Health care reform looks like it's on its way to passage this weekend. While I can't share Matt's ebullience, I'm not going to go as far as George Ochenski or Dave Sirota:
First, their leaders campaign on pledges to create a government insurer (a "public option") that will compete with private health corporations. Once elected, though, Democrats propose simply subsidizing those corporations, which are (not coincidentally) filling Democratic coffers. Justifying the reversal, Democrats claim the subsidies will at least help some citizens try to afford the private insurance they'll be forced to buy - all while insisting Congress suddenly lacks the votes for a public option.
Despite lawmakers' refusal to hold votes verifying that assertion, liberal groups obediently follow orders to back the bill, their obsequious leaders fearing scorn from Democratic insiders and moneymen. Specifically, MoveOn, unions and "progressive" non-profits threaten retribution against lawmakers who consider voting against the bill because it doesn't include a public option. The threats fly even though these congresspeople would be respecting their previous public-option ultimatums - ultimatums originally supported by many of the same groups now demanding retreat.
Soon it's on to false choices. Democrats tell their base that any bill is better than no bill, even one making things worse, and that if this particular legislation doesn't pass, Republicans will win the upcoming election - as if signing a blank check to insurance and drug companies couldn't seal that fate. They tell everyone else that "realistically" this is the "last chance" for reform, expecting We the Sheeple to forget that those spewing the do-or-die warnings control the legislative calendar and could immediately try again.
Good stuff, a real humdinger full of classic Sirota contempt and outrage.
And, yes, this bill appears to be a government bribe of the private insurance industry to take on the uninsured. Yes, the insurance and medical industries appeared to have financed the process. Yes, Democrats were the most egregious offenders - and did the Republicans abandon the process because their usual corporate overlords abandoned them for Democrats? Or did the lobbyists flock to Democrats because the Republicans abandoned reform? - my preferred party consistently ignored or even rejected the basic moral principles behind reform.
Whatever. We're stuck with a bill that doesn't really make much change to a very broken health care system, and whose cost controls are, at best, debatable.
But.
More people will have access to health care because of this bill.
Here's hoping that, as Matt does, that work on health care continues if this bill passes. |
