Health Care

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health care

I think Obama will get what he wants this year when it comes to a vote on health care, with some sort of public option.  I think the time is right, and that’s why I think this will happen.

My own feelings on this — well, I wish we had more aggressive leadership, I wish we were able to push for single-payer, I think this could have been done smarter and without the bogus push for “bipartisanship.”  I am not interested in the theories of Obama’s “long view,” because no matter what kind of changes he makes, they’ll only exist so long as he is in power.  Even if we end up with another Democrat in the Oval Office, they’ll change things to suit their own tastes.

But I think now is the time for change — even when it comes to the entrenched interests that drive our wretched health care system.

This is hardly a definitive essay on the health care legislation coming before Congress and the Senate.  One of the reasons I like Docudharma is that I can put unfinished thoughts out there and end up being more educated than I was before I wrote the essay.  This is one of those times.

To me, the bottom line is that if we even get a lousy public option, that would be a major change and would be the beginning of breaking the hold special interests have when it comes to health care.  We need to get this legislation passed, as unsatisfactory as it is, to get our foot in the door when it comes to breaking that hold.

I think that is going to happen.  I think the days of insurance company hegemony are at an end and that’s why they’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight this legislation by using delaying tactics.  But their time is over.

I am extremely weary of the conventional wisdom that this is the best Obama could do, that anything more aggressive would have doomed health care reform.  Incremental change is what we’re facing, whether we like it or not, and I don’t think that was an inherent aspect of this battle but one that the Obama Administration has chosen.

Given that, I’ll support passing the legislation — have contacted my representatives, signed every petition I received from my various email lists, I’ll support this incremental change because it’s better than the status quo.

And the most important thing is that if we get a public option, that will be a huge change that will also be the beginning of the end for the insurance companies.  It will cause a momentum, imo, a momentum towards single payer.  It’s not a guarantee, but it is, I believe, a movement in that direction.

Commenters are welcome to rip apart anything I’ve said in this essay — I am not emotionally invested in my own awkward reasoning, but I do feel strongly that there’s a reason the insurance companies are so threatened by a public option, that we will get that public option, and that will be the beginning of the battle for single payer health care in the USofA.  

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  1. … had a conference call with the bloggers, asking those on the call to push for this legislation.  All of a sudden the netroots are being recognized.  lololololololol

    I have to laugh or I’d cry.

    • Edger on July 21, 2009 at 17:46

    Hat tip to Blue Girl at They Gave Us A Republic for this…

    Senators For Sale

  2. To me, the bottom line is that if we even get a lousy public option, that would be a major change and would be the beginning of breaking the hold special interests have when it comes to health care.  We need to get this legislation passed, as unsatisfactory as it is, to get our foot in the door when it comes to breaking that hold.

    To me a lousy public is not lousy because it is not single payer which I would prefer. It is lousy when designed so that it not accomplish the objective of breaking the hold special interests have when it comes to health care.

    The public option currently offered by Congress has been purposely designed so that it can in no way compete with insurance industry . The majority of the American people have been prohibited from choosing the public by the restrictions on who may participate. No real market share (only 9-10 million in public option by 2017) equals no clout to change the status quo. If the public option becomes a serious cash drain without providing any benefit to the majority of middle class Americans, it could very well become a death toll for any real reform rather than a foot in the door.  

  3. …if it has a public option and a reasonable shot at universal coverage, I’m in!  I think it will move the discussion forward, and massive, brutal triage won’t be a reasonable option, politically…so eventually it will be cool.  Maybe not on this iteration, or the next.  I could easily be wrong of course.

    As a trans woman, I am pretty sure the final formulary will exclude me.  Most of my medical challenges are long addressed, but there is always bad potential there.  It could be very, very ugly.

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