‘Health Week’ gets off to a predictable start

May 9, 2006

As Roll Call reported today, “You can tell it’s an election year when Congress burns through a week of business debating issues important to partisan voters, but that have little to no chance of going anywhere.” What’s the issue? Bill Frist has labeled this “[tag]health week[/tag]” in the [tag]Senate[/tag].

By all indications, it’s a rather futile exercise. Republicans will push proposals that meet the demands of insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, which Dems will block. Dems, in turn, will demand action on measures such as expanded stem-cell research, which the GOP will block. Observers everywhere will wonder, “They interrupted the Senate schedule for this?”

Yesterday was almost comical in its silliness. For the sixth time in as many years, Senate Republicans unsuccessfully argued for the medical malpractice caps the party’s donors have wanted for years. Everyone knew the proposal would fail and everyone just went through the motions. It’s become so tedious, one senator didn’t even bother to change the speech he used two years ago.

“These bills address the medical liability and litigation crisis in our country, a crisis that is preventing patients from receiving high-quality health care — or, in some cases, any care at all,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said yesterday. Compare that with his thoughts from February 2004: “This bill addresses the medical liability and litigation crisis in our country, a crisis that is preventing patients from receiving high quality health care — or, in some cases, any care at all.”

It should probably go without saying, but substantively the arguments here are awfully weak. The GOP would have us believe that capping malpractice awards will drive down the cost of health care. The reality is we’re talking about “savings” of on one half of one percent on health insurance premiums.

As for the politics, if Republicans really want to spark a debate about health care, Dems are delighted.

A strategy memo distributed Friday to Senators by Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged Democrats to use the week to highlight why they are better on health care reform than the GOP.

“The American people have long trusted Democrats to deal with the issue of health care, and once again we will stand up for their interests,” the document states.

If Dems are really lucky, Republicans will host a few more “health weeks” before Election Day.

What about Enzi’s bill to gut the coverage of almost 80 million now-insured individuals, about which Dodd held his news conference yesterday? Will that, too, be successfully blocked by the Dems? I sure as hell hope so….

  • By the way, Mike Malloy went absolutely ape-shit ballistic about this last night on AAR. For those of us who feel the rage, Malloy’s show is like a soothing balm to our fevered foreheads as he rants and calls Bush and others by their “real” names (Bush is “Chucklenuts”, Tucker Carlson is a “little bow-tied bastard”, and most of the rest are either “pig bastards” or “lying sonz-a-bitches”). Go listen if you haven’t already!!

  • I do enjoy Mike Malloy. I wonder how long it’ll be before the Regal Moron hears about him and exercises his “Decider” powers to rush him off to Gitmo?

    Why do I always finish reading these kinds of stories with an aching wish that, somehow, FDR or HST could have been granted immortality? Wait, isn’t that what the Democratic Party should provide? Oh, forget it.

  • Good timing.
    The infant mortality data is like a slap to the face:

    “The U.S. ranking is driven partly by racial and income health care disparities. Among U.S. blacks, there are 9 deaths per 1,000 live births, closer to rates in developing nations than to those in the industrialized world.”
    “Every time I see these kinds of statistics, I’m always amazed to see where the United States is because we are a country that prides itself on having such advanced medical care and developing new technology … and new approaches to treating illness. But at the same time not everybody has access to those new technologies,” said Dr. Mark Schuster, a Rand Co. researcher and pediatrician with the University of California, Los Angeles.

  • I keep trying to remember what the freedoms we get to have in exchange for living in the most unhealthly and uneducation of ‘developed’ countries in the world.

    The right to carry around guns to protect our liberties when the Government wants to take those liberties away?

  • Along with the piece Koreyel mentioned, there was a USA Today article today about the cost of health care and those that want to solve it by having the “consumer” bargain hunt and think twice about actually getting health care. Driven by what? Higher deductibles!
    Yeah, health care is about the bottom line, not public health.

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