Finance committee votes on YOUR future health care

By Melody Gustafson

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Finance Committee's vote Oct. 13 will determine the form of a bill that if and when passed will have massive, daily reverberations on every citizen, probably for the rest of their lives. Most colossal programs or social institutions aren't repealed or abolished, ever. Look at welfare and social security.

With failing businesses and flopping bailouts, a near-broke FICA, GI deaths abroad, and possible Middle Eastern nuclear weapon development, not to mention the battle to pay bills at home, lawmakers could not wait to launch one of the most massive financial legislative movements in recent U.S. history.

Speaking of omnipotent control over individuals' lives in America, tomorrow's Senate Finance Committee has in its hands a bill that will drive citizens into helpless financial ruin. Clearly, the people who represent U.S. citizens are out of touch with the reality of the constituents' purses.

According to CNN live news broadcast Oct. 12, predictions on the cost of insurance for a single person is $9,700 yearly and for the average family it will be $25,900. Some houses cost that much. In a climate where every other house on a given street is lost to forclosure, unemployment rises. Now our monolith fed will impose a system on its citizens that inevitably leads to such a heavy insurance burden that will hasten the impoverishment of the many struggling people that are staring at an appproaching abyss of bankruptcy and homelessness.

The CNN broadcast also mentioned a possible loophole to participation: the fines that are supposed to punish non-participants are less expensive than the price to "play," and young healthy people may just pay them instead of buying the insurance and assimilating into the program. The young, healthy people's participation is integral to help pay for the ailing elderly, whose treatments cost more. Anyone who simply can't afford insurance will be compelled to "pay their way out" through fines.

It is yet to be seen how many starving, unemployed people can magically produce the 10 grand a year required to assimilate into this forced "reform." Of the ones who make the sacrifice of quality of life in exchange for health insurance, they will be more likely to make the doctor's visit for every sniffly nose and hangnail. Why not? That;s what insurance is for right? This increase in the use of medical services costs money, too.

This is just the beginning; tomorrow history unfolds.