Thursday, February 4, 2010

Letters, I Keep Getting Letters

I received one of those e-mails that I love to get from the Washington Democrats today. It's as though no request is too crazy. Today, they want me to sign a petition demanding that Democrats pass a health care reform bill no matter what. It featured this video of Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01), explaining how the House plans on doing this:



You'll note that while he says they'll start with the Senate bill there's no mention of the public option, the individual mandate, or of enforcement of the insurance regulations. That won't happen. I sent them this reply:

I'm a afraid that I cannot sign this petition.

The Senate bill is unacceptable. It has no public option, but demands that we buy insurance that is insufficient to keep those who buy it out of financial jeopardy if they're sick or injured. But this is not the worst thing.

The worst is that there is no provision for enforcing the insurance regulations. There has been no talk of addressing this deficiency in anything I've read on the subject. As long as this is true, I and other Americans will be required by the IRS to buy insurance or pay a penalty, but the insurance companies will be under no real obligation to live up to the terms of their policies, paltry as they will be.

This is completely unacceptable. It should be unacceptable to any sane person, and yet the House is trying to fob this off as a good thing.

That's why I won't sign this petition. I'm not going to lend my name to an obvious farce. Fix it and get back to me.

I'm guessing I'll get a reply with a link to another Krugman blog post in it. And you wondered why I've been smacking him down lately, haven't you?

It's gotten to the point where even the good people, like Inslee, are putting their names to this piece of crap, just to get it out of the way.


2 comments:

lawguy said...

Watching the democrats and their backers (enablers?) is interesting in a kind of sick way. Do you think that they actually think that the shit they are peddling will help them politically, in any way?

If so I wonder just what makes them think that. I live in east now wheres ville Ohio, and I know that it ain't working.

Cujo359 said...

The only reason I respond to e-mails like this one is to give the local Democratic Party leaders some idea what we're thinking. The reality is, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, that their folks in DC are screwing up big time, and people know it. These local leaders should be telling the DC Democrats that they're making the locals' problems much bigger.

To be fair, it's not entirely the DC Democrats' fault. There has been plenty of obstructionism from the Republicans. But even when there were 60 Democratic Senators, they couldn't get it done. They never said "If you're a Democrat, you'll let this come to the floor for a vote." That's the thing that apologists for them keep ignoring or forgetting. And it's why, now that they no longer have 60 votes, I suspect people aren't going to cut them much slack.