I'm posting some things a friend of mine posted in response to someone on Facebook linking to a letter writing campaign against he health care bill. This is probably the most cogent summary of what's going on I've read on the subject:
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"Government-run health care?" The bill on hand doesn't even have a public option. It stops the practice of refusing coverage due to pre-existing conditions (and making up pre-existing conditions to deny coverage once a person is sick). It removes the barrier for private health insurance companies to operate across state lines. It creates an open exchange for health care plans. It extends availability of medicare back a few years to the late 50's, and for some people below the poverty line.
And as for the democratic process... the democratic process says that if 50% of senators are willing to vote for a bill, it should pass. What has happened here is that 59% of senators are willing to vote for a bill, but the others are willing to block them by using a filibuster... a technicality that requires 60% of congressmen to vote to end a discussion, so that the other side will have had their say. Not only that, this is FOR A BILL THAT ALREADY PASSED THE HOUSE AND SENATE. It's a technicality process to combine the two passed bills... a technicality that is being blocked on a technicality. How is that democracy?
Quite frankly, countries with ACTUAL government-run health care are looking at this like a casual regulatory bill. Who has actual government-run health care? Canada. Japan. The UK. Germany... well, take a look here.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.gadling.c...reworldbig.jpg It's most of them, really. All of the industrialized ones, and a lot of the barely modern ones. It's not some big scary thing to fear, especially when the extent of socialization appears to be A: an expansion of medicare, which we already accept is a good idea, and B: a public exchange to help drive costs down, which fits perfectly with free-market ideals.
I might add that we're spending 20% of our GDP on healthcare, whereas most other industrialized nations spend 10%. Clearly, what we have has failed. Let's make this a competitive market, with a floor for the extremely poor.
[response full of the usual "The can't force me to buy health coverage!" And it's 2800 pages, it must be bad!]
You definitely have good points. The bills are bloated and huge, and not nearly enough people have read them.
However, there is definitely a few things wrong. For one, the government does mandate universal healthcare to a degree already: Emergency Rooms are not allowed to deny treatment to any patient regardless of inability to pay. As a side effect of this system, for the people who can't afford it the best strategy is to wait until a problem is bad enough for emergency care, then argue the bill down in court to pennies on the dollar. I've seen friends argue 20k dollar treatments down to 500, payable over a year. Guess who pays the difference? For another, the government already mandates fire, police, military, school, and other coverages. They just do it the sane way, universally, the way that a lot of other countries handle health care. And finally, my state already mandates that everyone has coverage, and provided a low-cost option for those who couldn't otherwise afford it. Amusingly enough, this was spearheaded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and has more than a passing resemblance to the current under-discussion healthcare bills.
For the pre-existing conditions clause: this is one that the insurance companies themselves have asked for. If any one of them individually strikes the pre-existing conditions clause, they will be outcompeted by people who don't. But if everyone strikes together, they all bear equal costs, which means competition can continue under these other banners.
Setting aside the abuses of pre-existing clauses (famous cases include declaring that going to a doctor twice for coughs years ago was a pre-existing condition for cancer, and considering rape a pre-existing condition), there are great reasons not to base health care on job, locked behind a pre-existing condition wall. The classic case is simple: Get Seriously Ill. When you get sick, you lose your job. When you lose your job, you lose your healthcare. When you lose your healthcare with a Serious Illness, you now have a pre-existing condition that will prevent any insurer from covering you in the future. This is not the basis for a sound care system.
A bill HAS passed the house and senate. Reconciliation is a routine matter, where even big things like "abortions aren't covered" are generally fudged between spending bills. Hell, entirely new clauses get inserted during reconciliation (which is not to say that they should, but they do routinely). More than 50% of the House and more than 50% of the Senate voted for what is essentially a capitalist, market competition solution with a couple of protections thrown in. What should happen now is a genuine merging of the bills into one, with differences earnestly hammered out. What is happening is one last chance to block any of it from being implemented, despite previous votes.
Personally, I think the bill is pretty lame. A universal baseline system (like the rest of the western world) would go a long way to cutting down administrative overhead and insurance profittaking, estimated at %40 of premiums. And it would untie people's health coverage from their jobs, a major problem currently. The "market will solve all problems" solution presented in the bill is lame and does suck, but it is an improvement over the travesty that we have right now. And none of these adequately address the cost issue in more than a cursory fashion. The improvement seems incremental rather than the real reform that is needed, with some dumb setbacks thrown in there. But it is an improvement, and that's all we're likely to get for a long time. I'm fine with taking the existing system that we have and fixing it, rather than trashing it. From everything I've seen, this bill essentially bolts on checks and balances to the existing system, including a floor for the extremely poor and some protective walls for workers. From everything I've read of the bill, this is not even close to throwing out everything we have.
Realistically, if we don't get some sort of movement on this here and now, we're going to lose our chance at any reform for the next 8 - 12 years. The entrenched political opinion will be that health care is a form of career suicide, the public won't challenge their internal fears about health care reform equaling death panels, and the cost will creep ever skyward. By the time the next opportunity rolls around the rhetoric will be even thicker, based less firmly in reality, and covering an even more disproportionate portion of our gross expenditures.
Also, I know you're a die-hard Conservative. Please, please reclaim the Republicans, or start a competing party that removes them. Please. I have a lot of respect for what pre-Regan / pre Christian Fundamentalist Republicanism stood for. It wasn't about lockstep following orders, invading countries, and finding convenient scapegoats. It was about reducing government expenditures, encouraging civic duty and participation by all citizens, enshrining individual freedoms, and generally being an uncorruptable Jimmy Stewart do-gooder.
