If there are problems within the Obama Administration's healthcare plan, let's identify them and argue about them.
I will begin.
p1. The Obama administration has not put forward any health insurance reform plan. (Yes, you're on my shit-list for using the "healthcare plan" construction.)
p2. The plan in the House has the so-called "public option" provision, but it's crippled almost beyond measure because A) it gives the big insurance companies three years to shoot it down before it comes into effect, and B) it doesn't tie reimbursement rates to Medicare and, therefore, doesn't really do what it could to reduce overall healthcare costs.
p3. The Kennedy-Dingal bill in the Senate will never get to the floor, thanks to the sheer bloody-minded malevolence of the Finance Committee Six [Baucus, Graessley, etc.], so does it really matter what it says? No.
p4. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to report a bill that has the lovely combination of A) individual coverage mandates, i.e. you must buy a compliant insurance plan or be held criminally liable, and B) no public option whatsoever, i.e. not even state-operated plans, just non-profit cooperatives, which have been shown again and again to be completely ineffective at controlling costs.
p5. There is the Kucinich amendment, which would allow the states individually to go single-payer, i.e. to box the private health insurance companies into the limited role of providing only supplemental insurance, which would be a mostly symbolic victory. It wouldn't make much of a dent in costs unless California and at least ten other states opted into single-payer. Nobody is willing to fight for it in the House, and it couldn't possibly pass the Senate, so it's dead.
At this point, the health insurance reform effort needs a miracle. Apparently, Matt Taibbi has an article in Rolling Stone that explains just what kind of miracle we would need, and why the capricious and sociopathic Gods of U.S. politics aren't ever going to give it to us. The article is not online anywhere yet, so far as I know.
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syntheid
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 05:25 pm (UTC)I will begin.
p1. The Obama administration has not put forward any health insurance reform plan. (Yes, you're on my shit-list for using the "healthcare plan" construction.)
p2. The plan in the House has the so-called "public option" provision, but it's crippled almost beyond measure because A) it gives the big insurance companies three years to shoot it down before it comes into effect, and B) it doesn't tie reimbursement rates to Medicare and, therefore, doesn't really do what it could to reduce overall healthcare costs.
p3. The Kennedy-Dingal bill in the Senate will never get to the floor, thanks to the sheer bloody-minded malevolence of the Finance Committee Six [Baucus, Graessley, etc.], so does it really matter what it says? No.
p4. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to report a bill that has the lovely combination of A) individual coverage mandates, i.e. you must buy a compliant insurance plan or be held criminally liable, and B) no public option whatsoever, i.e. not even state-operated plans, just non-profit cooperatives, which have been shown again and again to be completely ineffective at controlling costs.
p5. There is the Kucinich amendment, which would allow the states individually to go single-payer, i.e. to box the private health insurance companies into the limited role of providing only supplemental insurance, which would be a mostly symbolic victory. It wouldn't make much of a dent in costs unless California and at least ten other states opted into single-payer. Nobody is willing to fight for it in the House, and it couldn't possibly pass the Senate, so it's dead.
At this point, the health insurance reform effort needs a miracle. Apparently, Matt Taibbi has an article in Rolling Stone that explains just what kind of miracle we would need, and why the capricious and sociopathic Gods of U.S. politics aren't ever going to give it to us. The article is not online anywhere yet, so far as I know.