Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
The compromise in the House is not real Healthcare reform. Although our country desperately needs Healthcare reform just supporting any bill offered is not progress. After Corporate Democrats and Republicans have gotten a hold of the bills in the House and Senate they are so watered down that they will not be anything that will do much good.
They convienently ignore the real problems in the healthcare industry due to complaints from the very folks who profit handsomely by the status-quo.
Reports coming out about the “compromise” with the treasonous Blue Dogs in the House and with like minded stooges in the “House of Lords” known as the United States Senate should be completely unacceptable to those of us who seek real progress for real people in this country.
Of course the Corporate controlled media touted this as “sweeping reform”:
After weeks of turmoil, House Democrats reached a shaky peace with the party’s rebellious rank-and-file conservatives Wednesday and cleared the way for a vote in September on sweeping health care legislation.
Bipartisan Senate negotiators reported progress, too, on a bill to extend coverage to 95 percent of all Americans without raising federal deficits. “We’re on the edge, we’re almost there,” said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican involved in the secretive Senate talks.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/hea…
Luckily Liberals and Progressives in the House immediately voiced opposition. They are our hope to defeat this Corporate-tainted compromise:
The House changes, which drew immediate opposition from liberals in the chamber, would reduce the federal subsidies designed to help lower-income families afford insurance, exempt additional businesses from a requirement to offer insurance to their workers and change the terms of a government insurance option.
As word of the agreement spread, liberals fired back. “We do not support this,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., head of the Progressive Caucus. “I think they have no idea how many people are against this. They can’t possibly be taking us seriously if they’re going to bring this forward.”
Thank you Ms. Woolsey for speaking sanity to Corporate-controlled power. No free-thinking Progressive should support this “compromise”. You see, as usual the only ones who have compromised anything are the folks like all of us who want real progress in this country. The Insurance companies and big business as always are allowed to walk between the raindrops as the working man and woman are left to foot any bill of these “reforms”.
In the “House of Lords” the sellout of millions of Americans seems to be complete. Their version of “reform” is just as bad:
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has given Baucus months to see compromise across party lines is possible, and he told reporters during the day he expects a bipartisan plan to emerge.
The pace of decisions appears to have accelerated in recent days, with negotiators all but settling on a tax on high-cost insurance plans to help pay for the bill, as well as a new mechanism designed to curtail the growth of Medicare over the next 10 years and beyond.
More problematic from the Democrats’ point of view is a tentative agreement to omit a provision in which the government would sell insurance in competition with private industry. In its place, the group is expected to recommend non-profit cooperatives that could operate at the state, regional or even national level.
Nor is any bipartisan recommendation likely to include a requirement for large businesses to offer insurance to their workers. Instead, they would have a choice between offering coverage or paying a portion of any government subsidy that non-insured employees would receive.
Harry Reid is a disgrace as a leader, as is the leadership in the House if they actually think that they can shove this “reform” in the guise of more corporate welfare to the insurance companies off on the American people. This is simply a disgrace and not what we all fought so hard for last year. I beg the President, the Speaker of the House, or any real Democrat to stand up and oppose this. Americans have waited this long for Healthcare Reform and if this is the best these “leaders” can come up with maybe we just need to start fresh again when they get back from jetting home on the taxpayer dime and sipping their maritinis with the elite that they serve.
Furthermore, I have always loved my party and been proud to be a Democrat, the party that represents the working folk of this country. However, this process is showing me that the Democrats no longer represent the values of the majority of their own members. This compromise is finally nailing it home to me that our party is just as sold out to the Corporations as the Republicans. If this is allowed to go through I would love to start a third party, a REAL PROGRESSIVE party with other like minded individuals such as myself who are tired of being the only segment of the population that is denied representation. Unfortunately I think this Healthcare battle shows it has finally come to that.
The time is nearing to let the Corporate Democrats and the far-right lunatics have their party, and build a true grassroots political party that represents working Americans.
As an Independent, I vote w the Greens these days. Tomorrow we celebrate the 44 B day of Medicare by going to Claire’s office to hopefully speak to her or her staff re Single Payer 676 in the House and 703 in the Senate as well as the Kucinich amemdment to HR 3200 that would allow states to set up their own single payer systems.
Even if the public option provision survives, it will not be fully implemented until 2013, interestingly just after the 2012 presidential election. Considering the fact that LBJ smack dab enrolled 45 million older adults into Medicare in 1965 pre computer days, that seems a little longish for a task only slightly larger.
But if we don’t have to wait around for four years to see a public option implemented, maybe a solution would be to turn around next year, just start over and demand real health care reform.
We would be a much more effective party if we were rid of the blue dogs as a minority with courage. As it stands, we can’t even get meaningful legislation past ourselves. Having a majority has meant absolutely nothing. Bush lied us into war and walked. Bush turned us into a torture state and walked. Credit card reform did more to protect the credit card companies than consumers. In the end, the health care legislation will mandate purchasing insurance from the same industry who killed meaningful reform. My friends tell me to be patient, but I have seen enough presidents come and go to know that their greatest moments of opportunity are in their first 12 months. We are 3/4’s of the way through it already, and if it doesn’t happen now, it never will. I love Obama but I am not going to defend him for caving in. I’d start to remind myself of the Bush bobble heads who knew he was lying and defended him like he was incapable of a mistake. Hope is in need of hope today.