Finance committee on healthcare in introducing its infinite amendments to amendments is indicative of lawmakers sophistry and insincerity, reducing the Senate to brazen dysfunction and embarrassment. Republican members clearly favor protecting the rates and profits of the health industry under the aegis of the free market, while the Democrats contort reform with double talk by insisting on “change” that barely changes anything because it is constrained by fitting change into a dogged free market.
The Republicans love to cite Obama’s—admittedly idiotic—“if you’re happy with your health insurance you can keep it” as though there were no problem to begin with. Obama put himself in this paradox because during the campaign he separated himself from Hillary’s mandated universal care which is the only logical approach to reform. The point is a nation’s health cannot be held hostage by powerful unions, physician groups, and profit seeking corporate power. Senators—the liberal side anyway—love to refer to their own generous plan that is chock full of cafeteria style choices all competing for the government’s bucks. This is total nonsense. The only choice to cut costs is to do without certain so-called Cadillac plans, otherwise they’re all virtually the same. The real worth of federal employee health insurance is clearly in the numbers, and virtually all insurance companies vie to be a part of this immense treasure. Any sane politician would follow this logic and simply extend the pool to everyone but at a huge discount tantamount to Medicare which has been brutally criticized by both sides as though it were on the leper plane of Medicaid, a long neglected stepchild of the states. And incredibly the finance committee is keeping it!—when it should be abolishing Medicaid. In other words, the free market of healthcare through its obscene lobbying of indiscreet politicians—Grassley and Baucus are sitting on lobby proceeds, 2 and 4M, respectively—divides and conquers, and in an industry so crucial to the health and welfare of a nation profits and graft should be curtailed, if not eliminated entirely.
The marketplace of healthcare, of course, does not go away if true universal care were enacted. Hospitals, hospices, home care and nursing homes are significant job creators in every community; physicians hire nurses, office help, and generate work for labs and pharmacies. Insurance companies can still sell premium plans to the wealthy, and probably hired by the government to search out fraud and do billing.
Alas, our demented politicians aren’t ready for the logic of healthcare for everybody and by taxation.