I’ve negotiated with my inner Kucinich and made peace with the health insurance reform bill.  It’s time to finish the job.

By the way, a couple of points on the status of the bill and the reporting I’ve seen/read on the remainder of the process. It’s important to note that we’re not “passing” healthcare reform through reconciliation. The bill(s) already “passed” with the required votes in both houses, a majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. Now, the House will pass the Senate bill and changes which affect the budget will be applied through reconciliation, a valid and well used procedure. That’s it. The big commie muslim socialist black man will not be (c)ramming his big black reform plan down anyone’s throat. Language matters. I digress…

The bill is not perfect and it is not what I wanted it to be when the process began and it is a product of a very flawed system.  However, it is the first step toward real, long-term reform in our healthcare system.  Incrementalism is the reality in our corporate political world until the bright shining day arrives when money is taken out of politics.

We’ve listened to what FreedomWorks, AHIP, PhRMA, and the rabid teabaggers had to say.  The bill has been watered down to the point where progressives barely recognize it anymore. The Democrats adopted 161 of 201 proposed GOP amendments to the Healthcare bill and did not receive one single affirmative GOP vote as a reward for their compromises.

The final Senate bill includes all four planks of the GOP’s proposed alternative plan, including buying insurance across state lines, tougher medicaid/medicare fraud prevention strategies, empowerment for states to implement the plan in different ways, tort reform and purchasing pools for small business. It’s all in the bill.

In fact, one could say that this bill combines the best parts of the GOP plan and the worst of the Democratic plan. Primarily, it lacks a public option, single payer provisions and is entirely based on regulating the private market.  It is possible that a public option could be brought back into the bill through reconciliation with 41 Senators now signed on to support that effort (including Schumer and Gillibrand), but I won’t hold my breath.

Since the Democrats would not receive one single, solitary vote no matter what bill they put forward, I thought they should have simply pushed forward a bill with a robust public option and the regulations needed to make an immediate impact on the system.  However, the will was lacking in the Democratic Party as many of the legislators are just as indentured to the insurance and medical lobby as their counterparts on the right.

So, the bill we have is the one the system is willing to give us at this point.  With a minority party more interested in opposing then governing, this is what happens.  When Democratic Senators are operating as lobbyists for Wellpoint, UHC and Aetna, this is what we get.  As is often said nowadays, it is what it is.  My hope is that once this bill is put in place, further reforms will be enacted, market protections will increase, coverage will be expanded and we’ll eventually end up with a more perfect healthcare system.  Perhaps the Democrats might embrace a simple four page bill that should have been the starting point for this reform process.  To stop now simply guarantees that nothing will be done.

I chose the “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” video from the Obama campaign because it was a seminal moment in a historic campaign.  Whatever you thought of Obama then or whatever you think of him now, he speaks truth in that clip.  Change and reform are only possible if we advocate for it, fight for it, demand it.  If we push our legislators to demand better, more and faster.  Perhaps the grassroots on the left was disenfranchised from the start and were drowned out by the astroturf millions on the right during the formative portions of this process.  Perhaps the monied interests have a bigger ownership stake in our legislators than we do, but we have what we have.

The time is now for the grassroots to demand that something be done.  To remind them that we voted for this President and gave a sweeping mandate to the Democratic Party to enact this legislation, as imperfect as it is.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Public Option Support Now Over 40 In Senate (huffingtonpost.com)