Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private insurance policies, guaranteeing at least 50 billion dollars in new business for the insurance companies?
Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich
If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by forcing everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t have a house is because they can’t afford it.
President Barack Obama
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Every so often, even the most ideologically-polarized media outlets relent to some semblance of lucid reason. As with many a major newspaper, The Seattle Times is a newspaper deeply in the red—one wonders whether or not this is because the paper is basically a proxy for the New York Times, with New York Times articles averaging about 1 out of every 3 front-page articles. (Go figure.)
Showing us a rare, redemptive glimpse of reasoned discourse, its editorial page has been the site of several demurrals from lock-step conformity with the health care reform agenda of the Democratic party, despite astronomical unemployment rates and projections for a long, painful recovery:
“Right now the government’s goal should be the revival of business investment and the creation of private-sector jobs. This cannot be put off. It has to be pursued now, and it has to be President Obama’s major concern.
A good health insurance bill might help the economic recovery. But it would do this only if it controlled health care costs, so that when an American worker received a raise, he or she might actually see some of it. But this bill offers no real control of costs. It is all about coverage.“
The U.S. House Should Reject the Health Care Bill and Start Over
What is remarkably rare about the Times’ honesty is that it is offered in an instance of political consequence, rather than in the instance of some modicum of “bipartisanship” or other political double-speak. This is because one of the primary swing votes on the Health Care Bill is Brian Baird, a U.S. congressman in the House of Representatives, a democrat from Vancouver Washington, who probably (and hopefully) stands to be persuaded by the statements of such a major newspaper, especially one as liberal as The Seattle Times.
However, the the editorial is noticeably truncated and reticent of blame, making fine points while assuming evidence which the media has utterly failed to report. Frankly, it should be obvious that the issue at-hand is the health insurance mandates contained in the health care bill, despite the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The media has thus far suppressed the presence of health insurance mandates in the health care bill, and precisely how much unilateral (and unconstitutional) mandates compose what the democrats are calling “reform.” The reality is that fiscally they compose the largest part of “reform.”
In fact, while the democrats have busied themselves with a moralizing narrative about the cartoon villainy of “the industry” and the “evil insurance companies”, their own proposal stands to increase the insurance companies’ billrolls by the BILLIONS though unilateral health insurance mandates. This is what shows their arguments over cost control are artificial because instead of truly controlling costs, the democrats (with full industry backing) seek to simply expand the burden. As such, since health insurance mandates compose the overwhelming majority of fiscal and systemic change to the health care system, it renders moot any argument that the bill will really change the inherent problems of the system or “expand coverage” when in reality all it does is expand the burden. On top of such implicit deal-making, the democrats removed an amendment that would have allowed the importation of much cheaper drugs to the US, a move that would have reduced health care costs by a cool $13 billion, all at the bidding of the Pharmaceutical lobby. Likewise, they have also backed down from an excise tax on high-end insurance policies, because it was opposed by the unions who provide enormous funding to their party (apparently it is okay for the rest of the working class to foot the bill of those “Cadillac insurance policies,” as Obama himself called them).
My question for Brian Baird would be, is it morally or politically justifiable to vote against the popular will of your own constituents when the changes that act introduces will only harm the young, the healthy, and currently jobless in your district, and when the present system of health care in the U.S. will only become even less sustainable?
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Here is a link for contacting representative Baird:
https://forms.house.gov/baird/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm
