A widely read and recced diary today by lanae quotes President Obama as warning progressives that his presidency will “go down in flames” if Congress fails to pass health care reform. The diarist concludes with this: “No matter how much we hate this bill, not passing one will benefit the insurance companies and [R]epublicans and they will clean sweep the [D]emocrats out of office in the fall.”
I’m sorry, but the logic is intolerable. The syllogism runs as follows:
--Republicans hate the health care reform bill.
--Progressives hate the health care reform bill.
--But despite this we must pass the health care reform bill to save the Obama presidency.
What is wrong with this picture?
On February 25th, President Obama met with Republicans and Democrats to reason together about health care. Yesterday he spoke to a room full of doctors, saying everything has been said on every side of the health care debate, every position has been argued, and now it’s time for a vote. But there is one thing that has been sadly missing from the bill and from the discussion, and that is the most important thing of all: what are the criteria the final bill must meet for us to consider it successful? This is the question that Taiwan answered right up front when a decade or so ago it decided it had to reform its health care system. As reported on the Frontline documentary, “Sick Around the World,” the Taiwan health care reformers decided in advance exactly what their goals were:
They wanted a system that gave everybody equal access to health care, free choice of doctors with no waiting time, and a system that encouraged lots of competition among medical providers.
By contrast, the Obama administration and the Democrats NEVER fixed their criteria for success in health care reform. They NEVER stated hard objectives. The administration turned over reform to Congress with no goals, no criteria. It was reform for reform’s sake.
And now even though the president says his whole presidency is on the line if the health care reform doesn’t pass, even now we DON’T KNOW WHAT’S IN IT. You think you know? Tell me this: will there be effective price controls on insurance policies…or not?
I saw where on February 22nd of this year the president did propose price controls. A new seven-member Health Insurance Rate Authority would have the authority to make such decisions. But so what? Talk is cheap. The president also proposed single-payer – he just didn’t fight for it.
So if there are no price controls in the bill, which it certainly looks like there won’t be, then who in here thinks it is anything other than a truly sick joke to mandate everyone to buy health insurance? You can give all the subsidies you want to poor people and people with pre-existing conditions, but if you can’t control insurance policy pricing, then what’s to prevent the insurance companies from selling us policies with exorbitant copays and deductibles? This is our trillion dollar reform? Pathetic.