Are Republican’s Goose Cooked on Healthcare

Now that Democrats are willing to go it alone without the help from their respected colleagues from the Republican Party in the house and senate it is not a surprise to see the minority political party begging for a super majority on any healthcare legislation. Translation, they can’t stop the progress of the current congress no matter how many antics they pull against healthcare reform. I personally think that some of the elected officials on the right are bought and paid for by the people that donated so much to their campaigns over the years of public service. But we need to redefine public service in their cases as servants to the folks that wrote the mega checks.

For the purpose of explaining Calvin Ball in the link below, that is from the now defunct Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where Calvin made up all the rules and they changed every time he played the game to please himself and win the game. Something the political right is trying to do now with the current debate on health care reform. Matthew Yglesias has a great piece on this game of legislative Calvin chess over at Think Progress…

Republicans Calling for Super-Supermajority for Health Care

In order to become law, a health care bill needs to secure a majority on the House Ways & Means Committee and also the House Energy & Commerce Committee and also the House Education & Labor Committee and, of course, the full United States House of Representatives. It also needs a majority on the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee. And, of course, it needs a majority in the full United States Senate. Then thanks to the calvinball rules we’ve been playing with for the past 25 years, it actually needs a sixty vote supermajority to pass then Senate. After that, it would be subjected to presidential veto.

That’s a number of legislative hurdles that goes far beyond anything else found in major democracies. Naturally, key Republican Senators have decided that what’s needed is more calvinball. - Think Progress

There is just one thing that all politics comes down to and that is money. Political donations come into political campaigns from every cause imaginable and some of those donations just might influence a candidate, a congressman, a senator, or even a president. The insurance and pharmaceutical industry has their butt cheeks puckering in fear over this health care debate and their check books are wide open to defeat any healthcare reform. Money is no object to throw up in opposition to common sense when it comes to the billions in profits they see every single year.

This debate isn’t entirely about gutting health care as much as it is about tossing the Robber Baron’s out of health care. If competition is the basis of capitalism then the health insurer providers should be able to compete with the government with a public option. Everyone on the political right side of this debate claims that the government is bloated with fat and bureaucracy, which in turn makes one think that the government couldn’t even come close to competing with a private insurer and that nullifies their argument against a public option.

Or we could just do nothing and let the CEO’s of every private health insurance company buy another yacht, another vacation home, or just jet off to some distant land where they will be out of ear shot to hear the screams of millions of Americans without any health care plan other than the emergency room. And for the record, because you didn’t check the box where your mom or dad died from some form of cancer, the procedures you need now to save your life are no longer covered by your HMO. Deal with it!

Papamoka