Robert Parry on what's at stake in Health Care Reform

As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan,” one of the industry’s chief protectors, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a column for Politico.com.

Though some analysts question the 119 million estimate, it has transformed the debate over health-care reform into something of a death match for the private insurance industry, especially because it’s a good bet that many of the 50 million uninsured also would opt for a public plan, since they’ve been heartlessly left out in the cold by the private industry. 

Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankrupts: study

              Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track.

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

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