Health Reform Law - The First Step

From today’s Crooks and Liars (http://crooksandliars.com/) here are some of the provisions of the health care reform bill passed yesterday:
1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.

It’s not perfect (but what is?) and I heard it’s chocked full of amendments which were added to sweetened the deal for congress people to vote “Yes.” We shall see.

A side note which just shows the anger and stupidity in many people today: We still have an Obama sticker on our car and yesterday morning we had just gotten on the Garden State Parkway in NJ. The traffic was moderately heavy, we were in the right lane, had entered without cutting anyone off, driving in a way which would make a driving instructor proud (important to know considering what happened.) I turned to my husband (the driver) and said: Be careful, the health care vote is today. I’m sure he was thinking: Yeah, right. Crazy lady. And with that, a green SUV passes us on the left, honks his horn and gives us the finger. Oh, if only we could be vindicated so quickly all the time!

I had sort of expected something since before the election our Obama sticker got a lot of negative finger waving.

I do think the best thing I read though was the explanation from our Congressman Scott Garrett, Mr. Lock-Step Republican, for why he was voting “No.” You see, he explained, the bill was unconstitutional! What a dipshit excuse! Though I, even looking for the pony under the manure, reasoned that perhaps he had gotten so many “Vote for this bill” phone calls and e-mails (Hubby tried calling but only got through once because his mailbox was always full as they got closer to the voting.) that he felt he had to give some sort of quasi-sane excuse. Not that I believe a word of it.

I guess you may have noticed I didn’t even mention Movie Monday yet and, folks, I’m not going to. You see, I haven’t seen a good or bad movie in the past week worth reviewing. I am going to revisit Twilight as I promised from the director/screenwriter/editor POV; but not today.

Yesterday’s vote may have been historic or maybe not because the vultures are at the door and they are royally pissed with this loss. (And, I’m not even factoring in that they know a mixed race man got the first significant health care reform through in over 40 years!!!) So I’m not going to savor in this victory (???); I’m going to think about it awhile though.

But I’ll leave you with this little story:

On Reporter’s Roundtable (NJ reporters talking about NJ news; every Friday on PBS at 7 pm) they showed a clip of our present NJ Gov, Chris Christie, talking about being a “real” New Jerseyan (so am I, Chris) and returning NJ to the state he remembers from his youth.

Whoa now, Chris. I hope you don’t mean this as this sort of statement is often used: to return the world to the time before we had those pesky problems like minorities living by us and working with us.

Not even going there, I checked Christie’s age. He was born in 1962 which makes his cognizant childhood years in the late 1960's and into the 1970's.

He wants to return to that! Drugs, bad clothes style, riots, overt prejudice against “those people” like gays - the list is long.

I just don’t get Republicans. Why can’t they work together to make the world a better place for all of us? Oh wait, I’m walking into Aragon’s coronation speech again. Silly me.

See you next Monday. Or Wednesday, if you want a neat website to visit.