Dave Lindorff: Health Care Reform, DOA
I never thought I'd find myself thanking the women-loathing, Christian fundamentalist-pandering Democrats in Congress for anything, but here it is: Thank you, Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI), for your outrageous amendment to the House version of the health insurance reform legislation in Congress, which bars any insurance company in the proposed health insurance exchange from offering a health insurance plan that includes abortion coverage.
This amendment, which would actually bar women or families from buying even with their own money and no government subsidy health insurance that includes funding for a medically recommended abortion, was supported by 64 Democrats along with all but one Republican in Congress.
Because it passed and was attached to the House health reform bill, it gives hope to the notion that the disastrous so-called health reform legislation in Congress will die.
And so it should.
Because of an utter lack of leadership from the president, and because of the massive corruption in Congress, which is wallowing in lobbying money from the insurance industry and other parts of the Medical-Industrial Complex, a historical opportunity to finally bring the U.S. out of the dark ages on health care has been blown.
The legislation emerging in Senate and House does not reform the system. In many ways, this makes things even worse than they are today, with unfunded mandates that struggling working people buy insurance or be penalized, with taxes placed on better plans negotiated through long struggle by labor unions, with little in the way of cost controls on doctors, hospitals, and the drug industry, and it doesn't even provide coverage for all.
Way back in 1965, a different Democratic president and Democratic Congress passed landmark health reform that gave the U.S. a pioneering single-payer healthcare program, with the only problem being that you had to live to 65 in order to qualify for it. Today that program, Medicare, while repeatedly shortchanged and underfunded by Congress, is relied upon by over 40 million elderly and disabled Americans, and is widely appreciated for its simplicity and its universality. Sure it could be better. We could do away with the gaps in coverage, and tighten the screws on payments to doctors, hospitals, and the suppliers of tests, equipment and drugs. But it remains a beautiful model of what could be done for the rest of the country.
Instead of drawing on this excellent, time-tested model, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have pretended Medicare doesn't exist. Obama went so far as to say on several occasions, including in his address to Congress on health care reform, that while single-payer plans such as those in Canada and France might work well in those countries (indeed they do, and at much less cost than our insane "system" here!), introducing such a system here would mean "starting from scratch."
Come again Barack? From scratch? Those countries modeled their systems, in part, on Medicare, which we had here first! And Medicare is actually a bigger program than the entire Canadian health care system!
Medicare for all would have been the proper way to reform American health care, and in fact, it could have been implemented right away at a huge overall savings to all of us. This was never admitted by the Democratic leaders in Congress of by the president. In fact, bills in the House and Senate, sponsored, respectively, by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have never even been allowed to get a hearing or to go to a floor vote, for fear that the public would see what they are being denied.
Medicare for all, while it would certainly would have meant higher payroll taxes for all of us, would have been a huge net savings, because it would have eliminated the need for the Medicaid program for the poor ($450 billion a year), the Veterans Administration healthcare system ($100 billion a year and mounting), and publicly funded charity care by hospitals ($300 billion). It would have eliminated over $150 billion a year in private health industry administrative costs and between $75-100 billion in health industry profits. Add it up -- that is savings of over $1 trillion a year. Since adding the under-65 population to Medicare would only add about $750-800 billion a year to the program costs, that's a net savings of over $200 billion a year, without even counting the fact that businesses and citizens alike would no longer have to pay ransoms to the private insurance industry -- a savings to individuals and employers of close to $1.5 trillion a year!
We need health care reform. 40 million Americans have no access to health care. 40,000 a year die because of lack of access. 30-40 million more have lousy care funded by state Medicaid programs, many of which are underfunded and few of which provide for routine care. The rest of us are indentured to our employers, afraid to unionize, afraid to strike, afraid to speak up on the job, for fear of losing our insurance coverage.
The health care "reform" bill in Congress does nothing to solve these problems. Aside from outlawing a couple of the worst abuses, such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, or pricing such people out of the insurance market, or dropping coverage when someone actually becomes ill, it leaves all the evils of the current system in place, and assures that the crisis will continue and continue to worsen.
