The Seattle Times, a paper that leans (and sometimes lurches) to the right, has taken the odd stance of demanding that President Barack Obama’s hard-won health-care bill be shelved in favor of a greater focus on job creation. Never mind that the health-care bill is in its final stages, and that it will be completed in the next several weeks and signed by the president shortly thereafter. The Times calls the piece, “Jobs first, then let’s talk about health-care reform.” But what follows reveals that the Times isn’t concerned so much with priorities in Congress, but providing shelter from taxes, especially for small businesses.
But the Times‘ argument to delay health-care reform in favor of creating jobs is as odds with a study by Harvard and USC economists saying that “health-care legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade.” That’s 2.5 million new jobs by 2020—just by reforming health care insurance.
It’s admirable that the Times is sticking up for small business, but they do so at the expense of medium-size and larger companies, most of which are getting killed by double-digit health care cost increases—and will suffer more if we don’t reform health insurance. Whats more, the window for Democrats to pass health-care reform is closing quickly. Retirements in the United States Senate are going to help the GOP whittle down the Dems’ majority, making it impossible to prevent a filibuster of health-care reform later. No, it’s clear that it’s either health-care reform now, or health care reform never. The Times knows this. And calling to delay health care is actually a call to kill health care.
“next several week” ? Please correct
We shouldn’t support Obama’s shitty bill. Not because the right wingers oppose it, but because IT’S A SHITTY BILL. If the problem with the health insurance industry is the health insurance companies, it only makes things worse to force all of the 50 million people who don’t have health insurance to pay for that same shitty insurance. And if you can’t pay for insurance, you either get fined or the government will pay for your insurance (another corporate bailout). Obama’s plan = Leave no health insurance CEO behind
Will the Stranger please stop getting high off of Obama’s ass fumes and deal with reality?
I saw this and I was equally confused by the lack of logic. This is a win for businesses. There is no question. It’s also a win for millions of Americans. The only reason I can see for The Times to do this now, at this time, is to help the insurance industry and the Republicans. And I would not put it past them to have these motivations. It’s the reason I cancelled my subscription. They do shit like this.
The weird thing is that Republicans fall all over themselves worshipping small businesses and entrepreneurs, but it is difficult and expensive for them to get health insurance (and virtually impossible for anyone with any form of preexisting condition). One of the great effects of this bill will be to allow individuals facing a layoff or with an itch to start a company to take on that risk without the worry of a catastrophic health care event.
Create jobs first?
Bullshit. For the conservatives, the time for health care reform will NEVER arrive.
Who gives a shit what they say? They were voted out. Let them complain and cry all they want and hopefully they’ll hold their breath until they pass out and we can get back to work without their noise in the background.
18 percent of the GDP.
That’s a lot of negative job creation, especially when other first world nations spend less than half that and live 8-10 years LONGER than we do.
By the way, the Chicago school of economic thought has been debunked.
The Seattle Times is full of shit. This is a standard Republican line. The longer you drag it out, the worse it will be and the more likely we are to not pass anything at all. The Republicans know they can’t succeed in killing it completely, like they did under Clinton. So really all they can do is drag it out and water it down as much as possible. That is exactly what the Seattle Times is advocating. Assholes.
yeah, but it’s still a turd, RP.
I cancelled my subscription several days ago. The Times called me 6 times; finally I answered the phone and told them it was a terrible non-newspaper and that’s why I cancelled. The woman offered me a half-off subscription. So I guess they’re willing to keep publishing and lose revenue because they print stupid shit. Unfortunately, there are plenty of stupid people to read their stupid shit.
It’s not Obama’s bill. It’s two bills that Congress devised and they’ll have to be uncomfortably married before Obama can sign the final bill. He could have been a bit more fervent about advocating for a bill, but he didn’t write them.
The current system of providing health care through your employer is like a 40% tax on jobs that no company in any other country in the world pays. In all other countries, health care is paid out of taxes that WORKERS pay, not employers — which creates jobs, and creates flexibility for workers too. The new bill isn’t going to do fuck-all to solve that problem, but it might slow the increase some.
We read horsesass.org too. No need to repeat what’s posted there.
Y’know, if the GOP hadn’t been digging their heels in (and whining about Dems “shutting them out” when they were), maybe we could have been spending the last several months on job creation. But because the GOP is the party of “no”, Congress has been wasting valuable time on this.
And it is a terrible bill, and forcing health insurance on people when the insurance industry is one of the largest sources of the problems seems wrong to me. But then I won’t be happy until we wake up and do things like the rest of the developed nations do.
I agree with #2. Without free (well, tax-funded) government hospitals (actual government health CARE system), free government insurance (aka single-payer government health INSURANCE system), or less-than-free government insurance (aka public option government health INSURANCE system), the bill cannot be called reform. Regulation, sure. Also, it has nothing to do with health care, it has to do with health insurance. These are two separate issues, and the conflation of the two (health insurance industry tactic to get you to implicitly believe that insurance is necessary for health care, when, in fact, insurance is not necessary at all, or needn’t be) is confusing the issue of reform and obfuscating solutions.
Finally, it’s an enormous subsidy of the (crooked and unnecessary) health insurance industry, for which a 100% captive customer base is a major coup. It does help uninsured individuals over 55, who will be eligible for Medicare if it passes, and may help people who already have insurance.
It’s also unconstitutional to force people to spend their own money, that is, money they haven’t paid as taxes, on anything (at the Federal level, though not at the state level). There will inevitably be a challenge in Federal court which will certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court (regardless of the decision). I, for one, desperately hope that the law is struck down, as I want nothing to do with the insurance industry, and this bill is a shady back-room deal (complete with conflicts-of-interest and kickbacks) that proves that many Democrat senators are every bit as corrupt, hypocritical, and sleazy as many Republican senators.
Republicans dislike helping the disadvantaged (until a flood or fire destroys their houses, or they get injured on-the-job, or get fired – then they complain about how they’re not getting enough money fast enough); fine, it makes sense that they’d oppose another social program. What I can’t figure out is why the Democrats are so willing to throw out any semblance of reform in order to subsidize the health insurance scam. Unless they’re being paid-off. Frankly, I’m amazed that for-profit insurance companies are even legal, as they take money from people and do nothing in exchange except make certain that you can’t spend that money so it is available for them to spend on your behalf (if they can’t find a reason to not do so) down the road. Seriously, how does “Hey, give me a few hundred dollars a month, and maybe I’ll help pay for any medical bills you have, assuming I can’t find a reason to not do so” sound like a good deal to anyone? Why is anyone who is not being directly paid standing up for these guys? Why is it that so many people prefer getting screwed by corporations that do not have their interests at heart and over which they have little to no control to putting more into a government program, over which they ultimately do have control and which does have their interests as it’s only concern, than they get back (and for 97% of the country, we get more back than we put in, and it only gets better for that 97% as we increase the marginal tax rate on the top income brackets)?