African American Columnists on Health Care Bill

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert laments the Senate bill’s tax on “cadillac” plans which will hit the middle class hard:

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care.

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do.

The tax would kick in on plans exceeding $23,000 annually for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals, starting in 2013. In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year.

Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

Thomas Sowell writes a scathing opinion piece on Democrats and the politics of health care reform:

The only thing healthy about Congress’ health insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed.

Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past attempts to pass such legislation– going back for decades– failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government health care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political “victory.”

In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something– anything– to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.

DeWayne Wickham writes in USA Today on Senator Lieberman’s “political treason:”

Last year was the year of the unlikely hero. It was dominated by the ascendency of Barack Obama, a slender black guy with a hip gait and a finely tuned political mind, to this nation’s highest office.

But 2009 has turned out to be the year of the anti-hero. It is the year in which Joe Lieberman gets my nod — cynical though it is — as “American of the Year.” A Democrat of convenience, Lieberman has succeeded in doing what Benedict Arnold couldn’t. In a masterful act of treachery, he retains a position of trust among the very people he betrayed.

By threatening to join a GOP filibuster, Lieberman forced Democrats to strip first a public option and then a Medicare buy-in compromise from the Senate’s health care bill, provisions many experts and activists consider essential to effective reform.

Though political treason does not rise to the level of military treason, of course, it is treacherous nonetheless.

Eugene Robinson writes that at the end of the day it will still be a significant achievement:

When all is said and done — and, yes, there is a bit more saying and doing to endure, which means that anything can happen — the health-care reform legislation that President Obama now seems likely to sign into law, while an unlovely mess, will be remembered as a landmark accomplishment.

The bill making its way through the Senate by the slimmest of margins is imperfect, to say the least. But before listing its many flaws, let’s consider the measure’s one great virtue: For the first time, we will enshrine the principle that all Americans deserve access to medical care regardless of their ability to pay. No longer will it be the policy and practice of our nation to ration health according to wealth.

Stanley Crouch worries about Obama’s temperament and hesitation to call out his political enemies:

The President might be an easygoing man, but his temperament may be his problem. As one black politician said to me, “Those white advisers have convinced Obama that he will get an allergic reaction to a powerful black man from the white people if he starts playing the game like Lyndon Johnson and puts his foot in every crack he finds necessary.

“In politics, if you don’t use it, you lose power. You got to make your opponents fear you, especially when they have sold the country out and it’s right there in black and white.

“You got to raise your voice and prove your opposition is lying. Yes, people, the guys and dolls who claim to be so concerned with saving your money tied up Medicare and Medicaid and whatever else so that they could not barter down the price of prescriptions. That’s why the price of drugs is so high in this … country. The Republicans put it into law! The pharmaceutical industry made out like fat rats because the Republicans passed a bill that gave them $500 billion!

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