ARTS & FARCES internet

By five votes—five votes—the US House approved a healthcare reform plan that at best is mediocre, at worst pitifully lacking. Firedoglake appropriately sums it all up: “Last night, the morally weak failures that are the Democratic Party pulled off a well-executed Reverse Rope-a-Dope.” Best of all, no one—and I mean no one—saw it coming.

House members voted 220 to 215 to approve the legislation that will cost US$1.1 trillion over 10 years paid for by new fees and taxes and Medicare cuts. The New York Times has the results of the roll call vote and an outstanding analysis of the Democrats who voted against the bill. One Republican, Representative Anh Cao (R-Louisiana), voted in favor of the bill while 39 Democrats voted against it.

In Minnesota, the five Democrats voted in favor of the legislation; the three Republicans voted against it.

Democrats caved on subsidized insurance coverage for abortions, passing Representative Bart Stupak‘s (D-Michigan) amendment (.pdf; 82KB) by a vote of 240-194. That’d be 64 Democrats actively looking for progressive primary opposition. [....]

The House bill would extend coverage to 36 million uninsured citizens—hardly universal coverage; 18 million people (including illegal immigrants) would be left uncovered—and create a weak government health insurance program for which barely 10% of the populace would qualify. The House bill would mandate insurance companies cover preexisting conditions, eliminate lifetime maximums on coverage, and prohibit them from canceling insurance policies when the insured becomes ill. Insurance companies would be required to justify policy increases to federal regulators. The legislation would set up a national insurance exchange, expand Medicaid, and offer subsidies for moderate- and low-income citizens. The bill would require most Americans to buy private health insurance and businesses with payrolls higher than US$500,000 would have to provide coverage or pay up to an eight percent payroll tax penalty.

H.R. 3962 would close the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” by 2019 but would cut more than US$400 billion from the single-payer healthcare program for the nation’s elderly and most end-stage renal disease patients. Additionally, a 5.4% surcharge on individual incomes over US$500,000 (US$1 million for families; unindexed to inflation) would be implemented to keep the bill deficit-neutral.

Republicans, predictably, opposed the legislation on the fraudulent assessment of a “government takeover of healthcare”, “healthcare being too important to get wrong,” and “government limiting patient choices.” Oh, and let’s not forget outright lies. With regard to the first, the House bill actually ensures the privatization of healthcare in America. With regard to the second, Republicans had eight years—eight years—to pass healthcare reform and did absolutely nothing; too important to get wrong but not important enough to actually do anything about, apparently. With regard to the third, well that might have worked in 1994, but now everyone recognizes it for the malarky it is. With regard to the lies, well, that’s become common across both sides of the aisle.

Of the 215 votes opposing the House bill, only a few were with good cause. The one that stands out the most prominently is that of Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). After voting against the House bill, Kucinich released a statement outlining his opposition.

Kucinich said the House legislation “incentivizes the perpetuation” of the health insurance cartel. Kucinich understands that when corporations control healthcare, the goal isn’t to provide healthcare, but profits. By law, the sole purpose of US corporations is to deliver value to shareholders in the form of profits. What Kucinich almost certainly understands, but doesn’t say in his statement, is that the health insurance cartel is only half of the problem; the other half is the corporate healthcare provider cartel.

Here are Kucinich’s core points:

• Insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.
• Since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%.
• 31% of healthcare expenditures goes to administrative costs, not healthcare.
• H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. 21 million Americans would be required to buy private health insurance, resulting in at least US$70 billion in new profits for the insurance companies. Kucinich calls it a “bailout under a blue cross.”
• The “robust public option” would have offered a modicum of competition to the monopolistic health insurance industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million.
• An amendment protecting the rights of the states to institute single-payer healthcare systems was stripped from the bill at the request of the Obama administration. Change we can believe in, indeed.
• The growing divide between the financial economy and the real economy within which most of us live.
• H.R. 3962 continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of everything else.
• “Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America’s businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.”