US Health Care Reform Passes

So it looks like healthcare reform has finally passed in the US. It really is a major achievement for the Obama administration, and although I admit to not following all the specifics of the bill by most rational accounts it does sound like a positive move forward overall from our current health care system.

And yet, as with every other legislative "victory" for Obama (I can think of one other -- the bank bailouts) I find myself less than enthused. This too seems not based on Democratic principles (the fairly clear Roosevelt/Johnson legacy of ensuring a social safety net
for citizens) but instead upon Republican ones (an Eisenhower/Nixon/current Republican idea that health care should be overseen by for-profit companies whose single goal -- make money --
directly conflict with a goal of ensuring real health care for average Americans; if you have to pay for medical procedures, you're not earning as much as you could have). It took 3/4 of a year to get it done, during which time Obama once again did everything he could to get Republicans on-board by watering down his proposal even when the Republicans flat out told him there was nothing he proposed that they would vote for, and the Dems allowed every interest group and
nutball from their caucus to bring things to a halt until their demands were met. White House messaging and efforts to educate the public about the bill were poor and often confused, and usually over-shadowed by Ben Nelson or Bart Stupak or Joe Lieberman saying how
horrible some part of the bill was. Finally, the bill doesn't mandate health care for Americans, but rather that Americans purchase private health insurance (with government subsidies, if necessary). This just seems that this will increase insurance company profits (now,
everyone has to buy instead of just those who could afford it before), in part directly from the Treasury. This seems like much more generous a hand-out to insurance interests than those fuckers deserve.

We'll just have to wait to see how much of a positive impact is made by the bill.

Simply expanding Medicare to cover all people, however, should have been the way to go. If I recall my figures correctly, private insurance companies spend 15-25% of their budget on paperwork and overhead; Medicare spends only 3% according to Physicians for a
National Health Program(http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq#bureaucracy). (I had remembered the numbers being 40% and 5% respectively, but the percentage difference is about the same.) So the private sector is a) less efficient and b) provides crappier
coverage than the public sector equivalent. In exchange for a slight tax increase, workers could have saved the hundreds of dollars a month that usually comes out of their paychecks to purchase their employee-based insurance. Everyone in America would have had actual
health COVERAGE, instead of most people (I think something like 30 million still aren't covered under the Obama plan) simply having health INSURANCE. If you've ever fought with your insurance company to get them to pay a claim, you will have noted how at times these
are notably different things.

But a Democratic President with overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress never even considered it. Obama rejected a proud Democratic history of having created (regardless of what Republicans might say) the two most popular government programs --
Social Security and Medicare -- in an idle search for a single Republican senator's vote in support of a bill based on Republican principles. The search was in vain, as the Republicans told him it would be from the very start.

Still, kudos to Nancy Pelosi for pulling the House into order and ensuring concessions from the Senate in a reconciliation bill. And to Obama, for seeing it through to the end even after health care reform had been (convincingly) announced to be dead more than once. On the
other hand, Harry Reid continues to be absolutgely useless. He's unable to control his own caucus, unable or unwilling to use available procedures to shut down Republicans, and seems to have no strategic vision for the party at all. It completely baffles me how
he has remained Majority Leader for almost a decade. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to his re-election defeat this fall (if the polls are in anyway accurate), even if that means a decrease in the Dem majority. It should be noted, though, that health care reform
only passed once Dems LOST their 60 vote majority in the Senate, at which point Reid (once again) through up his arms and insisted their was nothing he could do. Again, kudos to Pelosi for making it happen.

So...how much is this going to help or hurt Dem election chances in the fall?