The Senate Healthcare Bill – We Will Limit Coverage
A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer:
The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.
As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.
Adding to the puzzle, the new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in the bill still captioned “No lifetime or annual limits.”
Just a few months ago, Barack Obama wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times where he had this to say about insurance companies and their policy of limiting coverage:
They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.
If the Democratic healthcare bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits of the dollar value of medical care as long as those limits are not “unreasonable”, who then would decide what’s “unreasonable”? Senators? The insurance companies? Death Panels? Hmmmm, death panels.
To add to the intrigue, no one in the Democrat ranks knows who actually slipped this loophole into the healthcare bill. Seeing though that this is Harry Reid’s bill, I would think he’s the one that has to take responsibility for it.
There are a few reasons why this clause could have been inserted into the healthcare bill: 1) Insurance companies wouldn’t support this bill if the clause wasn’t there, 2) the healthcare bill is hundreds of billions higher than it should be and this is a stealth way of reducing the overall cost, 3) it’s all about the power. The power to decide who lives and who dies. The power to control the lives of the population.
Look at it this way: For example – Let’s say that it has been decided that a person with cancer is allowed to have $150,000 in coverage each year. And that works out well for a few years, everyone is covered sufficiently and everyone is happy. A few years go by, and is want to happen with every government plan and organization, healthcare becomes increasingly expensive and massively bloated. So the lawmakers go back and change the definition of “reasonable”. $150,000 was “reasonable” a few years ago, but considering how the economy is not performing up to expectations and healthcare is close to bankruptcy (see Medicade, Medicare, Social Security, Government sponsored pension funds, Postal service, Amtrax, etc) $150,00 now considered “unreasonable”. So now a more reasonable amount is $93,000.
The government will say, “It’s for the greater good, we all have to make sacrifices. Think of the children…and their children…etc.” Most Americans don’t have cancer, so what do they care? Most Americans care more about their plasma TV’s or their PS3, cancer coverage isn’t even on their radar. Put another way: If most Americans aren’t concerned with an already bankrupt America and a government that has socialized banks, insurance companies, car companies, and is now socializing 1/6 of their economy, what makes you think Joe Six Pack will care about this?
But YOU care, and that’s what matters. You can still do something before it’s too late. Because once this is signed into law, it’s going to be there forever. It’s going to get bigger, more bloated, and you WILL lose the healthcare you have. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of WHEN.
December 12th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
The fellow who “sneaked” the clause into the Bill, did no such thing. He was ordered to make damned sure there was a “weasel clause”, just in case, and he did his job very well.
He’ll no doubt be rewarded accordingly.
In Canada, home of unlimited medical care, second only to Cuba’s, in the opinion of expert Michael Moore, we are masters at weasel clauses AND actions. Yes, you can have whatever care you need, BUT at the pleasure of The System.
Canadians have panels or individuals deciding how important their surgery is,and you can wait for years depending on some bureaucrat’s decision. Many patients die on the waiting list,and the bureaucrats who deny that fact are as credible as the proponents of AGW.
The Yanks would do well to contact our administrators in Ottawa and find out more about how to give the appearance of universal health care,but deliver way less.
The US can’t afford universal health care,and neither can we here in Canada. We’ve found ways around it by rationing,and the American government is about to find the reality of delivering UHC will force them to do the same.
December 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am
But, but, but…it’s freeeeee.
You’re right on every count, of course. But the American’s will get UHC and they will be sorry. The devil is already in the details, death panels being one of the details. From here, more bloated gov’t, more debt, and a corroded service. Those who get what they wished for are going to rue the day.
December 13th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Was in the local Future shop awhile back picking up the girlfriends new TV – Had a shirt on with Churchill’s picture on it. One of the two young men asked me who it was on my shirt _ I replied “Winston Churchill he led Britain during the second world war and he was a great leader”. The same lad said – Oh a great leader like Tommy Douglas who gave us free health care.
I was demoralized that Winston Churchill was unknown to a Canadian let alone the thought that health care was free for which I corrected the lad and later made a comment to the girlfriend that the boy must have just unlatched from his mothers breast.
Surprisingly their was no violence on her part directed at me , and I only received an eye roll.
December 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Mugs…don’t marry her. The “eye roll” will shift gears into full-throttled blowup.
December 13th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Tommy Douglas/Winston Churchill!?
Never thought I’d see the day.
That’s like comparing Paris Hilton with The Virgin Mary.