My article summarizing the 2009 healthcare debate

I am the editor of a magazine here Huntsville Alabama called The Muse. It is a literary magazine created each year by Calhoun Community College. The back of the magazine has a section called the MusePaper, which is mostly college news but can also include political pieces. At the beginning of the semester I decided I wanted to write a piece on the Healthcare debate with my own article being on the left and another article from the right. Finally, it is getting close to time to have all writing for the magazine finished and I cannot wait for this debate to end. I could have talked about this for many thousands of words but I am limited to 1500. here is the rough draft of the article I came up with today. Please note that, the magazine does not have regular circulation and is not known for politics. Therefore, I had to quickly explain some things that most readers wouldn't understand, such as filibuster and reconciliation. Let me know what you guys think. Any correction suggestions are welcome, as is constructive criticism.

The largest political debate of 2009 has obviously been healthcare and health insurance reform. When healthcare costs account for the majority of bankruptcies in America, almost 50 million people lack health insurance, and people are dying from pre-existing condition denials, it is clear that our health insurance system needs reform. But between the democratic and republican bickering in Congress, something has been lost in this debate. The American people. How much of the fight is based on facts? Are congress(wo)men fighting for us or for the health insurance lobbyists who are filling their campaign funds? This debate has lasted a long time and it will go on until a bill is passed or the entire idea or reform is defeated.
Barack Obama's voters listed healthcare as their number two priority after voting him into office in 2008. One of the largest and most talked about Democratic issues over the last two decades has been healthcare. There are a number of reasons for this. The biggest is the number of uninsured Americans and the problems those who do have health insurance face from their insurers. There are 47 million uninsured citizens in one of the most industrialized nations in the world. Millions of people are discriminated against every year because of pre-existing conditions every year. These discriminations range from denial of claims, denying coverage of a particular condition, denial of prescription coverage, denying an application for coverage, or dropping a customer's coverage completely. Surely, these statistics are oft used and seem meaningless to some. One gets tired of hearing them after a while. But, having been one of the millions of uninsured for five years, these numbers are very real to me. America spends 16% of it's GDP(Gross Domestic Product) on health care each year, more than any other country in the world. Health care costs account for 62% of all bankruptcies in America. By contrast, this is nearly unheard of in all other countries. Insurance premiums and healthcare costs are rising faster than both wages and inflation. These numbers are expected to continue their upward trends if something is not done to solve these problems.
For many years, part of the Democratic platform has been the implementation of a Universal Healthcare system. As the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide it's citizens Universal Healthcare, we are ranked 37 in overall healthcare performance, just above Slovenia. Our life expectancy is 38th in the world and we are 16th in infant mortality. Progressives have been screaming for Universal Healthcare for many years and Barack Obama said in 2006 that he supported a single payer system. Single Payer is a system used in England, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Canada, and many others. In his first of many gestures of bipartisanship, President Obama came out with his compromise right from the start of the debate, saying that single payer was off the table and that he wanted a public option instead. This is equivalent to giving the highest price you are willing to pay for a used car as your first offer.
Since the President introduced it, the Public Option has become the center of the debate. The compromise from the beginning put the debate right in the middle and the only place it could swing from there was to the right. The Public Option has been called a new “government bureaucracy”. It has been called a socialist program, taken straight from the book of marxism. They have said that the government will “come between you and your doctor” and make decisions about what treatment one could receive(as though the health insurance companies aren't already doing that). What the Public Option actually is, is a government run, non-profit health insurance option that would compete with private insurance. It would charge premiums so that it can remain viable but, because it has no profit incentive, it's premiums would be lower than private insurance, causing premiums overall to go down. It would not decide what treatment you could or could not have. The Public Option wouldn't care if you sliced your finger off, got malaria, became pregnant, or got cancer. It wouldn't care if you had a pre-existing condition; it would cover you no matter what. The Public Option started out with the support of 70 percent of the American population. After the Republican fear and smear tactics, and the weak, unconvincing rebuttals from Democrats, it has lost momentum.
The debate has been degraded by a slew of mudslinging from Republicans in congress, on TV, in their governorships, their state legislative bodies, and prominent republicans not currently affiliated with the government. They have called our President socialist, marxist, racist, fascist, communist, and more derogatory terms i'd rather not even list. Sarah Palin said on her “Twitter” page that she was afraid of Barack Obama's “Death Panels”. This caused even more mudslinging from the right and a TV debate about “Death Panels”, which lasted for agonizing weeks. The whole thing was started by a provision in H.R. 3200 which allowed medicare to cover end of life care. This means that when one sits down with their doctor to talk about what types of care they will accept or reject at the end of their life, the conversation is covered under medicaid. Furthermore, the measure was introduced by a republican representative. The biggest straw man the Republicans like to pull out is the current Budget Deficit. However, I don't remember the republicans complaining about the Deficit when it came to funding a misguided war in Iraq. I don't remember them complaining about the Deficit for the largest tax cut in the history of this country(the only tax cut to be passed during war time). Republicans have falsely claimed the bill will cover illegal immigrants, abortions, institute euthanasia(government encouraged suicide), and many other ridiculous claims meant to obstruct debate, not further it. Why? The Republicans are in a huge minority and they want this bill to be watered down so much with Democratic compromises that it will not work once implemented. Then, they can turn around and blame the problems on the Democrats.
But why does the Health Insurance Reform Bill need Republican support at all? There are sixty Democratic senators and that means they have a filibuster proof majority. A filibuster is a means of obstruction in which a senator will use the floor and debate time to talk about anything they want for as long as they want, delaying or preventing a vote on legislation. Democrats had to overcome a Republican filibuster on the Civil Rights Act. The problem, then, is not necessarily the Republicans. Each and every Republican in the Senate has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from health insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. They are bought and sold, and no matter how much compromise the Democrats try, they will not get a single Republican vote. No, the problem is not the republicans but the few Democrats who are, sadly, bought as well. Those Democrats have promised to join a Republican filibuster and kill the legislation. However, those Democrats who are willing to join a filibuster are small in number. Healthcare Legislation could still be passed with a majority through “reconciliation”. Reconciliation can be used for all votes dealing with the budget and does not allow a filibuster. Some see this as an impolite method of passing a bill but the Republicans did it all the time during the Bush administration. In fact, they used reconciliation to pass Bush's tax cuts, turning the Country's largest surplus in history into it's largest deficit.
Because the Democrats are weak and won't pass healthcare in reconciliation, we must compromise... again. One option is a trigger, meaning if the Insurance companies don't start to behave in the next five years or so, the public option will be set up. But since we couldn't get Joe Lieberman(who has taken hundreds of thousands from the health insurance companies) to vote for it, we had to compromise again. The next idea is to allow people 55 and older to buy into medicare and let the private industry run a non-profit health insurance organization. It is unknown weather or not this will pass but, if the past Democratic compromises are any indication, who knows how watered down this bill will become before it passes.

Ryan Wood December 9th 2009

verbal diarrhea about death panels on Facebook, not Twitter.