This week’s Partisan Gridlock:
Senate Republicans are a small and largely irrelevant minority of forty. That they repeatedly embarrass themselves by doing the bidding of their bosses in the insurance industry — even when the industry / Republican position has been entirely discredited — is simply not in dispute.
Proposals advanced by insurance company errand boys like our own Senator John Cornyn would do nothing to control costs and get health care to the millions who need it. They’re not calculated to. When you don’t believe health care is a right, why would you introduce legislation aimed at delivering it to everyone? Cornyn doesn’t so he hasn’t.
Instead, Cornyn’s proposals would result in greater windfalls to the very insurance racket which has more than doubled premiums over the last ten years, refused to pay for treatments needed by dying insureds, and denied coverage to people who suffer from preexisting conditions — conditions like having been raped. That kind of thing seems to be just fine with Republicans like Cornyn, so long as some share of the blood money goes to worthy causes. Judging by the industry’s generous record of giving, one such cause is keeping loyal industry servants like John Cornyn in the Senate.
But insurance industry tools like Cornyn can’t stop the Senate’s Democratic majority of sixty from passing a robust public option. Only Democrats can do that. And some are trying.
Democratic Senators like Max Baucus (D-MT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) oppose the public option. Most recently, conservative Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu reiterated her opposition. She says we should trust private enterprise — the same corporations that got us into this mess — to continue doing what they’ve been doing. Under no circumstances, Landrieu says, should working people have access to the same government-run insurance plan she gets as a Senator.
But there are some things Senator Landrieu apparently does believe the federal government should do to promote the well-being of her constituents. She has quite correctly been a fierce advocate for federal assistance to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She’s fought to force FEMA to help storm victims, for tax breaks to those affected, and even pressed for federal subsidies to small businesses in the hurricane damaged area.
Katrina killed 1,800 people over a period of a few days. Lack of access to health care kills 45,000 Americans every year. In all, 47 million people in this country don’t have health insurance.
Senator Landrieu believes the federal government is in a position to help victims of a natural disaster but shouldn’t do the one thing reasonably calculated to alleviate the suffering of the many millions more affected by the man-made disaster of our health care system. How strangely incongruous.
In unrelated news, Senator Landrieu has received almost $1.3 million from insurance, hospital, and medical interests over her career.
We take on Senator Landrieu and her unprincipled opposition to the public option this week on Partisan Gridlock. Listen here.
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and everywhere else at www.kpft.org.
