WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a law expanding a health program to include 3.5 million uninsured children, advancing an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system despite the embarrassing withdrawal of his nominee to lead the initiative.
Obama signed the legislation at a White House ceremony just hours after the U.S. House of Representatives voted 290-135 for the $32.8 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, which was approved by the Senate last week.
"In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to trade-offs or negotiations -- healthcare for our children is one of those obligations," Obama said.
The bill was "a downpayment on my commitment to cover every single American," he added.
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The expansion is being paid for by raising the federal tax on cigarettes to $1 per pack from the current 39 cent-per-pack tax. Taxes on cigars and other tobacco products will also rise.
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In a decent society, politicians do not make unpopular minorities shoulder the costs of Our Mutual Social Obligations
Alex Wierbinski
If this cig tax, is, as Obama puts it, "a downpayment on my commitment to cover every single American," with health care, not only has nothing changed, but we are in real trouble.
I fear to see how Obama will fund his broad "commitment to cover every single American," with health care if his method of funding this commitment is not approached as a shared social obligation, and the costs fairly spread across our whole society.
It appears that Obama, by targeting smokers, has avoided opening a general disscussion on health care funding. Rather than opening a responsible discussion about everyone taking responsibility for their share of the burden of funding health care, Obama has pulled an old political dirty trick out of his sleeve, and raised a tax mob against an unpopular minority, in this case smokers.
Like his recent political predecessors, Obama has apparently choosen to make politically unpopular minorities, rather than all of us, shoulder the responsibility for paying the bills due for our social costs of doing buisness.
In any case, Obama's scam will fail. It's simple: there are not enough smokers, or enough unpopular minorities, to even cover half the total cost of covering middle-class children's health care, (which is the narrow target of this triumphant victory over smokers) let alone fund a national health care policy.
Obama's screwing smokers does not qualify, as he claims, as a "downpayment on my commitment to cover every single American(s)" health care that Obama's "vision" calls for. Obama's cig tax indicates that he is not going to pursue the big game in health care funding: the huge HMOs, big Pharm, and the insurance industry. All of these are rather well-heeled, and have throughly paid-off both parties. Rather, Obama is going to continue down the same old road and target unpopular minorities and the politically weak to pay for his vision.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for taxing the shit out of the tobacco companies to pay for the social and medical costs they, their smokers, and making their massive profits have put onto our society. No problem with that.
But I am not willing to willie-nillie begin charging smokers for child care, breast cancer, or any other costs other than the expence that their smoking adds to their normal social costs. Smokers should pay their own share of America's health care costs, and then pay the additional costs smoking puts on society, and that's it.
Smokers are only forced to pay the children's share in a crooked system. Our system decides financial responsibility based on the formula of "who is unpopular" divided into "who bribes the politicians," rather than determining tax policy based on who draws the most profits. and who gets the most usage from society's structural expences such as medicine, education, and retirement. And all three of these social institutions have fallen apart.
Our corrupted political process assures that we end up with a system that features a tax-free privilidged elite class of political bribers making massive profits while the less-privilidged and less-popular have the privilidge of paying virtually all the social costs of doing business, if the social costs are addressed at all. This process and outcome, when combined with our rising police state powers, defines the nature of the modern corporate fascist state.
What I am willing to do, and what I have always supported, is establishing a responsible financial foundation for a comprehensive health care system that reflects and fairly balances the expences between employee and employer. It goes like this: the more you profit from our wonderful system, the more you pay to cover the system's structural costs.
As Obama's middle-class child heath funding scam well demonstrates, a comprehensive health care system that reflects and fairly balances the expences between employee and employer is not in the works. The same old game is still on. Those who can bribe the politicians or are popular pay nothing, while the poor, the unpopular, and those who cannot afford to buy political protection pay the costs for those who can. The only process that can fairly reflect and balance these social interests is democracy.
Who pays, and how we pay for our health care has reflected the interests and greed of the health care industry. Rather than fairly distributing the costs, who pays has been a measure of unpopularity, immorality, or a lack of social and political "influence." This outcome reflects a serious fundamental breakdown in our democratic process. The overpowering influence created by allowing bribery money to dominate the political process has made it impossible for a reasonable national health policy to be created, let alone determining how to fairly fund a comprehensive health policy.
As the system currently operates, it is currently impossible to make health care reflect our country's needs. rather than the health care industry's greed. This cannot change, nor will a comprehensive health care policy emerge from our political process, until the nature of our political process itself is reverted from bribery to democracy.
The corporate ownership of our political process has assured the failure of all of our social institutions to provide adequate service. As long as politicians are bribed they will be incapable of fairly balancing social interests to maintain adequetly funded medical service, educational oppertunities, or the social institutions required to protect our elderly.
