Tuesday, December 22, 2009

In Response to L and C Re: Healthcare...

I'm responding to a facebook discussion (on the eve of the Health Reform bill passing) with a couple of friends (at least they were friends until I posted this!)here so that I could really answer their questions, if they'd like to respond I'll post the answers here (I've left their full names off until I get permission from them):

L: you think what is happening right now is good politics? you know as well as I do that these senators are pushing it because they want a big pat on the back from the president. And those rich republicans/dems are paying so much in taxes it is not our fault that the government couldn't allocate a freaking nickle appropriately. It is not a democrat/republican issue it is a socialist vs. capitolist society issue!

C: Quick question .... why does this need to get done before Christmas? Why are we not taking the time to do this right? And people say - oh it is a start. Here is the issue, once money is appropriated they will never cut that spending or give it back. Look at TARP. What is happening now is a joke. How come NATIONAL healthcare is being determined by STATE specific considerations? And dont make the pharma lobby a partisian issue. The Dems and Rebuplicans both take a ton of money from them. Check here. Please note Lieberman, Dodd, and Specter.

For L: Good government is fixing problems that exist! Democrats have run on reforming healthcare since at least 1968 and it has consistently becoming a larger problem in that time. Moreover, we have been discussing the need for universal healthcare all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt. Democrats won with a substantial majority all running for healthcare reform. They’ve tried to pass it before with sizable majorities and failed. I don’t see how this has anything to do with the president’s approval of them. There are over 30 million uninsured Americans, healthcare costs 16% of gdp and medical emergencies caused over 50% of bankruptcies in this country (at least prior to the current recession). This is a real problem that needs solving and the Democrats are committed to solving it.

Moreover, it is well established that the cost saving measures in this bill will mean that WE SAVE MONEY. This is a perfect example of allocating resources properly, saving money in medicare to help pay for needed reforms. It’s nice to say that it’s not Democrat or Republican when the Republicans made a mess of our federal government and then blame Democrats for trying to clean up their mess. Republicans were content to ignore the real problems in our country (such as healthcare) and leave it to the Dems. Instead, they did things like declare unfunded wars, pass new entitlements that were unfunded (medicare advantage) and taxcuts that were unfunded. It’s easy to give away money to the rich when you just increase a deficit. Now that we’re trying to clean it up, they just stand on the sidelines shouting nonsense. Like ‘Socialism’, or (segue):

For C: ‘Why are we not taking the time to do this right?’ What the heck does that even mean? We have been discussing healthcare reform since Teddy Roosevelt. We tried to pass this 16 years ago. The entire presidential campaign discussed this! We’ve been working on it all year! We even slowed it down so that Olympia Snowe could take her damn time deciding not to vote for it! Now, Republican senators are slow walking every single Senate procedure to delay the bill being passed and accuse of rushing it? They voted against funding for the troops just to slow us down! ‘It’s going too fast’ is not a substantive critique when the people who are actually willing to discuss how to make it work are all in agreement. Five years from now will be too fast for the GOP.

The bigger point being that Republicans refuse to even discuss reforms in good faith. When they do that, they force Dems to get every single Democrat vote on board and you need to horse trade to get everyone on board. Then you can pretend that you actually give a damn about how these votes were gotten when you’ve never cared before about how Republicans passed bills. More to the point, do state specific considerations make this bill bad?

I beg you, do not say that the bill is too long or my head might explode!

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1 Comments:

Blogger Lee Bee said...

Well said William

10:46 AM  

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