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Sunday, January 3, 2010

Reboot the Health Care Bills?

Um-m-m-m… NO!
OK! You didn’t like that answer? How ‘bout, ”HELL NO!”?

Folks, we can’t DO that. Here’s a prediction (prophecy, for those of you who prefer that): if the Health Care bills now ready for Conference Committee are tossed, and the process restarted… it won’t. It won’t – period! It will be at LEAST twelve years (two Senatorial Elections AFTER 2010) before anyone tries again. You can bet the farm, the wife’s best jewelry and your first-born on that. We’ve tried this as a health care strategy before. It has NEVER worked. NEVER!

What we have to do is, stay with our senators and representatives. The Conference Committee is the place where the final fate of a woman’s right to control her body will be decided, where the last arguments on the public option will take place, where trial balloons will be floated for things that aren’t in EITHER bill. And when all’s said and done, ONE Democratic or Independent vote in the Senate or House could doom the entire enterprise.

And THAT’S why we can NOT be too demanding. We need to take what BOTH houses will adopt, and the President will sign. Then we’ll need to see to it that it’s amended over the next few years to make it whole. And we can directly amend Medicare/Medicaid to cover folks not now covered by ANY insurance.

It’s going to be a long slow process, and many people will remain without coverage for many years. But if we don’t demand everything today, which will get us NOTHING today, we CAN eventually get the package this country needs. Perhaps we can even eventually get to a single-payer system. And that’s what we need to aim for.

2 comments:

  1. Nice article. You always tell it the way you see it. I'm all for free medical coverage and I think this one will pass but it really does need revisions, but I don't think this will keep it from passing very soon.

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  2. I hope you're correct. We NEED to get this in place. It's a foundation for future construction.

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