The Healthcare Bill Must Pass
By Michele Troiano
The current healcare reform bill, however imperfect, must pass for no other reason than to hand the Republicans and the shameful teabaggers the political defeat they truly deserve. We cannot validate all the racist, hate-filled lies and fear mongering that poisoned Town Hall meetings across the country. At this point in our history, we can even afford a giveaway to insurance companies much more than we can afford to give any kind of victory to tea partiers holding up signs depicting Obama as Hitler. The tactics that have been used by the right to fight any effort at healthcare reform were so reprehensible that just about any effort at healthcare reform MUST PASS. Just hear me out.
The Republican strategy was almost successful. They planned to filibuster any plan that the Democrats put out, making 60 votes necessary. They believed that conservative members of the Democratic caucus (i.e., those members taking a lot of money from the Health Insurance industry) would water the bill down so much that the liberal members would not vote for it. Leiberman was their ace in the hole.
(Digression: In the late summer and early fall, the Democrats had Leiberman on board with the public option — or at least Leiberman never said publicly then that he was against it. And Leiberman had definitely supported the early Medicare buy-in. It was only when the Republicans feared the Democrats had a deal to beat the filibuster that they asked Leiberman kill the public option, which he did. Republicans likely predicted that this would cause the liberal Democrats to defect and the bill would be killed.)
With healthcare reform dead by their despicable efforts, the Republicans and teabaggers could employ the exact same tactic (with victorious fervor) to stop climate change legislation, then perhaps to stop reform of our trade policies, our banking rules and so on. In fact, the tea parties for the issue of climate change have already been organized. Mainly, Dick Army and his satanic mignons will lie that such legislation will kill industry in this country and thus take away all of our jobs.
I agree that the the current healthcare bill is a giveaway to the insurance companies. In a way, it is the health insurance version of Medicare Part D. However, the requirements set for insurance companies included in the bill (limiting their use of funds, requiring them to insure those who they are dropping today, etc.), which basically transforms them into public utilities, will take a huge chunk out of that giveaway. In fact, in the long run, the health insurance industry will earn less money than it would have had we maintained the status quo. Not much, of course, but enough to piss them off. And don’t forget, most people will now have coverage one way or another.
The bottom line is that it would be disaster for this country if the teabaggers were emboldened in any way. And killing this bill would validate all their fake grass-roots, racist, and shameful stupidity. It would give such efforts legitimacy as a successful political tactic and that tactic would then come back even stronger and with renewed vigor against the next liberal cause that Obama takes up.
So I say: This Bill Must Pass!