…and HCR update
The biggest bank failure of 2009 happened last week when the FDIC moved to shut down Colonial BancGroup of Alabama, along with four other banks, bringing the total thus far this year to more than 70. A quick deal with BB&T to purchase Colonial caused its shares to rise. FDIC will be shouldering much of the losses, of course, which adds billions to the bailout of the banking system while at the same time working to further bank consolidation for the wealthiest banks still standing.
Such situations are a ‘win-lose’ proposition. Win for BB&T and their stockholders, lose for We the Taxpayers. This scheme where the feds cap the buyer’s losses at taxpayer expense is just another outrage to the hard-pressed public at a time when all the glorious pronouncements of economic recovery have yet to even begin to touch the lives of the general public still losing jobs at a high rate while no new jobs seem to be forthcoming.
And on top of the still-dismal economic situation for average people in this country, now we have the extremely contentious health care reform debate ongoing that looks more and more like bad street theater every day. Between the noisy hoards of idle old folks bused around the country to shut down discussion of provisions during Town Hall meetings held by vacationing congresscritters, and the absurd lies being spewed by the usual suspects at FoxNews and right wing radio, it’s looking more and more like the final result will be a significant new tax on the working poor that will be earmarked directly to the health insurance industry by means of mandatory purchase of junk insurance.
The situation is really health insurance reform, though reform isn’t really a good title either considering how much the Death by Spreadsheet crowd will end up getting from the public directly and from the government as subsidies. Yes, they will have to stop excluding anyone with a pre-existing condition, retroactively canceling policies if the insured person gets sick, and simply not paying for covered health care after the fact. But they will more than make up for however much this costs them by the ~40 million new policies the uninsured will have to purchase, and with government subsidies for many of those as well as losses incurred by having to honor their contracts.
And I am sure readers know that “junk insurance” – insurance that has a high deductible and hefty co-pays – isn’t going to help a person living on a shoestring budget already. Whatever ‘extra’ money those people might have saved over months to pay for a doctor’s visit will be taken by the insurers for that junk insurance. Leaving the working poor even worse off than they were before.
Even the so-called “Public Option” Obama and other Democrats have been touting is just another insurance option. Basic buy-in Medicaid, for which the government plans to auto-deduct from people’s bank accounts to make sure their premiums get paid on time. No word yet on whether they’ll do that for bank accounts that don’t have enough money in them to cover the deduction (like mine, for instance), thus causing families to suffer huge bank overdraft charges and messing up their other payment plans, or if a too-slim bank account qualifies people for automatic subsidy to make those insurance payments. But if I were to guess, I’d guess it’s just going to shaft the barely getting by yet again by throwing their bare budgeting into chaos and costing them more than they can pay.
Isn’t it funny how the wealthy and well-off are somehow able to convince themselves that we at the low end of the spectrum somehow have lots and lots of ‘extra’ money they should be able to take at will?
At any rate, we will not know until Christmas at least what the health care bill looks like or what’s in it. None of us should be holding our breath hoping for real reform or actual access to health care. In the end it’s way more likely that the government will simply be able to claim that they’ve ‘fixed’ the access problem – those ~50 million uninsured and ~100 million underinsured – so the U.S. will no longer rank #37 on the list of 37 industrialized nations on all measures of health care. While We the People will simply be poorer than we were before. I’d like to be pleasantly surprised, but don’t expect to be so long as people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are spouting lies about killing granny and the Medicare crowd is hollering for the government to keep their hands off their Medicare. Stupid and/or evil people always seem to win in this country.
If you haven’t called or written your representatives and senators yet, please do so. We don’t have much of a voice in what happens in this country, but they at least need to know we’re out here and want real access to health care instead of just another theft of what little we do have. Then when we lose we’ll have earned our own bitching rights!