This may be one of the most important things anyone's said yet about the Waxman-Markey climate bill, or ACES. Ken Ward Jr. writing at The Charleston Gazette shares a quote from the communications director of the United Mine Workers of America, Phil Smith:
As it stands now, the amount of money dedicated to coal in this bill is remarkable, and the future of coal will be intact.
I've been working extensively to fashion a controlled program that Congress can adopt which will preserve coal jobs, create the opportunity for increasing coal production and keep electricity rates in regions like Southwest Virginia affordable. The compromise that I have reached with Chairman Waxman achieves those goals.
It doesn't seem unreasonable, as many have pointed out, that industry's weeping and wailing about this bill in public hides the fact that they know it's the best deal they're going to get.
Indeed, the EPA is one of the few government agencies that's done anything constructive to push us away from the destructive, outmoded coal industry. As the indispensible David Sasson reports, they did so just yesterday:
In a previous post, I wrote about how the coal industry got its way with ACES, the Waxman-Markey climate bill. Much of their victory had to do with sharply limiting the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose chartered purpose is to protect the environment, and therefore, public health.
The agribusiness industry won a similar victory. When Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), chair of the House Agriculture Committee and point person for an alliance of rural and coal state Democrats seeking to weaken the bill, put his foot down and said, "I'm pretty sure that any role for EPA in agriculture is a deal breaker."
Rep. Peterson's main complaint about the first draft of ACES, and what seemed to be the general complaint of the House Agriculture Committee, was that the legislation didn't give farmers enough money for things they were already doing. Throw more money at us based on no scientific evidence whatsoever, he said, or no deal.
House leadership took Peterson at his word. Like, for example, this word:
I'm beginning to feel that we have a real problem in talking about health care. Sometime in the last couple weeks, I read a comment about how what we were arguing about had little to do with health care and everything to do with financing.
... [A]ccording to the AMA 94% of all insurance markets in the United States are highly concentrated
... Between 2000 and 2007 the top ten publically traded insurance companies saw profits increase 428%! Let that sink in, in a little over seven years they saw a 428% increase in profit, all the while passing on double digit increases in premiums to their customers!
... There is also a need for new legislation limiting the size of health care companies ...
I was with them up to that point, but the size of clinics and hospitals isn't the problem and talking about insurance companies as if they were your GP plays right into the hands of the 'we have the best health care in the world' crowd.
Because your doctor or physicians' assistant or nurse provides health care. Your dentist or psychiatrist provides health care. If you're like me and one of these fine medical professionals has cured something that ailed you, the term health care probably calls up some warm and fuzzy thoughts towards them.
But United Healthcare provides medical financing. As with the rest of the finance industry, health care financing is driven by unrestrained greed, unsustainable profits, and a sickening disregard for the public good.
Medical expense financing isn't health care any more than car insurance is a ride to work, and helping its purveyors hide behind our goodwill towards doctors is like confusing Geico with Ford Motors. So call the public option health insurance reform, or medical finance reform, but please (I say, with a sternly wagging finger pointed selfwards,) don't call it health care reform.
