You ain’t seen nothin’ yet

    Rick Howell made an interesting effort, in last week’s The Liberal Agenda, to make Nancy Pelosi seem like just a sweet li’l ol’ granny. When Granny Pelosi rammed a massive health care reform bill though the House of Representatives, she had our best interests at heart. She just wants to make sure we all have good health care when we get a runny nose.

    Personally, I think that Pelosi is so far to the left that I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a hammer-and-sickle tattooed on her derriere. Regardless of her ideological motivation, however, the 2,300 page bill that she pushed is a mess.
    Granted, something needed to be done about America’s health care system. The inflation rate for the cost of medical services has for many years exceeded the inflation rate in the economy as a whole. More and more of us have been reaching the point that we can’t afford basic medical services. The rapidly rising cost of paying for medical services has been a major driving force behind the rapidly rising cost of medical insurance.
    Granny Pelosi’s remedy will make it worse.    
    Most of us have already seen one “benefit” of comprehensive  health care “reform.” We saw the amount we have to pay for medical insurance go up by a greater percentage than it has in the past. The boost was due to a couple of new mandates that this “reform” placed on insurance companies. The companies, in turn, raised their rates to cover the additional money that they expect to have to pay out next year to comply with these mandates.
    There’s worse to come. As various agencies work to develop what will probably turn out to be tens of thousands of pages of regulations to implement this massive bill, medical service providers won’t just stand there looking like deer in the headlights. They will take steps to deal with the potential impact of these regulations, and don’t expect their efforts to benefit you. They are going to work to protect themselves in the brave new world of health care that Granny Pelosi has helped bring us.
    One thing you are sure to see is consolidation in the entire health care industry. Instead of more choices, you will have fewer choices. Furthermore, fewer choices are going to mean higher prices. Expect to see the cost of many medical services soar to breathtaking heights in the near future. Will you be able to afford health care? Maybe Granny Pelosi will stop by, kiss it and make it feel better.
    Republicans vow to repeal this legislation, but they’ll never get a repeal past the Senate. House Republicans say that, if they can’t repeal it, they can starve the beast by refusing to fund it. Nevertheless, even if they are able to stop it cold in its tracks, I fear that it’s too late. Grave damage has probably already been done to a system that had serious problems to begin with.
    Congress could have done a number of things to make the health care system better, instead of passing a 2,300 page monstrosity. They could have set up a voucher system to help uninsured people buy medical insurance. They could have passed serious tort reform so that doctors wouldn’t have to take costly steps to protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits. They could have passed legislation to make it possible to buy medical insurance across state lines. Mandated coverages raise the cost of insurance and some states have really piled them on. Maybe, Congress could have even figured something out that would allow us to be more savvy consumers of non-emergency medical services.
    Unfortunately, they chose to dump a colossal mess on us, and we are all going to pay the price for their foolishness. I hope we all keep in mind who did this to us.