The process was wrenching, and tainted to the 11th hour by narrow political obstructionism, but the year-long struggle over health care reform came to an end on Sunday night with a triumph for countless Americans who have been victimized or neglected by their dysfunctional health care system. Barack Obama put his presidency on the line for an accomplishment of historic proportions.
The bill, which was approved by the Senate in December and by the House on Sunday, represents a national commitment to reform the worst elements of the current system. It will provide coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, prevent the worst insurance company abuses, and begin to wrestle with relentlessly rising costs ”” while slightly reducing future deficits.
“Damn the Constitution; four bells, Captain Pelosi! Go ahead, Reid – Full speed!”
Admiral Barack Obama
Battle of Healthcare Bay
21 March 2010
The healine should be: “Bankrupt,at Last”.
For the ~31M Americans w/o insurance it may bode well, assuming there are adequate resources to intake new patients. What it bodes for the remainder of Americans is TBD. Like many Americans who dread going to their mailboxes in January after shopping blindly with credit cards for holidays, we can now wait with trepidation for the bill to come in. For the record, I do not make >250K a year, so I’ll be safe.
The vote was 219 ‘for’ and 212 ‘against.’
The House Democrats passed this bill with a .81% majority. If four Democrat representatives had voted ‘against,’ this bill would not have passed.
This is not a vote of overwhelming or even significant approval for a law that will personally impact almost every American and which will affect at least 16% of our country’s economy. It may well also result in the rationing of healthcare in the United States within the nex 5 to 10 years.
The political chicanery that the House Democrats went through to twist arms and imtimidate wavering House Democrats and House Democrats opposed to the bill was very public and resembled the kind of pressure politics used in cities like Chicago. It wasn’t pretty and the public is generally well aware of what ‘went on.’
Given the reality that well over half of the voting public was against this bill, that the public has a very low opinion of Congressmen in general, and that the chicanery was so obvious, its fairly certain that instead of a Democrat ‘win,’ this vote represents the beginning of new political battles.
RE: “For the record, I do not make >250K a year, so I’ll be safe.”
I do not either — but my healthcare costs will now soar as a result of this bill. I will need to work more hours, or now consider going bare and paying the annual fine.
Personally I think our whole concept of “health care” in the US needs an overhaul. I don’t trust the insurance industry, the US government, pharmaceutical industry, etc, to know what is best for my health, but any more it seems like Americans prefer that someone else take charge of their health (and when $$ is involved, people are more than willing to oblige and expensively treat someone).
Look, folks: Our senators and representatives know there’s no such thing as a ‘perfect’ health care bill. This one is full of imperfections, and they know it. It takes many months and a whole lot of effort on the part of everyone involved to come up with a bill that will do the job. No one is satisfied, and you can’t please everyone. There HAD to be compromise!
This bill isn’t perfect…….far from it. The insurance industry isn’t happy about it, and neither are the lawyers. In fact, they didn’t want ANY kind of bill. But they’re realistic enough to know that Americans DEMAND reform, and the companies know that from now on, they’re going to have to accept the fact that they can’t just run rampant and jack up rates and deny coverage anymore.
Do I like this bill? No, but it’s what we got, so let’s see what happens with it. I think it at least deserves a chance to prove itself.
How do you feel having your tax dollars pay for abortions, Cennydd?
…and this:
“Billions of dollars will be spent to hire the thousands of new IRS employees needed to collect the taxes and fees created by this massive health reform bill. Yet, 3 out of 10 doctors have said that if Congress goes against their will, and the will of the American people, and passes this bill, they will retire from practicing medicine. So that’s what the American people will get – more IRS agents but less doctors. How is this health care reform?
That this “reform” is part of a vast expansion of federal power is one of the things that alarms me most…
The way I read the bill as of this morning, my tax dollars will NOT go for abortion.
I’m not defending this bill…..far from it. I AM saying, though, that we need to wait and see how this will work……or NOT work. It CAN be repealed, as all of our laws can, the last I heard.
Cennydd, perhaps you know something the RC bishops don’t after their study of this bill, but they, long supporters of health care reform, have looked at this bill and determined that tax payers will be funding abortions. Did anyone see NARAL or NOW protesting the bill’s passage yesterday like they did Stupak’s first amendment? No – you know why? Because this bill does nothing to stop taxpayers from funding abortions.
