Healthcare and Capitulation

President Obama's health care "reform" legislation is a plague upon us all. Why any congress member would support it, or if not in support, votes for it anyway, the bill has destroyed any remaining hope that Congress is able and willing to represent the people. I view the adoption of the Senate's health care bill by the House of Representatives and the subsequent list of amendments for Senate consideration, a tactic to circumvent the Democratic process for satisfying the interests of the health care industrial complex. With the bill's passage, it is quite obvious that democracy is not coming to America, and what is coming (or already here) is rather scary! For the purposes of this essay, I need to explore the rolls played by two politicians predominately involved in an engineered debate, where single payer was excluded out of hand and the public option was eventual elimination from consideration. These actions were defining events with serious and inevitable consequences for the nation, and for Obama and Kucinich!

With Dennis Kucinich's changed position on healthcare reform this week (March 15), the Progressive Caucus opposition to Obama's so-called health reform has all but disappeared, and the bill will get the 216 House of Representatives votes needed for adoption. The procedural method to accomplish Obama's latest objectives involves smoke and mirrors. The tactic is called reconciliation, a process that avoids an actual vote on the Senate version, rather on the promise that the Senate will act upon a list of requested amendments to the bill. Before this unfolds, the President will sign the bill as law. To any among us who still hold the notion that the Obama administration and Congress were a collective instrument for bringing about change and alleviating the pitiful situations faced by rank and file people, Kucinich's capitulation and Obama's signing speech were a knee to the groin and a karate chop, respectively! Passage created a jole de vivre for the private sector healthcare industrial complex.

What would be amusing if it were not so cynical, is the masquerade or charade that passage is a victory for the people and is a setback to the healthcare industry, which could not be further from the truth! On National Public Radio (NPR), status quo radio resembling Voice of America and its propagandist raison d'etre, health insurance executives bemoan the supposed negative consequences of alledged reform. They talk soberly about the hardships insurers will have to endure. The industry's and Obama's hypocrisy is immortalized in the legislation's title: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And I would not be surprised if the industry fashioned the title.

Kucinich is no Socrates! He changed his position to help secure his reelection and to save Obama's presidency. As a swan song, Kucinich claims that defeat of the bill would play into the Republican scheme to destroy the Obama presidency, and Kucinich did not want his vote against the bill as the deciding factor. Could this be called a failure of nerve?

Passage of the Senate bill (by any means possible) will solidify and make permanent, as Micheal Moore laments, corporate rule over healthcare in the U.S. Kucinich didn't have the courage to fall on his sword! He acted to preserve his political career and that of the President, but at the cost of Kucinich's creditability. He is facing considerable opposition in the November election. As he has stated, he will vote for any Senate health bill that comes to the House. The shift from protecting the interests of "working people" to safeguarding the career of a corporate sponsored politician from the University of Chicago.

Kucinich should return campaign financial contributions as Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.Org. has requested. Ralph Nader wants Kucinich to make speeches around the country on single payer. Many observers are shaking their heads why Kucinich capitulated so quickly without getting a quid pro quo? Had he not capitulated without conditions, he would have been crusted by House leaders and the White House.

This commentary was written over several weeks and is not linear. With that said, let me insert fast-forward developments. Late March 21, 2010, the House of Representatives passed via reconciliation vote the Senate bill, which Obama had already endorsed. I have the suspicion that Obama got exactly want he had actually and covertly sought. Had he wanted single payer or even a robust "public option" he could have succeeded in bringing either about with the reconciliation gambit. The issue is "will" or the lack of it. He wouldn't even campaign for ERISA, which would have preserved the right of individual state governments to institute their own single payer plans. However, he is doggedly selling the Act on the speech circuit well after its passage.

