Healthcare days are here again…or, maybe, will begin!

Okay, so let’s take a quick look out the window…no, the sky is not falling.

Let’s stand still for just a moment…yes, the earth appears to be still spinning on its axis.

Let’s check the wires…nope, no reports of hordes of mongrel and socialist orcs washing over the Canadian border or from any of the other major industrialized nations with national health care strategies (like all of them).

Is Rush Limbaugh packing his bags for Costa Rica? He’s gonna like it there. Costa Rica has an even better national health care plan than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere!

Ummmm, let me get this straight: the U.S. House of Representatives finally adopted last night a major overhaul of the U.S. health care profit industry and…what? The world is still here? The nation is still standing?

And, what’s that you say? There’s a significant possibility 32 million more Americans than now will have a chance at affordable, decent health care?

As the kids would say…O…M…G!

Does this mean Republicans, who for some unexplained reason really don’t want Americans to have better health care, are going to give up the fight? Oh, hell no!

Before the sun was even up on this new dawn in ‘Murka, attorneys general in eight states (controlled by Republicans) were already talking about filing suit against the health care reform.

“Where in the (U.S.) Constitution does it say that Congress can require somebody to buy health insurance?” asked the South Carolina attorney general.

Ha…Ha…Ha! It doesn’t, of course, but neither does it say African-Americans and women can vote and it certainly doesn’t say a U.S President can invade another country just ‘cause he wants to.

Oh well, this will all just be part of the fun and games over the next few days and weeks and months as the winger nuts, teabaggers and assorted other cretins go nuckin’ futs and heads exploding all over right-wing radio and the Faux News Network.

“A date which will live in infirmary,” reports the Sludge Report. Clever, one must admit.

“Tonight the Democrats voted to put people in jail who have no insurance, raise the costs of health care, destroy the federal government’s bond rating, keep unemployment high and kill forever the mythological creature known as the pro-life Democrat,” reported RedState.com, amid much war-like and violent talk.

Again, pretty dang hilarious. And, oh yea, one big lie.

Okay, so here’s the real deal: If approved by the Senate on Tuesday and signed by the President, the bill will immediately:

• Prohibit insurance companies from denying children with pre-existing conditions.
• Provide immediate coverage for pre-existing conditions through a temporary high-risk pool.
• Prohibit companies from dropping people who get sick.
• Lower prescription prices for seniors by eliminating the so-called “doughnut hole” in Medicaid drug coverage.
• Offer tax credits to small businesses that provide coverage for employees.
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits.
• Require insurance companies to cover children on parents’ plans until the kids are as old as 26 if they can’t get plans of their own.
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations.
• Ensure consumers have access to effective appeals o denials.
• Require insurance companies to rebate enrollees for excessively high administrative costs.

It’s going to cost $938 billion over 10 years but reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion.

Not bad for nearly 100 years of work.

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Tags: Costa Rica, Drudge Report, health care, health care reform, RedState.com, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, South Carolina Attorney General, U.S. budget deficit, U.S. House of Representatives