Ed came out yesterday with a hang-dog look on his face and claimed that we have to pass the Senate version of the health care bill or it will be decades before Congress attempts it again. He claims that politicians have become too bloodied to go back and fix things. Stephanie Miller has been claiming this for a couple of weeks now.
Bullshit.
First off, who's bloody? Republicans have been slapping any and every Democrat around that chooses to engage them. Blue dog Dems have been catered to like princes. So called progressives have been slapped around pretty good, but only because they don't know how to fight - and the rest of the political establishment doesn't care about them anyway, and won't until they make 'em. And the Democratic establishment, led by Obama and Rahm, have run this legislation like the Keystone Cops, and any blood or bruises are from running into doors or other movie-prop obstructions. Wounds in this case are self-inflicted. What they are is uncomfortable, because people care about this issue that so affects their lives. Results are expected, and they hate it because it means real work. That is not getting bloodied, that is doing your job.
And as for the argument that we have to take the deal now, or we will never get another chance - also bullshit.
If progressives were to kill this bill, Congress would have to take up some kind of health care legislation in the next couple of years at the latest. They HAVE TO! Our current system of providing health care through for-profit insurance companies is UNSUSTAINABLE.
Within five years we will begin to hit the peak of Baby Boom retirement. Within five years of double-digit rate increases, large portions of the middle class will no longer be able to afford insurance. Our government will HAVE TO ACT to buttress Medicare and provide medical access to the increased tens of millions of Americans who will no longer be able to afford insurance. Democratic leaders in Congress know this. Obama knows this. The insurance companies know this. And they all roll around naked in bed together.
This is why Obama is pounding the podium demanding an "up or down vote" on the Senate version of the health care package. This is how the feudal lords of the health insurance empire retain their wealth, and their place in the corporate oligarchy. The Senate version of the health care bill is a preemptive bailout of an industry that knows it is on borrowed time, at least as it is currently configured.
The Senate bill props up our dysfunctional health care delivery system with our Treasury, using the IRS to enforce the payment to large, for-profit corporations. Much more than any reforms that are in the bill, it retains the most corrupting and wasteful parts of the system, and nourishes them so that the corporate masters of our politicians don't have to face the "death panel" of economic reality. It is as bad as the bank bailouts.
It's not like we can't look around the world and see what works just fine. That our politicians have stooped to selling us this pile of shit shows how little they think of us. It is the corporations who own enough of our government to have them put on this charade, really, an embarrassing spectacle. They act as if the United States will burst into flames if they can't pass this turd of a corporate welfare bill.
If this bill dies, they try again. If they fail, they face our wrath. These sons o' bitches get good salaries, a nice office, good benefits and one hell of a vacation schedule. Yes their job is hard, but so is mine, and I get paid a lot less. Their job is to fight for their constituents. If we are not happy, they better keep fighting, or get the fuck out. C'mon Bernie, c'mon Russ...put a hold on this thing. C'mon Alan Grayson, let's see you act tough as well as talk tough. Kill this bill, and DARE Obama to do nothing. He won't, because he can't.
Health care HAS to be fixed. This current Senate bill is the fix that most benefits insurance corporations, hospital groups and pharmaceutical companies - and fucks the rest of us. Progressives can call Obama's bluff and kill it because he has to fix it. He has to or he is toast, and so are the rest of the Democrats.
Unless he is sooo weak, or suicidal, we can get a better bill.
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