Meeting the health care demands

The House bill does address concerns expressed by businesses in Southern Nevada. Specifically, the Act reduces or eliminates surcharges businesses currently pay for insurance. Further, a Titus amendment allows more small businesses to enter into the Health Insurance Exchange to leverage their purchasing power to get lower rates. None of these provisions, however, solve the problem of enriching the insurance industry at the expense of the poor and illiterate.

House minority leader, John Boehner, R., Ohio, voted nay on the legislation but not because it disenfranchised the poor. He simply argues that any democratic proposed health care will increase costs, add to the skyrocketing debt , destroy jobs, and cut seniors' Medicare benefits. To far too many in congress dollars are more important than meeting the health care demands of the nations citizens.

Boehner, for example voted nay on H.R. 3962, because he is paid to do so by the insurance and health professionals. His nay vote cost the insurance and health care industry in excess of $202,000 in "contributions."
Titus, who received $6,000 from the American Health Care Associaton (AHCA), did vote yea in-spite of AHCA's position, correctly, that HR. 3962 will make Medicare unsustainable and therefore detrimental to the nation's seniors.
 epublicans as represented by Boehner are protecting the insurance industry from economic damage. Democrats, as represented by Titus, appear to feel that anything is better than nothing. As a result, the poor will be poorer and Medicare for seniors will be less and healthcare will remain essentially the same: the domain of a profit motivated insurance industry.

Most, but not all, of the inequities, can be helped by a public option or, even better, a single payer system. These provisions seem less and less likely as politicians angle for ways to suck the poor and illiterate dry, cut Medicare at the federal level, and transfer inevitable cuts in Medicaid to the cash starved Governors.

Maybe something better will happen as the House version goes to the Senate for consideration. According to Senator Harry Reid, D., Nev., the next step in the health reform process is to "find middle-ground that will create competition to make health care more affordable for all Nevadans." Unfortunately, there is no middle ground when it comes to passing the burden on health care to the illiterate, poor, and disenfranchised.