[Anthony]

If many of you think obama's healthcare is for the people and not for the benefit of corporate america, you're wrong. How do you think he got the pham companies on board? By including a provision so they will still be able to make money. I'm sure there are other corporate friendly provisions as well.

Rregarding pre-existing condition issues, the only time this comes into play is when someone goes without insurance for greater than 60 days, and then the insurance company can use this "clause". And in my experience, from what I've seen, is that the waiting time period until the pre-existing condition will be covered is 1 year. If you don't have a 60 day or greater period of time without insurance, then the insurance company cannot use the pre-existing condition clause. The reason why there is this provision, is that you can't have a person go without insurance for years, until he needs an operation, and then sign up for insurance to get the operation covered, having the insurance company pay alot more than the premium the person was paying, and then the person cancels his insurance right after the expensive treatment. This law protects the insurance company from being scammed.

However, if you change insurance companies, with no time period of "no insurance", or actually less than 60 days of uncovered period, then the insurance company cannot consider any conditons pre-existing. If you lose your insurance from being layed off, etc., the smart thing to do would be to get cheap high deductable insurance, not cobra unless you have the money or a serious (expensive) illness, to bridge the time period until you get another job that has/includes/provides better insurance, at which time you could cancel the "cheaper" insurance for the better policy, even if you have to take a home equity loan to pay for the "cheaper" insurance.

The point is, to avoid the "pre-existing" clause issue, you never want to go for any time period without health insurance, no matter how good or bad that insurance is. No one tells you that, your employer, insurance companies, etc. I imagine that it's financially beneficial for an insurance company to have somebody with pre-existing conditions, yet paying tha same premium.

As far as denying care, medicare/medicaid already have many limitations already, VA hospitals deny ready access care, and BWC ( that's worker's comp - government run health insurace) is generally a nightmare for anybody that requires ongoing treatments, with BWC denying care all the time, delaying treatments for months/years at a time, or forever. You really think the government can get it right?

Let me see, the government intervened in the financial industry, influencing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae on loaning money, playing with the interest rate (causing the artifical inflation of housing prices) , and the lack of holding people responsible when the loans defaulted (homeowners, mortgage brokers, banks, mortgage insurance companies) leading to the recent financial meltdown. You really think a group of 5 lawyers and one banker can come up with a healthcare reform bill that will solve our healthcare problems?

Our healthcare is getting more expensive, because there are more and more people getting older and sicker, requiring more care. The care itself is not getting more expensive, infact Medicare and Medicaid are actually paying less money for specific services to hospitals and doctor's than 5 years ago. Medicare and Medicaid costs are going up because there are more sick people, enrollment keeps going up. It's going to cost us more money no matter what. That's the bullet we'll have to bite no matter what.