The Chris Moeller Archives

As the Kucinich Turns

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich got the royal treatment from the president this week, quite literally. The lawmaker had expressed discontent with the health care legislation currently before Congress that the Obama administration believes is imperative for our nation, saying right up until this morning that he didn't plan to vote for it.

But where conservative Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson gets wooed by his party leadership with promises of special reimbursements (and privilege) for his home state in return for his vote on health care, the White House believed-- correctly-- that it could land the support of the liberal Kucinich with just a ride on a fancy airplane. Kucinich flew with Obama on Air Force One to a rally on health care in Dennis' home district in Cleveland Monday. There, Obama proceeded to deliver a speech to a large Buckeye State audience, but one targeted specifically towards the yet-unswayed Congressman sitting in the front row. Kucinich flipped. That's all it took-- by his own admission-- nothing else, no policy concessions, no specific assurances on future legislative action, nothing.

"Courage" is what's needed to pass this health care bill, Obama said in his remarks Monday. That's rich. This bill is not single-payer, which would take actual courage. That option was never even placed on the table. There's also no public option of any kind written into the language. Obama sold us out on that one with some fancy backroom dealing last summer even while he was lying through his teeth about it to the American people. There's no option for states to enact single-payer on their own, and no caps imposed on insurance premiums. The legislation is nothing but the mandated purchase of the private health insurance coverage that most of the nation has already expressed that it despises, a billion-dollar giveaway, and we're getting this exact bill not because the public option doesn't have the votes, but precisely because it does. Fifty-one votes are all that are needed in the Senate now through reconciliation, but to include this vital provision would force Obama to break his unholy agreement from last year with the insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical lobbyists.

Last summer, 57 House "progressives" also signed a letter to the White House vowing that they would not support a health care bill of any kind that did not contain a public option. Eight months later, it appears we're about to find out, perhaps by the end of the week, that every single one of them has caved.

Each one of those 57 House members, including Kucinich, enjoys full-access to health insurance for themselves and their families. None of them will be among the 120 Americans who die every day, according to Harvard researchers, because they don't even have access to health care. Eighty-seven House Democrats are co-sponsors of a piece of single-payer legislation in that chamber, yet they're falling over themselves to vote for a Senate bill that the whistleblowing former executive at CIGNA, Wendell Potter, calls "an absolute joke" and "an absolute giveaway to the insurance industry," and that the lawmakers vowed nine months ago they would never support.

posted by CM @ 12:11 PM