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President Obama says the mandate, which he opposed as Presidential candidate Obama, is not a tax. Really? Then how come refusal to buy insurance will be punishable under the criminal provisions of the IRS code? Isn't the IRS responsible for prosecuting TAX evaders?
Obama
also calls having health insurance a personal responsibility. (I
thought personal responsibility was Republican talk, their way of
disclaiming any corporate or governmental responsibility for problems
with things like health or the environment. But I see now that
Democrats can use it, too. It's just "politician talk").
No one has been required heretofore to buy a product or service from a private company as condition of residency in this nation and I say we should not start now. It is no one's personal responsibility to provide profits to any industry.
Health insurance is not health care and you all know it. I expected the progressives in the House to ask out loud why anyone should have to pay a middle man (the insurance companies) for access to health care. Insurance companies are health care gatekeepers who make money when the gate is narrow, i.e. when people pay more in premiums than the companies pay out for services. I expect progressives to be for health care not health insurance!
H.R.
3962 is a bill that still calls for employment-based health care
access. But what about all the people who don't get health insurance
on the job? I am one of them. I work fewer than 20 hours a week (not
by choice), and thus do not qualify for my company's health program.
I have been in the labor force nearly 30 years and have had health
insurance through employment for fewer than six of those years. Those
were the times I had so-called regular, "permanent," full-time
employment with large corporations.
The rest of the time, I have
worked on contract, through temporary agencies, part-time, for an
individual, and as a freelance journalist. There was no insurance in
any of those situations In a "reform" that provides less than
universal access, people who do not work conventional jobs will still
have problems getting health care.
Why did the progressives not call Obama out on his nonsense about Americans being used to getting their health insurance through employment? The type of job that provides such a benefit is rapidly disappearing. How can representatives who call themselves progressive be in favor of re-enforcing the healthcare-through-employment system during the worst recession since the '30's?
I want H.R. 676, - the "Medicare For All" bill co-written by Rep. Kucinich. Shame on you who call yourselves progressive yet are not co-sponsors of this bill, which is the only true reform of the American health care system. If you had done the right thing and voted against H.R. 3962 with the Stupak amendment attached, it would have been defeated and you would have had to dust off H.R. 676. Hmm, maybe you did not want to do that. Let the people think you are progressive without your having to actually be progressive. This way you can go along to get along and still have your cushy job with its generous health benefits.
H.R. 676 spells the end of the health insurance industry, and that is what I want. It served its purpose at a certain point in history, when people did not have the means of paying for health care but were able to get it through jobs in companies that had their wages frozen during WWII but which were able to compete for employees through fringe benefits. But such a system is now obsolete for among other reasons, the fact that most of us have advanced in civilized attitudes well enough to realize that people need health care whether or not they have a job, or the type of job that carries insurance.
Until
we get even more civilized and recognize the barbarism of paying for
things, of paying to live on the planet we were born on-name me
another species on earth that has to do that?--we can at least get to
the point of saying that we, as a society, should all take care of
each other by seeing to it that we all have health care and that the
health care providers living in the money economy -- doctors,
nurses, therapists etc -- are compensated fairly for their services,
without the parasitic middlemen of insurance in the way.
I expect progressives to lead the way in developing our nation's level of civilization in thought. If you really need a philosophical basis for the idea that health care is a human right -- and you may need it in the face of certain opponents -- I'll be happy to provide you a copy of the paper I am preparing on the subject. But if you really are progressives, the need for H.R. 676, and the bane that is H.R. 3962 should be self-evident to you.
Some of you probably thought that you had to compromise. "Politics is the art of the possible" and "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" and "Half a loaf is better than none" yada, yada, yada. But H.R. 676 wasn't even "on the table". The leadership wrote you off before the game began and you went along with it. There are times when an elected official has to draw a line in the sand.
H. R. 3962 is one of those times. It is not a compromise; it is a sell-out to the health insurance industry. Big Health has controlled this debate from the beginning. For example, on November 15, 2009, the New York Times reported that it found evidence that during the debate on H.R. 3962, Democrats and Republicans inserted into the Congressional Record statements provided for them by lobbyists for Genentech, one of the world's largest biotech firms and a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche. A lobbyist told a reporter, "This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it."
The people gave the Democrats the White House and both Houses of Congress because they wanted real change. Instead, they are getting the same old run-around: more wars, more deficits and more giveaways to industries that don't give a damn about the people except for how much more blood they can suck from them. The Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans are against "Health Care Reform's" high cost. They have a point. Ditch the insurance companies and the costs will go down.
You
think you are doing the politic thing by backing H.R. 3962. But you
are throwing away a great opportunity to change the course of
American history for the better in order to kow-tow to Pelosi and
Reid and Obama. I don't even know why most of you bother, those of
you who have safe seats. (Yes, Ms Lee. This means YOU!). You don't
need to campaign contributions from the party. So what if Pelosi
takes away your committee assignments?
That won't go unnoticed by the press, even the weakling mainstream media, if she does it to a whole block of you. And politicians don't like bad publicity. You can still attend the hearings--I used to go to Congressional hearings as a college student--and you can still vote on the floor. That's actually your most important job. You can also hold your own hearings, be independent fact-finders. The people could use that in Congress.
