Teabaggers at it again - Republican health plan introduced just as House to vote on Saturday

November 5, 3:34 PMWorcester County Progressive ExaminerThomas Deusser

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (house.gov)

Literally dozens of “tea party protesters” (read: Obama Deniers) joined Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Jon Voight and a cast of tens to put on a show (promoted by FoxNews), which is either protesting health insurance reform, or is praising it. It's hard to tell when half the signs in the crowd are related to getting one's hands off one's gun.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) intends to put H.R. 3962 to a straight up or down vote this Saturday to the full House. It is expected to contain a public health insurance option and is expected to pass in a tight vote, with most "blue dog" Democrats voting against it.

This should take place after about three hours of debate, one of which is expected to be on the “Boehner Amendment”. After only ten months of research, Boehner introduced the Republican “alternative”, complete with a Congressional Budget Office score and everything. If you were expecting more than the Republican stimulus “alternative” one-page bullet point bill, well, you got your wish, kind of.

It's more than one page, at least, and it's being reported as a 230-page amendment. It is 230 pages, in which the margins are indented two full inches and double spaced throughout; which would be more like 75 pages in realityville, but it is 230 pages none the less. And while there are words there, they're about as important as they would be had they been writing in big font on an index card. I suppose at least it's beyond “no” and “you lie”.

In it, Boehner lays out the standard tort reform and “portability across state lines” positions, both of which are good things that H.R. 3962 currently doesn't have, and should. However, there is nothing stopping insurance companies from denying consumers for pre-existing conditions, and there is no mechanism in place to prevent the antitrust monopolies that exist in the insurance industry today.

The Congressional Budget Office scored the Boehner Amendment as saving $8 billion over the next ten years, but it also mentioned that an additional 3 million people would be insured over that time; leaving approximately 52 million non-elderly adults without insurance (H.R. 3962 currently provides insurance for more than 40 million non-elderly adults over the same time). There were also modest reductions in premiums for about 20 percent of insurance holders, while the rest could expect to see an increase.

The best part about the CBO scoring of the Boehner Amendment? It estimates that about 83 percent of non-elderly adults will have health insurance by 2019. They also estimate that if Congress does absolutely nothing, about 83 percent of non-elderly adults will have health insurance. In other words, this amendment would do absolutely nothing to insure those millions of American citizens without health insurance. This would be shocking, if it weren't so totally not shocking at all.

Essentially, the Republicans were better off with “no” and “you lie”. When a bill or plan gets produced, it's far easier to mock.

So, the dozens of teabaggers and sorry elected members of Congress who joined them get themselves another moment in the sun. Meanwhile, while they're mocked and laughed at for their idiocy, the House will be passing a health insurance reform bill this Saturday. Unfortunately, the Senate will water that down to the point to where it rivals the Republican “plan” unless a few members of the Senate remember they're supposed to serve their constituents, and not the checks insurance and pharmaceutical companies have given them over the last few years. We'll see. In the meantime, it's fun to mock the teabaggers and Michelle Bachmann and Virginia Foxx; hopefully they'll do this again soon.