Taking stock - and a deep breath - on health care reform

The last few months have really provided many opportunities to get all emotional and riled up over the roller coaster ride of proposed House, and then Senate bills that woulda, shoulda fixed our broken disaster of a health care system and insurance in America. The idea was that with Obama’s election, a real world, modern health care plan for all Americans would ride the groundswell of good vibes that seemed to follow the young, energetic new president.

It didn’t exactly happen that way. Perhaps a lot of us were being unrealistic in our expectations - at the worst, which doesn’t exactly seem too terrible. We want the best for the citizens of our country. How bad is that?

I think a lot of our idealism and energy was, unfortunately, deliberately redirected by the vociferously evil opponents of any sort of reform and their nitwit teabagger cheering section. I got caught up in it with a lot of my progressive compatriots when it seemed like the dirty money of the lobbyists was, indeed, taking over the process. I’m still very wary that they might have.

Anytime emotions take over, the rational thinking processes are compromised.

I believe I might even have said unkind things about Harry Reid. Shame on me.

I still think Nancy Pelosi did her best, too. 

This bill that has passed out of the Senate isn’t completely evil, although it is more stingy than the House version. With a little bit of luck, some of the House bills provisions might make it into the final compromise.

Alas, the ‘public option’ is the least likely to be one of those provisions that survives the final pass through the meat grinder. It’s sad, but the focus on the public option has only served to divert everybody’s attention from the real meat and potatoes parts that will really help a lot of Americans.

I still believe that a public option, or at the least - and extension of Medicare to people 55 years and up, would have been the best choice. That’s said only because I know Americans - when led by the Fox ‘guvmint is bad’ machine would have nothing approaching actual ‘universal coverage’.

Here’s the bottom line on the joint bills that we can look at in the coming weeks:

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Monday Musings: November 9, 2009

If the blog seems a bit thin by the end of the week, don’t despair. Although it would be kind of cool if Maven’s absence did cause you to despair just a little bit. I’m traveling to the big wedding event in Florida, that promises to be as much family reunion ( Mr. Maven’s side of the clan ) as anything. I’m on tap as the Official Photographer, which is always a bit scary since I’m hardly a professional.

Anyway, I’ll be having a blast and I hope that your week goes well too. I’ll be back sometime next week.

In a historic eleventh hour vote in the House, we have a health insurance reform bill. I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down for joy however. The bill is like a lot of things that are born of committee’s … they don’t resemble any of their parents, and nobody really seems to want to take ownership of the bastard, “heinz 57” offspring.

About all you can say for it is that it’s a limping lurch in the right direction.

The Stupak Amendment in drag.

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Whip the House into passing a bill with the 'public option'

Don’t let the public option die. And, don’t fall for faux public options like ‘triggers’, ‘co-ops’ and similar ways of weaseling out of it.

A strong public option - a government backed and sponsored health insurance at a fair and reasonable price ( much like Medicare, but for everybody that wants it ) needs to be a part of any health care reform bill. Without it, it ain’t reform but a sham.

It comes down to this: will progressives stand up against a health care bill written by insurance industry lobbyists?   Or will they follow the lead of Rep. Grijalva, who slammed the insurance industry bill as “not legitimate,” and fight for what the President says we need to keep costs down?

We need just 40 members of the House to pledge that they will only accept a final bill that contains the public option. Will you help?

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Ooooh, that awful House healthcare bill examined, page by page

Oh, jeeze … another one of ‘those’ emails that went out with a handy click of the Forward button, and without a bit of due diligence. Admittedly, this one is complex since it goes page for page with somebody’s ( author unknown ) interpretation of the suspect passages contained in the House bill.

Of course it’ all scary as hell, especially for anybody who’s never dealt with the standard annual re-up process on any really large ( as in America’s largest airline - which I get my health insurance from ) American corporation not currently in bankruptcy, having been crushed by providing healthcare costs to employees, their spouses and families.

As in GM. Get my drift?

Fortunately, I deal with this kind of legalese each and every year, about November, when I’ve got to read through pages upon pages of ‘if this, then that, unless the other thing’ legalese. I end up doing nothing, since I’m ‘happy’ with my current plan ( uh, yes there are reservations there).

For ease of discussion and reading, I’ll copy/paste the text of the email at the end of this post. Believe me, you don’t want to wade through it here.

There numerous ‘tip offs’ that it’s the bogus, paranoid ramblings of somebody who either works within the insurance industry or its lobbying firms, somebody who has great health coverage unlike so many millions of others and isn’t likely to lose it or some neo-con/libertarian wingnut that’s hunkered down waiting for the UN troops to swoop in with the black helicopters.

That they keep using language like “yet another payoff for ACORN” tells me it’s the latter.

I began to go through the first dozen or so pages, comparing them side by side with the actual text of the proposed legislation - admittedly, not something everybody has the time or motivation to do. I got my draft of the actual text at http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf.

Let’s start at the top of the mis-characterizations contained within the email:

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