One of my professors years ago was a round little man who liked to warn us, with a twinkle in his eye, “Making predictions is very difficult, especially predictions about the future.” Will a bill pass, in what form, and then what will the long term implications be? It’s hard to predict.
The incomparable Dr John Geyman, former president of PNHP, makes a strong case in Tikkun “The Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962) :Enough Reform to Succeed?” His argument is that whatever bill this Congress is able to pass will likely set the cause of single payer healthcare back because it “would leave in place an inefficient, exploitive insurance industry that is dying by its own hand, even as [the bill] props [the industry] up with enormous future profits through subsidized individual and employer mandates.” His comments follow up on those of Marcia Angell on the Huffington Post “Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?” and others that readers on this site have seen.
Not everyone on the Left agrees. Sam Stein’s piece in the Huffington Post is called “Goldman To Private Insurers: No Health Care Reform At All Is Best.” Goldman’s analysis for the health insurance behemoths is that no reform would benefit them the most, and if we end up with a version close to the House bill, that would cause the industry the most financial difficulty. Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic asks “The House Bill Is “Worse Than Nothing”? Really?”
Sorting all this out is tough and can be frustrating because there is so much wishful, non-reality-based thinking going on. It is clear that many of the supporters and opponents of the bills, both in Congress and the general public, are clearly deluded, and single payer is what has them flummoxed.
On the Left I keep talking to supporters of the public option who claim to be “single payer at heart”, and they believe that whatever passes will be the camel’s nose under the tent, the slippery slope to single payer. Seems delusional. If only they are right….
Speaking of the Right, many of them also believe that any bill this Democratic Congress will pass will become the same camel’s nose, the same slippery slope to socialism. Could they be right, too?
There is still work to do. The handwriting was on the wall Saturday 10/31 when anti-abortion Democrats had enough political oomph to get their Stupid Amendment debated and passed while the Progressive Caucus couldn’t muster enough support to bring either the Kucinich or Weiner Amendments to the floor.
No matter what happens, one thing is certain: we have to continue to build our movement. Next time around we have to get all those Representatives and Senators who plan to vote for reform this time, to vote for real single payer reform. And that would prove the delusional ones were right after all.