But with the ban on abortion coverage, there is a chance that at least some principled members of Congress, backers of a woman's right to unimpeded health care that she and her doctor say she needs, will reject the whole obscene package. If they do, this fraudulent reform legislation will go down in flames.
Then we'll be back to square one, and we can finally demand that Congress and the President give us the reform that will work: Medicare for all.
So again, thank you Rep. Stupak, and all you anti-women's rights Democrats who backed the amendment barring abortion coverage in the health reform legislation. You've given us another shot at real health system reform.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia journalist. He is author of "Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains" (Bantam Books, 1992) and most recently of "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
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medicare expanded is not the answer
Mr. Lindorph you give to much credit to the US.medicare was not the reason for universal health care in other countries as you stated.It was a good strong respect for socialism which was crushed in the US by the industrialist and never allowed to flourish.
As far as expanding medicare,it would be better then the piece of crap which will lead to more people losing their insurance if passed.Medicare however still relies on the insurance companies because you have to purchase supplemental insurance or get stuck with thousands of dollars in bills for a long hospital stay.Medicare pays for only 80% of your hospital stay.So expanding medicare still leaves people at the mercy of the health insurance industry and by the way i read a newspaper article saying medicare supplementary insurance is going up 30% this year.Do you really want to jump back in the frying pan?Single payer universal health care like the rest of the world is the only way to go,period.
Finally some common sense
Its nice to see a column on Buzzflash that actually takes a stand for the progressive values this site is supposed to champion. This BS "reform bill" needs to die. Its also nice to see a column on Buzzflash call out Obama for being a typical corporate tool. All the apologists and hero worshippers are getting tiresome. Its pretty obvious at this point who, in our government, are truly for the people, and who are truly for the entrenched wealthy elite. Mr. Obama and about 85% of congress fall into the latter category. The only leadership I can see comes from reps like Dennis Kucinich, who voted against this bill, because he has the guts to say if it looks like sh*t, and smells like sh*t, its surely sh*t. Even without the fruity fundamentalist abortion ammendment, this bill needed to die. The only solution seems to be to let the dems crash and burn with their bogus health care reform, let the whacko wingnuts retake the government and finish off the middle class, and reduce the populace to sick and starving beggars. At the point when the distracted masses are forced to lose their cable TV, we will finally see them rise up and retake the country from the billionaires club. In the meantime, Im afraid, were all screwed.
Health care reform, DOA
Thankyou for expressing pointing out that the so-called healthcare reform bill passed by the House is a very bad bill. But you seem to be engaging in some wishful thinking in hoping that the Stupak amendment will get it killed. Maybe, but don't underestimate the felt need of even what passes for progressive Democrats in the House to be seen as having accomplished something after all these years in the wilderness even if the perceived accomplishment is more appearance than reality. If enough voters don't demand that the bill be killed and real reform be put in its place, it won't happen.
There are three changes to the House bill that would make it worth passing:
1) Make the public option available to everyone, not just those who do not already have health insurance,
2) Use the revenue from the tax increases on the wealthy in the bill to subsidize the public option, not private insurance,
3) End the odious individual mandate to buy the product of the private health insurance companies. Only Democratic politicians who have lost their moral compass would think that a mandate to buy heatlh insurance is comparable to the mandate to buy automobile insurance. You do have some choice as to whether or not to buy an automobile. Not much in a country almost completely controlled by allegedly private business corporations. Not much, but some. You have no choice at all about your need for adequate healthcare to be able to live. Healthcare should be a right. It should have nothing to do with the marketplace. the private health insurance companies have no moral right to exist, and a mandate to buy their so-called product which is really just a gigantic scam and a mass delusion is a major step towards making this government a worse form of tyranny than what the English colonists who founded our country rebelled against.
Richard Garner
It goes deeper than that.
The medical insurance industry now controls who gets hired and fired according to these pre- employment background checks that can now (in most states) look up your life all the way back to birth.
