Time to Adjust AND Learn Health Reform Bill Details

It was a relief to learn that the health reform bill will not be signed into law until some time in February. There has been so much confusion and misrepresentation that I imagine that the vast majority of us don't know what the bill's various forms entail. The hassle over having it is now over with the Senate vote today. I gather that only a majority of each house is needed to pass an identical version acceptable to both houses.

I am sorry that the Republicans have been our party of "no" throughout the deliberations. Having experienced what health care is in our fellow industrial democracies, I have been appalled at the nonsense inflicted on us by the profit makers: excessive costs for medications, arbitrary denials of coverage. My wife used to spend hours getting the latter straightened out and saved us many thousands of dollars in the process. I hate to think of the abuses of those not as sharp as she was in working through these things. I could not have done it and I have a Ph.D. in legal areas.

I have been appalled by the Republican misrepresentations of the facts and the TV pattern of repeating them in short form so that this primary source of information has misled those who need the right information the most.

Now there will be time to deliberate, make choices, and explain details and implications. We did not win it all, but we have a good start in the right direction. Yes, we should have single payer medicine as do the several dozen other industrialized democracies at costs half or less than the waste and moral theft that we have had with our basic health needs.

We were lucky after my retirement to have all covered so that we only had some heavy bills for medicines to carry.

Let's hope for better things now.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]