The Sickening Reality Over Health Care Reform

About forty-five million Americans are either without affordable health care insurance or have none at all. It is all too common for people to lose their health care benefit upon losing a job, something that is very familiar to many Americans especially in a staggering economy where the unemployment rate is 9.5% and climbing. And for those who are insured and have a job, many of them are being denied coverage by insurance companies upon becoming ill due to a “pre-existing conditions.” Medical costs is on the rise to the tune of two percent above inflation, and the number one reason for filing for bankruptcy is due to high medical bills.

Therefore Congress is currently debating a sweeping health care reform bill, H.R. 956: HealthCARE Act of 2009, which its official goal is “to expand the number of individuals and families with health insurance coverage, and for other purposes.”

President Obama is pressing for a sweeping change in the American health care system, and with his party owning a considerable majority in the House and filobuster proof super majority in the Senate, passing this bill should be smooth sailing, right? Well, not so fast.

A band of conservative Democrats known as the “blue dog Democrat” are pushing to have the vote postponed until Congress reconvenes in the fall after the summer recess. “We have successfully pushed a floor vote to September,” said Mike Ross (D-Ark.). “The American people want us to slow down, and that’s what we’re doing here.” The blue dog Democrats also want to introduce a more watered down version of the public option language in the bill, a feature designed to lower the cost of health care by introducing the government as an alternative insurance provider thereby introducing competition.

So what exactly does a Democratic member of Congress have to gain by delaying a vote on a health care reform bill? According to Opensecrets.org:

There’s a particular breed of lawmaker on Capitol Hill that is pushing hard against a public health care plan, much to the delight of two seriously moneyed special interest groups–insurers and pharmaceuticals. They’re the Blue Dogs: moderate, vocal and funded in part by the industries trying to protect their bottom line. Read Full Article

Rachel Maddow Corrects Buchanan

UPDATE: In the spirit of fair play there are a couple of inaccuracies of Rachel Maddow’s corrections that need to be put into context. She misquotes Buchanan’s comments about the US track team being all black and the US hockey team all being from Minnesota. He posted these as hypothetical, stating “IF” the members of the US track team were all black and “IF” all the members of the US hockey team were all from Minnesota, not THAT only blacks made up the US track team or THAT only Minnesotans made up the hockey team.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, this mistake, intentional or not, does not innoculate Buchanan from the charges made against him. The overarching jist of Maddow’s correction of her colleague was still an indictment of his character. Below is the original debate that sparked the following correction:

In what can only be described as a brilliant stance for principles, Rachel Maddow takes on her colleague Pat Buchanan for peddling overt racial politics regarding the vetting process of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. What makes this correction so remarkable is that she not only points out his factually deficient statements made while discussing the issue with Maddow on a prior show but she also exposes his views on race in America as woefully disingenuous at best and outright bigoted at worst. And if that wasn’t enough, Maddow and her staff goes into the way back machine and dig up some writing of Pat Buchanan in suggesting the type of Supreme Court nominee his then boss Richard Nixon should select, leaving one to wonder if not only is he a racist but a hypocritical one at that. This is a must see!

Question of the Day: Will Obama Deliver Universal Health Care?

How would you grade the media’s questions, the president’s performance, etc? Was it enough to sway Congress to pass a health care bill that covers the over forty-six million Americans who do not have health insurance? Or will he pass a bill so far removed from his original intent which is to pass a government run single payer health care plan (aka universal health care)?