Why the Health Insurance Proposals Suffered an Apparent Demise

Obama obviously has no allegiance to either those who voted for him or to members of his party. Today he was meeting with Republicans to determine what they will support going forward. Obama and his right wing advisor Emanuel are more concerned with what Republicans think than with what Democrats think. He doesn't care at all about what progressives (who don't have a party) think.

The health insurance deform that was heavily supported by Obama was right wing legislation that, to Obama's surprise, no Republican agreed to support because it wasn't far enough to the right for their extreme tastes. The Republicans may secretly favor the mandate but they don't support, for example, the government regulating the coverage details of private insurance policy contracts.

If passed, these health insurance proposals would hammer the already partially collapsed economy and the totally collapsed labor market and cause additional damage to both. It would be sort of like force feeding someone very sick a huge, multi-dish meal. Whereas single payer is the medicine needed.

The "public option" shrunk to the point where it was just a mockery of the original public option as proposed by Joseph Hacker. And even that one, with over 100 million enrollees, would fail to control costs to the extent necessary, although that one would probably be a little better than nothing.

Why make things more complicated than they are? It's single payer or nothing, especially with a collapsed labor market involved. Democrats, to avoid a total wipe-out in November and due to inability to agree with hard right provisions in the Senate bill, have apparently wisely decided to cut their losses on this effort, which was doomed to failure from the very start. Were these laws to pass, the damage would have been much more extensive. If the legislation passed, the losses would accrue not only to the Democrats but to the economy and the people in it.

In the end, the only strong support for the proposed health insurance laws came from those who would directly benefit the most: from those directly or at least indirectly working in the health related industries. That alone tells you the proposals were not going to help the economy or the health care of the people as a whole. The health sectors are acting as a severe drag on the economy that is left, and quite frankly they need to be hurt a little in the short run if the economy as a whole (including health) is going to be helped in the longer run.

The Democrats should attempt to pass certain components piece by piece. They could catch far right Republicans red handed for voting against the banning of pre-existing condition clauses and the like. That they won’t do that proves that it is not only Obama who favors the Republicans over 1930’s-1970’s grade Democrats, but it is also the current right wing Democratic legislators. Durbin, Hoyer, Pelosi, all of them are essentially Republicans by 1930-1980 standards, not Democrats.

The above was in response to this article.

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