Healthcare

I don't know. Maybe I'm naive. Or incredibly smart (I like to think the latter...). But wouldn't the best, and easiest way to reform the healthcare system in the United States to simply regulate the health insurance companies/providers?

Basically, just as Wall Street needs regulation, a fact that became painfully obvious last year, after the crash due to nearly complete NON-regulation of the financial industry, so does the healthcare industry. It's time for insurance companies to have deep, strict regulation. That regulation would include complete and utter abolishment of discriminating against people who have "pre-existing" conditions. It includes regulation to prevent insurance companies from revoking insurance people who are already insured and who lose their insurance when they get sick and the insurance companies claim the person lied to get insurance. It includes regulation against charging people who DO have "pre-existing condition" far more than what they charge people "without" "pre-existing conditions." It would include regulating how much insurance companies can charge PERIOD.

Regulation would force insurance companies to expand coverage, without raising the price, to cover medical conditions they currently refuse to cover, or only cover for a much higher price. In my case, the prime example is insurance companies not covering medically supervised weight loss and, in many cases, bariatric surgery (while at the same time they refuse coverage for people who are obese because obesity is a "pre-existing condition").

Healthcare reform would provide for the nearly fifty MILLION Americans who cannot afford health insurance with quality healthcare.

And finally, as a parent whose children are currently on medicaid and whose children have a WAY better plan than my wife and I do, healthcare reform would definitely provide for a buy-in option to government provided healthcare.

Pretty simple, to me, if you simply stop listening to the asshole lobbyists and Republicans.

Exhausted!

Whew! This job is wonderful, but very exhausting. I've spent next to no time at the computer for the last week or so.

BUT, I wanted to comment on Congressman Wilson, ass that he is. The comment is this: If this had been while Governor Bush was in his stolen position as president, and, say, (name your Democrat) had yelled out to Bush that he was a liar (which, by the way, he WAS!) in the middle of Bush's address to Congress, the Republicans would simply have declared war on the Democrats and marginalized them even more than they had while the Republicans held House (and Senate) majority.

But you know what? A democrat wouldn't have done that. Know why? Because no matter how wrong the president is, you simply DON'T do that.

And this is the problem with the Democrats, or some of them, at least. Stop being so damned liberal that you want to make peace with someone who will happily stab you in the back at the first opportunity. God forgive me for saying this, but it's time for Obama and the Democrats to do what what Bush and his Republican cronies did during the Dark Years (2001-2009): JUST GET IT DONE. Don't worry about marginalizing the Republicans. Don't worry about hurting their feelings. They didn't worry about hurting yours!

Now, pass this healthcare bill already!