Five Things Wrong With the Senate Health Bill

More:  Forty-four is so desperate to pass any health care legislation that he is willing to alienate the base of his own party to get the Senate's weak version past the obstructionists and corporate lackeys in Congress.  He wants the remaining progressive feature of the House bill--taxation of the wealthy to help pay for wider insurance coverage--removed in favor of the Senate's taxation of expensive health care policies.  Unions naturally oppose this move because they fought long and hard to give their members in dangerous jobs generous benefits.  The House wants to increase income taxes on individuals making more than $500,000 over ten years.  Most analysts say that a tax on high price plans ($8500 for individuals) will be passed on to consumers who now face a federal mandate to buy health insurance.  Any pretense Obama indulged as a liberal legislator determined to change how Washington works is now officially history.  As one popular commentator crudely put it, "Obama be pimpin'" Denied the public option by the President's unwillingness to squeeze industry sponsored agents in Congress, despite campaign promises to provide a public option in the  insurance exchanges, progressive House members now need to draw a line in the sand and remind Forty-four he also promised not to increase taxes for the middle class.  He cannot be re-elected without their votes for a fair health care bill.  The Wall Street casino knows where Forty-four stands:  the S&P Health Care Sector has gained 32 points since late February 2009.

Update: Need more proof that Washington politicians do not give a flying fig about what the American people want? Progressive legislators were looking to the conference committee as a means of strengthening the Senate's business friendly bill, and perhaps even reinserting some form of public option. But no, says Harry Waxman, chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. There will be no formal conference committee reconciliation process. Instead a manager's amendment in the Senate will be allowed that incorporates changes agreed upon with House leadership and the White House. Rep. Waxman's (D-CA) suggestion that more regulation can take the place of a robust non-profit alternative is simply hog wash. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already sending semaphore that the public option is dead. But she may ask 'pretty please' to end the anti-trust exemption. Since when is the Justice Department interested in anti-trust prosecutions? So much for reform. What America will end up with is a sweetheart deal labled "health care reform" that only insures the conduit of corporate campaign contributions will continue to flow to Capitol Hill.  You too could get a health bill passed if you spent $600 million lobbying legislators.

{First post 12.31.09} Real reform being killed by craven, venial pols manipulating anachronistic rules of a corrupted institution is not an easy thing to watch, but that revolting spectacle aside, here for the sake of argument are five things wrong with the Senate bill which House conferees should concentrate on correcting or at least minimizing during negotiations:

• demand in return for the purchase mandate a public health insurance option, preferably by extending Medicare which would be cheaper in the long run than creating a new program. No public plan means there is no economic lever to force insurance companies and care providers to limit their greed, and forces citizens to further enrich them;
• both bills require Americans to buy health insurance without making it truly affordable for low income people. The Senate cuts off Medicaid eligibility at an income of only $14, 404 which is unrealistic;
• taxing working Americans with generous health benefit packages is an unfair allocation of the burden of covering the uninsured. A small tax surcharge on the wealthiest (>$1 million of income) is a fairer system of taxation;
• ending the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies that is responsible for their dysfunctional market behavior. Regulation of a single national health insurance exchange should be accomplished at the federal level and not left to state governments which are already experiencing budget shortfalls;
• too many Americans are left uninsured by both bills. The House bill covers about 5 million more people than the Senate version.

Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson should suffer the political consequences of denying Americans the opportunity to finally be insured without being gouged by corporate plutocrats whose primary concern is stuffing their pockets with cash, not the health of the nation.