Death to All Public Options
We’ve suffered through a lot of public option torture in the last few months. It’s had its hands tied behind its back with negotiated rate requirements and ever-growing eligibility requirements. It’s been water (-ing down) tortured, suffocated by a growing army of fake dummy plans, and had limbs amputated to supposedly extend others like Medicaid and early Medicare. Now the Senate feels it’s time to put it out of its misery; it pulled the trigger, so to speak. The public option has been sacrificed to pay off those who ransom the entire health reform process.
As Nancy Pelosi has publicly backed away from House endorsement of a public option, reincarnation during the committee process is highly unlikely. So what does this murder gain us? Well, to put it quite simply, handcuffs. Handcuffs for women’s reproductive rights, and handcuffs for the general public who now must purchase insurance from private plans with a long history of public abuses. Even the wealthier among us are handcuffed to ever-increasing taxes to subsidize the insatiable healthcare profit mill.
How did this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for healthcare reform become so bastardized, so thoroughly impotent? It tracks directly back to a special-interest tainted, partisan-gridlocked D.C. culture. I agree with Michael Tomasky, of the UK’s Guardian – America’s political process is broken. He watched with envy as Britain’s Labour party, which has a majority in the House of Commons, passed a budget bill with the opposing Tory party’s support. Can you imagine? Political cooperation for the common good of the country is amazing enough, but having a simple majority be all that’s necessary to pass a bill? The rest of the developed world is looking in on our democratic republic and saying “Well, the US was a nice experiment.”
PhRMA is also fighting drug importation tooth and nail, as would be expected. They won last night, when both importation amendments were defeated. Ezra Klein wrote a post describing how the healthcare bill is still very worthwhile, it accomplishes a lot and progressives should stop the funeral processions. I don’t agree with the majority of his reasoning, other than insurance will eventually be available to most people, at whatever price the private insurance industry dictates, without fear of being dropped but at the mercy of premium increases in an uncompetitive market. Whether through subsidy taxes or directly, we will all pay dearly for it, a topic we've already covered. Meanwhile, for the next 4 years, other than not being dropped from our plans and seeing expensive risk pools expanded (only for those who have gone bare for 6 months), the status quo will continue.
With a bill passed, there is some hope of improvement over time even without hope of a real public option trigger ever being pulled. But to see progress, our political gridlock will need to be dynamited so 3 or 4 gutless lawmakers can’t continue to hold the entire country hostage. For now, say goodbye to choice. The US isn’t looking much like the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, is it?
UPDATE: State single-payer, having risen from the ashes as an amendment earlier this month and until today the only single-payer incarnation to survive in HR 3590, has been defeated in the Senate. With luck, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and Anthony Weiner will put their heads together to offer an amendment to the upcoming committee bill.
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