Well tonight’s speech wasn’t the first and hopefully, it’s the last attempt Obama will make to urge congress to pass comprehensive health care reform. This time, he’s got a strategy: Dress people up in snazzy white lab coats and press a chilly thesascope to the GOP’s chest: are you still breathing over there?? Obama and his ensemble of white lab-coated supporters suggested that congress capitalize on parliamentary procedure and have the house pass the senate bill, and then have both bodies pass reforms to the senate bill. It will only take a simple majority – an up or down vote – to pass some significant changes to the bills already passed through congress.
read my other post on health care reform: http://policysalon.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/health-care-reform-because-you-arent-bruce-willis-from-unbreakable/
Reconciliation isn’t a new concept to republicans. They’ve used it 16 times since 1991: Bush used it on both tax cuts and on welfare reform. Yet the republicans are characterizing the move as an effort to “ram the bill through congress.” I say: a little pushing won’t hurt. The bill shouldn’t be taken lightly because yes, this is the single most significant HC reform to pass through congress since medicare and medicaid. But once upon a time, those bills were highly contentious too – viewed by many as ….gasp….socialist, and today many Americans enjoy a higher quality of living because of those reforms. So many leftist political analysts and pundits have remarked, however begrudgingly, that Obama needs to take ques from Bush- saying that he pushed his agenda though congress regardless of “what they thought”. To make matters worse the republicans, who seemingly have regressed to a “terrible twos” platform in the era of “no” only holds up congress based on issues of partisanship, not actual issues.
Oh and P.S. take a little trip down youtube lane and watch as republican senator Judd Gregg in March of 2005 raves on the effectiveness and normalcy of utilizing reconciliation to pass reforms. That should put all this farcical republican outrage to rest.
My policy suggestions:
1.Let’s ask the Tobacco companies to contribute some of their profit towards the cost of health care reform. They practically invented the illustrious “pre-existing condition”.
2.Nothing says “reaching across the aisle” like a bipartisan purple tie and a mizrahi-for-michelle plum skirt. The answer to passing reforms? Invest in purple.
3. Rangles should be “temporarily incarcerated” and not just “temporarily stepping down”
4. Kidding aside, this is the most important health care reform since medicare and medicaid, as I said previously. The good news? We already have the most fundamental reforms passed through congress. The bad news is that Obama has spent nearly1/3 of his term on health care reform, and without these final revisions in place, we can’t move onto shifting congress’s focus towards our most woeful-woes: unemployment. Health care appears to dominate and BTU’s have been completely diverted from the grand task of mitigating the effects of soaring unemployment levels brought on by the great recession. Here are some facts: our infant mortality rate is just lower than…CUBA’S. At the end of 2009, about 1.9 million Americans lost their home due to illness. In the U.S. 17% of our GDP is spent on healthcare; by 2017 20% of our GDP will be spent on healthcare. Yet, Switzerland spends 10.9%, Canada spends 9.7% and every single person in their country has health insurance.
Here’s another fun fact: the GOP is running the biggest socialized medicine program in the world: forcing Americans to use their tax dollars to fund emergency room visits and giving profits to insurance companies… let’s wise up and write the final chapter on health care reform now.
(NOTE TO SELF: excessive use of “air quotes”)
Tags: healthcare, Judd Gregg, Medicaid, Medicare, reconciliation
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