What if Health Care
Reform is Defeated
http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-if-Health-Care-Reform-by-Samuel-Lipari-091116-774.html
November 16, 2009
For OpEdNews: Samuel Lipari – Writer
http://www.medicalsupplychain.com
When Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi led the heroic majority in passing a healthcare reform bill
that would begin taking America's vast uninsured population toward eligibility
for treatment by doctors and medical facilities, she could lose up to 39 of her
democratic party members and still have the votes to
win.
Pelosi's
victory for the American people was worth the enormous political risk to House
of Representatives members in her party. On Veteran's Day we were sadly
reminded that the lack of health insurance contributed to the
deaths of 2,266 American veterans last year alone. Harvard
Medical School researchers estimate that deaths of Americans in general associated
with the lack of healthcare insurance have now climbed to 45,000 a year.
When
I first began my legal fight in 2002 against the healthcare industry
stakeholders under our nation's antitrust laws, my former attorney Bret Landrith
alleged from the best current data that 20,603
deaths a year would result from the increasing loss of healthcare coverage
as unemployment rose.
Senator Harry Reid cannot afford to lose one senator in
the Democratic Party majority. Senate rules also make Reid's job more difficult
than Speaker Pelosi's. Reid will not have Ms. Pelosi's forewarning of
amendments being brought to the floor, or even the Speaker of the House's power
to limit the duration of the debate. The
New York Times on November 8th, pointed
out that the familiar divisive political issues of abortion, immigration, and
even gun rights will appear in proposed amendments to the healthcare reform
legislation. The debate can easily postpone the vote on the bill till Christmas
Eve.
While
the Senate leader is attempting to build the 60 unanimous votes to overcome a
Republican filibuster, the healthcare industry stakeholders benefitting from
the existing system of artificially inflated healthcare costs resulting from a
complete lack of competition in both the $2.1 Dollar hospital supply market
controlled by the hospital group purchasing organization or "GPO"
duopoly of Novation LLC and Premier Purchasing
Partners and the insurance industry which benefits in the similar absence
of competition in health insurance will take all those billions of dollars
looted from Medicare and Medicaid and use them as a bottomless war chest to
pick off Harry Reid's Senators.
Senator Reid knows
this because this same money has whipped up fear and resentment of taxes and of
an increased federal government role in healthcare even in Reid's state of Nevada
where the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), long on the front lines of healthcare
reform had previously been representative of Nevada's majority of citizens
seeking increased access to medical care. As the key target of the healthcare
industry stakeholders, Senator Harry Reid can see he is now trailing in polls
behind two Republican opponents, one of whom is a physician jockeying for
Reid's seat as reported in the
Las Vegas Review-Journal. And of course, Reid's predecessor as Senate
Leader, South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle who in many ways is the architect of
the new healthcare reform was targeted in the same manner.
Despite
having the strong force of healthcare industry stakeholders in reach of voting
the Senate Leader out of office in next year's elections, Senator Harry Reid is
valiantly trying to craft a bill that will hold the Democratic Party together
and not suffer the defections of Progressive senators in red leaning states.
These senators are already feeling the heat of healthcare
industry stakeholder funded Astroturf grassroots campaigns and town hall
meeting mass protests coupled with over a quarter of a
billion dollars spent lobbying in just the first six months of this year.
The US Senate is historically the strongest rampart to storm for coalitions
seeking to legislate democratic and populist inspired
social programs.
Hard
wired into our bicameral system is the Senate's resistance to change including
the identification of Senators over their longer careers and far more expensive
to campaign for seats with the established big business interests that have
supported them over the years. And no businesses have been bigger or bigger
political contributors in the history of the world than the hospital industry
stake holders-Big Pharma, Big Insurance and the Novation LLC hospital supply cartel.
As
the forces of healthcare reform have been arrayed on the field of battle in
preparation to overcome this one last obstacle and help President Obama
complete the great social safety net envisioned by the most celebrated
Democratic Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson; Senate Leader Harry Reid
has had the help of Missouri's Senator Claire McCaskill,
once known nationally as then Senator Obama's Presidential Campaign Chair, she
was forced to distance herself from the president elect to remain viable in her
otherwise red state.
McCaskill came to office after
having only
narrowly defeated her social conservative Republican predecessor on the
issue of healthcare insurance in the aftermath of the tragic "Insure
Missouri"-the real GOP plan for healthcare reform, the elimination of
Medicaid and diverting the federal tax dollars to the usual healthcare industry
stakeholders including the state's Novation LLC cartel
hospitals and the healthcare billing software cost concealment giant Cerner.
The Pro-Choice
Democrat wonder woman who was able to take on an incumbent Pro-Life Republican
in a Red State and win was a good face for Senate Leader Harry Reid to put out
in front of his caucus. McCaskill did her part, often
appearing on the early morning network and cable news shows and in the same
evening appearing again to defend the administration and the Democratic Party
Senator Claire McCaskill was carefully maneuvered into
the ranks of the so called "Blue Dog Democrat" senators where Reid
knew the defections on the central and defining legislation of the modern
Progressive movement would come.
Senator
McCaskill endured the innuendos aimed at the Blue
Dogs by progressive journalists like MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow who had become frustrated with a
Democrat President and a Democrat controlled Congress seemingly unable to
implement Progressive or even Democratic policies, much less dismantle the
prior Republican administration's unconstitutional police state abuse of the
Justice Department, Court System, detainees and warrantless wiretapping
programs. However, it was on the issue of abortion where Senator Claire McCaskill played her foil to Senate Leader Harry Reid on
November 13th by attempting to model a compromise
strategy for the Blue Dogs. McCaskill was attempting
to describe a healthcare bill Blue Dogs could vote for without losing their
seats to Republican challengers in 2010 and 2012, when she inadvertently
exposed the tragic flaw of Reid's plan.
In
Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill under the
direction of the Senate Leader Reid's grand maneuvers to position his
Democratic caucus was sacrificing the strength and accomplishments of the state
Democratic Party which had managed to recapture the governorship, hold on to
the Missouri State Attorney General's office (albeit with a recently convert
from the Republican party). The Missouri Democratic Party was
even poised to elect a second
progressive woman senator, Robin Carnahan, the current Secretary of State
and the daughter of former Governor Mel Carnahan and his
widow and successor into the Senate, Jean Carnahan.
Certainly
Senate Leader Harry Reid didn't make Senator Claire McCaskill
choose between the spoils of patronage in pork barrel spending for her state
and loyalty to her Missouri Democrat supporters. Despite its importance as a
necessary swing state for President Obama's coming reelection campaign, few
Missourians can point out a recent high profile federally funded project. McCaskill, a mature and wise political leader knows the
statesmanlike thing to do is to fully participate in Reid's only strategy to
secure healthcare reform.
Very
few realize how severely Senator Claire McCaskill, a
former prosecuting attorney and a former state auditor, has been tested. The
willingness to compromise on abortion as Reid's secret accomplice was visible.
It was as if Karl Rove himself had been directing McCaskill
and the Democratic Party to de-energize its base. The compromise on abortion
for Progressives was the last straw. Democrats were being inspired not to go
out to the polls in 2010. Similarly, Republican voters who have been excluded
from press coverage of the early shaping of the House and Senate bills, which
necessarily involved secret negotiations with healthcare industry stakeholders,
tend to be as receptive as they were to
Hillary Clinton's 1994 failed healthcare reform attempt.