I was going on the basis of my first reading of the bill as it was passed. If I am wrong, then I agree with the RC bishops.
With massive reservations and qualifications too numerous to post here (I will single out abortion as one) I agree with Cennydd in his post # 7. I am not sure how the abortion issue will play out. I pray we have not been lied to on that subject and there really will be no funding for it through tax money. But I would also note that in every country that has adopted a viable system of universal health insurance, abortion rates dropped.
This is a terrible bill. In any rational world it would have been laughed out of Congress. But it is probably the best that could be done given the unified opposition of the GOP to any meaningful reform along with the various special interest groups and the Insurance Cartel. As bad as it is, the only thing worse would be the status quo.
This country was (and still is) in deep financial trouble. A large part of that is the unrestrained growth in health care costs and the fact that half or more of Americans have either no insurance or are inadequately insured against a catastrophic medical event. The staggering and utterly brazen greed of the Insurance Cartel is a national scandal. And the fact that their bought and paid for representatives in Congress (the GOP) were more interested in killing ANY bill than in passing some sort of compromise legislation that would fix these problems is very telling.
I read the GOP’s proposals carefully. They were a joke that would have done next to nothing to reign in costs and would have done absolutely nothing to extend coverage to the 30+ million without any insurance. Their idea of reigning in the Insurance Cartel was to deregulate them.
The hysteria coming from the far right would normally be the object of laughter if not for the fact that their distortions and outright lies are being bought hook line and sinker by a frightening number of people. What has happened to this once great party that it has fallen under the control of such completely crazy ideologues? It’s starting to remind me of the Jacobins in the French Revolution. They are killing their own now and everyone is more worried about ideological purity than in dealing with serious problems.
The one upside to this mess, is that it is not carved in stone. Like Social Security which started as a pretty modest program, this bill can and will be modified over time. Those clamoring for repeal are I think living in a fantasy world. Obama is president until at least January of 2013. Whatever happens this fall I don’t see the Insurance Cartel’s party winning enough seats in Congress to pass a repeal bill with a veto proof majority. If the GOP can somehow divorce itself from the ideological radicals they might well be able to introduce some serious improvements. But I don’t see repeal in the cards. The one thing that I don’t think will ever be undone is that we now have codified in law the basic principal that the United States will no longer be the only country in the civilized world that rations health care on the basis of ability to pay and for profit.
Interesting run-down here – 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms
And you’re right, Ad Orientem, the GOP missed a great chance to do some small scale reforms when they were the majority in 2002-2006. Maybe next time, they’ll know better.
Elections have consequences.
This was suppose to be about “Healthcare REFORM”; Tort cases, Interstate Ins., Pre-existing conditions, and more, which are lost in the mire of Govt spending and increased taxation. If healthcare is so bad, why do so many people from outside the USA come for care they can’t get in their own country? The system does need reform, but the current leadership didn’t provide the reform needed. MEDICARE has the highest incidence of denying claims!!
Re # 18
[blockquote] If healthcare is so bad, why do so many people from outside the USA come for care they can’t get in their own country?[/blockquote]
We have the greatest health care system in the world. Provided that you have money. If you don’t… well tough rocks.
Abortions will most likely go down, as they do in other countries with universal health care. One of the incentives to have abortions – lack of health care for children – is diminished. It’s a guess. And if it’s true it does show one way how tinkering with the market encourages others to make different social choices.
How much is that worth?
There are plenty of tax incentives for other small businesses. Once people learn what’s really in the bill, they’ll find it much more reasonable than the hyperbolic rhetoric insinuates.
Unlike the rationing we have right now. From a letter I received in the mail today from our insurance company.
Translation: “Congratulations — you are now covered for this drug until/unless we decide we’re losing too much money on you, in which case you won’t be anymore.” We already have rationing in this country — it’s done by the insurance companies. There is always going to be health care rationing, don’t delude yourself.
