The Amazing Maze of US Health Care

AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., holds a large gavel as she crosses Independence Avenue en route to the Capitol before Sunday’s House vote on health care reform. Immediately right of Pelosi is Rep. David Obey and immediately left, Rep. John Lewis. Next to Lewis is House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

By Bill Boyarsky Mar 24, 2010

Now that President Barack Obama has signed health reform into law, insurance industry lobbyists will turn their attention to trying to cripple it. This will be done under the pretense of improving the reform proposal—or, as they say in the lobbying business, loving the law to death.

The passage of health reform was a great event. The Republicans who talk about repeal are misreading the public. At the moment, public opinion polling is mixed, but two days after passage, a USA Today/Gallup Poll reported that 49 percent of those surveyed found the measure was “a good thing.” A total of 40 percent said it was bad.

And support will increase as the reform law begins to kick in later this year. Consider these provisions going into effect in 2010:

Bill Boyarsky: A Healthy Start … With Loopholes – Bill Boyarsky’s Columns – Truthdig

By E.J. Dionne

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.

Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans — or at least large numbers of them — should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

PostPartisan – Why Democrats are fighting for a Republican health plan

Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation.  And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people.  I believe health care is a civil right.  Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.

I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care.  I grew up understanding first hand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care.  I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Arthur Delaney  arthur@huffingtonpost.com

It’s the biggest “doughnut hole” of them all: Members of the middle class are losing their health insurance faster than any other income group, according to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The number of middle-income earners covered by employer health insurance fell by three million from 2000 to 2008, and government programs and the individual market aren’t picking up the slack. The total number of uninsured middle-income earners rose from 10.5 million to 12.9 million, representing 16.2 percent of the income bracket — a bigger increase than for any other income group.

Middle Class Losing Health Insurance Faster Than The Rich Or Poor

Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s single-payer system.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”

The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada’s health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and ‘death-panel’-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse.

Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care