Make note that as the final health care bill gets hammered out by President Obama and the Dems in preparation for delivery to Congress next week, there's not a whole lot of talk about controlling health insurance costs.
While affordability is supposed to be one of the three linchpins of effective reform access and accountability being the other two, at least in the eyes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many of her Democratic colleagues you may have noticed that most talk of cost has revolved around the cost of the legislation itself and how to pay for it; or the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and how we control them.
So when do we focus on the core, gut-level issue of controlling the constantly escalating, crushing costs of health insurance for struggling individuals, working families and small businesses, in Florida and across the country?
An even more troubling question is What will happen to the cost of health coverage if administration and oversight of the new "insurance exchanges" is left to individual states, particularly those with Republican-dominated legislatures, like Florida? Or if the Sunshine State and others are allowed to "opt out" of any federal program?
I think we all know the answers to those questions which makes it all the more important for all concerned people to get busy with phone calls and emails for the next week or more, insisting that our congress do more to break up the health insurance monopolies and bring the costs of coverage down.
Here's a new 3-minute video, Health Bill Needs Big Payoff For Small Business, that looks at just one longtime Florida small business, trying to do the right thing by its employees and getting squeezed worse than ever by private, for-profit health insurance costs - while those same insurance companies are allowed to monopolize the market and keep spending less and less of each premium dollar on actual medical care.
There is still time to threaten all in Congress with ballot box punishment if they fail to add some actual insurance reform into the final healthcare legislation - the kind of reform that will address and reduce the outrageous and ever-escalating costs of health insurance for so many struggling individuals, families and small businesses across our country.
