Stateside: Healthcare legislation debate, Part 3

The final vote on the Reconciliation Bill is 220-211, and Speaker Pelosi is asking if any member wishes to change their vote. Nobody does. It is 8:37pm PDT, and the House is now voting on a couple of resolutions to recognize the 65th Anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and that “all people in the United States should participate in a moment of silence to reflect upon the service and sacrifice of members of the United States Armed Forces both at home and abroad.” C-Span is taking callers while it waits to go to statements from Pelosi and Obama.

Golly! A member from Georgia has just resigned from the House. Nathan Deal is the most senior member of the Georgia delegation and was first a Democrat and then a Republican. Deal makes no speech, but a couple of other members—one Republican and one Democrat—do. No explanation is given for his resignation except that he will be putting all his effort into working for the people of that state (he is running for Governor). The resignation delays C-Span’s crossing live to the East Room where President Obama is speaking about the passage of the reconciliation bill. As he points out, there is still a Senate vote on the Reconciliation Bill to be gone through. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reckons he has enough votes to pass it, but there could be another “siege”, as Obama calls it, of “parliamentary devices”.

Okay, so here’s Pelosi and Hoyer in the Rayburn Room of the Capitol. Rayburn was one of the most important Speakers in the history of the House. Pelosi now ranks as one of the most as well. She’s calling it a “great act of patriotism” to pass the Bill. It’s an “All-American Act”. She also recognizes the Whip, Jim Clyburn, for corralling the votes, before giving over to the Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer. Clyburn, for his part when he speaks, praises Pelosi for her tenaciousness. Clyburn says it was a pleasure to be doing the corralling and that he considers this legislation to be the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century. John Larson, the Democratic Caucus Chair, also thanks Madam Speaker for her leadership. And now everybody else involved in getting this passed is speaking. Yikes, now Henry Waxman is talking about having passed “national health insurance”—a red flag to anyone who is opposed to government’s role in healthcare.

Pelosi is now introducing John Dingle, who called for the gaveled vote earlier (I mistakenly said it was Hoyer in my last post), and who gaveled the vote on Medicare as Speaker many years ago. “The air has been redolent with deceits”, he said, but members showed courage and will be rewarded with re-election because of that.

You can get to the C-Span video hub on healthcare from http://c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN.aspx.

Just to continue with why I’ve been loathe to write about the subject of healthcare, my next scary experience was when I resigned from my first job and was given a huge packet of information about COBRA, which gives people who have left or lost their jobs the opportunity to continue the coverage they had under their employer’s plan by paying the full rate that their employer had negotiated instead of getting individual coverage, which is usually more expensive. How daft is that? You don’t have a job, and now you have to pay a three-figure monthly sum for health insurance? Cheaper just to ditch the medication—it wasn’t going to kill me not to take it—and go without health insurance.

When I got another job, that employer didn’t offer insurance from the same company, so I had to sign up with another provider, and the doctor I’d been seeing before wasn’t part of that system, so I started seeing another. Then, I returned to work for my first employer, but when I asked to keep with the new plan provider so I could keep seeing that doctor, I was told by my employer that it was too expensive for me (really for the employer) and I should go back to my original insurance plan. WTF again! It’s not only pharmacies telling you what medications you can or can’t have because of the costs, but it’s employers telling you what plan you can or can’t have—even though they offer you a choice—because of the costs. Needless to say, I despise a system that is bent completely out of shape by the dictates of the costs imposed by insurance companies. It is nothing short of criminal.

When I left that job to go to DC to report for Scoop, the Foreign Press Center put together an extensive collection of information about the healthcare system in the United States in anticipation of that being a major issue in the 2008 elections. (It wasn’t.) The FPC rightly felt it was necessary to provide that information because most foreign journalists cannot even begin to make sense of the system here. I’ve lived in the States for ten years, and I can’t fathom it either, except to say that any government in any other part of the world thinking to emulate it is crazy.

At least I had the choice not to have health insurance. Once these measures pass, I will no longer have that choice. But neither will health insurance companies have the ability to take people’s money for years and years and then refuse to cover their medical costs. There is so much that is bad about this legislation, but perhaps the little good it does will be one small step in the right direction.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE—

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