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Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) is justly famous for saying that the Republican health care plan is for people to go ahead and die quickly when they get sick. But, a few days ago, in an appearance on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC show, he expressed his approval of Nancy Pelosi’s bill as “the only show in town” right now, and as “a good bill” that saves money, and he incorrectly claimed that the bill would save “the 44,000 lives” lost annually, that it would provide universal coverage, that its subsidies would start immediately, and make insurance immediately affordable (when he must know very well that the only reason why the bill is deficit neutral is because subsidies won’t start until 2013), and that it was “the only way we can save American lives.” Alan apparently doesn’t think that the same moral outrage he expressed at Republican intentions with respect to health care reform is merited with respect to the House bill.
However, if his moral outrage was based, as he claimed, on the occurrence of nearly 45,000 fatalities per year resulting from the present system, then it’s hard to understand why he wouldn’t feel nearly as outraged about the expected continued loss of 31,000 lives per year in the band-aid period before 2013, the date that the exchange, the public option, the mandates and the subsidies are due to be implemented. Does moral outrage and immorality end, and pragmatism begin somewhere between 45,000 and 31,000 deaths per year, or going beyond the band-aid period between 45,000 and 11,000 (the deaths we can forecast if 11,000,000 remain uninsured)?
Candidly, I was very disappointed to see Alan fold so quickly, and transform himself into one of Pelosi’s erstwhile supporters on this issue. I was even more disappointed, however, to see him make such blatantly untrue statements as those quoted earlier. The House bill, even if passed, exactly in its present form, won’t” provide universal coverage, but will fall short, even according to CBO’s charitable forecasts by 11 million people. Also, it is not the only way we can save American lives. “We” in the “person” of the Democratic Party in the House can try to pass HR 676, enhanced Medicare for All, if it chooses to do so. If that fails it can follow the three-step strategy I’ve outlined here, which would produce a very strong public option in the form of extending a Medicare option to everyone to take into the Conference Committee process.
Alan also lets us know that even though this bill is not perfect, we can always make it better later. Yet in the next breath he says he must vote for it because he doesn’t know what will happen later and whether the Republicans will take over again. Which is it? Can we come back later, or can we not?
It can be both, of course. If we pass a good enough bill now, then the Democrats will win the next election, and we can come back again to make the reform even better. But, on the other hand, if the bill is not good enough, then we may not get another chance (unless people get very frightened next year), because we’ll be voted out, and the Republicans and blue dogs will shut efforts at reform down. So, we come back again, to the issue of whether the present bill is good enough to give us a chance to make it better. As I’ve argued, I don’t think it is, and I even think it is an immoral bill, because it leaves us with too many deaths and too many people still in bankruptcy and foreclosure.
In his interview with Grayson, Ed Schultz calls him a “tell like it is guy.” But this performance didn’t tell it like it is. Instead, it shaded the truth, or distorted it emphatically, in saying what this bill would do. It especially failed to distinguish what would happen immediately, from what would happen in 2013, and it was particularly egregious in not owning up to the fact that if this bill passes we are still looking at a very substantial number of deaths annually, from lack of insurance, until 2013. And that even thereafter, for the remaining years of the first decade we would be still be faced with substantial, though a lesser number of, fatalities.
In addition, Grayson glossed over the whole issue of the increasing cost of health care as a percentage of GDP. The period from now until 2013 promises to be one in which private health insurance premiums will rise from 40-50%. The House bill does almost nothing to stem this tide, and the effect of the PO in the bill after 2013 is very uncertain, since its small size and exposure to adverse selection promises to raise its premiums and ensure that it will be less successful in forcing private insurance premiums to fall through competition.
In the end, I think Alan Grayson’s spinning of this bill is “not telling it like is,” but yet another attempt by a politician to frame what the House is doing as its members would like us to see it, and to avoid giving us an honest picture of what the bill would and would not do. Grayson is telling the truth when he says that the bill would save lives and make insurance more affordable for those without insurance. But he is not letting us know that it won’t save enough lives, or insure enough people, or lower or stabilize private insurance costs as the years pass. So the question remains, is the bill good enough to vote for, or should progressives block it? I think they should block it and confront Obama and the blue dogs with the possibility of no bill at all. In the end, they have far more to lose personally then the progressives do, so that is the best way to get them to come around to a bill that will end the deaths, bankruptcies, and foreclosures, due to America’s nightmare health insurance non-system.
(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)