Is health care change all that healthy for citizens?

Lou Marzeles
News Editor

     Change is good. You go first.
     Essentially that seems to be the message from the U. S. Congress this week, as it narrowly passed its long-heralded national health care bill. Already cries of political reprisal fill the hallways of Congress, something like the old baseball lament of a losing team: “Wait till next year!” But change comes inexorably, one way or another, and it’s the Democrats who have taken the pennant this year.      The message from Capitol Hill from the pennant holders to the American people is, we’ve made the change, so go ahead and change.
     The bill as passed actually still bears more than passing resemblance to its original language, though much has been massaged into terms considered more acceptable to a wider constituency.      The next time you have a couple of weeks to kill, you really should pick up the whole document and read it thoroughly, so long as you’re prepared for the risk of taking a verbal sleeping pill. People who purport to have read the doorstop of a document say that its cost will come out of a paring down of Medicare and a significant tax on Americans earning more than $200,000 a year. It’s projected to provide medical insurance for some 23 million people. Some provisions, such as prescription drug coverage for older people and children denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, go into effect immediately. Other provisions don’t kick in until 2014. Under the bill, parents can keep their “children” on their insurance plan until the age of 26. Insurance companies will be required to cover preventive services. By 2014, most Americans will be required to have health insurance or pay a fine.      These are just cursory highlights.
     Is this all good or all bad? Probably not. We’ll see. Change really is good, they say, and Congress definitely wants us to go first.