Currently we have no health care system in the United States. We will not have one until we restore our democracy. Until then, the policy of making unpopular minorities pay for health costs will continue to fail, as our health, educational, and social institutions have been failing for decades. Until we restore our democracy, the rich and powerful will continue to avoid paying the just costs of their profits.
Here's what I'd do In my imaginary democracy. I would immediatly make every HMO operate on a cost+8 basis. Regulation of our healthcare "system," and control of the distribution of its services would be taken from the hands of the buisnessmen and put back into the hands of medical professionals. Managment of the system should rightfully be in the hands of the buisnessmen, for an 8%, managment fee, and nothing more. Funding would be fairly determined democratically, and distributed between employers, employees, and the general population.
And so too believes General Motors, more or less, as well as every other large employer who has been screwed in the ass and financially drained by the "businessmen" who run our health care "industry."
But not Obama. He's going to make smokers pay for middle-class health subsidies. Classic Machine Politics. But, unfortunatly for Obama, we don't have enough poor, unpopular minorites to saddle with the costs to pay for Obama's "commitment." There is only one answer to this problem, if we are not going to do democracy: Obama must enlarge the population of unpopular minorities to subdize our medical bills. I've got an idea that will solve part of the problem, and get us on the road to a real solution.
Obama should legalize Crack, then tax Crackheads to subsidize puppies. Everybody likes puppies. Nobody likes Crackheads. This will go on until we run out of crackheads to subsidize our puppies. We will not run out of puppies.
In the meantime, the politicians will continue to drain crackheads and puppies for the profit of health industry executives, sucking profit from both puppies and crackheads by bribing both of the parties into submission to their interests. The politicians payoff? A percentage of these criminal profits sufficient to maintain their political power and position. In reality, what is still happening under Obama is that the poor smokers and crackheads who cannot bribe the parties are saddled with the "taxes" to cover the costs ot vital services that all of our citizens should fairly sharing. In the meantime, the puppies and crackhead both suffer under this farce.
But since Obama is screwing crackheads, and other unpopular minorities to pay for puppies, everybody cheers,...wait, you say this is the same old shit?
Obama has spoken out about healthcare through his patented megaphone of idealism and hope. But his speeches have never addressed the engine of corruption at the center of our polity that bribes the politicians of both parties to allow the healthcare industry to profit from our pain. His words need to describe reality, not hope, and so far Obama's deeds are falling far from the promise of his words.
tabocco tax
how did this tax pass anyway? Before health care sees a dime half the tabocco ind. will be out of work ..
Freedom and Responsibility
The Dem tax represents the loss of both. Freedom, specifically the personal freedom our country was once founded on, grants the individual the right to determine their own religion, or in secular terms, each citizen has the right to live by their own philosophy, their own values, and their own practices.
Smoking is one of those private freedoms that the "holier than thou" among us believe they can outlaw, or tax out of existance.
The problem is one group imposes their values on everyone else. Smoking, drinking, drugs, and gayness and abortion are the typical issues where various factions try to take away another faction's rights.
The dems and repugs are equally guilty of running political campaigns and candidates who aim to take away the rights of unpopular minorities.
In the case of tobacco, or anything else that people will do, such as drinking, being gay, keeping and bearing arms, and using drugs, protecting the freedom for our citizens to define themselves is the first priority, then second comes the responsiblity part of the equation.
A responsible democracy would tax the tobacco industry and users at the rate required to make up for the social costs, and no more. So too with drugs.
The government only has the duty to regulate the commerece in public between citizens, and does not have the "right" to ban the private practices of our citizens.
Our bribed government is incompentent to defend our rights, and the massive bribes of special interests have short-circuted the government's responsibility to regulate commerece.
Not only is the taxation issue affected by the great bribes of the tobacco industry to both parties, which had basically detaxed big tobacco, as well as all of Corporate America, but now the dems have decided to punish individual smokers by making them pay the cost's of foreign child health care in the US. That is the height of irresponsibility, and a disgrace to our once proud democracy.
Health care is a national responsibility, and taxing smokers to pay for what our nation should all share the costs to pay for shows just how big a farce the democrats really are.
Thanks for your comment, and we need all of our citizens to insist that our freedoms are protected, and our responsibilites properly addressed.
All bribes to the parties must be stopped, the government must be limited in how it intervenes into our private life and personal freedoms, while the power of our citizens to regulate commerece through a bottom-up citizen democracy must be restored.
Death to the corporate fascist state and the corrupted political parties and politicians who feed from the hand of the corporate traitors who have captured our once democratic govenment.
Join the Next American Revolution.