The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

The Tea Party crowd will be singing Bye Bye Ms. American Pie today after the United States House of Representatives passes the first ever health-care reform legislation in this country’s history.

But why? There’s really nothing to be so concerned about. This is a great day in the history of American democracy.

I mean what is so freaking wrong with the country that invented a definition of democracy that created a middle class taking a step most developed democracies took a long time ago to insure most citizens?

It is a logical step in our evolution as an egalitarian society. I know that word scares the bejesus out of Glenn Beck, but who cares? Glenn Beck is an uneducated idiot playing toady for the big insurance companies, their lobbyists and drug companies who subsidize Fox News.

The bill expected to pass the House of Representatives today is not nationalized medicine. It is not Obamacare, as it has been portrayed by the radical political right on Fox and talk radio.

What does it do?

For starters, it provides subsidies to low- and moderate-income Americans to help them purchase private health insurance coverage through new insurance exchanges.

What’s wrong with helping poor people get private insurance? Emergency room visits from people who can’t afford insurance is one of the biggest drags on the economy now. This will begin to fix that problem.

It provides more money to help states pay for an expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal health program for poor people and those with disabilities. In fact it provides full federal funding to all states for newly eligible Medicaid recipients for three years.

The plan closes a gap in Medicare prescription-drug coverage, otherwise known as the “doughnut hole,” part of a flawed plan passed by the Bush administration and a Republican Congress.

The Tea Party crowd pretends to be worried about the federal budget deficit, although they didn’t utter a word of protest while the Bush administration ran up the biggest deficit in U.S. history.

A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the compromise bill being voted on by the House today would reduce the federal budget deficit by $138 billion over the next decade.

So the Tea Party crowd should love it, right? Wrong.

They are protesting in Washington, D.C., screaming racial epithets at members of Congress, revealing their true racist cast.

Under this bill, most Americans without insurance would face an annual penalty for not purchasing insurance of $95 starting in 2014. In 2016, the uninsured would owe a flat fee of $695, or 2.5 percent of their incomes.

This plan would grant a pay raise under Medicaid for doctors willing to care for the millions of new people who will become eligible for coverage.

Under the so-called reconciliation bill, individuals who earn $200,000 and couples who earn $250,000 would face a 3.8 percent tax on investment income starting in 2013. The plan places a levy on high-cost insurance plans.

It sounds good to me. Would I rather have seen a full-blown government plan with a public option, otherwise known as a single-payer national health care plan?

Knowing that private health insurance companies hell-bent on the highest possible profit have absolutely no interest in people’s health, yes I think a government-run health system would be better. The evidence from other countries proves this.

But this plan is a major, historic step in the right direction.

If I had my way, any member of Congress who votes against this bill would be denied coverage under the public plan they have now. But I’ll settle for watching them all lose their next reelection bids — when the public finally figures out that this is a good thing and NOT the end of the world as we know it.

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Tags: The Day Health-Care Reform Passed in America

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 11:29 am and is filed under National Health Care, President Barack Obama, The Big Picture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.