Health Care Bill Passes (I'd still like some more reform, please.)

Monday, 7:20 AM.  I'm watching John McCain being interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America.  It's the morning after the Democrat's Heath Care Reform bill was passed by the House, and the Arizona senator is surprisingly sedate.  But his jaw is clenching and there's a strange, self-satisfied glow about him.  He tells George Stephanopoulous that a majority of Americans don't want health reform, and that Republicans will use this issue to unseat their political opponents in the midterm elections.  Maybe that's why he purrs like a cat lapping up heavy cream.

To be sure, the current bill is far from perfect.  Blood-sucking pharmaceutical giants got a sweetheart backroom deal.  Without the much-needed public option, which conservative pols consistently derided as as "socialism," "communism," "fascism," and every other "ism" they could think of, greedy insurance companies still hold all the cards.  Although some of their more flagrant abuses may be stymied, they will still flourish in a competitive vacuum.

But this new law is an important beginning.  We had to start somewhere.

Conservative columnist David Frum is glum:  At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles...  we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.  Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? ...Too late now. They are all the law...  We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.  There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible...  So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry.

I would hardly call reigning in insurance providers' more unconscionable practices a "defeat for free-market economics."  Had Congress done that with the banks, a lot of of human suffering might have been avoided.  But Republican leaders, starting with former president Ronald Reagan and ending with George Bush, were determined to deregulate America's top financial institutions and take an "anything goes" approach to Wall Street.  And we all know where that led us.

This health care bill is not a bad thing - but the tumor of corporate avarice won't be fixed with a legislative Band-Aid, no matter how well-intended.  These CEOs and their countless number-crunchers will find other ways to shaft patients and drive up profits.  Providing as little health care as possible is how they make money.  That basic concept won't change. 

Right-wing Christians who have been praying for ZERO reform are already screaming bloody murder. HuffPo contributor Paul Raushenbush questions their motives: It seems to me that the objections to health care reform always come down to selfishness. People who enjoy good health care are worried that their own care might suffer if it were extended to a wider group, or else they resent that they might have to pay a bit more to allow for health care for the poor. Putting aside the fact that those with money will always be able to buy superior health care, and that insurance companies continue to raise costs on health care annually (with reform or without it) the religious objection to these arguments is that they are grounded in making self interest the priority at the expense of the well-being of others. This selfishness is the antithesis of the religious impulse... I cannot think of one religious argument that does not support fundamental health care reform.

As Congressman Dennis Kucinich remarked recently, if America can throw trillions of dollars into an unnecessary war in Afghanistan, we ought to be able to provide medical care for every man, woman, and child in our own country.