Obama's campaign for the Senate bill in the final weeks before passage was truly that of a true believer, Herculean in its determination. The cynicism and hypocracy of his heathcare rallies reminded me of his Nobel Peace Prize speech when he laid out his justifications for imperial warfare, his speeches about the correctness of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (now including Pakistan) and his justifications for econmic sactions against Iran. With reference to war, as Cornell West has keenly observed, Obama is the face of empire; I would add that on healthcare issues he is the face of the healthcare industrial complex, and in matters of finance, he is the face of Wall Street. Obama's delivery, his supreme commander's tone of voice and the absolute assurance of his stance, is unsettling. I tune him out with simple distractions, such as what I might eat for lunch, or I become upset and lose my appetite. When I hear Obama speak, I hear the voice of the true beleiver.

Obama handed the drug and healthcare insurance industry exactly what they wanted. Generic drug options are dead and the government can not negotiate pricing. Heathcare insurance companies secure an even greater corporate monopoly by requiring 32 million currently uninsured people to buy insurance, what Ralph Nader calls "junk insurance". He states that having insurance does not ensure that people will get adequate healthcare! And in reality, medical costs will continue to rise exponentially. Dennis Kucinich explained his change of position on the basis of not wanting the credit for taking healthcare reform over the cliff. Instead, he took single payer, public option and ERISA over the cliff! The bill that Kucinich now supports contains innumerable loopholes and exceptions for insurance corporations to avoid providing adequate medical care! And the bill ignores another 20 million people that will remain without coverage. The insults are further amplified by the implementation date of 2014.

Kucinich is playing a macabre numbers game. He accepts over the next four years the death of an estimated 180,000 people (Nader) and the poor health of possibly million of people, for a system that in 2014, requires 32 million people to purcase suspect insurance--which given the record of healthcare insurers may prove worthless. It is altogether possible that the bill is part of an unfolding attack on Medicare.

The aftereffects in terms of spin the insurance corporations place on the new healthcare law are misleading: the masquerade that the regulations somehow seriously threatens corporate profits, that the law is a major setback to the industry is absurd! Come what may, the health insurers will persevere and adjust to the imposed hardships for the good of the people.

While insurance executives bemoan the law's affects on profits and the fate of for-profit medical care, Obama is upbeat and triumphant as he tries to sell the law in campaign speeches around the country and on media. Doublespeak fills the media. Obama is a politician and needs to be listened to carefulling; for his choice of words is important for deducing true meanings and positions. He speakes in half-truths or qualified truths that to the causual listener are accepted or heard as one would wish to hear them.

In the days before adoption, Obama made an arrangement with a small group of House anti-abortion, conservative Democrates lead by Rep. Stupak, whereby in exchange for its support of the bill Obama would issue an Executive Order reaffirming the Hyde Amendment of thirty years ago which forbids any use of federal funds for abortion assistance. With the Executive Order Obama chips away at Roe v. Wade with the Christian Right and sells out on the Pro Choice movement. With Obama's changing positions on many of his presidential campaign promises, what does this man really stand for? For support of an ugly healthcare bill, Obama furthers the attack on women's right to choose. He abandons his alleged beliefs without hesitation or conditions.

When I heard President Obama say that the healthcare bill's passage was a "victory for the people", Comrade Napolean's speeches in Animal Farm came to mind. Hearing House Speaker Pelosi carry on about the passage I thought of Fat Pig Squealer. With a train wreck-healthcare package, his impassioned comments about victory for the people have no connection to the consequences of the seriously flawed legislation. The President claims that the passage is an historical event over a hundred years in the making! Actually, the so-called reform legisation will put true reform on ice for another hundred years! Obama seems to be speaking from a parallel dimension, through a worm hole! Of course, his historicity is shaped by his orientation: substitute "corporations" for "people", and he is correct. His speeches are Shakespearian siloques without a twitch of doubt or a reflective hesitation. He has the voice of unquestionable command, even when he is dead wrong!

I have the feeling that the assembled spectators for his healthcare rallies are encouraged to applaud his every expression--similar to the ritualistic response to his State of the Union Speech. The theatrics lack only the rolling of barrels in the rafters.