Health care reform supporters betrayed by Senate and President..
Something ugly is happening in Washington. It’s nothing new, nothing that hasn’t happened before. It is, really, standard operating procedure in circles of corruption and greed, deceit and treachery, and in the banana republics of which most Americans continue to insist we are not one. Their point, I suppose, is that we produce few bananas.
Our elected leaders, even those “agents of change” in whom we invested such hope, are leaving the dance on the arms of other suitors; led away, lured away and bought off with money.
Variously for money and power, United States senators, including Democrats who won our votes by promising genuine reforms, are sentencing American men, women and children to sickness, suffering, poverty and death. It is no exaggeration. It is a simple, sorry and sobering fact.
Senators Max Baucus (D-MT), Joe Lieberman (CT) and others, for what must be irresistible incentives, are betraying those whose votes put them in office as certainly and effectively as Judas betrayed our Savior. Like wooden faced marionettes, their painted faces smile at us on television while their insurance industry puppet masters pull their strings and control their every action.
Stripped from the Senate’s version of a health care reform is all semblance of reform. Single payer universal coverage is gone. Any form of a public option is gone. The expanded Medicare buy-in, once the cornerstone of Joe Lieberman’s health care reform promises, is also gone. Joe now says he cannot support what he once proposed. He isn’t running for re-election right now, so different rules apply.
So, what is in this bill? Death panels. The same death panels that have for decades denied coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, dropped the coverage of the chronically ill, and denied claims for medically necessary treatments to make the companies’ bottom lines meet their targets—the death panels that place corporate profits above all else, even life.
Also in this bill is the mandatory buy-in provisions that require you, me and everyone else to buy the shoddy and overpriced product the insurance companies are peddling, all under pain of fine or imprisonment. Like driving your car, living has become a privilege and not a right. If you drive a car, you must buy auto insurance. If you breathe, you must buy health insurance.
The insurers are at liberty to charge as much as they want, free of any competitive market forces, and we are obliged to pay. They decide how much, and we must pony up for these policies that suck up premiums and resist all claims.
Thirty million Americans who today cannot buy insurance because they cannot afford the premiums will be subject to fines for their poverty. Fifteen million who today cannot buy insurance because of pre-existing conditions will be able to buy insurance, but at exorbitant rates they cannot afford. They too will be subjected to fines.
How many Americans will cut back or go without food, heat, electricity or gasoline in order to pump more money into Cigna, Blue Cross and United Healthcare? Millions. Maybe you. Maybe me. Certainly, millions.
And what of the Commander In Chief of Change? Where is Barack Obama and his flamboyant campaign rhetoric and activist resume? Declare him a fraud.
There is an old an ugly object lesson that asks why one would buy a cow when milk is free. The President’s favors to Big Pharma, Wall Street, Big Insurance, war profiteers and the Republican Party bring that story to mind. The barn and his private stall, since his inauguration, have been open to every rich and powerful client. It is only us, the liberals, progressives and independents who put him in office who have had no taste of that milk.
Is this change we can believe in? Sadly, I guess it is. It’s the kind of change I’ve seen all my life—the fake kind. Change for the worse. It has made a believer out of me.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Prentice, generally you write so very well. But here you’re letting bitter disappointment and disillusionment lead you to misspellings, grammatical errors, and generally a pen dipped in poison!
And I too have done the same. Vivid on my mind is a letter to editor I wrote the day after Reagan beat Carter. Don’t remember misspellings or erroneous grammar, but I know my pen was dipped in the poison of bitterness. Among other points I hurled at the voting public was my disillusionment that they (we) broke precedent & elected a divorced & remarried man. I intended this as criticism of Reagan alone (one of many criticisms of the B-rate actor turned B-rate politician), NOT as judgment on all remarried divorcees. But a couple in my church at the time took it that way & never returned to church as long as I was there, even tho’ I apologized. Sunday after I left for the Army they were back!
Anyhow, are you SURE Lieberman (or other you named) are in the pocket of Big Insurance? I’m not saying he (they) isn’t, but could he have another and valid reason for his change of position? This health reform bill started out so lengthy & has gotten so convoluted that I don’t know which way is up or down re it. But the alterations surely have caused many a change in attitude toward or agains it.
And our President “favors. . . the Republican Party”? I’m certain that’s news to the GOP!
Friend, I recognize bitter disappointment writ large when I see it. Been there done that! I’d have advised you to sleep on it (as I didn’t back when), which in Spanish is “consultar con la almohada” (consult with my pillow). Always considered this one of my favorite Spanish idiomatic sayings, and a good nugget of advice!
Better writing next time!
Well, I critiqued the writing, but allow me to say that the photograph that accompanies almost makes up for it. Good photo of Mary ann &
Beverly! Just wish we could read all the sign they were holding!
This wasn’t taken in front of the Keefauver Fed. Bldg. on Broadway, was it? (Clearly it wasn’t on one of these sub-freezing nites we’ve been having in Nashville lately!) If so, it brings back fond memories of an earlier day — before the big heavy obstructions to Tim McVey wannabes (terrorist bombers) got set up in front of the bldg. — when yours truly was a grad student & then a recent (grad sch.) alumnus of Vandy. I was in La CASA “Central America Solidarity Assoc.” & we staged frequent protest marches back & forth along that stretch of Broadway to oppose Reagan’s policies against our neighbors south of the border. We also imported contraband, like Nicaraguan coffee (better than Juan Valdez’ Colombian stuff), around Reagan’s embargo against the people of Nicaragua. And we bro’t in citizens of Nicaragua to speak about conditions in their country since the Sandinista-led overthrow of the Somoza family of dictators. The reagan embargo was lots harder on them than being governed by the Marxist-leaning Sandinistas. The Sandinistas allowed free speech in a way not seen under the Somozas! They probably were also trying to institute universal health care for Nicaragua. . . .
Glen, from all the resources I can find it appears that Max Baucus has received more money from the health insurance industry than anyone in Congress. Joe Lieberman, according to Public Campaign Action Fund has received $448,066 in campaign contributions from the health insurance industry. I believe this puts him in second place. That kind of money buys something, don’t you think?
As for President Obama, he began his Senate campaign with a call for a single payer, universal coverage system. He campaigned for the presidency on a health care reform plan that provided for a very robust public option. He has done pitifully little to advance either program and, apart from cutting an $80 billion closed door backroom deal with the pharmaceutical industry, he has been missing in action throughout this debate.
The article does not say that the President “favors… the Republican Party.” It does say that he has extended favors to the Republicans. If this is news to you, perhaps your attention was diverted all summer long as Obama consulted, cajoled and pandered to Chuck Grassley and his cohorts. As Time magazine reported, no Senator of either party “received more presidential TLC than Chuck Grassley.” In his zeal for bipartisanship, the President left his principles on the bus.
I am neither disappointed nor disillusioned by these developments. They are, after all, what I predicted here several months ago when the health care debate began.
If Prentice’s pen is poison, then so are the tongues of all the commentators on MSNBC and other liberal media outlets. I don’t think anyone can make a convincing argument that liberals and progressives have not been sold out in the health care arena by those we elected in 2008, President Obama included.
Obama is a political rookie. He doesn’t have the experience to get a reform bill this important through the Congress. Should have voted for Hillary.