There will be more bankruptcies, foreclosures and (long) short sales if the healthcare bill proposed today by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, that he said took him a year to come up with, passes into law. I guess it took him a year to get enough money from the healthcare insurance companies and drug lobbyists to make sure he wouldn’t have to run for his Senate seat next year because everything in this bill is written to benefit them, by maximizing their profits to the detriment of anyone who has to buy one of their policies. Health insurance companies are in business to make as much money as they can and to deny as many claims as they can and this bill hands them that power and more; as it forces people to “buy” health insurance or be “fined” for not doing so. Tell that to an unemployed man with a wife and kids to support.

This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills. Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

America desperately needs to get a healthcare bill passed that has an entity, the government, who has no need or desire to make a profit, indeed, if the taxpayer is paying for it, through taxes, the incentive would (should) be to keep the costs as low as possible. Of course we have so many lobbyists for the malpractice lawyers, wealthy doctors and for-profit hospitals, insurance groups of every size and nature, pharmaceutical companies and their representatives and the politicians smell, touch and feel their money, as Baucus did to the tune of $3 million in his last election, that it is almost impossible for the middle class and working poor to have any influence at all on these politicians who answer only to one god: money. It’s a shame but I can see America continuing to implode from within, as Capitalism reigns supreme in Washington and the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, take as much as they can get, stay in office as long as they can, and then retire with their millions of ill-gotten gains.

Aw well ... may our friends respect us, trouble neglect us, angels protect us and heaven accept us.