These things that used to be illegal to do ever to a person employed or looking for work with a company with much restrictions,so now you have people losing there jobs after being employed for years for something they did years ago and paid there due.
The medical insurance industry controls all these tests that you now have to take to get a semi-decent job for something as simple as un-skilled labor.Not to mention the random drug-tests and pre-drug testing that always went against our civil rights.
The insurance industry as a whole controls our roads and now despite there objections our police as well who have basically become collection agents for them.What "Your not wearing a seatbelt" Insurance goes up," 2 parties involved in an accident,both are now at fault" insurance goes up.
"DUI" insurance goes up," Stop sign violation" insurance goes up,or makes you ineligible for insurance cuts for another what 2 to 6 years.Etc.And now what you have is Obama and congress giving them even more power with this bill.
It Has To Be Said
"Aside from outlawing a couple of the worst abuses..."
Actually, the "outlawing" of those abuses doesn't end their application. It will just require the insurers to utilize alternative methods of implementation to remain within the law. This monster must die!
Anyone who has been keeping track of the repeated retreats by Obama and the Democrats can only conclude that there is no good reason to pass this abomination. The image of "passing" health care "reform" spits in the eye of the public, which must deal with harsh reality daily. Why is it that Obama and crew think they can pull this heist off in the face of so much evidence which screams that we're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore?
We ARE mad as hell, and we aren't going to take half measures anymore. If this means that the only way we get this message across is to have our representatives kill this bill, then too bad for Obama and his delusion that image can still trump substance. Reality for our "elected" representatives is losing the next election and have to give up that cushy K Street lifestyle they have all become accustomed to. They will do what we tell them - PROVIDED we all tell them that to pass this execrable thing means the end of their tenure.
The B---Sh-- is not the enemy of the Perfect
David Lindorff is an enemy of the good, but this piece of sh-- bill - which the enemy of the good says - he likes it - he likes Stupak - this bill is not good, this bill is f---ed up. A bad bill is f---ed. Make the Republicans filibuster. A bad bill is something you're wearing around your neck in 2010, that f---ing mandate piece of sh-- and nothing in return for it, Stupak and this bullsh--, Obama the f---ing idiot who thinks he wants to go into 2010 with a bad bill, and don't have an actual filibuster because that wouldnt be congenial to your f---ing Conservative piece of sh--, FRIENDS!!! Down with Democrats in 2010.
Thank you, Mr. Lindorff - the Emanuel/obama "reform' bill is
Thank you, Mr. Lindorff - the Emanuel/obama "reform' bill is an ATROCITY, a dead albatross that threatens to hang around the neck of Democrats and Democratic voters FOR DECADES to come.
All through the 1990s, (especially after the Democrats lost the House to Newt Gingrich Rethuglicans in 1994) we Democratic and "liberal" voters had to endure the moniker "Big Government TAX-and-SPEND, stiffiling REGULATION Democrats," because in the decades after the Civil Rights, Vietnam war protests, environmental fights, and other "liberal" issues has won so much public support that they were enacted into law, Democrat politicians FORGOT how to DEFEND 100 years of ever increasing liberal, progressive, populist, democratic, ever-increasing-enfranchisement progress.
Americans forget that in the early 1900s, mine-owners routinely worked miners TO DEATH in hazardous, no regulations mines; every attempt to demand MINIMUM mine safety standards by unionizing, were defeated because the wealthy mine owners like the Rockefellers could portray the mostly Med. & Eastern European miners as "communists" or anarchists. It wasn't until AMERICAN miners were shot and killed by mine owner "security" goons (the Baldwin Felts 'security' agency) in both the Ludlow Massacre, Colorado, and the Battle of Blair Mountain, West Virginia, that the American public and press FINALLY accepted the notion that maybe mine owners should not be able to run hazardous mines, just because there were thousands of workers needing jobs.
