The Great Health Care Give-Away of 2009

In an earlier blog post I explained why health care insurance reform without a robust public option is a huge government give-away to the private health insurance industry. But that is just what is coming out of the US Senate this week. Harry Reid has reportedly dumped both the public option and the idea that people 55-64 years of age should be able to buy into Medicare, in order appease Joe Lieberman (the Senator from Aetna), Ben Nelson (another recipient of insurance industry largesse) and other conservadems.

This is truly outrageous! What we are getting from the Sausage Factory that is the Senate is a bill that will require millions of Americans to purchase expensive private health insurance, many of whom will be subsidized by taxpayers dollars in order to do so, with absolutely no mechanism to prevent these corporations from using the proceeds to pad their profit margins. This is disgraceful.

Progressives need to learn a lesson from this. The reason why this happened is nicely summed up in an article by John Neffinger "Why We Lost Health Care." The US Senate is a dysfunctional and undemocratic institution.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has now called upon democrats to "Kill the Senate Bill" and start over with the House of Representatives. Without a public option or a Medicare buy-in provision it is not real reform at all. It is just a huge corporate welfare bill for the private insurance industry.

The people need to rise up and demand better of their government.