Health care reform legislation is going to pass.
We can debate the merits of the bill’s 2,000 pages, but quite frankly, we haven’t made it all the way through yet and we doubt any individual member of Congress has either.
What we can weigh in on here is our disgust with the failed political system charged with crafting the most important piece of legislation in decades. Millions of Americans need quality affordable health care, but only a privileged few politicians will really benefit from the work that’s being done now.
With Democrats in firm control of both houses of Congress and President Barack Obama having staked much of his political capital on having a bill passed, it’s going to happen, whether Republicans or progressive Democrats like it or not.
H.R. 3590, passed 60-39 along party lines Christmas Eve by the U.S. Senate, has drawn fire from both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, the final bill that Obama signs into law at some point in January or February will likely largely resemble Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Christmas week fast-wrap job.
It’s a circus. In the main arena, you have Republicans pulling procedural stunts like forcing the Senate clerk to read the entirety of a 700-plus-page amendment aloud. Up and down the aisles, you have Democrats doling out million-dollar sticks of cotton candy. Buy a ticket. Take a ride.
Obstructionism has reached new heights. Threats to filibuster a variety of bills have forced numerous cloture motions — 67 in Obama’s first year in office — that have made the 60-vote supermajority a basic necessity.
By means of comparison, there were 139 such motions in 2007-2008, the first two years after Democrats regained control of Congress in November 2006, according to the Senate’s Web site. From 1991 through 2006, there had been an average of 35 cloture motions per year. From 1971 through 1990, the yearly average had been 18. And there were just 56 motions total in the 52-year period ending in 1970. Government has slowed to a grinding halt.
For Republicans, stall tactics may seem like wise strategy now, but eventually the GOP will regain control of Congress and wish they had never gone down this road. Democrats won’t soon forget the procedural stunts, and when Congress changes hands, we’re going to be right back at it, wasting time and reforming nothing. And so the show will go on.
The Senate was designed so a bare majority could pass legislation. Requiring a 60-vote supermajority for every piece of legislation is a gross perversion of what is supposed to be happening in the upper chamber.
It would be a shame if this bill became the first major piece of legislation in recent memory to pass with an entire party, as Reid said this week, “on the sidelines.” But what courting of the other side has really happened?
The GOP’s total reluctance to come (or be called) to the table, combined with many Democrats’ willingness to blindly vote for any bill they can call “health care reform,” left all the power in the hands of the few Democrats who had not made up their minds and instead demanded concessions in exchange for their conditional support.
This small number of senators — specifically, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson — had an inordinate amount of power considering the states they represent — Montana, Louisiana, Connecticut, Arkansas and Nebraska, respectively — together contain less than 5 percent of the nation’s population.
These people got everything they asked for in negotiations. For example, Landrieu’s infamous “Louisiana Purchase” steered an extra $300 million in Medicaid funding to her state and Nelson’s indefensible “Nebraska Compromise” exempted his state from future Medicaid payments.
How did such a small number of senators secure such a large amount of power and win such sweetheart deals for their constituents, seemingly by doing their best to gum up the works of such an important bill and sending the rest of us up the creek without a paddle?
While a few pilfering senators were grabbing anything that wasn’t bolted down, a once-in-a-generation chance to pass genuine reform slipped through Congress’ fingers.
Is this the best we can expect from our Congressional leaders? More political bribes?
Any real health care reform proposal, in addition to the bedrock principles of expanding coverage and making it more affordable, would have seized the opportunity and included a clean-up of the health insurance industry and a renegotiation with the pharmaceutical industry.
Instead, the drug companies bought their way out of the entire process, working out shady back-room deals with the Obama administration that flew in the face of his campaign promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open, “on C-SPAN.”
The health insurance companies, who fought tooth and nail against any and all reform proposals, are surely celebrating this Christmas and New Year’s over the Senate’s decision — thanks particularly to Lieberman — to kill the public option, which would have gone a long way toward keeping insurers on their toes.
It’s not as if we’re rooting for the health insurance companies to go bankrupt, and there’s no ironclad rule that says industry profits are mutually exclusive with equitable and adequate coverage, but it has to make even the least cynical observer fret when Wall Street’s response to the Senate’s movement this week was to buy insurance company stocks, driving up their prices in a ringing endorsement that the bill maintains the status quo.
And why hasn’t tort reform, a critical component of reforming the overall health care system, been included in the legislation? There is a broad consensus that medical malpractice lawsuits are driving up the costs of health care. Why not at least give expert health courts a shot through a pilot project?
Enough about what’s wrong with the bill. Here’s what’s right:
The Senate’s version, which will likely be largely unchanged after conference with the more progressive House version, will provide coverage to an additional 31 million Americans and will reduce projected federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The bill will provide subsidies to those who cannot afford health insurance and tax breaks to some businesses while requiring others to provide coverage. The bill will prevent insurance companies from excluding coverage of pre-existing medical conditions, will put a cap on some premiums and will require insurers to spend more on medical claims.
At the end of the day, a health care reform bill is going to pass early in 2010, and it’s high time one did. We are happy to see our fellow Americans get the medical coverage they desperately need and certainly deserve.
This is the most significant reform of our nation’s health care system in decades. We just wish back-room deals, stall tactics and political power plays hadn’t played such a huge role in the final product.
