Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com is on a mission, even to the extent of venturing into the enemy's lair at Fox and Friends: to try and kill the Health Care bill that had already been declared dead by the media a million times since last June. And yet, it keeps rising again, like a cat with nine lives. Or maybe a zombie. Here are her 10 reasons to Kill the Bill.
Here is Ezra Klein of the Washington Post's analysis of Hamsher's 10 reasons. He concedes less than two are valid.
And what of the much vaunted Public Option that Obama insisted needed to be in the bill? It made it into the House bill, albeit in a limited form that wouldn't be of much use to any but a small minority.
After most of the left jumped on the bandwagon of the Public Option, he airily dismissed it as not being a centerpiece of his plan, anyway.
"Startlingly, the clearest signal that the administration is preparing to jettison the public option came from Obama himself. Speaking at a town hall event in Colorado referred to the public plan as merely a "sliver" of his reform agenda and said: "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform."
On this, Obama is right.
The public option has already been so dumbed-down and neutered that it is little more than a sliver.
The problem is that it may be the only sliver of real reform in his program. "
Classic feint, along the lines of the 'Don't throw me in the Br'er Patch' variety. There was no fighting tooth-and-nail to keep it in the Senate bill. It, as well as a proposed 'early Medicare buy-in option' which was supposed to be the next greatest thing to replace it, was jettisoned without any major pangs, in order to get Lieberman to give his vote to the bill.
The right hates the bill because they see it as a socializing of America. (Remember all the screaming about 'death panels' and the fear of rationing!). The left hates the bill because they think the mandate to buy insurance is a give-away to the insurance corporations. Those caught in the middle assuage themselves by talking up the 31 million currently uninsured who will now be able to purchase some form of insurance. It's not a perfect bill that promises a single-payer system like the NHS in Britain, but starts to address some of the structural problems that have plagued the US healthcare system for years.
Part of the problem is a faulty understanding of how insurance in general works. To provide affordable premiums for a large population, it requires that the risk be spread over a large group of payers, largely healthy and few who are sicker. It is in effect a communal pot into which every one drops their mite, so that those with the greatest need can be helped. Mandates accomplish this and are in effect the first step towards a true single-payer system, despite the howls of protest over them.
How does this benefit the insurance companies, seen as the villains of the piece? This is an example of how the health insurance giant Wellpoint reports its revenues. The hidden factor is not in the profits, which are show a relatively modest 5-6% increase annually. It's in the Selling and General administrative expenses (S&GA), which comprises the payroll, 'other' expenses and includes the humongous salaries paid to the top-level executives. This holds true for even 'non-profit' insurance giants like Highmark.
Another sticky point for the left is the erosion of abortion rights, first through the Stupak-Pitts amendment that was passed in the House bill, which bans permanently payments to health plans that cover elective abortions. The Senate bill is only marginally better, stating that federal subsidies will still be available for plans covering other health care but that the coverage for elective abortions would have to be paid from a separately collected set of premiums (which could render it more pricy, since the risk would be spread over a smaller pool of payers), also that states could opt out of this arrangement if they chose. The right is understandably largely silent on this: they would rather have preferred abortion to remain a wedge issue in the healthcare debate for them to exploit. As it is, it is primarily the pro-choice movement, organizations like NOW, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU that have been vocal against these provisions.
Finally, a word from Paul Krugman, who seems to think that there may be more to the bill than meets the eye.
We will just have to wait with bated breath and see if the chimera coming out of conference as the House and Senate bills are reconciled is any better than the individual versions.
Update: Apparently Wendell Potter thinks the same.
Another useful link comparing both House and Senate versions of the bill.
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