Health Care Reform

What to cover: Good parts of the bill; lack of a public option; opposition to the mandated buy-in; insurance company boondoggle; single-payer; Obama's presidency; dropping the subsidy for businesses buying insurance.

After Congressman Stupak finished grand-standing with pointless provisos on a woman's right to choose (federal money can't be spent on elective abortions already...), the massive, sweeping reform to American health care passed both the House and the Senate. It has been hailed by various progressive voices as the most important piece of social legislation since at least the 1960s, sometimes even compared to passing Social Security during the Great Depression.

Is it?

It does deal with some of the surface problems. Banning the insurance companies from dropping coverage for those who get sick seems to be common-sense compassion. Kids can stay on their parents plan until they're in their twenties. It creates pools for people with preexisting conditions, and big insurance can't place lifetime limits on your coverage. These make sense, and are needed reforms to our current system.

But there are two major issues I have with this legislation. One is the lack of a public option; the other is the mandated buy-in.

A good friend of mine, a local Republican/Campaign for Liberty activist, said that insurance companies couldn't make profit if they were forced to cover people with preexisting conditions. It would be nice if that's what business they were in, but unfortunately, that's not profitable.

Then tell me this: Why the hell are we still dealing with them? This is the 21st century. By now, we should see health-care the same way we see food and shelter: As a basic human right that everyone deserves, no matter what. What business are these people in, then, if they aren't supposed to pay for the sick to receive treatment? What is so radical about taking the words "over 65" out of Medicare and letting anyone buy into it who wants to?

We have taken a social problem (lack of insurance) and made individuals pay for it. Then, as taxpayers, we pay vouchers to the working poor, now forced to purchase their own health care. And without a public option, all that money goes into the pockets of private insurance companies. As it was said in the International Socialist Review, this is the biggest boondoggle for capitalist America since the railroads in the 1870s.

And maybe hoping for a single-payer system off the bat is a bit idealistic. But in the end, what's so radical about wanting to cover every American?

Short of a public option, and with the mandated buy-in that hurts the working poor and serves as a boondoggle for the insurance companies, I don't know that I can say I support the new legislation.