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Yep, that’s it. It has been dead for quite some time now. Unfortunately, it’s not always apparent *why* that has been the case.

Warning: Political and healthcare-related opinions below, linked to various reputable sources.

Public Option, Single Payer, Medicare for All? The most contentious part of healthcare reform has been the concept of a government run health care plan. HR 676 refers to the idea of “Medicare for All”, extending our Medicare program for seniors to cover all Americans, effectively creating a single payer system in America. As expected, people who didn’t give a crap about running up deficits to blow holes in the sand halfway across the globe were outraged, *outraged* at the idea that we could possibly spend money on healthcare. So much, in fact, that they paraded around like morons, complaining about how large and awful government has gotten. (You know, after they didn’t say jack since the *last* Democrat was president.) A simple google search seems to show that the only places that are worried about Medicare deficits are right-wing thinktanks like the “Heritage Society” and Pravda-like news organizations like “Fox News”. Did I forget to mention that Kaiser and BCBS were up there as well? Trusting insurance companies to control costs in healthcare is like handing over a chicken farm to a drooling fox. No mention whatsoever that estimates of savings with single payer are in the hundreds of *billions* of dollars. And those estimates aren’t some cherry-picked thinktank garbage. It’s from the CBO. PNHP has a substantial list of studies which all seem to conclude that we’re flushing money into private insurance companies. Not to mention that 59% of doctors favor it.

Don’t let that fool you. The Insurance companies *love* this new bill. For all their hemming and hawing, the health insurance complex is almost giddy with this new bill, which would allow them to effectively dump the lowest income, highest risk people onto a publically subsidized but privately run healthcare system. All the profits, none of the risk. Sounds like Goldman Sachs 101 to me. In a related vein, one of the major reasons that the banking and financial industry has come out against HR 676 was that part of it . In case you didn’t see those numbers, those were a quarter to half of a percent. Twenty five to fifty cents from each hundred dollars.

“But the Free Market! Socialism! The Commies Are Coming!” Healthcare is an essential service in the same way that fire and police service is an essential service — serving everyone in the same capacity. We have created an artificial tier system valuing some peoples’ lives over others by allowing access to healthcare dependent on job and income level. We can blame Richard Nixon for the birth of the HMO, but we would have to thank FDR for valuing the idea of a public health plan. “Free markets” are also a really bankrupt idea, as every time we let the “market regulate itself” by deregulating, we end up with crap and more crap.

“Death Panels! Rationing!” If you believe either of those, you’re an idiot. I mean, really. Factcheck.org did an excellent job debunking the latest figures. (If you *still* believe that crap, go back to bitching about immigration. I’m sure *your* anscestors formed themselves out of ancient American clay, and had no need to come here.)

“Trillions! Trillions! Deficit! Deficit!” If you care that much, defund our wasteful military and use part of that for public works and the rest for tax refunds. In 2000, the Pentagon admitted they “lost” $2.3 trillion dollars. Almost 2 1/2 times the total cost for universal healthcare in the long haul. Even the Cato Institude reported this stuff, and those guys are right of the Pope.

Washington isn’t about to push any of this through, they’re too busy being bankrolled by the same fuckers who have us over a barrel. So, nothing is going to change. If the bill passes, we get some more efficiency and the insurance complex gets amazingly huge subsidies. If it fails, don’t worry, we’ll come up with something worse, while the rest of us are drowning in medical bills. HR 676 isn’t a panacea, and certainly doesn’t fix all of the problems in our system, but HR 3200 (or whatever it’s called now) is far worse. I’m almost at the point of hoping it fails miserably. Is something horrible with fringes of benefit better than nothing at all?

Sadly, I don’t think that any amount of reading is going to convince some people that the gub’mint isn’t going to take their freedoms and guns and bibles and heterosexuality in the interests of *gasp* treating their medical ailments.

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