Why Would I Support This?
Pardon me, I’d like to make a couple points about domestic political current events for a moment, then I’ll stop. It’s not what this blog’s about, but I feel I need to speak about something.
The honorable, admirable, and astute John Cole posted a warning about the Health Care Reform bill working its way through the legislative lower intestine we call The Senate:
So it should be clear. If you are thinking that you can kill this bill and come back with a better one, you are fooling yourself. It is this, or it is nothing for decades, and that is why folks like Rockefeller and Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden and other folks are sucking it up and still supporting the bill.
Okay, so the message is clear, it’s this or nothing. Now, I certainly understand that nothing is bad news. We’re in dire straits here as far as health care in America goes. But, I’m sorry, it doesn’t mean that I automatically have to support this, whatever this is.
And here’s the thing about what’s left of this: they’ve taken out any chance of a public option or expanding Medicare, but they’ve left in the mandate, the part that says that I’m legally obligated to purchase health insurance. It’s not that I don’t understand the concept of risk pools, and that it only becomes financially viable to insure everyone if everyone, healthy and sick alike, pays into the pool. But here’s my problem with this arrangement.
If I want a cell phone, I will have to enter into a contract with a giant bastard of a corporation that will fuck me in a heartbeat if it means they clear an extra fifty cents. But it is still my choice whether or not I want to have a phone. By the same token, if I want to own a car and operate it on public roads, the law requires me to purchase insurance from, again, a company that wouldn’t hesitate to do me wrong if they thought it was legal and in their best interest to do so. But I don’t have to buy a car if I don’t want to.
But the thrust of a mandate (without providing a publicly administrated alternative) is that I, by virtue of my existence and citizenship, am legally obligated to throw myself into the maw of an industry that’s been proven time and time again to be one of the most immoral, unethical, exploitive, parasitic industries in the corporate world. And, sure, it will make health care accessible to folks that currently can’t afford it… by way of a framework through which the American Taxpayer can subsidize poor and lower-middle class families. Isn’t that snazzy, how it creates a second pipeline from the pockets of those of us that aren’t bankrupt yet into the coffers of private health insurance companies. How awesome is that for a “reform” bill, thanks Democrats!
The answer is obvious, and it’s not to make the Health Insurance Industry work better. Congressman Weiner is absolutely correct on this score, health insurance companies give no value to the system. If we’re going to make healthcare available to everyone, then let’s make it a goddam public utility. And if we need everyone to chip in, then take it out of my check with the rest of the fucking taxes. And if these sorry sons-of-bitches in both parties can’t come around to representing the best interests of the American People because they’re all too dependent on revenue streams from the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries, then they all deserve to burn.
But the bill that’s coming out of the Senate is no more a “reform” of the Health Insurance Industry than are the “reforms” being crafted by Obama’s Economic Team of Rubinite Wall Street Gangsters. And I’m supposed to be scared of Sarah Fucking Palin? With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans!
I swear to God, if this steaming shitpile of a bill becomes law, I will dedicate all the money, time and effort I can spare into throwing as many different size wrenches as I can into every political machine that helped bring it to pass. If this thing fails, it fails, but I’m not going to support this goddam thing, and I’m sure as hell not going to be a pawl in the Rightward Ratchet. Fuck that.
[UPDATE]: Evidently, Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias wish that lots of us that are potentially going to have to eat this shit sandwich would learn to go along to get along and pass the fucking thing. John Cole & Co.are apoplectic that anyone would decide that this thing has crossed a line over which they can’t get behind it.
But here’s Kevin in practically the same breath saying:
The individual mandate was a way of getting support from the insurance industry. The backroom deal with Big Pharma was a way of getting support from the drug industry. The change in Medicare reimbursement rates was a way of getting support from doctors. The gutting of the Medicare commission was a way of getting support from hospitals. Provisions related to biologics, home healthcare, and the prescription drug doughnut hole were a way of getting the support of AARP.
So all these interest groups get huge concessions, that ultimately entrench their power even more deeply while giving Americans a bigger, harder punch in the face, so that they’ll get on board. But I’m supposed to sit on my hands and ignore the fact that the parts of the bill that would have enacted real reform have been decimated, and that what’s left includes a provision to feed me to private insurance companies like so much shark chum, without bothering to so much as inconvenience said companies with a strong, strict regulatory framework. Huh.
Again, fuck that.
[UPDATE AGAIN]: Just so.
