As the national Democrat Party does back flips to pass its healthcare monstrosity, there's are important bits of context of which we shouldn't lose sight. The first is that: "Job loss has been a big factor in the loss of insurance coverage, but not the only one," and job loss has been the sickly child in the room that Congress has ignored in its fixation on further nationalizing healthcare. Here's the second:
"Nobody is saying that providing coverage for those Rhode Islanders who are fully or partially uninsured won't cost anything," [Owen] Heleen, of the Rhode Island Foundation, said. "We all know it's going to cost something. That's much of the fight going on in Washington."Said Koller, the health insurance commissioner, "You need significant federal money if you want to reduce the number of uninsured unless you want to reduce the benefits for everyone else, and that's a nonstarter."
"It's not something we can solve ourselves," [Deb Faulkner of the Rhode Island-based Faulkner Consulting Group] agreed. "We can do our own Rhode Island thing, but we need their money."
But somehow, coming up with that money at the federal level is going to reduce the national deficit. Got it?
"You need significant federal money if you want to reduce the number of uninsured"
After all, "federal money" just grows on trees. It doesn't come out of anyone's pockets or anything ...
"unless you want to reduce the benefits for everyone else"
Well, under the pending bill, THAT will never happen. (At least not for the first four years ...)
Posted by: Monique at March 21, 2010 4:00 PM