I’m guessing that the newly passed energy bill, despite being watered down to make Blue Dawgs and Republicans happy, isn’t all that bad. I’ve not read it, but John Boehner, the orange guy who is the leader of the House Republicans, has declared it “a pile of shit.” That’s good enough for me.

Part of what this bill does, of course, is regulate carbon emissions, and Boehner, that paragon of intelligence that he is, knows all about carbon emissions

The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

he said just two months ago on ABC’s “This Week.”

So in my book, if John “Behold my magnificence” Boehner” says it’s a pile of shit, then it must be a pretty good bill, all in all.

More problematic is the health care bill, which is in danger of doing exactly what the Republicans say it’s gonna do — limit care, raise costs and make it more difficult to keep your doctor. But it’s not the Dems’ plan that will do that — it’s what Republicans and their DINO Blue Dawg allies are forcing into the bill. Clear case of self-fulfilled prophecy here, and I’m guessing it’s calculated so they can later say, “See? This is what we told you would happen.” They’ll just conveniently forget to mention that It happened because of what they did to the bill.

Of course, it’s also true that we Americans. at least those of us with good enough health care insurance, think that it’s our god-given right to have whatever we want in terms of health care, and our rich doctors are more than happy to make sure we get it so they can get even richer. This poses a problem for the insurance companies, who consider paying out on an insurance claim a “loss,” and so they work to drive health care costs up in order to cover their “losses.” plus devise elaborate ways of keeping the truly sick from ever receiving coverage. The idea is not to help people who need help, but to make their stock more valuable.

Here’s former insurance company executive Wendell Potter, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on June 24, 2009.

The average family doesn’t understand how Wall Street’s dictates determine whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they’ll be charged for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock. Stocks fluctuate based on companies’ quarterly reports, which are discussed every three months in conference calls with investors and analysts. On these calls, Wall Street looks investors and analysts look for two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical “benefit” ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.

To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling… I have seen an insurer’s stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period.

And, the easiest way to do that — as it is for most other for-profit companies — is not to provide better service and attract more paying customers, but to limit expenses and “losses.”

To help meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment.

And here’s my favorite part, which proves the lie to the conservatives’ much vaunted support of the small business:

They also dump small businesses whose employees’ medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year’s premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether leaving workers uninsured. The practice is known in the industry as “purging.” The purging of less profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has fallen from 61 percent to 38 percent since 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. Once an insurer purges a business, there are often no other viable choices in the health insurance market because of rampant industry consolidation.

An account purge so eye-popping that it caught the attention of reporters occurred in October 2006 when CIGNA notified the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust that many of the Trust’s members in California and New Jersey would have to pay more than some of them earned in a year if they wanted to continue their coverage. The rate increase CIGNA planned to implement, according to USA Today, would have meant that some family-plan premiums would exceed $44,000 a year. CIGNA gave the enrollees less than three months to pay the new premiums or go elsewhere.

So, our insane employer-based health insurance premiums keep going up — forcing our employers both to pay more and to force us to pay more. We also pay more because the millions of us who do not have health insurance turn to the emergency room for broken arms and colds, where, in many cases, taxpayers foot the bill.

The bottom line, for conservatives and Blue Dawgs, is to preserve the bottom line for doctors and insurance companies. Adding in a public option will not do that because it will work and take away from the for profit insurance companies. So that has to be stopped. But they’re going to be forced to get more people onto insurance rolls somehow. And more insured means more “losses” for the insurance companies — and we know what that means.

What we’ll end up with will likely be worse than what we have now, and even if it isn’t, it’ll be far from what we really need — and especially far from what a country as great as this one likes to tell the world it is can and should do.

I know, I know, can the fucking shoulds. But this is America, goddammit, the promise of democracy and a living constitution and all that. It’s the right thing to do. Winston Churchhill, not necessarily my favorite fellow from history but a damn good quote when you need one, said

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing — after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

We have exhausted all the other possibilities. There’s one left, and it’s waving to us from across our northern border — a system that thinks of the patient (us) first.

If you haven’t, I thoroughly encourage you to read this piece from Sara Robinson, who’s lived Up There for five years now. And think again about this part:

What would you have done differently if you’d never had to worry about health insurance? How would life be different now? How would it change your plans for the future?

Go ahead. Think about it. Let yourself get good and angry. The current system has robbed an entire generation of Americans of their full potential. It has made us serfs. It has narrowed our horizons. It has undermined our families and communities. It has deprived us of the chance to save, to own a home, to educate ourselves and our children, to see the world, to retire in comfort, and to live to a healthy and robust old age.

It has left us in this swamp, chin-deep in alligators. And the first step in getting back out is getting very clear in our own minds that there are other places where people don’t live this way — and then angry enough to lean on our leaders, and make it just as clear to them that we don’t intend to live like this any more, either.

It’s not too late, but it’s getting there. The president’s penchant for “bipartisan” legislation, meaning watering it down to appeal to a couple of moderate Republicans and the Blue Dawgs and still receiving no vote from Republicans, is going to kill our chances for honest-to-god reform. It’s already cost a lot of what’s really needed. Make sure it doesn’t cost any more.