You Think Baucus' Miserable Bill Could Get Any Worse? Give Enzi & Grassley A Shot At It

Where's Enzi? Can't find his make-up kit?

This CNN report last night that health care negotiators-- the ridiculous, built-to-fail Gang of 6-- are finding common ground turns out to be as false as the CNN 9/11 scare-mongering about an al Qaida naval invasion last week and Fox's report of the Million Moron March on 9/12. Sure, Baucus' bill is a grotesque charade of health care reform but still not horrible enough to satisfy any Republican hacks in the Senate, save, maybe Olympia Snowe. As expected by anyone not on heavy doses of narcotics, Grassley and Enzi blew up the talks... again.

As though the Finance Committee's shameful excuse for health care reform wasn't already a total sell-out to Baucus' Medical-Industrial Complex ($2,890,631) and Insurance Business ($1,196,463) donors-- not to mention Obama's generous supporters at Big Pharma-- Grassley and Enzi think it is still too generous to the louts who have to pay for the whole hideous charade.

Two of the three Republicans in a small group trying to forge a bipartisan compromise on health care have requested numerous major changes in a proposal drafted by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, reducing the chances that he can win their support.

The Republicans, Senators Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have catalogued their concerns in documents sent to the chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana.

Their main complaint is a fee on health insurance companies, clinical laboratories and manufacturers of medical devices meant to help finance coverage of the uninsured. Although they are also bitching that the prohibition against allowing for women's health issues involving choice isn't strongly worded enough. And then they've decided that it isn't just illegal immigrants they want to keep out of the pool, but legal immigrants as well-- like most of our what would have been our grandparents and great-grandparents. I can only imagine what their demands would have been if the GOP had won either the Senate, the House or the White House in the elections 10 months ago!

On the other hand, wasn't the bill just absolutely bad enough straight from Baucus and his lobbyist pals even before Grassley and Enzi felt the need to further screw over as many more working families as Republicanly possible? Jonathan Cohn took a little peek-- and puked all over the newest issue of the New Republic.

The bottom line here depends, in part, on which people you consider--in particular, whether you’re looking at the poor or middle class, and whether you’re looking at the relatively sick or the relatively healthy.

Total medical expenses, including premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, would be no more than 20 percent of annual income for most of the people profiled in the document. For the poor, it'd be dramatically less. That's the (relatively) good news.

And the bad news? These figures are all for people in average health. But people end up paying a lot more in out-of-pocket expenses when they have a serious medical issue--whether it's because of an accident, an acute illness, or a chronic disease. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, a family of four making $42,000 a year could owe $9,000 a year in medical expenses if it hit the maximum in out-of-pocket expenses--which is pegged, in the Finance legislation, to deductible levels in Health Savings Accounts. That's easy to do when one family member gets in an accident, has an acute medical problem, or is dealing with a chronic disease.

A family of four making $78,000 a year could owe $23,000--nearly a third of its income--if it had a member with high medical bills.

Expect a massive ad campaign backing this travesty-- and paid for courtesy of Rahm Emanuel's deal with one of his role models, crooked PhRMA chief Billy Tauzin-- coming to all TV sets near you very soon. It's all part of the massive vaguely bipartisan clusterfuck passing for health care reform.

Obama was wrong when he said that for-profit insurance companies have a legitimate role in the country's health care system. They don't.