Repeal and Replace This!

I think that we can all agree that Barack Obama was elected on a platform of change from the last eight years of “business as usual” in Washington. The President inherited two wars, a financial meltdown of historic proportion, and a massive deficit engineered and kept off the books by the last administration. In the last two years, the GOP, (the party that was ousted from power, because of the mess they created) did nothing in Washington, but say “no” to almost all proposed legislation, without offering a single viable alternative. The "all about change" Democrats, cried foul and then consistently...whined....a lot!

It took that “shellacking” at the polls in November for the Obama policy wonks to finally get the message that, if you want the substantive spaghetti to stick to the walls in heartland America, the message is just as important, if not more so, than the means. By December of 2010, after months of doing various impressions of a deer in the headlights and talking about it…a lot, the donkeys finally borrowed the stones (from Conan the Barbarian?) and shamed the kicking and screaming, GOP,“no-sayers,” into not phoning in filibusters on a few really vital pieces of legislation. This is a taste of what the Democrats finally accomplished in one month:

The START Treaty (supported by every administration since Washington, but the GOP still felt rushed!)

DADT Repeal (only took em 15 years!)

911 First Responders Compensation (only took em 10 years!)

Food Safety (GOP griped, because it costs money to not poison people!) 

Tax Relief (GOP said OK, only if the million/billionaires got a windfall as well!) at all levels of income, including estate taxes, and capital gains and exemption for such things as child educational expenses, a credit for post-secondary education, renewable energy tax incentives, small business deductions, increased depreciation allowances, a temporary reduction in payroll taxes, enhanced deductions for charitable giving, marriage penalty relief, and an extension of deductions up to 100%, for farmers who grant conservation easements. If you look at the above provisions, you can understand why Obama forged this compromise. He was actually looking out for the middle class.

Today, January, 5, 2011, the 112^th Congress swore to protect and defend the United States Constitution.  The new GOP/Tea coalition (now in control of the House) also swore to make it their tippy-top priority, to make President Obama a one-term president. To that end, they also swore that their first order of business will be to cast a vote to repeal the Health Care Legislation. They have vowed to replace it with... something else, but have offered nadita nueva, as most of their bright ideas were already contained in the bi-partisan compromise bill which they helped to write and then decided later that they didn’t want and now want to repeal. They are using a similar strategy to balance the books by slashing programs in next year’s budget, but refuse to say which ones are slated for the axe. We will discuss that on another day.

Since the House of Representatives was the only legislative body to turn to the dark side at midterms, any Health Care repeal vote has zero chance of actually abrogating the existing law and the Tea/GOP coalition (and the rest of the country) knows it. So after they get done wasting a bunch more time and news cycles on that, they intend to try piecemeal to strip individual fiscal notes for each provision of the law. One thing the Tea/GOP folks are already great at is making laws with lots of form and no substance.

I got fed up hearing that the health care law is a really BBBAAADDD law, but not why.  I thought that I needed to read for myself, about some of its more insidious, sinister, and corrupt provisions. And so, I was forced against my better nature to embark upon an exhaustive research project on the subject. And by that, I mean I read a newspaper:

1. No Child can be denied coverage on her family’s plan for a preexisting condition. This provision will extend to adults as well, by 2014. Several health insurers have already responded to that provision by simply canceling the policy for the entire family. That is their answer. Kind of an actuarially based, gotta make more profits, don’t give a damn about actual sick people thing.  Their lawyers worked overtime to find this loophole so they could pay nothing to make sick kids well again. OK. These insurance companies are full of sick, greedy bastards, I get that, but why do the Tea/GOP folks say that the American People don’t want the change? Poll after poll (except for Faux News) show that, not only do a majority of Americans support the law, but a significant minority think it is not strong enough. So with what are they going to replace this provision? The only Americans who don’t want this to be law of the land are the CEOs of Signa, Anthem, United Health, etc. and the rich stock-holders (same guys).

