BIBMIPPA...

...is short for what Gregg Levine at Firedoglake calls the Big Insurance Bailout and Medical Industries Profit Protection Act of 2010. He notes:

"If BIBMIPPA doesn’t sound good to you, it shouldn’t. This bill will not provide universal coverage, it will not provide universal access, it will not significantly bend the cost curve, it will not prevent draconian escalations in premiums or out-of-pocket expenses, and, upon signing into law, it will not do anything at all for the large majority of the 48 million uninsured for another four years.

"What it will do is mandate an expansion of the customer pool for private insurance. What it will do is funnel taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the lobbying arms AHIP, PhRMA, and the various private hospital associations. What it will do is enrich and entrench the current powers-that-be at the expense of middleclass and poorer working Americans.

"What it will do is make future efforts at reform much, much harder."

Firedoglake is now my one, essential, politics and news blog. I was surprised to see how often I linked to stories at Salon over the last couple of weeks. But then I realized that was because almost every post at Firedoglake was newsworthy and postable. It is the ground against which I check my current understanding of the USA.