Health Care Finale (posted by DT)

Well it looks like the Health Care Reform bill is going to be passed by the House along with a "sidecar" bill improving the Senate version, which will go through Reconciliation in the Senate. Yesterday we saw that Dennis Kucinich, the most left-wing member of congress and an opponent of the bill because it doesn't go far enough, has been convinced to vote in favor. At the same time, some Catholic organizations have come out in opposition to the Conference of Catholic Bishops and announced that they support the bill because it promotes social justice while still allowing no government funds to be available for abortions. This presumably gives cover to some pro-life Catholics who have voted no because the bill doesn't restrict abortion enough more than current policy.

So now Republican opposition has stopped talking about the facts of the bill (perhaps their fiction department has stopped working on new lies about the legislation) and has moved on to bogus process arguments. To be fair, the party out of power always resorts to this crap when they're about to lose, and many examples of Democratic party hypocrisy are out there to be found too. Still, at the end of the day, the Democrats have a large majority in Congress, and to argue that this is somehow anti-democratic is patently absurd.

It's hard to encapsulate such a complex political and policy issue into a pithy statement, but I think it's clear what the difference between the parties is: Democrats want to cover all Americans with health care, like the rest of the civilized world. Republicans don't want taxes to go up one dime in any area for any purpose whatsoever, lest we become like the rest of the (socialist) world.

Keep in mind that the Congressional Budget Office came out today saying that this legislation will reduce the deficit, in both the short and long run. If that sounds surprising to you, it's because the conservative noise machine has cleverly framed the issue: How could something that costs money reduce the deficit? There must be funny business going on! Well the answer is simple: it reduces the deficit because it raises revenue to pay for the extra costs, and then has cost controls to reduce health care expenditures later. This is apparently difficult to understand for Republicans, who are accustomed to doing things that cost money (the Medicare drug benefit for example) but refusing to pay for it.

The fiscal choice is pretty clear to me: Democrats may tax and spend, but Republicans will borrow and spend. Pretty easy choice for me- I'd rather pay now than make my grandkids pay later.