Gorilla's Blog

Wow, only another month of pointless Senate debate, a conference committee, and by 2013 we’ll have health care reform!!!

And what does the CBO say about all this?

The good news on health care reform:

Those currently buying insurance as individuals will see their benefits improve and their premium costs go up less steeply than presently.

The bad news on health care reform:

Those currently buying insurance as individuals represent only 17% of the market.

So, for the 72% of Americans who currently get their health care from their employers, premiums wouldn’t change very much at all.

Proving: the employer based health insurance system is good for everyone who has a job, although it keeps wages down and premiums continue to skyrocket.

Those who don’t have jobs or the self-employed or the bone idle or the working poor or those whose employers don’t offer health insurance continue to be screwed.

Single payer would have insured everyone, cut administrative costs substantially (they’re currently 30% of health care spending, or more accurately insurance company spending to cherry pick the healthy, which by the way will still be in place following health care “reform”), and kept premium increases reasonable.

But the medical-industrial complex would make a lot less money, particularly from prescribing and getting paid for treatments of dubious medical effectiveness, and that’s just plain unacceptable to the Washington leadership circles they’ve purchased.

Gorilla, whose own insurance is going up next year by 12%, has gone beyond being dismayed: “Reform today is bullshit by other means. We’ll all be in Medicare by the early 2020s, including me!”