NY Times

.....Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity.

One of them is Lawrence Yurdin, a 64-year-old computer security specialist. Although the brochure on his Aetna policy seemed to indicate it covered up to $150,000 a year in hospital care, the fine print excluded nearly all of the treatment he received at an Austin, Tex., hospital.

He and his wife, Claire, filed for bankruptcy last December, as his unpaid medical bills approached $200,000.

At St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where he went for two separate heart procedures last year, the hospital’s admitting office looked at Mr. Yurdin’s coverage and talked to Aetna. St. David’s estimated that his share of the payments would be only a few thousand dollars per procedure.

He and the hospital say they were surprised to eventually learn that the $150,000 hospital coverage in the Aetna policy was mainly for room and board. Coverage was capped at $10,000 for “other hospital services,” which turned out to include nearly all routine hospital care — the expenses incurred in the operating room, for example, and the cost of any medication he received.

In other words, Aetna would have paid for Mr. Yurdin to stay in the hospital for more than five months — as long as he did not need an operation or any lab tests or drugs while he was there.

Meanwhile...

Senate Dems Compromise with Themselves to Weaken Public Health Plan

Leaked trial balloons from the Senate Finance and HELP Committees on their respective versions of a public insurance option tell me Senate Democrats have no intention of adopting a robust public plan or any other reforms that will challenge the corrupt structure of the current system......

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.....Why is this happening? The Republicans' obstructionist conduct made them irrelvant and gave bipartisanship a bad name. That gave the Dems an open running field to solve the fundamental problems of a rogue industry and runaway costs. But instead the Dems have chosen to fumble the ball, mollifying their own confused members who want kick it in the wrong direction.

Who's coaching this team? Who did the recruiting? As Bernie Sanders told Ezra Klein,

The Coalition of the Willing sounds a bit strange to me. You have a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, and the coalition that is determining health-care policy are seven people, including four Republicans? . . .

So I think, with all due respect to Max and his hard work, it's the wrong strategy. I think the strategy should be to say to all 60 members of the Democratic caucus that even if you don't want a public plan in the final bill, you should commit to ending the Republican filibuster. You don't need 60 votes to pass legislation. You need 60 votes to end the filibuster. And if we do that, we can get a strong public plan that will be real change.

Reform requires the Democrats to challenge a deeply entrenched industry, it's structure, it's market power, and its incentives. Pretending to do so doesn't get it. But apparently there is no leadership in the Senate that cares enough about genuine health care reform.

Reform requires the Democrats to challenge a deeply entrenched industry, it's structure, it's market power, and its incentives. Pretending to do so doesn't get it. But apparently there is no leadership in the Senate that cares enough about genuine health care reform.

So the President needs to explain why any of us should support an effort that looks increasingly like a multi-trillion dollar bailout to those who've been fleecing America's businesses and citizens. Why should Americans give trillions more to a failed system and bloated industry that is literally bankrupting the nation and killing its people?

Excuse me whilst I go bang my head against a brick wall. Aaarrghh!