On health care - Democratic Underground

Nikki Stone1

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Tue Feb-23-10 03:22 PM
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On health care

If the Obama administration really wanted to get something related to health care passed without changing for for profit system in this country, they should have been truly incremental in their approach. (There was a meme that Obama's plan was "incrementalism" but this was only used to fight against single payer advocates.)

True incrementalism would have been to have made small but significant changes: decrease the Medicare age from 65 to 60, then to 55. Extend programs for children, pregnant women. Put money into the roving health clinics (the ones Olbermann got his viewers to sponsor) and have them more able to reach the public. Put a percentage cap on annual insurance increases. (And here's where the threat of single-payer could have been useful: you either accept some form of price control or we will take the industry out from under you.) I'm sure there were other fixes that could have been done, even in the bad economy. One might have been to reduce medical school costs so that doctors didn't have astronomical debt and could afford to charge less, or to put a cap on malpractice insurance for the same reason.

But if you're going to do a major overhaul of healthcare and the true end result of that major overhaul is a consumer mandate to spend money consumers don't have on a product with no price or quality controls, then your overhaul is a sham, since to most people, health care reform would involve LOWER prices, BETTER care, LOWER profits and bonuses for Wall Street, and SOME government involvement at very least. So logically, if you want to win the Congressional elections in 2010 and you want to win the WH in 2012, you want something to get to the President's desk that has lower prices, better care, fewer profits for Wall Street and some government involvement. You also want something that the average person does not perceive as a threat, and a mandate to purchase health insurance under penalty of fine or even jail time IS a perceived threat. In fact, it's the only real enforceable threat, and the only part of the bill that has remained invariant through this entire process.

I am sure the WH and Congress had thought this out. I'm sure they knew what the people would perceive as helpful or effective. Surely, if many of us could see what was workable, their Ivy League educated brains could figure it out.

That's why, the only way their Health Insurance Industry-Big Pharma giveaway bill makes any sense is if the real goal was to get the mandates--mandatory customers, a captive public, a Wall Street bonanza. The rest was negotiable window dressing, political theater, and it had to be rushed through the House and Senate in record time to get it to Obama's desk before the general public realized what a crime was being committed under the guise of reform. The only decent thing the GOP did was slow down the progress of the bill, and they did this for their own political purposes, not for the public: my guess is the GOP wants a GOP Congress or president to put through the same thing so they can have all that big Insurance and Pharma money for their political coffers.

In the end, Obama spent most of his considerable political capital trying to pull a fast one on the American people. The mandates made him the enemy of working people everywhere and a clear friend of Wall Street. Add that to his choices of Geithner, Summers and company, and you have a sadly clear image of who Obama is working for.

And in the end, these people--the Geithners, the insurance industries, Wall Street--want no competition from the goverment on basic services like healthcare and education. (Or, in CA, many others. WATCH California and what happens with basic services--we're the test case for the new Milton Friedman world order.) Wall Street wants to make money off your every move, your every breath. And they don't want government run programs to interfere with their scams to take every last dime you have. Meanwhile, they will feast on our tax dollars, money we have to BORROW FROM THEM: we end up financing our own debt.

God help America.