white male consumer

He told the media from his Saratoga Springs office on Monday that he believes health care reform is critical, but it’s coming at too high a cost to cornerstone businesses in the North Country. That is why he voted “no” on the bill.

Murphy says the bill makes a number of important reforms which he supported, however, such as lifetime caps on insurance benefits as well as the pre-existing condition exclusion – meaning an insurance company can refuse you if you have a preexisting medical condition.

But during Saturday’s vote in Washington, Murphy sided with 39 other Democrats who also voted with Republicans, saying the plan would put affordable health care out of reach of many small businesses and that it unfairly targets some Capital Region industries, like Finch Paper in Glens Falls.

I was surprised to see Smurphy vote against the healthcare bill in the house after being a supporter of the stimulus plan – and really the overall Dem agenda coming from Washington – since being elected. A talking head on the news the other night suggested that certain house Dems from conservative districts (Murphy included) may have very well been given the OK to dissent, political self-preservation in mind.

Was the vote orchestrated as such? If so, I feel the danger is that political calculation playing out too well. Because the real question is whether anyone interested in substantial reform should have supported the bill in the first place. In his public statement, Murphy faults the measure for affordability and putting an additional burden on area businesses.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, co-author of H.R. 676 (the single-payer bill that should have been included in this debate) was another ‘no’ Democratic vote. In part:

“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.”

“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.”

“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.

The final tally on H.R. 3962?

• A mandate to at least 21 million to buy into the broken system – resulting in an estimated $70 billion in new revenue to the health insurance industry
• A crippled public option, potentially enrolling only 6 million – available only to those people deemed unprofitable to insure privately
• Little to nothing in the way of cost containment or prevention
• A provision to allow states to implement their own single-payer (read: effective) systems was stripped from the final bill
• A four year period until the bill goes into effect, after the 2013 presidential elections. Seen the banking industry’s reaction to the grace period for new credit regulations? Enjoy watching healthcare costs balloon these next four years, and keep in mind the Journal of Public Health‘s recently published study estimating that 45,000 Americans die annually due to unaffordable, unobtainable treatment. What happened to the immediacy of reform?

It appears then that this is substantial reform in name only. Nader’s take:

Still Waiting for Health Care
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During this overall debate on the bill, Republicans stood up one by one, as prevaricatory dittoheads, to often scream and howl (like coyotes) that this is “a government takeover of one sixth of the economy,” “would destroy the economy,” “put 5.5 million people out of work,” “destroy the doctor-patient relationship,” “be a steamroller of socialism,” “force millions of seniors to lose their current health coverage” (meaning, Medicare?) and, in a passionate appeal to the Almighty, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) declared “God help us as the government takes over your day-to-day life.”

Never mind that this bill is just an expansion, however misdirected, of government health insurance designed to increase corporate profits and increase the corporate grip over the day-to-day decisions regarding who, when and how people get their health care or get their bills paid.

So whether Murphy’s vote was political calculation or not, I can hardly fault it.

UPDATE: More, from today’s Healthcare-NOW! newsletter:

So is the House bill better than nothing?

“I don’t think so,” writes Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.”

Given that the bill does nothing to contain or reduce rising costs or end the private health insurance industry’s dominance, we hoped that the Progressive Caucus would stand strong. But they did not. All but two of H.R. 676′s cosponsors voted for H.R. 3962 — Rep. Eric Massa [D-NY] and Rep. Kucinich [D-OH].

Rep. Massa stated, “At the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period. There’s really no other way to look at it.”