Mod Max Baucus and his Senate Finance Committee Gang of Six have put the finishing touches on gutting the public option on health insurance. And, if you expect a federal government alternatingly lead by neolib Dems and yahoo GOPers to actually regulate health insurance companies tightly enough to save us all money, I have some palm trees in Baucus' Montana to sell you, complete with lobbyist funding to buy them.
Beyond no public option, here’s what else is missing:
• Details of how the government will more tightly regulate health insurers, when the federal government doesn’t even have an office for that right now, and only the semi-toothless Federal Trade Commission to oversee advertising claims.
• Any plan to address fee-for-service doctor payments, which almost everybody agrees is a significant part of the problem.
• Guarantees that big insurers won’t be able to “game” the health-insurance coops that are being proposed as a VERY poor person’s substitute for the public option.
Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Team Obama continues its sellout to Big Pharma.
So relax, folks. You are going to get screwed; the astroturfers could have saved their Tea Party money; the lobbyist money worked just fine by itself.
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