December 28
For all the historic force of the vote — Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki Kennedy, was in the chamber, as was the elderly John Dingell Jr., whose father introduced the first national health-care plan into the Congress almost a century ago — it has become difficult to write these milestone posts. Health-care reform, by this point, has had a lot of milestones. It has cleared five committees. It has come through the House of Representatives. It has been merged into a single bill in the Senate. It has passed through the Senate. No previous health-care reform bill has come anywhere near this far. But there are more milestones left to achieve: The House and Senate need to agree on a bill. That bill has to pass both chambers again. And then the president has to sign the legislation. Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. … Bad a system as it might be, it’s the only one we’ve got, at least for now. This is what victory looks like.
October 30
You Can’t Produce a Baby in One Month by Getting Nine Women Pregnant
Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies? Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up insurance costs, but the government won’t negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs. Is this the best we can do? Only 3% of Americans will go to a new public plan, while currently 33% of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured? Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while forcing most people to buy private insurance. If this is the best we can do, then our best isn’t good enough and we have to ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the corporations.