Image: Gilbert Garcin. Le moulin de l’oubli - Mill of oblivion. 1999.Anyone really surprised, like Mr. Harkin was, that Obama didn't try and lobby Lieberman on the public option? Of course not. Not if you're paying even marginal attention to the health care "debate."
What's a supposed progressive being so gullible and credulous for anyway? Assuming Harkin actually is "surprised," it's probably painful to realize the scope of the Democratic Party's corporate give away, and know that this bill was not inevitable: It was willed that way. This corporate nanny-state mandate, forcing people to purchase insurance without a strong public option, is a kind of audacity that the market is rewarding generously. Glenn Greenwald's post today illustrates just how much health insurance stocks have gone up since Lieberman stated he'd filibuster on the public option:
*Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;
* CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;
* Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;
* WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;
* UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;
* And Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent" -- Shahien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post's business reporter, yesterday.
He also points out just how riven the Democratic Party is with conflicts of interest relating to this bill (It's worth quoting in full):
Evan Bayh's wife, Susan, "owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits." That would mean that the value of her personal holdings in that one health insurance company alone, in the last six weeks alone (since Lieberman and her husband began menacing the public option), would have increased by a value of between $125,000 and $250,000. As part of the bonanza of health care industry board positions she magically received since her husband became a Senator, Susan Bayh is given a quarter-million dollars each year in stocks and stock options from Wellpoint.
But notwithstanding the underlying corruption, the question for progressives still remains: Do the benefits of the bill outweigh the drawbacks? Greenwald astutely--and rightly--frames the choice for progressives this way:
one must weigh (a) the corrupt, mandate-based strengthening of the private insurance industry, the major advancement of the corporatism model of government...[and] (b) the various substantial benefits to many people who do not now have and cannot obtain health insurance and the risk that defeat of this bill will ensure preservation of the status quo.
A difficult question to answer, indeed. But whatever one's position, I agree with Greenwald that it is still excruciating to watch the Dems play this off as if they got the votes to pass this bill in the Senate despite all the "special interests." For more on the merits of supporting this bill or not, TPM has an excellent discussion with many smart and wonky guest bloggers.
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And... as if there really needs to be a defense of the notion that presidents actually can keep their promises once elected, David Sirota offers a much needed civics lesson to Obama apologists. His defense of actual, republican democracy, is centered around Obama's utterly hypocritical capitulation to the pharmaceutical industry:
the Obama administration crushed legislation that would have allowed Americans to purchase lower-priced FDA-approved medicines from abroad — legislation President Obama promised to support as a presidential candidate; legislation that would have reduced drug profiteering and saved the government and consumers $100 billion.
I wonder if Harkin is surprised by that reversal? He shouldn't be. Sadly, this president has been continuing many of his predecessor's destructive policies (state secrets privilege, tiered justice system, civil liberties violations, bailouts with no regulation, use of private contractors and mercenaries, collective punishment of civilian populations: see--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and most recently Yemen, etc., etc.). And so this is just more of the same. As Stephen Colbert puts it, and I'm paraphrasing, "The lack of change is the change you can believe in."
In defense of reneging on campaign promises---and right on cue---a pharmaceutical spokesperson pulled out that old, tired canard: "It's about being a candidate as opposed to being president." Remember, "serious" people acknowledge, and then submit to domestic "realpolitik."
But Sirota drills this excuse---this "logic":
...it's not unreasonable to ask officeholders to at least try to honor the campaign commitments that informed voters' electoral decisions.That's especially true on something like drug importation, whose opposition is about enlarging profits, not, as Obama aides argue, about protecting consumer safety.
Drug companies already manufacture medicines in the developing world so as to evade U.S. labor, environmental and safety regulations. They then legally import those products for sale to Americans at inflated prices. The new bill would have merely let wholesalers, not just manufacturers, also import medicines — but at the lower prices the manufacturers concurrently sell those medicines abroad.
He goes on to remind the administration (and its defenders) that wholesale importation is legal in the rest of the civilized world, and that if it were unsafe, "then where are the dead Europeans?" Do we see a pattern of behavior with Obama yet?
So in short: this major point of contention that divides progressives over the health care debate, whether to pass a bill that clearly forces people to become customers of private enterprise, is obviously part of a larger issue, and is a grave problem that Americans have to face: the confluence of private power and government. There is no escaping this fact. And Senator Harkin (and Obama acolytes) should know that, should recognize that, and stop being so (willfully?) surprised.
Thankfully, we've got Colbert, who once again, knocks it out of the park with a genius piece of satire (He is the only man who can string together both Jefferson and Mussolini).
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Spyvate Sector | ||||
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Now let's show corporate America what we think by going to the mall and celebrating the holidays!
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