Time for Democrats to Pass Health Care Reform With or Without Republicans
Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 10:10AM 
Almost 100 years after Teddy Roosevelt called for national health insurance, the drive to reform America's health system has crashed against a fierce, partisan campaign of disinformation and obstruction.
Roosevelt was one of history's great reformers - motivated by the fundamental understanding that a democratic country that tolerates immoral behavior from its government, corporations or citizens eventually decays and collapses.
Since then, almost every American president has tried, in small and large ways, to create a health care system that could assure the citizenry some basic level of care, a system that acknowledges that health care along with adequate nutrition, housing and education are the building blocks of a sustainable democratic society.
For an alternative social model, you can look at countries that have either left their people to survive on their own, with disastrous consequences, such as Haiti, or countries whose political systems, often based on repression, smothered popular sentiment, hiding the cracks in the social contract only to collapse under the weight of governmental failure in meeting basic needs, think the Soviet Union.
But beyond the moral dimensions of health care, there are the economic implications. Even the most ardent opponents of the President's health reform acknowledge that the current system is economically unsustainable.
Health care cost have risen much faster than inflation - adversely impacting real wages and family prosperity, while increasing the costs of both small and big businesses, as well as state and national governments.
The current health care system is like a voracious parasite eating its way through the host - gnawing at its body until it eventually kills it.
Today, the major cause of personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by health crisis that throw families into financial ruin when their inadequate insurance policies, or lack of insurance, swamp them with medical bills that can easily zoom into the millions of dollars for catastrophic incidents.
In this dreary scenario, a sure recipe for national economic ruin, one would think that a broad-based consensus on a plan of action would emerge.
Non-partisan experts have outlined various reforms that could significantly ameliorate both the individual and societal damage that runaway health care costs are causing.
But the decay in our political system is obvious.
Thirty years after Ronald Reagan informed us that government was the root of all of America's problems, the Republican Party has become not the Party of Teddy Roosevelt, a party of reformist vigor, but a party that rejects the very notion of government itself.
It is as if the Founders had decided to replace King George III's rule with nothing - no Constitution, no body of economic laws, only a massive military, a theoretically "free" market and a nanny state that regulates social behavior according to a narrow interpretation of "Christian values".
While real philosophical differences exist between Democrats and Republicans, ultimately the Government's role is to make the country work. The Government must regulate society in such a way that it protects the very institutions that have guaranteed Americans their Liberty, prosperity and aspirations of happiness.
Republican Senator Jim DeMint gave away the Republican's true game last year when he announced to Republican strategists that stopping health care reform would "break" the President, it would be his "Waterloo", DeMint pronounced.
That is the reality of the opposition to reform - it is not based on policy or even philosophical differences, it is based on political calculation.
It is, simply, a Machiavellian plan to win back Congressional power for a GOP that has been punished by the electorate after 8 years of disastrous Republican rule.
So now after almost a year of debate, negotiations and deliberations, a time when Republicans and Democrats tried to hammer out a consensus, it is time for action on a final bill.
Democrats were elected with a mandate to reform health care. They have a majority in both houses of Congress and a President ready to sign a bill.
The time for "bipartisanship" is over - let's face it, Jim deMint was being honest about the true purpose of the Republican's opposition to health care reform.
Now is the time for Democrats to push forward a final bill through reconciliation.
History reminds us that reconciliation was the very parliamentary process employed by Republicans under George W. Bush (who did not win the popular vote of the American people) to implement their radical tax cutting package that took America from a budget surplus in 2000 to a doubling of the national debt by 2008.
Meanwhile, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has scored the Democrat's health care bill as lowering the deficit, one of the key Obama goals.
If Democrats do not act now, they will have abdicated their mandate, surrendered their principles - and consigned our great country to economic and moral failure.
At that point, they will deserve to lose Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012.
Paul Krugman, Nobel winning economist, Princeton professor and columnist for the New York Times exposes the GOP arguments as political rhetoric meant to torpedo reform:
...what was nonetheless revealing about the meeting was the fact that Republicans — who had weeks to prepare for this particular event, and have been campaigning against reform for a year — didn’t bother making a case that could withstand even minimal fact-checking.
It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”
Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.
His fib on premiums was quickly followed by a fib on process. Democrats, having already passed a health bill with 60 votes in the Senate, now plan to use a simple majority vote to modify some of the numbers, a process known as reconciliation. Mr. Alexander declared that reconciliation has “never been used for something like this.” Well, I don’t know what “like this” means, but reconciliation has, in fact, been used for previous health reforms — and was used to push through both of the Bush tax cuts at a budget cost of $1.8 trillion, twice the bill for health reform.
What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable...
The Republicans, in their post summit weekly address, respond with Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma following the Party line "start over" - a strategy meant to deny Obama and the Democrats a victory, and give the GOP a major "victory" before the 2010 mid-term elections:
Here's the President's political advisor David Axelrod on letting the "majority rule":
And in the President's weekly address he once again calls for final passage of health care reform and warns the GOP to come to the table to negotiate or watch as the bill is passed by reconciliation, i.e., a majority vote:
A key excerpt from the President's remarks:
We need that same spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship when it comes to finally passing reform that will bring down the cost of health care and give Americans more control over their insurance. On Thursday, we brought both parties together for a frank and productive discussion about this issue. In that discussion, we heard many areas of agreement. Both sides agreed that the rising cost of health care is a serious problem that plagues families, small businesses, and our federal budget. Many on both sides agreed that we should give small businesses and individuals the ability to participate in a new insurance marketplace – which members of Congress would also use – that would allow them to pool their purchasing power and get a better deal from insurance companies. And I heard some ideas from our Republican friends that I believe are very worthy of consideration.
But still, there were differences. We disagreed over whether insurance companies should be held accountable when they deny people care or arbitrarily raise premiums. I believe they should. We disagreed over giving tax credits to small businesses and individuals that would make health care affordable for those who don’t have it. This would be the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, and I believe we should do it. And while we agreed that Americans with pre-existing conditions should be able to get coverage, we disagreed on how to do that.
Some of these disagreements we may be able to resolve. Some we may not. And no final bill will include everything that everyone wants. That’s what compromise is. I said at the end of Thursday’s summit that I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge. The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.
It is time for us to come together. It is time for us to act. It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations. So let’s get this done.
