Sunday 21 March 2010

Stupak vs Stupid

Good to see them all admitting that it should have been the House Bill, combining the public option and the Stupak Amendment to make abortion practically impossible, after all. Or have I missed something?

The Republicans may win back Congress this year, but any repeal would be vetoed by Obama. And by 2012, no one out in the general electorate is going to vote to repeal their own existing entitlement. Instead, Middle America will want two things: an end to the practically limitless taxpayer subsidy of insurance companies, and an even firmer statutory ban on the federal funding of abortion. Step forward, the public option and the Stupak Amendment.

It should have been the House Bill after all. In the end, indeed within the next three or four years, it will be. Although a slight delay might be endurable in order to see it signed into law any time after January 2017. By President Stupak.

1 comment:

  1. We also need to start rebuilding out health care infrastructure. Under the Hill-Burton system, in place from 1946 to the 1970s, the U.S. saw a huge expansion of the public health system. Many U.S. counties received their first hospital ever and various public health programs all but eliminated many diseases like polio and tuberculosis.

    But with the start of the deregulation and privatization craze in the 1970s, Americans have seen their public health system rot as for-profit Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) ate away at the system. For example, the number of community hospitals in the U.S. has declined from a mid-1970s high of nearly 7,000 to about 4,897 as of 2009. That number is probably even lower now that so many hospitals have had to close due to the recession.

    While I support health insurance for all Americans, and hope we are moving in that direction, we also need to fix the physical health care infrastructure, so that people actually have some place to go to get care. In some rural areas, people have to drive several counties over just to get to a hospital.

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