The health care “reform” legislation passed by the House – and soon to be rectified by the Senate, and then signed into law by Obama – will together form the last needed indication that the Democratic Party is utterly vapid and is not going to be an agent of progressive reform.
On its merits, this legislation is broadly odious. The ban on coverage of reproductive health services alone is a real and serious attack on reproductive freedom and church-state separation. More broadly there is the fact that this legislation will criminalize any “failure” to have a health insurance product, without:
- Providing any meaningful regulation of the notoriously exploitative health insurance and pharmaceutical industries,
- Providing any meaningful government alternative to private corporations in health care, now or ever.
Effectively, the Democratic Party has, in its desperate attempt to enact something that they can term “health care reform” in mass media prior to the mid-term elections, created an elaborate and effectively tyrannical system for upward transfer of wealth from people who work to the people who sit atop health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. I use the word “tyrannical” in the sense that this legislation is a contributor to an overall creeping, exploitative plutocratic dominance of society and our economic functioning. This wealth transfer scheme is deeply insidious in that it is being presented to the broad public as a populist reform that addresses the economic and human costs of our failed health care system, while deliberately avoiding the root of the problem with the current system.
While we can all ponder the implications of the apparent likelihood that it will be an ultimately jailable offense to not have an *insurance* policy, I think it should be immediately clear that no thinking, decent person should vote for any Democrat who voted for this (or will sign this) legislation. The “nothing is perfect, we must compromise” argument is being made by a President and by figures in the national political class who *do not suffer* as a consequence of this bill, whose *sponsors and special interest clubs* benefit from this bill, and who most of all will sacrifice any consideration in real health care reform to get a salable fiction in front of base voters.
One could re-cover the vacuous political gamesmanship and intra-party squabbling that led to this lunacy. One could re-examine the involvement of the famous lobbies and special interest groups that won the fight in DC. One can hem and haw and make excuses about what is “realistic” and what is “not” in the utterly bought-and-sold venue that is our national political class.
But there is no point to that. The legislation that is being passed – this “reform” that sets us back and cements the control over of us by big business interests that are the source of the problem needing reform – is all we need to see about the Democrats, and about the "change agenda" hoax.
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My understanding of the requirement for health insurance is that this bill allows for a tax increase if you don’t buy health insurance, and then you are a tax evader if you don’t pay that extra tax.
How will they enforce this? Will all insurance companies report paying clients to the IRS by Social Security Number, so the IRS can cross-reference purchasers of health insurance with their tax forms? And will there then be a pro-rated tax fee if you only had insurance for part of the year? Or only covered part of your family?
I’m ready to join any others in a civil disobedience movement, and not buy insurance, at least until I’m 65 (don’t touch my Medicare!). Of course, it may take that long for this to be enacted (I’m 55 now, so 10 years? Sure.)
“One can hem and haw and make excuses about what is “realistic” and what is “not” in the utterly bought-and-sold venue that is our national political class.
But there is no point to that. The legislation that is being passed – this “reform” that sets us back and cements the control over of us by big business interests that are the source of the problem needing reform – is all we need to see about the Democrats, and about the “change agenda” hoax.” ; Yup, been saying that for quite awhile now but there are a whole lot of people here at the FDL entourage that insist that the only games in town are the Dems and Repubs.
again I ask, how much longer and what does it take for us to withdraw ALL support for Obama until he changes his ways?
PascoBill November 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I personally see the enforcement aspect as probably easy for the Feds. We all have W-2s, that our employers are required by law to provide to us, and which we must file with our tax returns. The vast majority of people (sadly) who have health care provision will have corporate health insurance products through their employers. So, for most people, enforcement will (I speculate) go through a little box on the W-2 that the IRS can review and audit. With respect to those provide their own health care payment – again, sadly, private corporate health insurance products that they must themselves find – these figures also must pay taxes every year. Finally, those few who access to some sort of government “option” will be the easiest to audit at all.
Ponder that: it will be a compulsory legal requirement that each of us demonstrate through our tax filings – the mechanism by the which the government revenue is acquired – that we have effectively purchased or had purchased for us by employers private corporate health insurance products. That’s wrong.
