The Senate's health care fiasco

[IndianaGreen]

The Senate's health care fiasco

Lee Sustar explains why we'll be better off if proposed health care "reform" legislation that may come to a vote in the Senate is defeated.

December 18, 2009

HOW DID we get here? How could Barack Obama so spectacularly squander his mandate and give a handful of "moderate" senators nearly total control over health care legislation?

Part of the answer is Obama's repeated commitment to "bipartisanship"--an effort to get both main parties to support what is sold as "historic" legislation. But given that the Republicans are determined to oppose Obama on virtually everything but his war drive in Afghanistan, such efforts were doomed from the start. The administration's strategy had the effect of putting so-called "moderate" Republicans like Maine's Olympia Snowe in command of the process.

But Republican intransigence is only part of the problem. The main reason for this debacle is the nature of the Democratic Party itself. It's not just that a key Senate figure on health care, Max Baucus, is a top recipient of campaign funds from the health insurance industry. Nor can all the blame be placed on Rahm Emmanuel, the pro-corporate New Democrat who runs the Obama White House.

The problem is more fundamental. Big business has dominated the U.S. political system since the rise of industrial capitalism more than a century ago. But in recent decades, corporate dominance of Congress has reached new levels. Health care reform has turned toxic for the same reasons that bankers have gotten trillions of taxpayer money from Congress while hard-pressed indebted homeowners have gotten almost nothing. Bankers, like the health care companies, lavish legislatures with campaign contributions and offer key members of Congress second careers as highly paid lobbyists.

What about Obama, who invoked social movements in his campaign for the presidency? The fact is that Obama was never the outsider he portrayed himself to be. His political rise had grassroots support, yet it was also sponsored by powerful businesspeople and Democratic officials.

Obama came to Washington not to transform the system, but to try to repair its image after eight years of George W. Bush and run it more competently. In other words, Obama's priorities were chosen for him by the established power brokers--not just on health care, but every other issue, from the economy to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some reform of the health care system makes sense for the capitalist class. But capital is determined to push the costs of any changes onto workers. Obama will try to sugarcoat that process, but he won't alter its pro-business character.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/12/18/senate-health-care-fiasco

[villager]

1. Ah, the Panglossians got here first, with their reflexive "unrec..."

n/t

[Laelth]

2. Agreed. Kill the bill. And here's another reason to kill it:

California will probably pass single payer on its own in 2011. All they need is a Democratic Governor. The legislature has already passed the bill. Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Once California has single-payer, most (if not all) states will follow suit.

It's likely that if we pass a new law now, the new law will preempt single-payer, i.e. the Federal law will preempt state law and prevent states from enacting a single-payer system.

THIS is what the health insurance companies fear. THIS is what brought them to the bargaining table. THIS is why they are not fighting Obama's tepid reforms, and THIS is why it is extremely important that we do not pass any health insurance reform bill this year.

Let's not settle for a bail-out of the health insurance industry. Let's insist on the eradication of it. In all likelihood, California will lead the way in 2011 ... if we can just give them time.

Canada got its single-payer system one province at a time, and it looks like that's the only way it can happen in the United States.

I don't think the Federal Government is capable of reforming the system right now. If this bill is the best the Federal Government can do, then the Federal Government should do nothing. Let the states try, as I suggested in my post above.

:dem:

-Laelth