Last week, when Senate Democrats passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the right wing's quest to kill President Obama's No. 1 domestic priority ended. Santa has delivered a lump of coal to Senator Jim DeMint, who gleefully predicted that defeat of health reform "will be [Obama's] Waterloo; it will break him."
Progressives in the Senate have reached a momentous crossroads, just as our predecessors did in 1935, when they passed the Social Security Act, and in 1965, when they passed the Medicare Act. Both of those bills were giant steps forward for the health and economic security of the American people. Both were bitterly opposed by conservatives, who waged strident campaigns of fear and loathing, warning that the bills would lead to "socialism."
Make no mistake, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a profoundly progressive bill. As Ezra Klein wrote in the Washington Post, "The bill is the most important social policy achievement since the Great Society." It will usher in three truly historic reforms.
First, we are going to extend access to quality, affordable health care coverage to nearly every American. An estimated 30 million Americans who do not have coverage will get it thanks to this bill. By itself, this is an historic achievement every bit on par with passage of Social Security and Medicare.
A second great reform in this bill is an array of provisions cracking down on abuses by health insurance companies - abuses that currently leave most Americans just one serious illness away from bankruptcy. Among other things, this bill will extend coverage to people with preexisting conditions, and it will eventually ban the practice of denying coverage due to preexisting condition. It will stop insurers from canceling the policies of people who get sick. And it will stop discrimination against women, who now pay premiums up to 48 percent higher than premiums for men.
A third great reform is something I have championed for many years. Our bill includes a whole array of provisions designed to jumpstart America's transformation into a genuine wellness society. For example, we are going to require reimbursement for recommended preventive services such as mammograms without deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements. We expand Community Health Centers, and help businesses to create workplace wellness programs. This bill will begin to transition our current sick care system into a true health care system - one focused on preventing chronic disease and keeping people out of the hospital in the first place.
By passing this legislation, we will achieve a progressive prize that has eluded Congresses and Presidents going back to Teddy Roosevelt. And we now know why those earlier efforts failed: Because the special interests defending the broken - but highly profitable - status quo are extraordinarily powerful. At long last, we are going to break their stranglehold.
To be sure, the path to securing 60 votes was paved with painful compromises. That's also the way our predecessors were able to get the votes to pass Social Security and Medicare, both of which had big gaps in coverage when they were first enacted. They passed bills that were less than a full loaf, and then they came back for more in later years.
Instead of that "partial loaf" analogy, I like to think of this bill as like a starter home. It is not the mansion of our dreams. But it has a solid foundation, giving every American access to quality, affordable coverage. It has an excellent, protective roof, which will shelter Americans from the worst abuses of health insurance companies. And this starter home has plenty of room for additions and improvements.
The reforms in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are extraordinary achievements. That's exactly why the right wing has pulled out the stops to try to kill it. But let's be clear: This bill is the beginning of health reform, not the end.
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victory. It is nowhere close to what is needed. However, the government has been able to expand coverage. Insurers have modified policies for the benefits of their subscribers. What follows, or not, will tell.
As we squabble over health reform, patients suffer and die daily without proper care. The public option may not be, but scraping all is not the alternative. Reform is needed. The failings of our health system are many. Most egregious is standing by and allowing millions of our citizens to be without health insurance. Without insurance, they have no physician and without a physician, they have no medicines.
For those preferring to kill health reform 2009, or feeling that what is in the current bill is not historic, as a practicing primary care physician, I offer my observations from the free medical clinics in Little Rock and Kansas City.
Stories from both cities were identical.
Eighty percent were working one, two or three jobs that had no health benefits. Others did not have enough work hours to qualify for health benefits. Forty percent had not seen a physician in the past six years. Any care was urgent, fragmented and without follow up. All had the same reasons for neglecting their health. Without insurance, they could not afford to pay for a physician visit. Without insurance they could not afford to fill their prescriptions. Without insurance, they could not afford any surgical procedure.
Fibs, all Fibs!
No legislator asked that important question about why Europe can provide excellent health care for every citizen for less than $4,000 per year, and we Americans are being ORDERED to pay $8,000 per person per year, on average, OR ELSE! Oh, there'll be some Federal off-set, maybe $3,000 per year for those who qualify, but we consumers are still going to be paying out top dollar for crappy coverage, and, for the first time ever, the insurance companies will have their hand DIRECTLY in the federal till. That's why their stock went through the roof when the Senate extruded this legislative disaster.
There are no price caps in either bill. No regulatory controls. No federal enforcement mechanisms (that's left up to the states)
This is a boondoggle; 30 million people are being mocked by Congress and corporate America! Think we've got power do we? They showed us who's boss!
Right up until the first primaries of 2010, that is, then WE, THE PEOPLE can demonstrate how democracy works. We can re-make the House in 2010 and 2/3 of the Senate by 2012, if we really want to!
Throw the bums out in the primaries, re-make OUR Congress, and we can have single-payer health-care for all by 2013!
I hope it is defeated in conference ...I am sick of these basement dwellers and there non-stop defeatist mode. Their incessant bashing of a great start to something wonderful makes me think that nothing but the complete destruction of the health insurance industry will satisfy these people.
I'm not going to count mandates to purchase insurance from private monopolies that are regulated by toothless state insurance boards as providing people with health care. Most bankruptcies are caused by health issues and most of those people HAVE INSURANCE now. So forcing 30 million people to buy bad policies isn't going to help them.
And the subsidies can disappear with the next Federal budget. We've already got the President's Federal Reserve Chairman telling the senators in his renomination hearing that the money for the wars should come out of Social Security and Medicare (but he can't comment on taxes for the rich). There's no reason to believe subsidies big enough to keep people from being bankrupted by being forced to pay for spiraling insurance costs will make it past the first Republican Majority.
