I would object to labeling every lower-case titled program a bureaucracy but do agree that bureaucracies are served. In particular, the bill protects the bureaucrats of private health insurance, the auto, home, and casualty underwriters who also pay out for medical claims (from our premiums),  inefficiently operated care facilities, and financial regulators since Wall St is left with all the insurance profits kicking around.

Then there's the oh so needed jobs of those tasked with denying claims and drafting loophole riddled insurance contracts. How about the lobbies which play a more integral a part in drafting the legislation than we do?

It isn't that our government should not be involved, it's that we have surrendered our government to interests working against us. We need to take it back and create a health care infrastructure which serves us, addresses our needs and rights, not the desire for profit.

OH, NO... NOT PROFIT!  Profit is what keeps people employed.  Why do politicians attack profit?  (because that's what the narrow minded will believe)

Since when did "profit" mean the same thing as "greed".  Last time I checked, profit means you have happy customers. 

Your first paragraph consists of two very long sentences.  Do you have any real proof of out-of-control profits?  Do you have real facts that you can reference from non-partisan sources?  I use www.state.co.us for all of my facts because everything the insurance industry does here is mega-regulated and well documented online. 

ALL of the facts for Colorado are published including claims $$, premiums, claim appeals, increases in state mandates, and increases in costs due to increased mandates.  We even have a public option!  It gets 25% of its funding from "special taxes and fees on insurers".  We already have price controls... our insurance commissioner approves all the increases!

Jason, profit from delivering care (and I would consider that earning a professional compensation) is a lot different from the profit derived from using up to 1/3 of someone's health insurance premium to invest and NOT use it towards the reimbursement of a medical fee. In addition, those corporate profits never seem to benefit any group other than shareholders because the health insurers continue to raise their rates while recording profits. Not even the customer benefits from the profits generated. I don't know about you, but that pisses me off.

Where have you been?? Do you actually think Wall Street profits keep people employed???? Wall Street profits usually mean people have lost their jobs, either thru down sizing or overseas exportation of that job. Once upon a time profit was returned back into the investment in people or technology or innovation or comapany growth. Now it just means some sharehoklder's stock value went up.

Greed is ruining more than health care access in this country and when are people going to wake up to that fact? AS to your insurance situation in CO, Congratulations. Perhaps if you were experiencing the chicanery the rest of us are enduring you would have a bit more empathy towards the situation. 

Jason,

Somehting better must be trickling down on you than most hard-working people. Wall St profits have nothing to do with employment. Moreover, people can earn a living and businesses can profit without the economic rents demanded by corporations and, by extension, their stockholders.

There should no more be profit from medical needs than from letting you vote, letting you live, letting you have free speech, letting you have fair and impartial juries. A right is not a means to profit. Nor are human needs.

If corporations were profitting from efficiencies and from the pursuit of satisfying our needs, the reason any economy exists, we would need no reform, no regulation, and greed would not fit into the equation. Profit would be a byproduct of success, a welcome reward.

But corporate businesses are not people and corporations are not the same as local entrepreneurs. To equate profit and market capitalism with the corporate capitalism we have is ludicrous.

I live in Jersey and we have some of the most stringent insurance regulation known to this country. I know what insurers claim the mandates cost but there is a difference between covering the costs of funding medical care and paying more than that simply because the insurer wants more and wanting more is why the insurer is in business.

The mandates are there to define the need that must be addressed. As with any economy, needs will be met and costs covered regardless of whether anyone profits. The sooner Americans wake up to this inexorable fact and dump the worship of wealth, the better.

Having our government on the side of those non-human entities who simply want more and not on the side of the people's needs violates the very spirit of our Constitution.

So, I know I'm late to this thread, but let me get this straight, Jason is questioning us questioning high insurance company profits? Where HAS he been. In fact, he just hasn't done his research. Jason, you are defending profit valiantly in the name of capitalism, but you have forgotten that we didn't sign up for our corporations to do us in, literally. I think you need to watch Money Driven Medicine and read up on other systems around the world before you go jumping to defend profits.

Is it okay with you that corporations profit while someone dies every 12 seconds with no access to healthcare in THIS, our beloved country?

you and me both, M. I refuse to be forced to buy private insurance, I don't trust them with my care.