicemaker monopolies and cartels that are driving American health care costs up at a rate of double digits per annum.

I’m getting tired to listening to people like Obama and Sibelius accurately diagnose all the problems but do nothing to solve the problems.

You get the sense that Obama and company think they’ve solved a major social problem just by making an eloquent speech that says all the right things. No, you actually need to f*cking do something to solve the goddamn problem, not just make speeches.

Obama and Sibelius are treating the American people like three-year-olds. Obama and Sibelius think if they just make soothing noises but don’t solve the actual problems, no one will notice and we’ll all applaud and re-elect the sonsofbitches.

Smoke-and-mirrors bullshit like a HCR bill that bans recission but permits insurers to dump people for fraud, where fraud gets defined as baving an illness but not telling the insurance company (Guess what? The instant you’re diagnosed with a sickness you didn’t know you had, you’re guilty of fraud!) doesn’t solve these problems with American health. Cons and scams like expanding medicaid, when the states are slashing medicaid reimbursements right and left and most doctors and hospitals won’t accept medicaid patients in the first place because medicaid already pays too little, aren’t going to solve America’s health care problems. These con games permit the current health care system to sail right on with its grossly unsustainable practices and costs, just under another name,
using different language rather than “recission” and “banning patients for pre-existing conditions.”

These kinds of scams and con games insult our intelligence. It’s the equivalent of holding a woman down and raping her and telling her it’s not rape, it’s just non-consensual sex, so don’t worry about it. That’s contemptible.

We need actual health care reform, not speeches, and not con games and verbal calisthenics where recission is permitted but just not called recission. And here’s a warning: one way or another, we will get health care reform. Either people in Washington will fix the system, or it will collapse and there will be chaos and travail, and at that point, we’ll get reform because there won’t be any other choice.

Por Que No??

Corporations can do whatever they want. If you don’t like it, don’t send them nasty emails or buy their poisoned food or purchase their defective products that will kill you: just don’t support them. Don’t eat their food full of toxic additives, drive their defective cars that kill you, and don’t talk about them. ...Vote with your dollars and purchase elsewhere.

Gooooood thinking. Let’s carry that demented reasoning a little further:

Politicians can do whatever they want. If you don’t like it, don’t send them nasty emails or vote for them: just don’t support them. Don’t pay attention when they torture people don’t speak out when they vote for endless lost wars in other countries that bankrupt America, and don’t talk about them. Since money’s not usually involved, vote for someone else—and if the opposition party also tortures peoples and votes for endless lost wars in other countries that bankrupt America, too bad on you.

Ah, yes. The libertarian version of democracy. Eat it, bitches, we own you. And if you don’t like it, go to some other country.

Gooooooooood thinking.

Could be interpreted a lot of ways I guess.

Yeah, I know. I’m probably being a bad neighbor and it’s somebody’s garden. I don’t want to hear it. My house doesn’t smell like cat pee. Is that Republican of me?

Don’t know if it makes you a Republican, but it does make you an inconsiderate neighbor. My yard, vegetable and flower garden is used by neighborhood cats for this very purpose and it’s beyond annoying. I’ll be walking out in my yard, smell cat poop, and have to look all over to find it before I step in it. Sometimes I step in it first. Yuck.

I’ve had cat people tell me that cats don’t poop indiscriminately all over the yard. Yes they do. I’ve watched them do it. I don’t own a cat, so it’s certainly not my cat. It’s the thoughtless neighbors’ cats who go running all over the neighborhood.

Animal control has come out before. They will come out again if called. I like cats just fine. But not cats that poop in my yard.

i can be reached at constantlyconsuming at JUNO dot com

I would appreciate any help getting started in the right direction.

I’ve had to tell Max the Wheaten to “drop the kitty” more times than I care to, but he’s a dog who hates cats and they come in his yard to poop. The next cat he goes after, I might let Max take it out, just to prove a point.

Don’t blame me (metaphorically) when my dog kills your cat.

I don’t think it was before the proposal, Cornerstone. I think it was after.

I don’t think that was his point. His point was labor won’t trust the Senate with the sidecar, because the sidecar will be needed to change the excise rates when the House adopts the senate bill.

It’s too broad a statement anyway. “Labor” isn’t monolithic. The SEIU is composed of younger and poorer service workers, and it’s actually growing. That’s different than the UAW or public employee unions.

Yeah, I know. I’m probably being a bad neighbor and it’s somebody’s garden. I don’t want to hear it. My house doesn’t smell like cat pee. Is that Republican of me?

Ha. Because the problem all along has been the Obama hasn’t given enough speeches, or talked about it to the press enough. Double Ha, because that document about the presidents plan is almost entirely lies and half truths.