This past week there was a health care summit given by the president. Many important leaders from both parties in Congress were in attendance. In honesty it was a showboating opportunity for both sides of the issue.
The Republicans made sound bites for future elections, and the Democrats said they wanted a bipartisan bill while stating clearly they would do it with or without Republican support. The success of this summit was huge if measured in points by the fringe of both parties.
The hyper progressives will be satisfied that the Democrats are willing to use reconciliation to pass the bill without Republican obstruction. The hyper conservatives will be pleased that the Republicans didn't care about any compromise; they would stand against the bill.
The fact is the people that lost in the health care summit were you and me. The average American is losing on this health care debate.
The Republicans say they want to start over and work out a new bill. The fact is they aren't willing to allow the government to regulate or offer assistance. That means the solution will have to come from the health care market. That is what got us into this in the first place. Tort reform is the second battle cry, but it isn't a long term solution. People must be protected by the courts from mistakes by doctors.
The Democrats aren't willing to go back to the drawing board. The bill has changed so much from the start. Who really knows what is or is not in the current bill? Senate or House bill? It is a mess. The process has failed. We need to go back to the start and make a bill worth passing. That will help the American people, not trying to force a bill on the people to claim success on the subject.
Too many people in Congress are worried about keeping their jobs. They don't care about the people's need for affordable health care. They care about the success of their career and the ambitions of their party.
Don't be fooled by either side at the moment. We know that the system needs to be fixed. We know the market can't do it alone. We know the government can't do it alone. We need a balance. Stop trying to force-feed the American people taxes and regulations that aren't proven to work. We need to sit down together, both parties, and work out a health care bill that will help all Americans.
Contact Jay Roudebush at roudebush1@marshall.edu.
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You sound like you're surprised about their being an overwhelming bias in government, its government for gods sake. The bill in its current form is not great, in fact its pretty watered down. However, passing it will improve our healthcare system. It may only make slight changes, depending on what the bill looks like between now and then, but it will improve our system. You're correct in that social security, medicare, and medicaid are all fluttering on life support from bankruptcy, but the crux of the bill involves insuring those who cannot otherwise afford to. The system needs reformed. We do not have the greatest healthcare in the world, it is dreadfully subpar. Millions of americans are uninsured, thousands will die. Scrapping the bill is only a tactic republicans want to use to stall the process even more. We have one chance to get the ball rolling. This healthcare bill isn't a consummate fix-all procedure, far from it actually. The importance is that it gets things started for reform and opens the door to improvement.
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