The healthcare debate now plods along in the Senate. So far, the Senate has deleted the initiative to create a public alternative to private insurance and then defeated an effort to expand Medicare by allowing people 55 and older to buy coverage through Medicare.
Nevertheless, the healthcare bill before the Senate even in its present form constitutes a significant step forward toward ensuring that every American has guaranteed access to healthcare coverage. In particular, the bill will extend coverage to another thirty million people and prohibit onerous practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and charging women a higher rate than men for the same coverage.
Of course, consideration of a bill and passing a bill are not equivalent. The Senate must still vote and at least one senator objects to how the draft legislation addresses abortion.
If the Senate eventually passes a healthcare bill, the Senate and House must reconcile what are certain to be too very different bills and then both houses must pass the reconciled bill. In other words, healthcare legislation remains very far from being a fait accompli. Seven previous presidential administrations have attempted healthcare reform; seven previous administrations failed.
The more I learn about the Senate’s version of healthcare reform, the less I like it. However, I also know that most social progress occurs incrementally. I’m certain that some of the proposals I most like, if tried, would prove ineffectual or worse. Unfortunately, there’s no way to identify those proposals in advance. Legislation, especially complex legislation like healthcare reform, results in unintended consequences, some beneficial and some not. For better or worse, our political system generally favors incremental rather than sweeping change. Although incremental change generally disadvantages the disenfranchised (e.g., those without guaranteed healthcare access), incremental change does help to avoid the costly and disastrous unintended consequences sometimes associated with the sweeping changes possible within a parliamentary system like the British have.
In other words, my support for healthcare reform is not contingent upon the bill including everything that I think best or preferable. Instead, my support depends upon answering only one question in the affirmative: Is the proposed legislation an improvement over the status-quo? If so, then the legislation will have my support and, I hope, yours as well. As I’ve repeatedly argued, healthcare reform to ensure that everyone has guaranteed access to care is a basic human right.
2 comments:
I think it is very marginally an improvement. What it doesn't do is come to grips with the billions in profits the insurance industry makes providing a basic human right. BUT! you are correct that these things are usually done incrementally. Better a small first step than a defeat. It also exposes the soul-destroying grip that big money has over our Congress.
I am a little confused by the last readers comment. Doctors, nurses, therapists, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals all have an opportunity to make a profit on what is “a basic human right" In each of these cases, there are those that gouge the system. Goodness, even members of the clergy have a right to a decent living – nobody seems to take issue with that! So why are insurance companies singled out as the evil doers? Last time a checked, it was a competitive and highly regulated industry. Many insurers had to merge or have gone out of business over the years because they can’t compete. Anyone who understands the nature of the system knows that it couldn't work without insurance. So I wonder why some single insurers out as some sort of evil doer? Where is the evidence that insurers should be singled out as gouging the system?
Post a Comment