The Obama health care debate drove home the reality that the differences between Democrats and Republicans are too profound to be bridged. The Republican warnings that Obamacare was all about “socialism” and “death panels” was pure political spin and all about protecting corporate America, companies with 50 or more employees, that will be required to pick up most of the new health care costs.
When it suited corporate America to offer health care to attract employees after World War II, they gladly did so. Corporate America offered generous health care plans because wages were fixed, international competition all but nonexistent, and corporations ruled the roost. Powerful unions added new features to their “Cadillac plans” with the same enthusiasm that Detroit added tail fins to Coupe de Villes. Now that the world has changed, corporate America wants to shrug off its health care responsibilities and leave it to the government and individuals.
Health care costs in America are out of control ─ absolute malpractice ─ and a looming disaster for business. The proportion of GDP devoted to health care grew from 5 percent in 1962 to 16 percent in 2010 before Obamacare became law. Rising health care costs appear to have suppressed wages, as firms try to make up for the expense.
America spends 53 percent more per head on health care than the next most profligate country and almost 2½ times the rich-country average for a lot less care. With health-care costs rising much faster than general inflation and 500,000 fellow baby boomers now becoming eligible for Medicare every day, health-care spending is likely to hit 20 percent of GDP by 2017 and 25 percent by 2025.
There is no doubt that Obamacare is another deficit spending entitlement at the mercy of whatever debt instruments are financing and backing the various parts of the scheme.
The Senate in December 2009 gave President Obama the 60 votes needed to pass his top domestic priority. We the Maids had to pay one hell of a price. A commitment to Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, that federal funds would not be used to pay for abortions and providing extra Medicaid funds for his home state of Nebraska got his critical 60th vote. The agreement came over a handshake, as all agreements should, except when there are side deals that are not publicly disclosed that benefit individual senators and their small sparsely populated states at the expense of the country as a whole. People and country must come first. Not senators and their pet home-state projects that We the Maids have to pay for.
Compare this sad state of affairs to the great domestic reforms of the ‘60s. Most notably, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Some 80 percent of congressional Republicans, and a smaller percentage of Democrats, voted to give black Americans equality before the law. In the same decade, roughly half of Republicans joined the Democratic majority in voting to create Medicare and Medicaid. Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms, which chivvied the jobless to seek work, were also solidly bipartisan. The American system of checks and balances makes it hard to pass sweeping changes without broad consensus.
America has to re-unite and Democrats and Republicans must work together for the United States to become a healthy economic power again.