Job safety, union wages, 40 hour work week, end of child labor, FDIC regulation & insurance of your bank account; pensions, job security, SEC oversight to supervise your financial investments, rural electrification, the TVA, the federal very SOCIALIZED interstate roads & highwasy - over the past 3 decades since the end of the Vietnam War, DC "Democratic" "leaders" have FORGOTTEN HOW TO CLAIM CREDIT for the very infrastructure of America that we all take for granted, that Righties take credit for.
And, of course, the wealthy bankers and financial barons have NEVER been "liberal," no matter how much the Carnagies or Rockefellers may have donated to charity.
The current "Pelosi House health care 'reform' bill" fulfills exactly the "TAX & SPEND, BIG GOVERNMENT REGULATION" moniker that Conservatives tried to hang on Democrats in the 1990s.
It is the MAX BAUCUS, industry written, atrocity of a bill that Rahm Emanuel and his GolddamnSachs banksters have been trying to shove down our throats since January.
It was in May that Senator Baucus LAUGHED, as he SLAMMED THE GAVEL DOWN and called for MORE POLICE, to have doctors from www.SinglePayerAction.org ARRESTED, for protesting his, Baucus', 17-0 SEVENTEEN-to-ZERO EXCLUSION of Single Payer advocates from even THE MOST PRELIMINARY of health care 'reform' hearings! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI&feature=channel
The Obama White House DID NOTHING to support the doctors, not that day, not a few days later when more doctors got themselves arrested at another event, not ever.
THIS IS SHEER TREACHERY, BETRAYAL, and DECEIT by the Emanuel/obama White House - PREMEDITATED SABOTAGE, CENSORSHIP, of even discussion or debate of a CORE Obama 2008 campaign issue - SABOTAGE, CENSORSHIP, BETRAYAL, DECEIT, and TREACHERY.
IF Mr. Obama was so "for" the atrocious Baucus, industry written bill, HE SHOULD HAVE SAID SO back in May, Single Payer and Public Option supporters would have had a battle cry to rally against.
Instead, Mr. Obama treacherously TRIED TO ROB OUR VOICES, in exchange for his industry friends & lobbyists' CAMPAGIN DONATION BRIBES.
FOR SHAME! Mr. Obama sees himself as a god on Mt. Olympus, far removed from the American peons getting DOUBLE DIGIT "health" insurance premiums every single year.
Senator Baucus says it right there: "THE COMMENTS FROM THE AUDIENCE [the American people who want _genuine_ reform] ARE INAPPROPRIATE, OUT OF ORDER, and a DISTURBANCE" that would cause the mighty "Democrat" Senators to have to interrupt their 'campaign donations' LEGALIZED BRIBERY, taxpayer-EXTORTION on behalf of Big Pharma & Big Insurance GRAVY TRAIN
mediocre is indeed the enemy of the better
The Stupak amendment shows that desperation to achieve a legislative "victory" can be exploited by the minority to achieve unpopular goals. The majority appears to be willing to say "Yes" to almost any bill (except the dreaded single-payer, of course!).
Is there any amendment or provision that could be added to the "health care reform" legislation that WOULD get congressional leadership or Obama to say "No"? I believe that they would swallow almost any bitter pill at this point (especially since they aren't the ones, most likely, who will actually do the swallowing).
To a real extent, this has already happened in the bill going forward. (I really do worry that there may be many, perhaps less odious, "stupak amendments" already buried in 2000 pages -- and who knows what will happen in the Senate and in conference?)
The arguments regarding "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" (a sure recipe for mediocrity!) and Bill Clinton's efforts at persuasion (where the liberals who threaten to block the bill are scolded, while the conservatives who threaten to block the bill are coddled), remind me of the Biblical story of Solomon and the dispute between two women claiming to be the mother of a baby. The true champions of health care reform are expected to abandon their claims rather than risk the total loss of reform. People such as Lieberman and Nelson, who would be just as happy if nothing passes, are quite willing to risk that with their stubbornness.
The mediocre is indeed the enemy of the better.
Bob