Peter Shapiro is a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers
(NALC) Branch 82 in Portland, Oregon.  He also co-chairs the Health Care
Committee of Portland Jobs with Justice.
This article was originally distributed by FightBack News Service at
fightbacknews.org.

Health Care Bill Does Not Fix Health Care System

By Peter Shapiro

Passage of President Obama’s health care reform in late March made for
great political theater.  Here was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skillfully
maneuvering the bill through Congress after many had given it up for lost.
Here was House minority leader and Republican point man John Boehner,
reduced to ranting about ‘Armageddon’ and predicting the end of
civilization as we know it if the bill passed.  Here were Republican
legislators egging on the mob of teabaggers who massed outside the
Capitol, hurling racist and homophobic slurs at Representatives John Lewis
and Barney Frank as they went inside.

I’ll admit the scene worked on my emotions. The Republicans’ tactics were
ugly and cynical and I was happy to see them fail.

Now that the dust has settled, however, a hard look at the legislation
that prompted all the fuss suggests that, far from ‘fixing our broken
health care system,’ it merely reproduces some of its worst features.

The bill does nothing to lessen the grip of the private insurance industry
on our health care system. It won’t bring exploding health care costs
under control. It does little to change the shameful disparities in access
to treatment in a society that treats medical care as a commodity to be
bought and sold, rather than as something all of us need and deserve.

What it will do is require everybody to buy health insurance, with federal
subsidies for those who can’t afford the premiums on their own. The price
tag of these subsidies is $447 billion over the next ten years. That’s
money that could have gone to pay directly for medical treatment but which
will, instead, wind up in the pockets of the insurance industry – one more
corporate bailout at taxpayers’ expense. Continued…

Posted By Mike Hall On March 25, 2010 @ 4:46 pm

The health care reconciliation bill that corrects flaws in the overall health care bill [1] passed Sunday by the U.S. House and signed by President Obama on Tuesday, won Senate approval (56-43) this afternoon and is awaiting a House vote as soon as this evening.

Before the final vote was taken, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for a moment of silence in honor of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) who made enacting comprehensive quality health care reform the centerpiece of his 47 years in the Senate.

Senate Democrats, yesterday and today, easily defeated amendment after amendment in the Republican [2] vote-o-rama designed to stall or kill the health care reconciliation bill. But because two minor provisions that were found not to conform to the complicated budget reconciliation rules had to be removed from the bill, it must now go back to the House for another vote. Continued…