I really don’t have much time to spend here today, but I’d like to comment here:
As I understand it, Obama’s “ein fal” that you are calling “Obamacare” (cute) is not the beast you think it is. My feeling is that everyone here believes his idea is a National Health plan, similar to what Canadians have, or NHS across the pond. This is not actually what he is proposing (at least right now).
From what I understand, this is supposed to function as a “public insurance company”. Those who can’t get private insurance will be able to purchase it from Uncle Sam’s shop. He (Obama) pretends that it will be cheaper than private insurance because they have no profit objectives. (Of course, that is foolish. Any public “company” has operating costs far in excess of private ones and manages to lose oodles of money.)
Again, this is not Universal Health. If it were, it would be dead before it even made it onto a piece of paper. For those who are too young to know, Universal health in the US is not (by far) a new idea. Kennedy (the senator) made a big push for it in the 70s. I think there was also a push in the 30s, but I’m not sure. Hillary was working towards this in the 90s. There were others, too. Do some research if you are interested in details. All failed; all will continue to fail.
Getting back to the package at hand, I believe it too will fail. Big drug companies don’t want Uncle Sam getting more involved in their price structuring (as they would if US had a National health plan will millions of participants). Big insurance companies certainly don’t want the competition. Both have big money and money=lobbyists=control of the Senate. They will kill the bill, whether or not it is actually harmful. Don’t worry, this too shall pass.
Basically, this plan is like Medicaid. Medicaid is run by the States, but this would be run Federally. Better? Certainly not. Worse? Probably not much. The future of US Health Care? Likely not.
Does anyone know more about this or disagree?