Starting this week, to generate a little content for the blog - and partly to relieve any hostilities toward my editors (all in good humor, all in good humor) - I'm going to post the articles I write for the Standard, the Missouri State student paper, completely unedited. No cuts, no re-wordings, no Speel-Check; just good, old-fashioned shitty college writing. So, without further ado, here's my column for the week. Check out the edited version at The-Standard.org.
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Just last week, the state of health reform seemed so much bleaker. Momentum had stalled. Ted Kennedy, the Liberal Lion, had died before realizing his life's ambition. (Meaningful health reform, I mean. Not his dream of a swimming pool full of scotch.) Republicans were mis-characterizing almost the entirety of every committee bill. Disney had purchased Marvel Comics – slightly unrelated, but nonetheless tragic. It seemed a dark hour for the President's agenda, and indeed the nation.
Then he gave his speech before the joint-session of Congress, using one of the more potent weapons in a president's PR arsenal. In it he detailed, for the first time, what the White House expects from the final bill. Support for his handling of health care jumped by around ten points in multiple polls – though some conservatives claim at least one of those polls, done by CNN, was flawed because it had a larger percentage of Democrat contributors than Republican ones.
But Obama wasn't talking to Republicans. Whether they like it or not, conservatives are entirely superfluous in this debate. Obama needed to rally his troops, to unite his own party and light a fire under legislative lollygaggers. And it seems to have worked.
Now we're left to wait for the opposition's next outlandish tactic. Some, dubbed the Tenthers, are trying to argue that the Tenth Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”) denies Congress the power to legislate health care reform at all. Legislators in Georgia are so enamored with this argument, they're discussing a change to their state constitution that would ban good medicine. Or something to that effect.
Not being a constitutional expert, I decided to call one – Dr. Kevin Pybas, an associate professor here at Missouri State – and find out if these Tenthers had a legal leg to stand on. “They would have a case,” Pybas told me, “if it were the 1790's.”
Since the Civil War, and even more so since the days of the New Deal, the federal government has insured states are dependent on its resources – meaning that, even if unable to force states to follow a federal mandate, the states could be given, let's say... an offer they couldn't refuse. Add to that the pesky Commerce Clause in Article 1 Section 8, which gives Congress authority over any issue that substantially affects the national economy, and it seems the Tenthers are just another lunatic fringe that lawmakers are using to scaremonger.
Add to the mix that Obama pledged to sign only a deficit-neutral bill, that no Federal money would support abortion, that illegal aliens wouldn't see any benefit, and that no part of the bill mandated eugenics or euthanasia, and it would seem the only ammo left against reform is the cost. Deficit neutral only means it would be a funded mandate, mostly with tax increases, partly with cost-reduction and fines.
The President's speech seemed in line with the known details of the Senate Finance Committee bill, which would mandate health insurance much like auto insurance. Any person without coverage would be fined up to $950, and a family of four would be fined up to $3,800. Even the impoverished would face fines. The idea is drawing fire from even liberal constituencies, who are traditionally enamored with the poor.
But, is it really so bad? Car insurance is mandated without objection, even though we all hope we'll never need it. Health care, on the other hand, is an unavoidable requirement. As professor of economics Dr. Thomas Wyrick put it when I spoke with him about the issue, when it comes to health insurance, “everyone has a catastrophe called 'death.'”
You will need help with medical care in your lifetime. And right now, when some insurance companies have near-monopolies on entire states (Blue Cross controls at least 75 percent of Alabama's health insurance market, for example – a number even Dr. Wyrick flat-out refused to believe, despite my insistence on my ability to do cursory research), debt is as inevitable for your average-Joe as illness is.
Obama, by most accounts, has won some breathing room for his controversial agenda, and ginned up support from his party and even some Independents. He regained momentum and won back some control of the debate. It seems like, barring an effective Republican strategy or another Democratic implosion, we might finally be seeing the beginnings of resolution – we may actually see a day soon when we can debate more important, less stale, issues. Like how the hell anyone allowed Disney to buy Marvel. For example.
______________________________________________
Just last week, the state of health reform seemed so much bleaker. Momentum had stalled. Ted Kennedy, the Liberal Lion, had died before realizing his life's ambition. (Meaningful health reform, I mean. Not his dream of a swimming pool full of scotch.) Republicans were mis-characterizing almost the entirety of every committee bill. Disney had purchased Marvel Comics – slightly unrelated, but nonetheless tragic. It seemed a dark hour for the President's agenda, and indeed the nation.
Then he gave his speech before the joint-session of Congress, using one of the more potent weapons in a president's PR arsenal. In it he detailed, for the first time, what the White House expects from the final bill. Support for his handling of health care jumped by around ten points in multiple polls – though some conservatives claim at least one of those polls, done by CNN, was flawed because it had a larger percentage of Democrat contributors than Republican ones.
But Obama wasn't talking to Republicans. Whether they like it or not, conservatives are entirely superfluous in this debate. Obama needed to rally his troops, to unite his own party and light a fire under legislative lollygaggers. And it seems to have worked.
Now we're left to wait for the opposition's next outlandish tactic. Some, dubbed the Tenthers, are trying to argue that the Tenth Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”) denies Congress the power to legislate health care reform at all. Legislators in Georgia are so enamored with this argument, they're discussing a change to their state constitution that would ban good medicine. Or something to that effect.
Not being a constitutional expert, I decided to call one – Dr. Kevin Pybas, an associate professor here at Missouri State – and find out if these Tenthers had a legal leg to stand on. “They would have a case,” Pybas told me, “if it were the 1790's.”
Since the Civil War, and even more so since the days of the New Deal, the federal government has insured states are dependent on its resources – meaning that, even if unable to force states to follow a federal mandate, the states could be given, let's say... an offer they couldn't refuse. Add to that the pesky Commerce Clause in Article 1 Section 8, which gives Congress authority over any issue that substantially affects the national economy, and it seems the Tenthers are just another lunatic fringe that lawmakers are using to scaremonger.
Add to the mix that Obama pledged to sign only a deficit-neutral bill, that no Federal money would support abortion, that illegal aliens wouldn't see any benefit, and that no part of the bill mandated eugenics or euthanasia, and it would seem the only ammo left against reform is the cost. Deficit neutral only means it would be a funded mandate, mostly with tax increases, partly with cost-reduction and fines.
The President's speech seemed in line with the known details of the Senate Finance Committee bill, which would mandate health insurance much like auto insurance. Any person without coverage would be fined up to $950, and a family of four would be fined up to $3,800. Even the impoverished would face fines. The idea is drawing fire from even liberal constituencies, who are traditionally enamored with the poor.
But, is it really so bad? Car insurance is mandated without objection, even though we all hope we'll never need it. Health care, on the other hand, is an unavoidable requirement. As professor of economics Dr. Thomas Wyrick put it when I spoke with him about the issue, when it comes to health insurance, “everyone has a catastrophe called 'death.'”
You will need help with medical care in your lifetime. And right now, when some insurance companies have near-monopolies on entire states (Blue Cross controls at least 75 percent of Alabama's health insurance market, for example – a number even Dr. Wyrick flat-out refused to believe, despite my insistence on my ability to do cursory research), debt is as inevitable for your average-Joe as illness is.
Obama, by most accounts, has won some breathing room for his controversial agenda, and ginned up support from his party and even some Independents. He regained momentum and won back some control of the debate. It seems like, barring an effective Republican strategy or another Democratic implosion, we might finally be seeing the beginnings of resolution – we may actually see a day soon when we can debate more important, less stale, issues. Like how the hell anyone allowed Disney to buy Marvel. For example.
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