As far as abortion — am I the only one who thinks that exempting something from taxes is a form of subsidy/support? And does anyone but me notice that group health plans are exempt from taxation and that these constitute by far the greatest part of the insurance market in the U.S. and that virtually all group plans — including the plans that most of the commentaters here probably receive from their employers — cover abortion? Am I in favor of this? Heck no!!! We and/or our employers are paying premiums that are being used in part to pay for elective abortions. But it’s interesting that this doesn’t seem to rouse anyone here to consider civil disobedience in the way that this bill does.
First, the argument that health care in the USA is broken and requires radical legislation, is just that, ‘an argument.’
Second, the argument tha the USA has some of the best health care in the world but that health care in the USA has some problems that ‘need fixing’ is also ‘an argument.’
But the use of ‘backroom pressure tactics’ to force a vote, with a plurality of +.81%, that will radically change the healthcare system in the USA without thoroughly exploring both arguments both houses of Congress is unAmerican. It is a direct attack on the American process of government with the intention of achieving a legislative victory ‘at any cost.’
As a matter of fact, to those Democrats, not all Democrats, who engineered these pressure tactics, the American process of government is an inconvenience when it ‘gets in their way.’
Medicare passed with significant majorities about fifty years ago after coinsiderable Congressional debate. I will repeat this bill passed in the House of Representatives with a +.81% plurality. This small plurality and the overwhelming opposition of the American people to this bill, as indicxated by respected pollsters, make this bill an extremely ‘devisive’ piece of legislation.
The American people deserve better treatment than this from their elected representatives.
I am no fan of this bill for a variety of reasons, including my dislike of big govt and corporatism, as well as my belief that diet and lifestyle changes should be the cheaper and less toxic first responses to a variety of diseases. However…
I remember when the Republicans did “tackle” health care, they made it illegal for the government to negotiate drug prices. What a joke. The Republicans could have come up with some innovative solutions that were more conservative, but instead, as usual, they, like the Democrats, sold out to special interests. Based on the abysmally low polling numbers for both parties I wonder if the only people approving are those employed by the political parties themselves.
If our government leaders really wanted to tackle “health” care they would find ways to incentivize healthy lifestyles, and end their subsidies of industries that contribute to obesity and unhealthy lifestyles. You can’t subsidize high fructose corn syrup and then wonder why obesity (and its results) is rampant.
“If our government leaders really wanted to tackle “health†care they would find ways to incentivize healthy lifestyles, and end their subsidies of industries that contribute to obesity and unhealthy lifestyles. You can’t subsidize high fructose corn syrup and then wonder why obesity (and its results) is rampant.”
Good point.
If a man eats too much of the wrong foods, drinks excessive quantities of alcohol, uses illegal drugs, engages in unsafe sex, spends his income on toys such as speedboats, unneeded big pickup trucks, snowmobiles, trips to gambling casinos, partying in expensive nightclubs, etc., why should I pay for his healthcare?
This archtypal person has made a myriad of choices of what to do with himself and his money. If his body is in bad shape because of his own neglect and mistreatment of it and he can’t afford healthcare because he has squandered his money, why should the government tell me that I should have to pay for his healthcare?
Tell me. Why?
Yes, AnglicanFirst, I totally agree. I’m particularly sick of paying for the healthcare of people who buy big pickup trucks and snowmobiles and spend time in casinos, as these are three things I dislike. Also their 10 year kids when they get some kind of cancer and they complain when their health insurance company drops them. You make a bad choice to get cancer — well, you made your bed, now die in it.
Reply to #25.
I am not talking about children, of course that 10 year-old child should receive treatment. But that care should come from first the family’s resources to the point where the resource demand becomes unreasonable, then fom the child’s church, the child’s community, then state government and finally if all else fails, the federal government.
But if any child’s parents are/have been irresponsible, they shouldn’t have the expectation that life is ‘ a free ride’ and that someone else is going to compensate for their irresponsible lifestyle when their child is in need.
#22. Medicare was an overwhelmingly Democratic bill in 1965. Only 13 republican Senators voted for it. It was a little less partisan in the House, with 70 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote yes (compared to 237 Dems voting for it). No way Medicare as we know it passes if the Dems didn’t have significant majorities in both houses in 1965, and it takes a strange reading of history to imagine Republicans ever creating Medicare (even though the GOP made hay by complaining that the current version of health care reform threatens Medicare, which is now sacred).
