Thoughts on The Passage of the Health Care Bill

The great challenge of American politics is to make things better without changing them. Or is it to change them without making things better?

I have written in favor of a public option for health care. That being said I don’t think that the health care bill that was passed is as significant as when social security or civil rights legislation was passed, as was claimed by some of the Democrats.

It was a watered down, government hand job to the health care industry. It was never going to be anything else. The insurance companies spent massive amounts on lobbyists that have access to the ears of your elected officials, access and attention that you will never have. The bill was  molded by that corrupted influence, as all legislation is, but the most pertinent fact is that this legislation was undertaken during a massive recession.

The health care industry constitutes 1/6th of our economy. There was never a chance that there would be any truly significant reform, because such action would have immediate repercussions in the health care industry, causing them to lose stock value and cut jobs, and that would end Obama’s chances at a second term, 3 years before it would even start.

The hyperbole by the right wing opposition aside from being terminally retarded, is also patently false. This bill was crafted to insure the continual profitable management of your health by private bureaucracies that have no interest in your health. Their profits are assured, as are their jobs.

The legislation is backed by the pharmaceutical industry because it insures a continual flow of government money into their coffers, through the continuation of a practice of curing everything with pills, instead of preemptive actions to improve the exercise, heath education, and eating practices of the American people.

The true goal of American health care has been, and now is legislated to always be, to keep you alive, not to keep you healthy. It is not the same thing.