Is There A Republican Case FOR Healthcare Reform? And Is Bart Stupak Breaking The Law?

LaHood and Schock, havin' a party

Since there isn't a single Republican in the House or Senate who isn't too scared to death of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and that pack of far right media hyenas and their raucous, self-righteous followers to make the argument for meaningful healthcare reform, Obama's Republican Secretary of Transportation did it yesterday in the Chicago Tribune.

LaHood was a conservative Republican congressman, as partisan as the rest of them, although not notably sociopathic. He was elected to represent the strongly Republican central Illinois 18th CD in 1994, a district that has an R+5 PVI and that was one of only three in Illinois McCain won, albeit with only 50% of the vote. (In the 2006 Democratic wave year LaHood was re-elected with 67% of the vote.) LaHood campaigned for and voted for McCain. If he got into fights with his Republican colleagues, it was generally because he is a deficit hawk and resented them spending tax money like a bunch of drunken sailors. He calls himself "a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government."

For those reasons and others, most people wouldn't expect me to be an advocate for comprehensive health care reform. But the truth is, I believe there is no bigger issue to solve and no better chance to solve it than now.

If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don't believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do.

We do not need to look that far down the road to see the pain that failure to pass health care reform will cause. Americans of every background, class, race and political persuasion are suffering. We have the best health care system in the world, yet more than 40 million Americans lack access to it, a reality that is morally reprehensible. Health care is an essential, as important as food, water and shelter. Those who don't have it are left without the tools to survive.

In the coming days, Congress has a chance to change that. The bill that will be voted on will reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next two decades, and will reduce waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. It will slow the rate of growth in health care costs and put America back on the path toward fiscal sustainability.

The bill will give families and small business owners greater control over their own health care. It will expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans and will include tax credits to individuals, families and small businesses, giving them the same choices that members of Congress have to purchase private coverage. It will create state-based exchanges that will bring competition and transparency to insurance markets. And it will put in place common-sense rules of the road to hold insurance companies accountable and end some of the most outrageous practices of the insurance industry.

Never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Never again will insurance companies be able to raise rates unfairly-- like the 60 percent hikes expected in Illinois.

While the ultimate vote on health care may not be bipartisan, the ultimate bill certainly is.

There are several Republican ideas in the bill. It allows Americans to buy health insurance across state lines. It increases the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to pool together-- much like large corporations or labor unions-- to bargain for a better insurance rate. It gives states the flexibility to come up with an alternate health care plan, and it gives them resources to reform our tort system by developing new ways to deal with medical malpractice.

LaHood's plea to his former colleagues in Congress-- or the twerpy, cowardly little closet queen who won his seat, Adam Schock-- to seize "the opportunity to change the lives of their friends and neighbors for the better by voting for health care reform"-- will fall on deaf ears. I doubt even Ahn Cao (R-LA), the one Republican who voted for it the first time around, will vote for it again, even though the majority of Americans-- and certainly the majority of Americans in his congressional district-- want healthcare reform and reject Jim DeMint's tactic of using healthcare obstructionism to cripple Obama's presidency.

On the other hand, it looks like Bart Stupak's attempt to hold the entire nation's healthcare reform hostage (I'm told based on a sudden conversion to religious fanaticism due to his son's suicide, with Stupak's gun) is failing. As Rachel Maddow explained, the House leadership peeled away some of his support, which was largely garnered by using false GOP talking points about abortion funding, and then called Stupak's bluff and left him muttering darkly to himself on the sidelines. (Please consider contributing to Connie Saltonstall, the progressive woman standing up to him on his home turf by running a primary against him.)