Voting record here:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/tally65.html
I won’t buy federally mandated insurance, I won’t allow taxes to be used for my health care. Therefore I assume that at some time in the near future I will be penniless and in jail.
Don Gander
“Medicare was an overwhelmingly Democratic bill in 1965. Only 13 republican Senators voted for it. It was a little less partisan in the House, with 70 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote yes (compared to 237 Dems voting for it).”
Well, 13 Senators was a healthy chunnk of the Senators voting as were the 70 Rpresentatives in the House who voted for it.
Let’s see 13 is 13% of 100 Senators and 70 is 17.5% of approximately 400 Representatives.
So when you compare 13% and 17.5% to a +.81% plurality in yesterday’s House vote, there does seem to be some sort of an ‘order of magnitude’ difference between the votes in the two different situations.
Don’t you think?
Who is going to pay for this? Many folks are not working now and the rest are not paying the taxes of the past. Our property is half the value that it was therefore property tax revenues are less. Very few small businesses are making ends meet and unlike times before, reserves have run out and the doors are about to close. And what I see more so than ever before is a distrust of the government. More and more people will begin cheating on their taxes as a result of frustration. And there is a gorilla in the room.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
It is conceivable that a local illiterate piggly wiggly shopper may not understand what is really happening, but is it possible that the great minds in our government cannot. Might there is a bit of filling the pockets before jumping ship? This is not sustainable and adding to debt through a phony new health care bill is treason. It doesn’t matter if the entitlements are old or new, they all have to go back. It is gonna get ugly.
They always take care of themselves, never forget – check it out:
29: I just don’t see the big deal with the “.81% plurality” phrase you’re throwing around if you’re going to draw a parrallel with Medicade.
In 1965, the Dems had the votes to pass Medicare with or without the Republicans. A few (13-17%) Republicans joining the majority didn’t change the result.
In 2010 the Dems had the voes to pass health care reform with or without the Republicans. The fact that it was a deliberate GOP strategy to refuse to participate didn’t change the result.
Or is your argument that only bills that get a certain percentage of Republicans congressional votes (13%?) are “American?”
Reply to #32.
If you don’t see it, then I won’t be able to explain it to you.
This is a thinly veiled attempt at reparations any one that thinks otherwise is fooling them selves. This bill was specifically designed to crush our economy and make more people dependent on big brother.
If a child down the street were dying would you give up a years salary and live on welfare to save them? Answer carefully because thousands of third world children die everyday and few step forward to help them. True charity can only come from within the government cant and shouldn’t force it and that is what they mean to do. Anyone in this country can go to the emergency room and receive treatment is there disparity between rich and poor treatment? Yes but did not the more affluent person work and toil to achieve that luxury? Would the blind man or the leper have been healed had they not come forward and sought to be so? Yet the great Obama seeks to level all whether thy seek it or not.
Well, Planned Parenthood is happy:
#29: The ratio is nowhere near an order of magnitude. The actual ratio of the “for” votes is 219 to 313 — or alternatively, 70% as many votes “for”.
Reply to #36.
I compared a current House plurality of +.81% to a past House Republican ‘pro vote’ percentage of approximately 17.5% and a past Senate Republican ‘pro vote’ of 13%.
The actual Republican ‘pro vote’ for the current House bill is actually 0.00%. But if we divide 0% into 17.5% or 13% we get a nonsense answer of infinity. Therefore I choose to compare the percentage of Republicans who voted for the heallth bill in the 1960s to the current Democrat plurality.
The order of magnitude comment was based upon comparing the current House Democrat plurality of .81% to the past Republican ‘pro votes’ of 17.5% and 13%.
That comparison reveals that the ratio of the current Democrat plurality to the past Republican ‘pro votes’ is approximately 1 to 10.
That is an order of magnitude ratio of 10.
That means that the scanty and embarrassingly small Democrat plurality of 0.81% is less than 1/10 of the percentage of the Republicans who supported the previous national health bill of the 1960s.
Actually, this is all very unnecessary. The Democrats ‘won by a nose’ with a ‘photo finish’ in the House.
And winning by a nose is by no means or stretch of the imagination a plurality that justifies the winners to proclaim that they have been given a mandate.
