It’s now been almost a week since the health care bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed by the President. And the sun yet rises each morning. Despite a year of lies, fear-mongering, and obstruction, the bill has passed (positions are open on the Death Panel — apply now). The world didn’t end. It is either the downfall of American civilization, or the United States belatedly joining the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteeing reasonable access to health care for its citizens.
Some of the good stuff takes effect quickly. A lot of it doesn’t take effect for four years, leaving the self-employed to the tender mercies of the insurance cartel for a while longer. I’m assuming the company I’m with will push through another annual 30 percent premium increase, just because. But the day will surely come when I have the option to buy insurance from somebody else who can’t turn me down because I had a strep throat as a teenager.
The costs of the health care legislation are almost certainly understated, and Congress being Congress, there is no obvious plan to pay for it. That needs to change. It will cost more to provide the last leg of the stool that makes up the social compact on which society is founded. We are all going to pay a little more somewhere. Frankly, given the debt hole Congress has dug, we all need to be paying a lot more everywhere to get back to even. But the bill has been signed by the President, and the starting point for all future discussions of health care reform has been moved.
The Republicans are still insisting that the world will come to an end, even if they have to destroy it themselves. It surely will, someday, but not because insurance companies are required to provide insurance to children with “pre-existing conditions.” The rancor in the debate has been really disgusting. This is a big, complicated issue, and deserved a reasonable discussion among people who understand it and can look at policy options rationally. Instead we got death panels, tea-baggers, and Mitch McConnell.
The Republicans have been at their most reprehensible in the health care debate. And now that the bill has been signed, they’re actually getting worse. The basic legislation passed the Senate with 60 votes, and the House adopted the Senate bill. The President signed it. Done. Game over. Parallel to that, there is a secondary bill with some “fixes” for the worse of the Senate’s vote-buying process (which was made necessary primarily because the Republicans have been on strike and are “agin everything”). That needs only 51 votes in the Senate to pass. Under the rules, the Republicans can offer as many amendments to the “fixer” bill as they want. They don’t have to make any sense.
So by way of demonstrating that they are sore losers, they are offering amendments that will be awkward for the Democrats to vote against. These are amendments offered for the sole purpose of being obstructionist jerks. Amendments that would prohibit tossing babies to the wolves are being offered to clutter up the process. The Democrats, anxious to get the fixer bill passed, are then forced to vote against a measure prohibiting throwing babies to the wolves, and their Republican opponents in the next election will take great joy in pointing out a depraved record not that anybody has ever proposed throwing babies to the wolves. Well, except for the Republicans in cases where the baby has a pre-existing condition. As a result, I’m all in favor of throwing Republican senators to the wolves. And when the wolves are through cleaning the bones of the Republicans, we can start feeding them the Democrats.
The Republicans vow to fight back, and try to repeal the bill. Good luck with that. Next November, the Republicans will be running on a platform that calls for throwing 25-year-olds living at home off their parents’ health insurance plan, and denying insurance coverage to diabetic children. Yep, that’s a sure winner. While they’re at it, they should campaign on canceling prescription-drug coverage for seniors (the new legislation fills the “doughnut hole” a mysterious gap in coverage that costs Granny a couple of thousand a year).
To listen to the Republican lies on health insurance, you would think that Russian tanks were rolling down the National Mall. American citizens are being forced to buy health insurance, or pay a tax penalty equal to the cost of insuring themselves (except that they watered this down to a point that it hardly matters). Imagine: being forced to buy insurance just like you do with your car insurance. Next thing you know, they will be carving Stalin’s face on Mount Rushmore, and we’ll all be speaking Swedish.
The big health reform isn’t all that I wanted. It’s a beginning, not an end. But the sun is still coming up each morning.
Tom Clyde served as Park City attorney in the 1980s and is the author of “More Dogs on Main Street.” He has been a columnist at The Park Record for more than 20 years.