March 09, 2010 06:37 PM UTC

HCR: Democracy at Work

• 1 Comments
• by: JO

The Will of the People vs the Will of the President.

President Obama now gets worked up over the misnamed “health care reform,” turnin’ up the volume on the ol’  Rhetorictrola turntable ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03… )

I can speculate that IF the debate were about health care reform, i.e. guaranteeing health care for everyone who needs it, then my heart rate might increase along with the president’s.

But this debate is about health insurance reform, and at bottom the “solution” to providing everyone with health insurance is: require everyone to buy some. Don’t have insurance? We’ll make you buy some and call that a solution. Can’t afford it? Well, we’ll decide whether what you can afford, and if your income is low enough, we’ll give you a little stipend, but no matter how you cut it, brothers and sisters, you’re gonna pay if you aren’t already doing so.

That’s also the answer to insurers’ objections to existing conditions: we’ll increase the size of the pool to compensate for those uninsured who have pre-existing conditions.

The fact that the CBO’s imagination can see the current plan actually reducing the deficit is all the evidence we need that this is about insurance, not health care. And that doesn’t get many people overly excited.  

Meantime, there is the question of first things first. That would be income, to pay for rent, food, clothes, and yes, health care insurance. When people don’t have any income, because they can’t find a job in this economy, their priorities usually don’t align with the president’s: let’s do health insurance before everything else. When we finish that, there’s a jobs bill waiting in the wings. There’s a financial regulatory bill in the imagination of Chris Dodd, also waiting in the wings.

The fact that the economy is shedding only 36,000 jobs last month should make us all relax about jobs? What’s needed, of course, is a net increase in employment, not a smaller decrease. Forgive us, O Leader, if we’re postponing our dancing-in-the-streets schtick.

One wonders whether the new health care insurance legislation will cover hearing aids for deaf Democrats. We can hope, but don’t pin your tale on that donkey, not yet.