| I haven't been writing much about the healthcare bill in Congress right now - I've been writing about this issue for months now, and all that happens is that it gets uglier and messier. A grind. Frankly, I have no idea how staffers and lobbyists deal with the schedule, the endless bickering, the soul-sucking compromises.
In the Senate, of course, the public option was dropped in favor of Medicare expansion. Which, well, I would take as a start towards "Medicare for all." But then Joe Lieberman stepped in, and they dropped the Medicare buy-in. And now, thankfully, Bernie Sanders says he won't vote for the bill without the public option or Medicare expansion. Howard Dean's also speaking out against the legislation:
If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Even the SEIU is balking at the bill.
FDL's Jon Walker has a nice post on the reasons why a lot of us feel the Senate bill unacceptable, and why killing it is a good strategy. Read it. It's pretty much how I feel about this thing. I see the bill as fatally flawed, offering the wrong incentives, mandating that individuals purchase deeply flawed and expensive health insurance that may not cover their healthcare anyway.
There are progressives who do still support the bill. John Podesta:
The Senate health care bill is not without its problems. But if enacted, it would represent the most significant public reform of our health care system that Congress has passed in the 40 plus years I have worked in politics. The bill will give health care coverage to a record 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured, lay a foundation that will begin to lower costs for millions of families, and provide all Americans with the access to adequate and dependable coverage when they need it most.
Nate Silver:
So, we've talked a lot about what the bill is not. It's not structural reform. What is it, then? At the end of the day, it's a big bleeping social welfare program -- the largest social welfare program to be implemented since the Great Society. And that's really what it's been all along: fundamental reform like single-payer or Wyden-Bennett was never really on the table. The bill comes very close, indeed, to establishing what might be thought of as a right to access to health care: once it's been determined that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied health care coverage, and that working class people ought to receive assistance so that they can afford health care coverage, it will be very hard to remove those benefits. It's the sort of opportunity that comes around rarely -- and one that liberals will greatly regret if they turn down.
(By the way, as I understand the bill, most of us will not enjoy the protections against pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps, etc. Most employer-based insurance won't be subject to those new regulations in the near future, although I believe they will eventually be rolled into those provisions.)
That's an argument that's hard to ignore. A greatly flawed bill will actually help millions. Still, I don't think that argument is enough to have progressives go belly-up at the kind of egregious deal-making that's currently going on in the Senate. Hopefully Senator Sanders will stand firm and find a few friends, and force this bill to improve. |
