The Sober Reality of Health Care Reform

The country turned an important corner last night when Congress
affirmed the moral imperative of providing quality health care to more
Americans and passed the President's sweeping health insurance reform
bill. It is to President Obama's credit that he was willing to commit
his office to such a challenge when others before him had failed.

But this is not health care reform, and the task of providing health
care that Americans can afford is still before us. Too much was
sacrificed to corporate interests in the sausage-making process. Rather
than address the fundamental flaws in our health care system, we
applied a giant band-aid. This health care bill does not come close to
doing all that needs to be done to meet the needs of our citizens and
our businesses as we retool our economy for the 21st century.

There are many good and praise-worthy things in this health care
bill: help for those with pre-existing conditions, guaranteed coverage
for children, money for community health centers, and expansion of
Medicaid and SCHIP. But there is also cause for serious concern. Never
before has the government mandated that its citizens pay directly to
private corporations almost as much as they do in federal taxes,
especially when those corporations have been granted unregulated
monopolies.

This bill fundamentally shifts the relationships of governance in
order to achieve its objectives. It was hard to reconcile the
President's campaign against the evils of the insurance industry with a
solution of "corporate tithing" that drives millions of people onto
their rolls. We have empowered another quasi-governmental, "too big to
fail" industry with alarming nonchalance.

Over the course of the past year, it was exciting to take part in
covering the health care debate as online journalists, watching "new
media" mature as we all explored new ways to deliver information
beat-by-beat to our audiences. At the same time, we witnessed a
political process that could not keep pace with the depth and intensity
of this coverage. Myths were exploded almost as quickly as they were
generated. In the end, it was not a lack of 60 votes or 50 votes that
caused the President to break faith with his supporters and sacrifice
the public option, it was a lack of political will.

We saw in the last days what President Obama was capable of when he
truly put the force of his political skill behind an effort. But as
time wore on, the mountain of data unearthed could lead to only one
conclusion: this bill, with its eerie similarities to a plan written by
insurance industry lobbyists in 2008, was what the president wanted.

Rather than use his talents to rein in corporate interests, as he
promised on the campaign trail, the President used his office to shield
them from accountability. This was our chance to weaken them, and the
Americans that Obama inspired with his message of change would have
fought like hell by his side to do just that. Sadly, that opportunity
was squandered. President Obama made himself the defender of the
corporate interest problem that we still need to overcome. Perhaps
that is the best that can be achieved within our current system. If so,
that is a sobering reality.

This bill is a first step, not the last. The Democrats must fix this
bill while they still have the chance. Before they leave Americans at
the mercy of the system they have created, it is imperative that they
address the issues of cost control, the dangerously weak enforcement
mechanisms, and the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies.

Even a single, solitary Senator can begin that process immediately
by introducing a public option amendment when the Senate takes up the
reconciliation bill later this week. Now that the health care bill has
passed, there is no need to worry that this move could endanger the
overall package. The Senate should also consider the bill ending the
anti-trust exemption for insurance companies already passed by the
House. And when Congress takes up immigration reform, we hope that they
provide for the health care needs of immigrants, a need too quickly
cast aside in the face of right wing demagoguery.

We also hope that the Democratic party recalls that preserving
abortion rights is a plank in the party platform. Unfortunately, with
this legislation, women's reproductive rights were sacrificed for
corporate profits. There's no other way to say it. And the party alone
is not to blame. It could not have happened without the cooperation of
pro-choice groups, who failed to mobilize and did little but issue
press releases and fundraise in the wake of the biggest assault on
women's reproductive rights in 35 years. Their complete capitulation is
symptomatic of the crisis that the passage of this bill has triggered
on the left. Liberal interest groups across the board sacrificed the
interests of their members, and, in the end, acted as little more than
enforcers for PhRMA and the insurance companies, or sat mute in
exchange for personal sinecures and carve-outs.

But it is a national shame that a Democratic President who pledged
the repeal of the Hyde Amendment would proudly issue an executive order
affirming it. How far we've come since 2007, when Barack Obama swore
that his first act in office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

And finally, most of all, we hope that members of both parties find
the courage to stand up to the corporate lobbyists who dominated this
process-because if left unchecked, their pernicious influence will
continue to infect every aspect of our government to the detriment of
its citizens. We who are voters must clearly communicate in November
that we will accept nothing less because the fight cannot end until we
as a nation decide to take on the corporate interests that are
corrupting our political institutions and strangling their ability to
provide affordable healthcare to everyone.