Mike Schmid at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. (Photo: Mike Schmid / Flickr)Back to the Health Care Drawing BoardBy William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 17 September 2009
Give some credit to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who unveiled his $774 billion health care reform bill on Wednesday, for being true to his word about wanting to craft a centrist, compromise piece of legislation. That's exactly what he did, and after revealing his bill, that's exactly where Baucus put us: in the middle of the road, right where all the squashed roadkill can be found lying on top of a long, yellow stripe.
It's a nonsense bill, to be blunt, tossed like a hand grenade into a debate already raddled with nonsense as it is. The far right Teabagger brigades want you to believe this reform effort will remake America into a socialist disaster zone where killing grandma is mandatory but insuring undocumented immigrants is only required. Thanks to the unutterably compromised mainstream (read: corporate) media's relentless pursuit of "equal time," each and every one of these shamelessly incorrect and morally bereft accusations have been provided with exactly 100 percent more air time than they deserve. The result has completely polluted the national debate on health care reform.
Now comes Baucus and his mixed bag of centrist, half-a-loaf goop, which was brought into being for three sad reasons: 1) President Obama all but disappeared from the debate over his own health care reform for weeks, which allowed the inmates to take over the asylum. This was a failure on the part of the administration that could have lasting, catastrophic repercussions for the White House; 2) In far too many instances, Democrats in the Senate are made up of what Richard Nixon would have described as "first-rate second-rate men," timorous, still somehow frightened by their GOP cohorts despite the Democrats' dominating majority, and totally unwilling to do anything that might annoy anyone, anywhere, ever, and; 3) An obsession with making health care reform a bipartisan process, which is the specific genesis of Baucus's bill.
This is not to say that the legislation proposed by Baucus is all bad. It isn't; as he correctly claimed, many parts of it are precisely what President Obama has been asking for. But there are a few crucial aspects of the original reform proposals that have been deleted from Baucus' proposal, and therein lies the make-or-break rub. The New York Times explained it this way:
The proposal would extend benefits to millions of people who are uninsured by broadly expanding Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor, and by offering subsidies to individuals and families with modest incomes to help them buy insurance. The proposal would also set limits on out-of-pocket health care expenses.
It would cap at 13 percent of household income the cost of health insurance premiums for middle-class Americans who just miss qualifying for the new government subsidies. Such families would also face additional cost-sharing, such as co-payments and deductibles.
Starting in 2013, it would require nearly all Americans to obtain coverage or face a penalty of up to $3,800 a year for families. The bill would create new state insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, where consumers could shop for insurance and compare plans.
The Baucus plan calls for the creation of private, nonprofit health insurance cooperatives to compete with private insurers, a compromise aimed at bridging the gap between Democrats who want a government-run insurance plan and Republicans who adamantly oppose that idea. As insurers, the cooperatives would offer their coverage plans on the exchanges and would have to meet the same requirements as private insurers.
And in a nod to the stiff Republican opposition, the proposal did not include a trigger calling for the creation of a public plan if the legislation fails to make affordable health insurance widely available, a compromise step that Mr. Obama has indicated he could accept.
Some good stuff in there, to be sure. But when you get to the part where it reads, "In a nod to the stiff Republican opposition," that's when the wheels come off.
No "public option" to balance the playing field and offer real health care alternatives to people who cannot afford insurance under this plan. Not even a "trigger" to activate some form of public option down the line if circumstances warrant. A pile of other important aspects that are critical to creating actual, workable, legitimate health care reform have likewise been excised by Baucus and his yellow-striped legislation proposal.
Why?
Because the president blew it by checking out of the debate he started.
Because too many Democrats in the Senate would fold in half if they weren't propped up by aides and staffers due their absolute lack of spine.
Because all these Democrats continue to cling to this mind-boggling desire to be bipartisan when it comes to crafting this reform legislation.
A health care reform bill without the crucial aspects Baucus choose to leave on the cutting-room floor would be worse than no bill at all. It would leave nearly 30 million Americans still uninsured; it would require millions more to pay for benefits they can't afford, or else be penalized with fines they can't afford, either.
Worst of all, it would come into being without the public option, which would be nothing short of a catastrophe. The reason the GOP - and far too many Democrats - do not want the public option involved is because they are paid employees of the health care industry and all the medical cottage industries that make their living by screwing sick and disabled Americans. These are the capitalists, mind you, cowering in terror over actually having to operate in a capitalist system, one with actual competition that would force them to (gasp) make less and provide more.
Finally, the Baucus bill is a waste of ink for one bottom-line reason: nothing the Democrats put forth on health care reform is going to get any meaningful support from Republicans, no matter how much far-right compromising claptrap the Democrats wire into the thing. Maybe one Republican will vote for the Baucus bill, maybe two.
Is that enough reason to completely shred the reform process by turning it into a sop to the GOP?
President Obama has jumped back into the debate, which is a very helpful turn of events given his planet-shaking ability to move and motivate people. This should hopefully invest Democrats in Congress with the courage to come out from under their desks long enough to regain control of the debate.
But this bipartisan gibberish has got to stop, which is why Baucus's bill cannot be allowed to get any further than it already has. Instead, the whole debate needs to be reset and restarted, beginning with this absolute truth: there will be no bipartisan bill, no matter what, period, end of file, turn out the lights when you leave. The GOP won't vote for anything the Democrats come up with, because they don't care about reform. They want to shame the president and make sure their corporate check-writers are still paying and getting paid.
If that is true, and it is, there is no reason to even consider Baucus's proposal. President Obama and his people in Congress need to go back to the drawing board on health care reform, and come up with something that will pass with 218 in the House and 51 in the Senate, i.e. something that will actually help people and be worthy of the word "reform.". Then he needs to sign it, and the Teabaggers will just have to suffer the excellent health care provided in the wake of their defeat.
President Franklin Roosevelt didn't need bipartisanship to make this country a better, healthier place to live. President Obama needs to take a leaf from FDR's book, junk this whole blithering fool's errand, and begin again from the beginning. If they want bipartisanship, the Democrats can start a card game with the minority. That's the only place they are going to find it.
http://www.truthout.org/091709A
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