2. No more annual limits or life-time limits for patient care. Makes sense to me. You are insured, for crying out loud! You get cancer. You should not lose your house, while you are fighting to survive. What self-respecting, humane, individual, North of Hell, would oppose this change (besides the insurance industry)? And again, with what is the Tea/GOP going to replace this provision? Low-cost funeral insurance maybe?

3. Your kid can stay on your health insurance plan until they are 26. Corporate America has managed to shrink the middle class to the size of a walnut and a college education no longer guarantees a job. In fact, the job market is still so abysmal, that five people are applying for every job which has not been outsourced to Mumbai or China.  And guess who goes bankrupt, if your kid gets sick? Yes, I have no problem with this provision either, as I do not now, nor  have I ever governed my life by actuarial principles, but rather, by the principles of hopeless progressives, like Jesus, Gandhi, and Bullwinkle J. Moose. Perhaps the Tea/GOP coalition will pledge to personally fund the health care of any sick twenty-something in their district. When they sign as much on the dotted line, I’ll support a repeal of this provision.

4. Insurance companies must now spend 80-85% of the premiums they rake in, on actual health care and sickness prevention programs. Wait just a doggone minute! That’s Communist/Socialist/un-American and anti-Free Market! How can the Tea/GOP stand idly by, while health care insurers are forced to devote more to patient’s health and less to obscene profit margins for rich stockholders? Seriously, does any sane person really believe that the poor insurance companies will go broke if they are forced to actually provide the services for which they are paid? What’s 20% of a brazillion dollars? Not as good as the 60% industry-wide standard it was before, that is true. After the Tea/GOP coalition repeals this provision, with what will they replace it? What percentage would be fair to an industry, whose main goal is, and will always be, to deny us coverage, whenever possible, so that they may continue to expand their little oligarchy? Socialism or Plutocracy. It’s an easy choice for me, but I am not running for public office.

5. A discount for some prescription drugs for seniors, currently caught by the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” I guess if you are elderly and have to choose between eating a decent meal and purchasing your life-sustaining medication, you can always live on cat food. Many seniors now do just that, and this provision may help them to buy more people food. There are a BUNCH of old farts in Congress, but they get free health care and the best that our tax dollars can buy. So I guess I see why the Tea/GOP coalition would want to do away with this provision as well. Replacement? A tax break for seniors who buy inordinately large quantities of kibble?

6. Free screenings for seniors. This one’s easy. If non-congressionally connected seniors don’t get screened, then they die and insurance companies don’t have to pay squatola. Plus, the gummint saves a bundle on So-So Security and Medicare benefits. Wow!  Now I think the Tea/GOP is onto something! They do have a plan after all. Kind of a “ gag em, tag em, and bag em” strategy.

7. All citizens are individually mandated to buy health insurance. The obvious rational argument is that, if all citizens were required to buy insurance, the actuarial risks involved would be spread more evenly (and, not incidentally, the insurance companies would make a bundle) and hospitals would no longer have to increase fees to account for emergency room services. The Don’t Tread on Me, Tea/GOP argument is that this requirement is nothing more than extortion. I mean, why should a young, healthy dude have to dig into his micro-brew fund to subsidize a sick boomer? And why should safe drivers have to buy car insurance? And why should people with cars, pay to subsidize public transportation? And why should a childless couple pay property taxes that are used to fund local schools? And why should people in private gated communities have to pay for police and fire protection that extends to public neighborhoods?

I seem to remember something in high school about the social contract, to which all civilized societies agree, in order to provide for the general welfare of its citizenry. But, if the Tea/GOP were to look at my last sentence, they would only see the words, social and welfare. Just because our founding fathers actually based our principles of government on that same social contract doesn’t mean that gerbils like Michelle Bachman and Allen West  will learn as much during the U.S. Constitution for Dummies lessons that they are attending with Antonin Scalia and his Gang of Five.

In sum, I could easily live with the whole repeal and replace strategy, if they repealed the  health insurance/AMA/pharmacorp stranglehold on the American people and replaced it with a robust Public Option or better yet, a government sponsored, Single Payer Health Plan, modeled after Medicare. Then the Tea/GOP could concentrate their collective brain power on something really important, like repealing the repeal of DADT.

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo