The Left v. Health-Care Reform

T.C. Perkins Jr.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that the Senate health-care bill is too broken to warrant passage and would do more harm than good.

by Adam Lynch
December 23, 2009

Critics are lining up against the U.S. Senate health-care reform bill. Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean warned in a Dec. 17 Washington Post editorial that the original health-care reform bill has become too watered down to be effective after Senate members removed an option for government-orchestrated health insurance.

“The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries—in the range of $20 million a year—and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders,” Dean stated. “In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.”

Many Democrats and progressives maintain that the public option needs to remain intact to act as a nonprofit competitor to private insurance companies and keep down insurance prices. If insurance companies get too expensive, theoretically, they’ll lose customers to the government-run public option.

Republicans and their allies in the insurance industry argue, however, that the public option is a first step toward government-subsidized health care, similar to Medicare.

Dean went on to criticize the bill’s stripped-down version of insurance regulation—most notably a weaker version of a requirement to outlaw insurance companies’ refusal to cover any patient’s pre-existing conditions, including age-related health conditions.

“Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage,” Dean wrote.

The call is echoed by some liberal bloggers, who feel the only way to reasonably keep insurance affordable is to force government competition into the ring with private companies giving huge bonuses to their CEOs.

Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern wrote a December letter to SEIU leaders comparing the good parts of the bill against its unsavory aspects.

“We talked about … the 30 million more people who will have health care they can count on; the people who will no longer lose their coverage if they get sick; all of us who no longer have to worry about being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions; women who will no longer be discriminated against just because of their gender,” Stern wrote.

“But we also recognized, that … for many people, care will still be too expensive to afford; some of you would face an additional burden because your health insurance benefits would be taxed; and the best way we saw possible to hold insurance companies accountable (the public option) was no longer an option.”

Stern added that President Barack Obama should wield more influence over the process to ensure the completion of his campaign promises on health-care affordability.

Mississippi AFL-CIO President Robert Shaffer argues that the Senate bill is still worth saving, no matter how unsavory it could prove to be, thanks to the government process in Washington.

“The way things work up there, whatever goes to conference between the Senate and the House can come out looking like anything. And when it comes out of conference, all the votes you need to pass it in the Senate are 51,” Shaffer said. “Even if the Senate agrees on a bad bill, the House could add some of its better ideas from their own bill, and the Senate would only need 51 votes to pass the new bill.”

Shaffer added that he could not identify Dean’s objective in calling for the death of the bill, knowing another important stage in bettering the bill still lay before it.

“Anytime anybody’s mouth moves, up in Washington, you have to worry about their agenda. It’s like (Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joe) Lieberman. He initially thought it was a good idea to let people buy into Medicare at age 55; that is until the insurance lobby got to him,” Shaffer said. “The insurance companies stroked out when they went with that idea because the 55-to-65 crowd is the group they make their big bucks on.”

Still, some progressives declared that even the government law-making process couldn’t repair the damage so long as the Democrats in power remain cowards.

“It’s got a triply slim chance of survival,” said The Progressive Magazine editor Matthew Rothschild. “It’s slim that something will even pass the Senate, it’s slim that the bill would be any good, and then it’s slim that the Senate and the House would be able to reconcile their differences in conference with a bill that would pass both houses again.”

Rothschild admitted to the Jackson Free Press that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can appoint whatever negotiators he wants to reconcile the bill, and that his chosen negotiators could bring back any manner of progressive health-care reform bill for the Senate to approve with only 51 votes.

He doubted, however, that Reid could be relied upon to make that decision.

“It’s the same thing that stops them from pushing the public option,” Rothschild said. “... They don’t have the guts to do the right thing and risk alienating the more conservative Democrats in their midst.”

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