H.R. 3962

Having advocated so much for a public option, I felt I should comment on the resolution that was passed by the House of Representatives.

I think, like most legislation, there are good and bad points to this.

On the one hand, 36 million more people will be insured or become eligible for Medicaid. There will be money for this. There will be measures to control the costs of Medicare and we won't be subsidizing private insurers in Medicare Advantage. Most importantly, I think, it prohibits denial based on pre-existing conditions, begins dozens of health prevention programs, and has what I think more of as the seeds of a public option.

But on the other hand, it carries with it essentially a ban on insurance plans that cover elective abortion. It will be one of the most far-reaching national restrictions placed on abortion, a legal medical procedure, in decades. And it has the potential to be used by insurance companies as a means of legally discriminating against low income Americans.

So while it is a massive achievement that we even have a health reform bill in America, that it actually passed in the House, and that it's as far-reaching as it is... it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that it also forces women--especially poor women--to pay a high price on a private matter of conscience. It's as if, at the last second, someone decided that if America was going to get health reform, it was going to be at the expense of women and their legal rights.

I think it's a legitimate reaction to be disappointed that we've appeared to come so far, only to take yet another step backwards when it comes to peoples' rights.

In its way, that's the story of civilization. We keep advancing technologically, but I don't see where we've progressed very much as people. I read about someone killing their own child in the name of Christianity because they think the kid is possessed, or a 15 year-old girl getting raped by 10 men and boys while 20 others looked on and took pictures with their camera phones at the homecoming dance, or people going on shooting rampages because they just can't take the stress anymore, or the idiotic debates over whether or not gay people should be allowed to have rights, or people protesting health reform by comparing state health coverage to the Holocaust--and there are even elderly people who are doubtless on state-run Medicare and Medicaid in the crowd supporting this idiot--and I think it's a miracle that any kind of health care reform could ever get passed in the United States. Because civilization is hanging in place by a thin thread, anyway.

There are a number of people online talking about how the Democratic Party leadership has betrayed everyone. My answer to that is that they were never beholden to constituents, anyway. Politicians will always be beholden to corporations, which is why most of the laws they pass are going to be to benefit and protect corporations. I've said this over and over: no one is looking out for you. If you feel betrayed by the Democrats, vote them out of office. Vote out politicians who defend the right of corporations to do whatever they want and treat us however they want and to contribute to campaigns.

Vote for the rare politicians who advocate term limits so that these people will quit taking our tax money and working three days a week and voting for their own pay increases and enjoying the same lifelong free health care that many of them fought hard to deny other Americans. Did you know they announced to day that there are 237 millionaires in Congress? That's 44%. These are the people who make laws to keep you in poverty and under the thumb of the people who pay them the real money: corporations.

Progressives, Barack Obama laughed you off long ago. So did Nancy Pelosi. Obama is a moderate if ever there was one. I think that progressives mean well, but that they are ultimately not going to get serious about taking a stand in Congress. Despite what they said, they were never going to vote against this bill, even with an anti-abortion amendment and without the single payer amendment. No politician really wants to take a stand, and ultimately, the progressives are just as spineless as the more moderate Democrats are.

No one in politics wants to be accountable. And that's the problem with American leadership. Weiner caved. Obama will, too. He's been trying to soften the blow for some time. He may have conviction, but I honestly don't expect him to stand firm on it.

The government itself needs to be reformed.

So, while I don't think anyone can deny that H.R. 3962 is an important step in health reform, it sets women's reproductive rights back and created a toehold for the anti-choice movement in American policy. It's a steep price to pass the bill.