Proposed Senate Health Care Reform Bill Should Be Named ‘Hurricane Katrina’
Proposed Senate Health Care Reform Bill
Should Be Named ‘Hurricane Katrina’
If you’ve observed news reports on the health care reform process you have probably been impressed that Howard Dean is one of the best informed in the country on the issue. He has made good sense all through this process—and now, after working cooperatively with everyone on the issue, and the Dems have completely caved, he has thrown down the gauntlet—-vote NO if this thing doesn’t change for the better.
President Obama and the Senate Democrats have allowed this bill to be butchered to the point of disaster—just to get a bill. In the interest of compromise they have been compromised. Earlier on this blog Watts Cookin wrote a column entitled ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ and that’s what we are getting—-only worse. The lipstick has been smudged all over the pig’s face.
If this bill passes the Senate the only saving grace for the Democrats will be the moment when the House and Senate bills meet at conference. The House bill is much better than the Senate bill and if the bad from the Senate is eliminated and the good from the House can survive then all this discussion is overwrought panic. The senators and the administration are counting on being able to ‘kick over the traces’ at the conference session.
One of the huge albatrosses is the requirement than everyone must buy health insurance, an idea that won’t work and is fundamentally repulsive and is also in the House bill. That clause alone is enough to make a nation sick. It’s a bill that requires getting blood out of a turnip and it ain’t going to happen. Furthermore, it’s not a tax on income or property, it’s a tax on just being alive. How can we make it mandatory for people to pay for health insurance when they don’t have any money and can’t even get a job? It won’t work without enormous government subsidies, subsidies that will have to increase dramatically every year. What do we do with those who won’t mandate? Throw them in jail? Deny them coverage at emergency rooms?
This Senate bill is about as far away from the ideal Single Payer system as one can imagine. The claim is that this Senate bill will cover some 30 million people who haven’t been covered before. How will that happen? By compelling them to join up at whatever fee the insurance companies demand, and fining them if they don’t? This isn’t free enterprise. This is slavery.
What should be done? The Democrats should put together a health care bill that can garner 51 votes, will work for America, including a strong public option, but preferably single payer, limits on insurance administrative costs, and call for an up and down vote on the matter and let the naysayers of both parties suffer the consequences. Make the naysayers actually filibuster. Make them take up the nation’s time in a clearly minority position and watch their support at home erode. The Republicans and DINOs who are opposed to any reform and will not vote YEA on anything, have butchered the bill to where everyone ought to vote NO.
This lovey, dovey contrived ‘it’s still a good bill’ is a song and dance being sung by many Senate Democrats and the Obama administration simply for political purposes. Most of them are disappointed or outright disgusted by the end result, but at this point they have determined that any bill will save face and they can claim victory if they repeat the message often enough. This is not governing. It is playing politics. Getting a ‘W’ on the Democratic side and a ‘L’ on the Republican side has become the goal. Health care reform has become the football and all the air has been kicked out of it.
However, as soon as that mandatory payment to health insurance companies is law there will be a whole new class of anti-government protesters, and they will be from the left and the right. It will not be pretty! This mandatory payment is the seed of sorrow and has been glossed over in the discussions with little analysis of the downsides. It is fraught with problems. How are families to be handled in this individual mandate? Does this mean that a father is mandated to cover his spouse and children? Until when? What about college students with no income? What does the mandate cover? Is the cost of the mandate different for different ages? For different health conditions? For differing healthy living styles?
The cost of premiums will skyrocket, making mandatory compliance even more revolting. The misery index for Americans can be measured as in inverse relationship to health insurance stock prices, and those stock prices just reached a 52-year high in anticipation of the passage of this colossal legislative mess.
What negatives are there in this bill for insurance companies? Nothing. They can charge what they damn well please. Their profit is guaranteed. It is said the bill contains safeguards that places a percentage restriction on the amount of their revenue that can be paid for administrative costs and profit, but that will not hold down premium costs for the American people, and in fact, is another incentive for the insurance companies to increase premiums. Every increase in premium will result in a net dollar profit gain for the insurance companies. They will still have every incentive to raise premiums.
Some are hailing that it now prevents the insurance companies from disallowing coverage based on pre-existing conditions, which is very nice and appropriate, but only raises the cost of all premiums and adds to the bottom line for insurance companies. That is not a negative to insurance companies at all. It just changes their actuaries.
Insurance companies are the health care problem and they have been strengthened, not weakened, and we are going down the wrong road. This bill will increase the cost of health care and diminish America’s capacity to compete in the global market place. It’s claim of providing for insurance for 30 million more Americans can only be a magic number pulled out of the sky. The only way that is possible is for almost complete government subsidy for millions of people.
And of course, one of the most revolting developments in the whole process are the bribes that the Obama Administration have handed out to get votes, the most egregious being to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Criminal charges should be filed in that case. If that isn’t bribery then a duck isn’t a duck and America has been screwed.
Why not cut the chase and get Single Payer on board now? Single Payer resolves most of these problems and we will eventually adopt it.
Many of the senators who intend to vote for this Senate bill think they will have time to amend and reform it before the disaster is felt, but the dikes around this bill are not going to hold back the water.
Perhaps the bill should be named Hurricane Katrina.
Edited, after passage of Senate bill, Dec. 21, 2009
