Paul Raushenbush: July 2009 Archives

The time to fight for a public option healthcare program is now.  As reported on the Huffington Post, the Senate finance committee has offered a bi-partisan proposal that would drop the public option for health care:

These officials said participants were on track to exclude a requirement many congressional Democrats seek for large businesses to offer coverage to their workers. Nor would there be a provision for a government insurance option, despite President Barack Obama's support for such a plan.

This is bad news for those of us who think that one of the most important groups to be considered in the health care debate are the 50 million or so who do not have health insurance at all.  In an earlier post I wrote about Christianiizing the health care debate in which I said:

The impetus for our need to correct our health care system is not that it is failing the rich - it is that it is failing the poor, the fifty million or so  Americans who have no or little health care and for whom getting sick requires deciding whether or not to risk bankruptcy to get healthy.  Christianizing the health care debate would give the concerns of poorest of our society equal weight to the concerns of the wealthy.   

This new plan by the senate finance committee does little or nothing for those who are most vulnerable.  It may be telling that the members of the finance committee come from the great states of Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico,  Wyoming and Maine. Not states with big populations of people uninsured, although the rural poor in these states could probably use more assistance than they are getting. 

President Obama made the mistake of leaving the country while health care heated up, and then distracting the country by getting involved in the Gates/police controversy.  The health care debate has gotten dangerously off course.  it is time for all of us who support the government option to call our senators and make sure that a government option is offered - health care is too important to be left in the hands of the insurance and pharma industries and their lobbyists   

Republicans called heath care reform Obama's Waterloo but it is their own downfall they should be wary of.

On a conference call with the same conservative group that brought us the lame tea bagging on tax day, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," 

It is disgraceful that the main reason that conservatives are stopping health care reform is in order to "break" President Obama.  Talk about cynical and looking out for...well, nobody really aside from their rich underwriters from the insurance and pharma companies.   Certainly they don't give a damn about the 50 million Americans who are living in our country without health care or with limited health care.   They just are against it to score political points.

Today, RNC chair Steele said that Obama's health care reform proposal is socialism.  This is meant to be the great insult.  But when it comes from Republicans who are taking their marching orders from big business and Wall Street, it is time to say that Republicans smell of like fresh, store bought capitalism in which the rich and powerful have the final word on what the rest of the country can and cannot do. 

Obama's health care reform should be passed because it gives people more options not less. For those who have a health care plan they like they can keep it.  For those who don't have any health insurance, or think that the government option might be better they can choose the government option.  The last I heard, competition was good.

Of course we need to make sure that the health care reform doesn't break the bank and time should be taken to make sure that we have the plan will serve the most people at the best price.  But that is different than killing health care - which is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do.

Those Republicans and conservative Democrats should remember that this country overwhelmingly supported health care reform just 9 months ago.  And we still do - and we will remember in 2010.

Walter Cronkite's death reminds us how full one person's life can be if he puts his mind to it.  For most of us, Cronkite was a news man and the most important anchor person (and most trusted man) in America in the second half of the 20th century.  He was also a man with political and religious opinions. Among them were the importance of inter-religious understanding, civility and religious liberty.  Rev. Welton Gaddy, a friend of this blog and head of the Interfaith Alliance, offers this tribute on KNOE 

Rest in peace Walter Cronkite