Health Care & The Bigger Picture

Here is a comparision chart for the Senate and House health insurance reform bills.  Sorry, I mean the House health insurance reform bill and the Senate’s early Christmas gift to the health insurance industry.

The differences between the bills reflect the stark difference between a representative legislative body and that caters to the whims of its most corrupt members, members like Joe Lieberman who are more than willing to prevent an up or down vote on any significant issue almost single-handedly (if the price is right).  And it reflects the fact that the Republican minority and the few Democrats who act like Republicans are not dealing in good faith and would rather see people abused by insurance companies than give up their contributions and future lobbying jobs.

The Senate bill has no public option of any kind, no Medicare expansion and thus no way at all to control the premiums huge corporate insurers can inflict upon their now captive customer base.  Americans will have a mandate to buy coverage from the same companies that have been gouging them for years, denying coverage when they suffer medical catastrophies and driving millions into bankruptcy.

A reminder: 62% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills and 75% of those people have health insurance.  With the antitrust exemption still intact in the Senate bill and no competing public option, the insurance companies have free reign.

The Senate bill allows companies to charge older people and people with pre-existing conditions much higher premiums and is funded, in part, by an increase in the payroll tax instead of a small tax increase on the wealthy found in the House bill.

According to MSNBC, the Senate bill would ban lifetime benefit limits, but would still permit annual limits.  Loopholes don’t get much bigger than that.

At the end of the day, the insurance companies get no new competition, whether from a privat competitors who would exist but for the antitrust exemption or from an expansion of Medicare, which is more cost efficient and has far higher satisfaction ratings than any corporate insurance company.

Good job Senator Reid, President Obama, and so-called Senate moderates, you’ve accomplished exactly what George W. Bush did on prescription drugs: you’re enacting a law guaranteeing profits, customers and federal subsidies to an industry that has consistently extorted people with in an almost explicit “your money or your life” proposition.  And you’ve done it without any semblence of consumer protection.

Democratic leadership and President Obama, your base called and it says it’s lost.

What bothers me most is that I get the sense that in nixing a single-payer system early and in not pushing for any public option, President Obama knew this would be the outcome from the beginning.  This has implications for every major issue and is the latest demonstration of a pattern among both the administration and Senate Democrats.  Neither has shown any stomach for taking on the big industries and that’s a problem for people who claim they intend to reform Wall Street, education and energy policy next.

On two of those fronts, recent events have been disheartening.  Corporate-owned Democrat Melissa Bean and friends punched so many holes in Barney Frank’s banking reform bill that once it’s conferenced with what will be a weaker Senate bill, it will be nearly meaningless. 

President Obama went to Copenhagen with a watered-down proposal that wouldn’t stop catastrophic climate change, frustrated the Western Europeans with his intransigence, and came home with not even a framework for a binding agreement with anyone on anything at all.  The Chinese were partially at fault for the failure in Copenhagen, but Obama didn’t impress anyone with his modest proposed reductions.

We’re still in Iraq.  We’re escalating in Afghanistan.

Other than the stimulus package, itself watered down in content with non-stimulative tax cuts for big business and limited in scope enough so as to reduce its impact to about half of what it should have been, where is the great departure from Bush we expected?

The newest Supreme Court Justice is a groundbreaking choice, but no more liberal than Justice Souter.  The Democrats have done nothing to restore the assault weapons ban and are wavering badly on The Employee Free Choice Act.

Bush’s tax cuts have not been repealed, though ending the recession takes precedence and provides some legitimate cover.  Bush’s torture policy has supposedly ended, but we still have indefinite detentions and the precedent that if you do torture, you won’t be prosecuted.  Even worse, if you set the torture policy, you won’t even be investigated.

In West Virginia, mountaintop removal continues.  On Wall Street, bank executives are pretending to have been chasened after hearing the President scold them a little the other day…at least those who showed up for the meeting.

One would and should expect more from a President and party elected on a platform of social justice, ending the “stupid” war, and reform.  In short, we were promised transformational change.  Instead, we see marginal change and audacious window dressing.

And if the Senate’s handful of conservative Democrats are permitted to continue and President Obama continues to live in the mythical town of Bipartisanville, there will be nothing to motivate those who were most offended by Bush in 2006 or most inspired by Obama in 2008 to fight hard in 2010. 

Some who would campaign will only contribute a few dollars.  Others who would only contribute, will only vote.  And a few more who would only vote won’t bother.

Meanwhile, frothing Glenn Beck watchers, ranting tea baggers and bubble-headed Dittoheads will march single-file into the voting booth and off a socioeconomic cliff like they do every year for the Republicans and that will be enough.  Enough to give every Sunday morning pundit  a year’s worth of fodder that the “Republican revolution” shows that the Democrats “just went too far” or “mistook mistrust of Bush for endorsement of Democratic populism”, as those same pundits forget that leading Democrats never really tried to do much of anything.

From then on, President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi become goalkeepers.  Federal regulatory agencies will have teeth, but legislation won’t from 2010 forward.  It’s not the worst thing in the world to have Bill Clinton circa 1995, but the times call for FDR circa 1944 or Lincoln circa 1864.  And Obama could still be that kind of president.

This next year is the last best chance for redemption for the Democrats and it may be the last chance to get climate change, Wall Street reform and health reform right for America.  But as Bill Maher said, it’s going to take less hope and more audacity (and that applies both to President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate). 

The health insurance reform capitulation is a failed model.  FDR, Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt were fighters and history remembers them well.

The message to the administration and Senate Democrats is clear: if you fight for those who elected you, we’ll fight for you.  But don’t expect anyone to go that extra mile if you continue to prove the cynics right that it was all for show.  You have it in your power to answer the question of whether the era of Change We Can Believe In is over before it began.