Waiting and Hoping: You Gotta Know When to Hold ‘Em

Well, here we are all waiting with our fingers crossed…hoping against hope, it would seem, especially if you listen to all the pundits and prognosticators on both sides of the debate…for the President to make his case on Health Care Reform before a joint session of Congress and a National television audience this evening.

What we know already is that the best case scenario, a single payer system, was off the table virtually before this game even began. If this was Texas Hold ‘Em, it was as if the administration folded that hand before they even looked at their hole cards. End of story!

The second best scenario, the public option, appears to be on life support…and if you believe everything you read and hear, the plug may be pulled on it before the ‘river’ card is turned over. From what we’ve seen so far, the Democrats appear to be the kind of poker player every other player dreams about seeing across the table. No bluff…no cojones… just keep chuckin’ in your ante and throwin’ in your hand…and thanks for coming.

That would seem to leave the Dems with only two cards to play: some sort of co-op system that would still leave us at the whim of the same insurance companies who have been stealing us blind for almost 40 years; or a trigger mechanism that would again leave our fates, at least initially, in the hands of the money-grubbing insurance industry.

Frankly, neither of these options is very appealing to those of us who worked so hard to elect this President on the promise of meaningful Health Care Reform. But it probably doesn’t matter all that much anyway because there’s a seemingly insurmountable stumbling block in these negotiations that we haven’t even addressed yet. When it comes right down to it, the Republicans, the mouthpieces for the insurance lobby, won’t even agree to one of these less desirable options. There will always be something unacceptable to them in every proposal that’s put on the table.

That’s because they’re not negotiating in good faith. They never have throughout this whole process, just like they didn’t in 1994 when the Clinton Administration tried to usher in a Health Care Reform package that was palatable to everyone. Every time the Dems take a negotiating step towards the middle, the GOP takes a step further to the right…and the reason is simple. Their benefactors, the insurers, don’t want them to reach an agreement because they don’t want the system to change.

The status quo is like a license to print money for the insurance industry. They make billions…by refusing to cover anyone who poses any sort of risk such as a pre-existing condition, and by denying payment of as many claims as possible for whatever reason they can come up with. And if the claim is substantial, you can take it to the bank that they’ll use every unconscionable, dirty tactic they possibly can to avoid paying it. That’s the biggest single reason why their profits are so enormous.

So what we’re left with heading into tonight’s speech is the hope that President Obama has the steel to look the Republicans, and by extension the insurance industry, squarely in the eyes and play out his hand without blinking. We’re hoping that he’ll man up, buoyed by the knowledge that something approaching 70% of the people in the country will back his play if the changes he proposes are meaningful and equitable…and by the conviction that throwing in his cards would not only be a tragedy for the millions of uninsured, it would also be a disaster for the country as a whole.

He’s got to be willing to say to hell with South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and everyone else of his ilk, in either the House or the Senate, whose only interest is in taking the feet out from under this administration. These people really don’t give a tinker’s dam about what’s good for this country or the people they represent. Their only interest is in playing politics in the nastiest way possible…so in this debate they should be considered as insignificant as the piles of dog crap that they have shown themselves to be!

And he’s also got to be willing to say the Democrats are ready to go it alone if the Republicans continue their stance as the PARTY OF NO! Meaningful Health Care Reform would be the single most important step this administration could take in their continuing quest to lead this country out of the financial mess it was left in by George W. Bush and his band of special-interest rogues.

So what’s it going to be Mr. President? Are you ready to stand up for us, or are you going to fold?

SC