America, Bright and Dark

Here's just ten things the healthcare reform bill bring to our nation over the next six months:

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
   
   
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
   
   
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
   
   
4. Free preventative care for all
   
   
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
   
   
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
   
   
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
   
   
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
   
   
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
   
   
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.

Per Democratic Strategist:

Step back a minute, take a deep breath and tune out all of the spin and yammering to consider the magnitude of what has been achieved with the House vote on HCR: For starters, America will very soon be a country where no insurance company can deny health coverage to a child because of prior illness or condition. That alone is a truly monumental reform, which honest opponents of the bill will acknowledge.

Every family in America can now breathe a little freer with that knowledge, and great credit is due to the President his staff, Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer, as well as the courageous House members who risked their careers to do the right thing. There's more, much more, that can be said about the positive impact of this bill, as well as the problems associated with it. But for now, the immediate health security it will provide for millions of children is a very great accomplishment for America, and not incidentally, the Democratic party.

And the more conservative Steven L. Taylor:

Winning has a way of transforming public perception (it’s true in sports and in politics). Obama has gone from appearing unable to tame an unruly process to triumph and he will now sign a historic bill.⁴ This will alter the way a lot of people view the President, and in a way that will generate political capital.

Likewise, the GOP are now going to be perceived as losers. While this is not a permanent condition, it isn’t where any party wants to be.

Hmm...and how does a (repeated) sore loser act?:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is angry. So, too, are his fellow Republicans. And, McCain says, there will be consequences.

"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during a radio interview Monday. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."

Listen to the man. Even if something that he should agree with comes along, he's too pissed to help. Which is odd, considering how little The Party of No has helped out this past year.

In fact, it's become The Party of Anger. Sure, I was angry during the Cheney years (oh, and Bush was there, too, I guess) as were many people I knew -- tricking America into a war and allowing the country that never attacked us to be trashed in the process, the people subject to unspeakable horrors, trashing the U.S. reputation in the world, trying to destroy Social Security and, I'll continue to content, allowing the worst terrorist attack on American soil to happen due to gross negligence and discontinuation of policies under previous President Clinton. Oh, and creating conditions for the sub-prime crisis and crash of the economy, leaving yet another Democrat to clean up after yet another Bush.

But this anger is something different, something dark from our violent, reactionary, Klannish past. This is cries of n****r and f****t by a vocal minority who are now calling the tune for one of our two major political parties, rapidly turning from The Party of Anger and Fear to The Party of Hate -- per Stephen Schlesinger:

First there are the insensate attacks on those who dare to disagree with the party's views led by the Republican Minority leader John Boehner in his final remarks last night assailing the health reform legislation. Then there are the Republicans who cheered on the hatred and ire of the Tea Bagger protesters encircling the capital from the balcony of the House of Representatives over the weekend. Then there are the Tea Baggers themselves who hurled racial and homophobic slurs at various Democratic Party legislators.

And what about the vitriol mouthed through the months without any Republican regrets by the right-wing radio hosts like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and their cadres. All of this -- hatred, churlishness, pique, resentment, snarling, incivility -- has become the face of a political party which once reflected the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan. Let me ask -- when was the last time a political party gained power in America on anger alone?

In Germany, sure. They called themselves the Nazi Party. And if President Obama is successful in shoring up the Middle Class, as Bill Clinton did before him and as George W. Bush emphatically did the opposite (see tax breaks for the rich and personal savings wiped out), we may yet avoid a rightwing revolution.

The most dangerous aspect of this is how the GOP pretends they are the will of the people -- even through they were trounced in the last two national elections, even as they cry about "the tyranny of the majority," as James Zogby points out:

A Republican talking point repeated ad nauseam during yesterday's debate pounded on the theme that they, and they alone, had the right to speak for "the will of the American people." This took different forms: "the American people have spoken," or "you (Democrats) are ignoring/imposing your views on the American people" or "the American people have sent a message," etc. All making the same point -- that the GOP speaks for the American people.

Of course, the American people have spoken, and in November 2008 elected a Democratic White House and Senate and House of Representatives. But, elections and the workings of our democracy including the idea that the losing party respect the outcome of elections appear to be alien concepts to today's GOP.

The idea that the minority party represents the "will of the people" (not some of the people, but "the people") is the seedling of a totalitarian mindset. In this mindset -- democracy doesn't matter, ideas are not to be discussed, and opposing views are not to respected. What matters is that they alone have truth, they alone are metaphysically connected to the "mind of the people" can interpret their will, and because they have truth and speak for the people, others represent a threat and must be silenced and stopped.

This was a major concern last summer as violent demonstrators disrupted "town meetings" -- with angry chanting mobs claiming to represent the "will of the people" arrayed against the elected Congresspeople and their constituents who had freely assembled to discuss issues. The mobs didn't come to discuss or even debate. They were mobilized to disrupt discussion and silence debate.

The psychological state of transference once again rears its ugly head. Those screaming "fascist" at Obama are the ones most likely to rule by gun. They are the purveyors of Goebbels' Big Lie technique, per Joe Klein:

The Republicans, stuck in a hermetically-sealed intellectual cyclone of extremist fantasies, are moving farther and farther from the American mainstream. Their willful confusion of socialism (or, more mildly, "government control") with government regulation of an untrammeled and imperfect market was an act of breathtaking dishonesty. Their use of this Big Lie almost derailed a middle-of-the-road health care reform bill. But it didn't succeed. They didn't prevent Barack Obama, and the American people, from enjoying this historic victory.

I'm not sure how many electoral defeats it will take. I have a friend who believes one assassination by this wing will snap America out of its stupor and finally put a bridle on them, but I doubt it. There's too much self-justification amongst these people, too much self-centered, self-righteous anger.

Sure, there are legitimate discussions to be had about cost and change and even individual mandates without a Public Option. But the GOP didn't make those points the centerpiece of their opposition. They senselessly repeated "government takeover of healthcare" like a mantra and it's just plain wrong. It is government regulation of health insurance, thank God. My friends further on the Left aren't celebrating -- they believe the rise in insurance company stocks today shows how hopelessly capitalistic the bill really is.

Well, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has informed the GOP that even though they fought the bill with $144 million, they will not support repeal, only fixes. And, as Joe Conason points out, the GOP arguments against the bill depended on it not getting passed in the first place:

The answer could be found in the subtext of Boehner’s speech, which did not dwell on the bill’s specific provisions, beyond its alleged expense. He knows that arguing the bill’s specific provisions is very dangerous to his party, because so many of them are quite popular and the public will hold Republicans in disrepute for opposing them.

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An informed public was always the ultimate peril for the Republicans in this process, so distorted during the past year by wild propaganda about death panels, government takeovers, and the entire mythology of the Obama administration’s socialist-communist-Nazi-totalitarianism.

Creating those crazy expectations was a strategy that depended on the bill never passing. If and when people learn what is actually in the legislation, many of them will realize that they were misled, and will end up appreciating most of what the Democrats have passed, after all.

Lastly, and yes, I'm not immune to it.

Schadenfreude:

To your health.