Dems Surrender - Insurance Companies Win

During the election campaign of 2008, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party made a solemn pledge to the American people. They promised to pass real health care reform. They lied to us. Instead of actually passing real health care reform, they are now set to pass a bill that would leave the current broken system in place.

They have done a little tinkering around the edges, but they have allowed the Republicans, the insurance companies and a few blue dogs to gut the bill of any real reform. They now claim to have the 60 votes to cut off any filibuster, thanks to giving in to Ben Nelson (pictured) on even more abortion restrictions, but frankly there is little left in the bill worth filibustering.

This is a bad bill, but they will probably now be able to pass it anyway. Democrats will brag that they eliminated pre-existing conditions, but the fact is that anyone with diabetes, high blood pressure, or any other medical condition can still be charged an additional 50% for insurance. Those over age 55 can also be charged an extra 50% on insurance premiums. Won't this still price most of these people out of the market just like the insurance companies wanted?

Democrats will also brag about restricting insurance company overhead to 20% of premiums paid. What they won't tell you is that a public option would have reduced that overhead to 4% (as Medicare does). And by forcing millions more Americans to buy private insurance (whether they can afford it or not), they have made sure that the 20% of allowed overhead will result in a gigantic windfall profits payday for private insurance companies.

Democrats will try to tell you that they have passed significant health care reform, but what they have actually done is leave the private insurance companies in charge of making the decisions on what kind of treatments that patients can receive (and you can bet if it's expensive they won't be approving it). The Democrats could have put treatment decisions back in the hands of doctors, but they were too gutless to do that.

The Democrats have surrendered so many times on so many issues, that they now will be giving the insurance companies exactly what they have wanted all along -- a giant payday with no real restrictions on their abuses of consumers and patients. Even worse, they have set themselves up to take all the blame. The Republicans have gotten what they wanted for the insurance companies, and now by voting no, they won't have to accept any of the blame.

There were two issues the Democrats were elected to fix -- stop the two wars and fix our health care system. They have failed in both so far. If they pass this terrible bill (as it now looks like they will) and continue to stay in and even escalate the wars, will there be any reason to vote for them in 2010 or 2012?