Unfortunately, the *are* the only game in town. This is a conundrum: the lack of competition in terms of national political parties – remember now, the evil Communist states run with only one party effectively, whereas we are somehow noble and free with two – makes it so that politicians hold activists and the public hostage to special interest agendas. This is not effective representative democracy.
It all boils down to the fact, that we are expecting the people who caused the problem to fix it.
The Congress has basically promoted our Insurance for Profit based healthcare system, and now we are expecting them to have the wisdom and the courage to fix it.
We have become a country of insane people, that still think their Government works or could work for them. When the time comes that we really realize that it doesn’t, it will be far to late.
We will keep voting and thinking that will fix things, until we join Rome in the fallen Empires.
“We have become a country of insane people, that still think their Government works or could work for them.”
You forgot to mention, “and will fight tooth and nail to give the government MORE power, MORE money, and MORE control of our lives because we are SO much smarter than those silly-ass Founding Fathers with their cockamamie ideas about limited government.”
Grumpy You make me laugh, and I agree with what you say is true.
This is a really good diary. Thanks.
I don’t need any more time than that. I’m already down with starting a third Party and primarying everyone in sight including Obama.
Good diary, sfriendly, I enjoyed it.
This is not happening until sometime in 2013. That gives us plenty of time to change it. As more people realize what’s going on, the program will become deeply unpopular. The band-aid period from now until then also be deeply unpopular when people experience because prices will keep going up and by teh time 2013 rolls around, they’ll be 40-50% more than they are today.
There is a single-payer, Medicare for All movement out there. People who don’t like this bill, but who want a Government solution to the health insurance problem, need to join forces with it. With 3.5 years or so to work on it, and increasing disaffection with the Democrats over their work with the banks and their failure on jobs, we may be able to get a movement going that can spawn a new political party that does care about people.
Names anyone. The American Justice Party? The New Progressive Party? The Real Democratic Party?
It will never happen. The progressives lack education and preaching against the only game in town (ie city hall) won’t get you any brownie points.
Still if it ever happens then economic tragedy and emotional upheaval will be a big help. There may be a lot of that going around.
It would be great to have a multi-party system that really works, such as they do in Australia or Germany or elsewhere. This is what rabid teabaggers are also pushing for from their end of the spectrum. As admittedly looney as they are, in their own nutty way, they are probably as disenchanted as we are – it’s just that progressives and teabaggers are seeking different goals that are generally in conflict.
I dunno. Ralph Nader (dare I utter his name) has been preaching about how corporations own Dems as much as Repubs, and that corporations are the ones really running the country. That said, would I have preferred to have Gore & (shudder) LIEberman in power rather than Cheney & W? Sadly, yes. And I do feel that Nadar was a spoiler in that election. What to do?
I’ve said it a zillion times, we are slightly (ever so slightly) better off with Dems in power. I would love to see a viable 3rd party, but I don’t really see it happening in my lifetime. Others, such as Ross Perot, have made a valient effort (no matter what you thought of him, he made a good showing), but to no avail.
IMHO, third parties probably work best if built from the local level up. Do we have time for that sort of coalition building and so on? And/or we can certainly try to get more 3rd party candidates into the House for starters.
I am not that disappointed in BHO bc I think I realistic expectations all along. He talks a good game, but I had serious doubts about what he could or would actually DO. I am most disappointed at his lack of interest in cleaning up the Justice Dept, but most of the rest of it: I figured it would be bidness as usual, and so it goes.
But would I prefer Hopey to Bible Spice? In a heartbeat! So I feel like I’m stuck in the same rut voting for the evil of 2 lessers and don’t really see it changing much my lifetime. Willing to try, though.
It takes tremendous energy to build a party from scratch. That work was done in California in the 1990s.
And after Nader ran in 2000, the Democrats successfully framed him as having elected Bush, which spelled death for the Green Party.
The difference between how the bases are revolting against the leadership of the Democrats and the Republicans is that when progressives speak to the issues, we tend to sound reasonable and thoughtful, while when the rump Republicans go tea bagging, they appear to the public like lunatics.
That’s why the Greens were able to make more progress over 15 years than had been made since the depression and why the right wing has problems gaining similar traction.
The only way that they can be stopped is with credible threats of political defeat or when we shut down their cities so that the profits stop flowing through nonviolent civil resistance.
Organizing a party takes work and people are lazy.
Organizing economically significant civil resistance risks jail time and people are timid.