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By Rady Ananda

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, forever memorializing President Obama’s squeeze on tens of millions of poor Americans. In perfect Scrooge fashion, the bill mandates those who cannot afford health insurance to buy it.

The insurance industry exists solely on profits garnered by denying claims. A majority of US citizens rebuked the middleman plan, but Obama and the Democrats pushed to support another industry bailout at the expense of the public. Talk about class war.

Not since 1895 has the Senate voted on Christmas Eve. Then, it was “to overturn a law that banned former Confederate Army officers from employment in the U.S. Army,” reports ABC News. This time, it’s to force poor people into insurance they cannot afford. My, have times changed.

Obama boasted his plan was “historic.”

But Rep. Dennis Kucinich has another take on that word. “When you analyze the underlying economics, it’s a tremendous subsidy of insurance companies. It forces people to buy private insurance. That’s unprecedented. That is historic, though.”

Even Senator Bernie Sanders voted for the bill, once a $10 billion package for community health centers was added to it. “I know there are a lot of people out there telling us to kill the bill because it is not as good as they wanted it,” Sanders told the Vermont Press Bureau. “But if we don’t do this now, when will we do it? It’s not like we can vote this down and start from scratch the day after.”

What’s amazing with this crop of plutocrats is that they could not even figure out how to cover all Americans. Less than 2/3 of uninsured will be covered under the Senate plan. At least 47 million people don’t have insurance, yet the 10-year, trillion dollar plan will only cover 30 million people.

Kucinich rebuked the bill, saying the mandate will cost America’s poor $50 billion annually, based on Wall Street projections. “We should be able to get the benefits right to the people without having to go through the middleman of the insurance companies and drug companies.”

He added, “One out of every three dollars in our healthcare system goes to the activities of the for-profit system: corporate profits, stock options, [and] executive salaries.”

Under the Senate-Insurance bill, Kucinich reported, “There’s going to be a doubling of premiums for people who fail the wellness test [pre-existing conditions]… People are going to be charged four times more, based on age… There’s going to be little oversight on denials of care.”

Chalk another point for predatory capitalism, where 30 million more people will be denied care so Johnny can get his helicopter.