This bill is just fine for the health insurance industry, though. That's why their stocks are skyrocketing. It doesn't break them, it doesn't "let them survive", it makes them richer and more powerful than ever.
I hope you are prepared to help them and others like them. You guys are so negative.. you only look for things to gripe about.
Your entire premise in this column, sir, is incorrect.
Bush did want to privatize social security (imagine where retirees would be now - the only one who would have been better off are, of course, Wall Street brokers.)
I am well on the way to believing that everyone in Washington, Obama on down, is a paid-for corporate hack who holds Americans in contempt. (Maybe not Kucinich.)
I am getting tired of Democrats pointing at Republicans - you all are complicit, this has been like watching a Noh performance - every word and dollar carefully choreographed.
And every email I get from a Dem basically says "send more money". Enough with that.
No more votes for Dems or Reps, no more support.
No votes...Ju
Withhold all your votes and see how much better things will be..
So many people have sat out elections year after year and expect things to be in their favor.
Only a fool would give hard-earned money to either the Democratic or the Republican Party directly. 95% of us don't have enough money for our donations to be able to give us a voice.
Kucinich 2012
How many will die waiting for you to improve this bill to the point of being real health care reform?
Wake up and notice that, thanks to the Internet, the populace is far better informed about what you and your Senate and House colleagues are doing and not doing.
We are not fooled.
Next year, the House will be calibrating every move according to election polls. The year after, the Senate and the President will begin running for the 2012 elections.
None of you wants to run on real health care reform. You certainly don't want to come back to this terrible bill.
Mandates? Sure, you really want to address that one again.
Quit fooling with us. You are NOT COMING BACK TO THIS ISSUE once you get this feeble bill passed.
Reform activists saw you as a steadfast progressive and an avid supporter of Public Option as the backbone of real reduction (not holding) of costs, real competition and choice, and keeping the Ins Co honest in following the regulations and spirit of he bill. Thus it was painful to see you strong armed into abandoning your core position.
Whitehouse and Party leadership are trying to sell the bill using WH talking points containing omissions and half truths. However voters are not going to the pursuit of shallow political gains and corporate patronage. Please note the following issues not addressed in your talking points.
1) 200,000 more will die until 8013/8014 when subsidies and exchanges etc kick in. Should we not treat this as a National Emergency instead of shedding crocodile tears for the dying?
2) Insure 31M (not 47M) by 2019, not exactly a crash program. It is not pointed out that tax payer money will be squandered on high bone crushing premiums (and more than proportionately higher subsidies) which are projected to grow 111% by Ins Industry's own estimates.
3) No alternatives, which provide "the same" cost lowering and competition as the Public Option, have been clearly identified - and probably not created.
4) Older people with preexisting conditions may pay up to 300% of regular premiums compared to 120% in Vermont today. People above 400% FPL will not find it affordable. For those eligible for subsidies, tax payer will be hit for obscenely high amounts.
SO GET A MOVE ON AND GET BUSY.
Otherwise there will be more obstruction in 2012 and the possibility of repeal - IMAGINE THAT ?
Some things will last from this reform. The mandates will go on.
ALSO, ITF NOTHGIN PASSES I GUARANTEE YOU YOUR PREMIUMS WILL OCNTINUE TO RISE OH A WHIM OF THE INSURANCE CO. INSTEAD OF ACTUALY NEED
The CBO and others have said as much.
Insurance corporations will face no anti-trust provisions, no cost controls and no competition.
The subsidies are a joke. The insurance corporations will simply raise their premiums to cover the cost of the cosmetic reforms and to pocket the subsidies. There is more harm in this bill than good.
Democratic Party hacks and Obama sycophants are desperate to silence progressives or make them call this lipstick-wearing pig of a bill "Miss America". It won't work. We will continue to speak the truth about this legislation.
Nor will this bill be "improved" any more than was the so-called "No Child Left Behind" bill improved.
Ditto
The problem is that the Senate is unable carry out its duties to the American people; its own rules prohibit it from doing so. Watching this bill go through your legislative body was enough to turn a sausage maker’s stomach. We are in hard times and the last thing we, as a people, can afford to tolerate is to have our government abandon us by disabling itself. Forget the damned health bill; the Senate desperately needs to reform itself so it can begin to serve the American people again. As it stands now, the Senate is about as useful as a broken arm.
Those two programs were created to help the people, and help them they did and continue to do.
This bill is designed to help the corporations at the expense of the people. Literally.
The only thing historic about this bill is that it will be the first time in our history that citizens will be requred by law to purchase a junk product from a private, profit driven, unregulated, monopolistic corporation.
Truly a first.
And not one to be proud of.
The democrats will own this one.
Part of why I left the Democratic Party two weeks ago was because of seeming "progressive" Senators like Harkin, Brown and Boxer who didn't have the courage to stand up and fight and now are trying to put lipstick on this pig and sell it as Miss America.
That 30 million new people will have access to "insurance coverage" doesn't mean much when you realize they aren't "getting" anything. They are being forced to buy it at whatever rate the for-profit insurance corporation wishes to charge.
Our corporate shill President and our corporate-owned Congressional leadership have thrown us to the wolves and now they want us to say thank you. They weren't willing to stand up and fight the insurance corporations or the conservative movement, but will fight anyone on the left who dares to tell the truth about this bill.
Tens of millions of middle and working class Americans who cannot afford for-profit insurance before will be forced by law to buy it at extortion level rates, under heavy tax penalty if they don't, with no cost controls, no competition and no choice of any public option.
Sorry, Senator Harkin, your post proves that leaving the Democratic Party was the right thing to do.