Come on, governor. Don’t be ridiculous. The healthcare bill is not a good one — it fall too far short of universal coverage and leaves the for-profit insurance industry in place — but it is constitutional, and a challenge on these grounds is pure ideological hubris.
This week’s Dispatches, the third in my series on healthcare reform, is up a couple of days early. You can find it here.
Dispatches — my second-straight healthcare column, this one on coverage of the debate — is available here.
Talking Points Memo is reporting that New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg has signed a letter pledging to pass a public option via the reconciliation process — essentially, an end-around the fillibuster. I’d rather see a single-payer plan, but failing that, it is clear to me that we cannot reform the healthcare industry without creating a publicly administered, national nonprofit health insurance company that can act as competition for the insurance cartel.
That means 16 are on board and another 35 are needed (which could include Vice President Joe Biden). The odds are not good, but longshots do occasionally finish in the money.
Congressional Democrats are finally digging in their heels, for the most part — though it appears that the sudden appearance of a spine probably comes too late.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that the healthcare bill as it currently stands is essentially dead, thanks to Scott Brown’s win in Massachussets on Tuesday and the realization on the part of House Democrats that the Senate bill contained far too many negatives to be considered a positive.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been struggling for days to sell the Senate legislation to reluctant Democrats in order to get a health-care bill to the president’s desk quickly. But House liberals strongly dislike the Senate version, while moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate have raised doubts about forging ahead with the ambitious legislation without bipartisan support.
The only way to keep the Senate bill alive, Pelosi said, would be for senators to initiate a package of fixes that would address House concerns about the bill. In particular, Pelosi described her members as vehemently opposed to a provision that benefits only Nebraska’s Medicaid system. Also problematic are the level of federal subsidies the Senate would offer to uninsured individuals and its new excise tax on high-value policies, which could hit union households.
“There are certain things the members simply cannot support,” Pelosi said.
The health bill has been flawed from the beginning, as I’ve pointed out on more than one occasion. The administration allowed the process to get away from it, leaving it in the hands of people like Max Baucus and others who have proven they owe their allegiance more to the health-insurance industry than to patients. The result has been a gutting of what looked to be a rather moderate bill in the first place. Single-payer was removed from the table before the discussion started and the so-called public option soon followed. The writing of the bill was then handed over to the money folks, who turned it into a massive giveaway to the insurance companies (forcing everyone to buy insurance from private companies while using tax dollars to subsidize low-income coverage).
Brown won, as this post from Corrente points out, because he became the change candidate, running as a populist against a Democratic Party that — as David Sirota has been saying on his Colorado-based radio show (listen to the podcast) — no longer is the party of the people but the party of corporations.
That’s nothing new, of course. That’s why I voted for Nader in 1996 and (gasp!) 2000. I would have voted for him again in 2004, except that the prospect of another four years of George W. Bush scared the hell out of me.
And it will continue to be the corporate party unless voters make it clear that they will run them out of town for it. That’s what happened in Massachussets and what was facing Democrat Chris Dodd before he decided to retire. It is what won the nomination and then the election for Barack Obama and what could destroy his presidency unless he rediscovers his inner populist.
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Hank Kalet 