When the numbers for the last Senate healthcare reform proposal came out it became painfully clear looking at the actual numbers that someone on unemployment might end up paying way too much of their unemployment check, even with their proposed subsidy, to comver the costs of insurance. Numbers looking good can obviously be pretty darn deceptive when it comes time to actually apply them to the real world.

Right now, a supposed golden nugget is buried in the latest Senate proposal since their last latest fail to actually solve something.

"The deal reached Tuesday puts even more requirements on insurers by
requiring that 90 percent of premium dollars be spent on medical
benefits, as opposed to administrative costs, officials said."

AP Story

If you want a bit of perspective on how big that is, consider this:

"USA wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured"

Health Care Bureaucracy Article

"The participation of private insurers raises administrative costs.
The small private insurance sectors in Australia, Canada, Germany, and
the Netherlands all have high overheads: 15.8%, 13.2%, 20.4% and 10.4%
respectively, far higher than the 1% to 4% overhead of public insurance
programs."

MassCare Article

"Medicare, the publicly managed plan for the elderly in the United
States, spends 5 percent of each health care dollar on administrative
expenses, compared with the 17 percent devoured by private insurers on
average. "

10% is a huge number, folks.  

First thing: I have to question if that 10% number is not still way too much to make it affordable for more people, never mind to make healthcare coverage universal. As a comparison, in Switzerland basic private insurance coverage runs at around 95% of premiums (about 5% for managing insurance and for profit) and that is accomplished through a combination of regulations out the ying yang AND the competition of their own version of a non-profit public option.

On the other hand? The mere mention of regulating them on their profit margins would be a positive step in the right direction on the private market side. Treating them like almost any other utility is in any other state can control costs in the long run.

But there is still the fundemental aspects of the underlying politics of all of this. Whether you are regulating profit or not, the value of your life is still being balanced against and commodotized on a balance sheet of a corporation. A corporation that serves no other purpose than to suck up your money, siphon profits off of it and, all the while, provide zero value to providing you actual healthcare services. That is a job that could just as easily be done by a 1000 accountants working with a 100 statisticians figuring out the risk management of an entire pool for a hell of a lot less than that MASSIVE proposed sum of 10% skimmed out of the real healthcare system.

It is like paying a parasite to live in your intestines and eat your food.

And that is the biggest problem the base of the Democratic party, the voters and activists have shared with the most of the rest of the voters in this nation, and it is why many were actually excited about the proposed Public Option and may not be too happy with this Senate answer:

I get spam:

We will not back down

From: President Barack Obama to Markos

Markos --

As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance
company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless
attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the
status quo.

So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.

But do not doubt -- the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you to fight alongside me.

We must continue to build out our campaign -- to spread the facts on
the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train
them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep this 50-state
movement for reform going strong.

Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today:

http://my.democrats.org/...

Let's win this together,

President Barack Obama

Really? All we have to do is send the DNC $5 and we get ponies? The
same DNC that is enabling corporatist Democrats to water down and
destroy any hope for health care reform? That DNC?

This is so freakin' obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to
get a turd of a "reform" package, potentially worse than the status
quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money?

Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he
thinks we're supposed to get excited about whatever end result we're
about to get, so much so that we're going to fork over money? Well, it
might work with some of you guys, but I'm certainly not biting. In
fact, this is insulting, betraying a lack of understanding of just how
pissed the base is at this so-called reform. The administration may be
happy to declare victory with a mandate that enriches insurance
companies, yet creates little incentive to control costs or change the
very business practices that have screwed so many people. But I'll pass.

I am still waiting to see what the numbers actually pan out to look like before I decide to support it or oppose it. Being a Single Payer supporter, since Single Payer is THE GOLD STANDARD, by nature I am skeptical of any solutions that are market based when it comes to healthcare reform. And there are other goodies being proposed that may be hard to justify turning down. A lot will depend on how universal it is and if it is actually affordable.

That is IF, ya know, they aren't lying to us again.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy