By now you’ve probably heard about the Stupack amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance offered on the exchanges set up by the health care reform bill to cover abortion services. It is being allowed to the floor by the leadership, and indications are that there may be enough votes for it to pass. If it were to remain in the final bill, it would strip practical access to abortion from millions of women, a number which would increase when the exchanges open to businesses.
Recently we have also seen the proposal to tie prices for procedures to Medicare +5% fail. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reported that the public option will likely only get 6 million enrollees and will cost more than private offerings because it will get more sick people than private plans since it won’t anti-select, has no auto-enrollment, and won’t have any scale advantages for bargaining since it will have so few people and not be linked to Medicare.
Meanwhile the bill itself will force people to buy insurance, provides inadequate subsidies, and falls hardest on the middle class and young people—forcing them to spend a huge chunk of their discretionary income on average, and doubtless pushing many families into bankruptcy (plenty are on the verge, it is impossible to imagine that this won’t push them over the edge).
And yet it is still supported by the same people who supported it all along. Apparently nothing can happen which would cause them not to support it.
This is the sort of “deal at any cost” thinking which bloggers used to decry. I find it amazing. Absolutely amazing. For any provision which is called “public option”, no matter how weak, folks are apparently willing to swallow hard and get over any number of deficiencies.
At this point, I’m wondering if the Democrats will even maintain control of the House in 2010. It’s looking like a close run thing. The jobs recovery will probably start in Spring, but it’s going to be slow, and most people who lost jobs are not going to find new ones (the recovery will probably not even keep up with population gains). The legislative record of Congress and Obama will stink. And they’re willing to pass a bill which falls hardest on the young (who can’t afford the cost of buying insurance) and on child-bearing age women, two extremely strong Democratic voting cohorts. This behavior seems designed to depress turnout in 2010 and 2012.
I can only conclude that both Democratic politicians and many progressive bloggers want to be back in the opposition, since they keep being willing to swallow bad policy. Policy so bad, in fact, that it seems designed to hurt Democratic electoral prospects. Forget doing the right thing morally, I don’t expect that of Democratic politicians. But apparently they are also incapable of acting in a way designed to make sure they keep their majority.
Remarkable.