You'd have to watch the show at PBS; whether the actual/Final/At-Last thing provides the means for redress via regulation: when the greed-heads do their predictable lateral arabesques -- seems to be the prime question. Potter made clear that many revisions would have to occur after signing; that these should be anticipated in the final wording. He was well aware that every part of the Medico-Industrial Complex would immediately be setting out to exploit loopholes. (It was his specialty, back then.)
... And it mandates that people buy these companies' products for whatever they charge.
Agreed that, if that is the exact result of the final bill -- then it will be odious. I've lost track of the revision game; certainly it could be a disaster. i had expected that it would, anyway -- we are now dysfunctional in all important matters.
I also don't think that Obama could have, single-handedly, handed the Insurance Cos. their heads, (too many employees turned out at once: for a start.) However brilliantly logical and economical that would have been, logic has little to do with matters involving this much extorted cash. I've aways considered this whole topic to be fraught with thousands of means of subversion -- we Are that corrupt.
Clearly anyone with a 100 IQ would want a Public Option; just as clearly -- anyone with a $100M (2-3 years 'salary' for a Medico CIEIO) -- will spend what it takes (the Company's funds, of course) to continue their parasitic function, no matter what.
I refuse to worry about the death throes of all those possibilities; we are fucked on so many other levels, I'm surprised when my mail (still) arrives just as if we were a normal country. My guess is that Inertia is giving the illusion ... for a time ... that 'we shall overcome' the nuclear damage done by the Bankers, magically solve the perpetual problem of the 50ish Trillion of unfunded mandates (from Soc Sec to Medicare to dozens lesser Official debts) plus the Bush giveaway to Big Pharma of that Part D drug bonanza.
But I don't see How all that can happen, with no manufacturing base left. The US, now a Two Class System, is a mere re-marketing arm of those who still make things. We move around mostly paper in all those offices while rebundling even more 'Financial' papers: that meaningless shuffling is called 'work', now. And if most people are doing inherently useless things -??-
The plebs aren't informed and (too-) many of those are uninformable -- while the Congress lives for its stipends. It's all surreal, so I'm just going to watch; it's not worth emoting about. IMO, anyone (worth less than a few Mil) who gets sick in Murica will at best be bankrupted, at worst die that much earlier. ( I just may have to get my ass out of here yet, painful as are all those details.) But I'll have to leave while healthy and before the rush. Missing temporal data: what is the *rate* of the Murican collapse?
Wish I knew.. because that phrase in Moyers' intro re Obama and "the present climate" suggests it all: the present climate is Stalemate, and not only in med. Unclear if we shall be 'governable' again and, if so -- when.
What Me Worry?
Alfred E. Neumann