While baking those holiday cookies with loved ones, few will think about the insurance plan they have right now through their employer and how this bill will be paid for by taxes on this plan so that means their employer will inevitably cut back on benefits and increase co-pays. They won't think to wonder why they must start to pay taxes on this bill now if they aren't going to see benefits from the bill and an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions until 2014.[2]
Sitting down to eat the Christmas feast, family and friends may exchange passing thoughts about Obama and healthcare or Obamacare (depending on one's political stripe) but few will discuss the reality that health reform will force them to pay up to 8% of their income to private insurance corporations whether they want to or not and if they refuse they will have to pay penalties of up to 2% of their annual income to the IRS.[3]
Opening gifts, few will think they must return that which they got such a great deal on from Wal-Mart or Best Buy when they bought it on Black Friday. Unless they have had a health care experience of horror recently, they won't hesitate and think of how premiums for a family will rise an average $1,000/yr, which means in 10 years health care will cost $10,000 more annually than it does right now. [4]
The American people are not supposed to be anxious or concerned about provisions or clauses in the bill. Democrats have gone to great lengths to ensure that those crying out against the corporatist elements of this bill---the idea that you will be forced to purchase insurance under penalty of law---are considered to be numbskulls, jerk-offs, dipshits...
Those in power have setup conversation on the bill so that people making the perfect the enemy of the good, who cannot realize this opportunity for incremental reform is historic and without victory we will never get another chance to pass health reform in the next few decades at all, are utterly disdained and dismissed as fringe people.
Realities of the political terrain effectively do not matter. Clear, incisive, cerebral analysis like the following excerpt from a recent piece of writing on health care just doesn't mean a damn thing at all:
...In the intelligence and surveillance realms, for instance, the line between government agencies and private corporations barely exists. Military policy is carried out almost as much by private contractors as by our state's armed forces.Corporate executives and lobbyists can shuffle between the public and private sectors so seamlessly because the divisions have been so eroded. Our laws are written not by elected representatives but, literally, by the largest and richest corporations. At the level of the most concentrated power, large corporate interests and government actions are basically inseparable.The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry -- regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry -- tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations -- and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model. It's undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can't get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well). If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor. But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign"
The tragedy of Donna Smith does not factor in but wants and desires of the gun lobby in America do.
That alone should be enough to convince one that this has been a political farce from the beginning and as a people we have given too much room to our political leaders to wheel and deal and lie and scheme and triangulate and showboat and pledge to fix reform but ultimately fail to have the moral fortitude to do anything transformative that will benefit the next generation of Americans and other generations to follow.
Somewhere on Christmas Eve, families will talk briefly of the victory and how they got the gift of health reform finally. But, this gift isn't anything one should be excited to unwrap on Christmas. It's not something anyone should look forward to even if they are not bothered by the fact that they really cannot benefit from this gift until four or five Christmases from now.
This is a Christmas gift to the insurance companies, not the people. And, it's a gift that will keep on giving as it will ensure the revolving door for lobbying Congress continues to spin since they will be able to use money from the health care bill to further prevents Congress from removing the burdens of health care from the backs of the working poor, lower, and middle classes of America.
So, from the plutonomy to Americans all across this nation, merry Christmas! And a happy New Year!
*For more on the con job---the health insurance enrichment bill---
10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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