George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by a 0.009% margin, according to the certified results. Since you like dividing numbers into unrelated numbers, I will do the same and conclude that the health care bill is 90 times more legitimate than GWB’s first term.
dawson
You can get treated for a bullet wound or a broken arm in the emergency room, but how many people suffer those? You can’t get treated for anything that needs more than a splint or a surgery. For example, one of my son’s has a genetic endocrine disorder. He needs to take two drugs and they have to be monitored by a pediatric endocrinologist four times a year. You can’t show up at an emergency room and say “I’m here again! Time for my next monitoring!! Please go get a pediatric endocrinologist and have him adjust my meds if necessary. Oh yeah…and please give me four months supply of the meds.” The ONLY way you’re going to be treated is to have insurance that pays for regular visits to a pediatric endocrinologist and for the meds.
Ross (#38.), this was a comparison of a Democrat plurality of today with the number of ‘pro’ Republicans voting in the past on a national healthcare issue and it was intended to show the difference between no Republican support today and signficant Republican support in the past.
By the way, vote counting in the Congress is exact so it would make no sense to talk about the accuracy of a Congressional vote.
But in a presidential election there are many factors that can affect any one count of a vote over the complex demographic distribution of the electorate.
Throwing in the counting of votes in Florida during the first Bush II ‘win’ in that state is a ‘red herring.’
If you really want to ‘start confusing the hounds with red herrings,’ then let’s talk about Kennedy’s plurality in Illinois in 1961.
There are historical accounts that indicate that crooked machine politics in the Chicago area stole the state of Illinois from Nixon and gave it to Kennedy. But in that case, Nixon didn’t whine and ‘carry on’ as occurred in Florida when Gore lost in that state.
Re # 33
AnglicanFirst,
“[i] In a democracy a majority of one is as sacred as that of a million.[/i]”
-Thomas Jefferson
I never said that it was fair or the current system correct only that in a Christian society charity shouldn’t have to be rammed down the throat of the giver. I don’t have the answer but a bill of thousands of pages that NO ONE has read is not the answer. I will pray for your son though that is probably of little comfort.
RE: “Since you like dividing numbers into unrelated numbers, I will do the same and conclude that the health care bill is 90 times more legitimate than GWB’s first term.”
And of course, a populist vote is precisely the same as a representative vote.
[roll eyes]
This is a silly debate. More than half of the people in Congress voted to deconstruct the Constitution and do something immoral, illegal and destructive to our freedom.
Less than half voted against such a thing.
I’m proud to be on the minority’s side.
The majority has done their worst, and now, we shall do ours.
“AnglicanFirst,
“ In a democracy a majority of one is as sacred as that of a million.â€
-Thomas Jefferson”
That’s only true if those with “a majority of one” REALLY believe in “democracy” AND “individual rights” AND the principles behind a bi-cameral system as guaranteed in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights.
“Populism” is is not necessarily and quite often is NOT democracy when it disrespects the rights of individuals in the minority and the Constitutional processes.
It was white populism that brought about Jim Crow laws in the South and unions that denied rights to African-Americans in the industrialized North after the Civil War.
dawson
Your prayers are much appreciated. Fortunately, my son is doing very well as a result of receiving excellent care as a result of having good insurance, which I truly do view as a blessing. All of my son’s problems will be resolved by the time he gets through puberty (they have to do with adrenal issues that cause premature puberty and stunted growth so he has to take drugs to prevent puberty and to promote growth.) I just pray we continue to have good insurance coverage for the next 7 years or so. But..as they say…in the current environment we’re all only one lay off away from losing our health insurance.
I do not believe that providing medical care for all is “charity” any more than providing public education is. It’s a public good which the public can decide whether or not they want to tax themselves to provide. If Americans really hate this health bill, they’ll vote out the people who voted for it, it will be repealed, and that will be that. We don’t have a government by referendum at the federal level — we elect representatives and they vote they way they see fit. If we don’t like it, we elect different representatives. Currently, this bill represents the will of the majority. If that changes, then it changes. I don’t like a ton of things that my tax money goes for. Those thing are, however, not “shoved down my throat” but determined by my representatives. If I don’t like it, I need to elect different representatives.