The euphoria that propped up Wall Street the last week or two that was born in the overly optimistic belief that the recession/depression had "bottomed out" and that the economy was turning around appears to have led Congressional Democrats into coming up with a health care plan based on the fairy tale that full employment is right around the corner.
To warm words from President Obama, the Democratic leaders of the Senate health committee unveiled a revised plan Thursday to provide health coverage to nearly all Americans. The plan would require most employers to offer benefits to their workers or pay fees to the government and would create a public competitor to insurance companies.
Unfortunately, the bad unemployment news this week is shooting holes in that assumption.
The American economy lost 467,000 more jobs in June, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the longest recession since the 1930s had yet to release its hold.
“The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”
The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of employment, released Thursday, challenged visions of a recovery already taking root. The numbers intensify pressure on the Obama administration to show returns on programs aimed at improving national fortunes — not least its $787 billion stimulus plan.
(emphasis added)
The Reagan-esque plan from Obama's Wall Street Willies - or Timmies, in this case - hasn't had much of an effect and, as little more than modified trickle-down, can't be expected to. Contrary to the apparent belief of Obama's economic team, saving bankers' bonuses really doesn't have much to do with creating jobs.
Which kind of makes an employer-centered health care system a system guaranteed to fail. Jobs are still disappearing at an alarming rate and employers are bitching about the cost of health care. Many don't want to pay anything at all for employee health insurance and the Democrats want to mandate it? And how does that help the poor and the jobless with Democrats - even Teddy - trying to buy Republican votes by cutting health insurance subsidies to those same jobless folk?
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the health committee chairman, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut subsequently filled in details of the plan and scaled back subsidies that would help low-income people buy insurance.
The details that are beginning to firm up are as bad as we thought they would be. The bogus deficit argument from Pub propaganda rooms has the Dems running scared. Not of us, but presumaby of the backlash from their corporate contributors. Yet even those contributors would prefer the govt to take responsibility for employee health care off the corporate plate. So what they actually seem to be responding to are the rich people represented by Republicans who think their taxes will go up to a reasonable level if a rational national health plan gets passed.
Even I can add 2 + 2. As the recession deepens and more and more people are thrown out of work, it doesn't make a helluva lot of sense to make your health insurance dependent on whether or not you have a job. To cover that disconnect, there may be a proposal on the table to expand Medicaid to include the long-term unemployed and the poor, a bureaucratic nightmare waiting to happen with the GOP poised and ready to throw a monkey wrench into the eligibility requirements that will keep as many people off the Medicaid rolls as possible. Eliminating the vast majority of people who need help is a skill they've been developing for 40 years and they're very good at it. With the Dems bending over backwards just to get Republican votes they don't actually need, the Obstructionist Party is in a position to kill national health just by gaming the rules.
And all of this useless wheel-spinning is required so private "health insurance" companies can go right on prepetrating fraud on hapless consumers.
Have we lost our minds?
You don't have to answer that.
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