What's true of the Ten Hours Bill is also true of medical care. A work force that is forced to "choose" no medical care or inadequate medical care will be sicker and less productive. (Not to mention the loss of productivity caused by the increase in stress generally). Employment-based medical care is falling apart around our ears. You're right that the Baucus bill tries to solve this by making it mandatory for individuals to purchase medical insurance, and by trying to do something about cherry-picking and its cousin, the adverse selection death spiral. But will the Baucus bill work? Oh, hell no! Auto liability insurance is mandatory in Illinois. There are a shitload of companies who will sell you the minimum liability insurance, but if you're hit by someone with one of these policies, just try collecting. There will be bottom-feeder medical insurance as well. Cheaper rates (though not that much cheaper) and even higher rates of co-payment and denied claims than the slime in the pool right now. So, from the point of view of Capital, the Baucus bill (or anything else that we will get) is going to be an abject failure.
And that gives us an opening. An opening that must be seized now. The liberals shilling for Obama on this are the enemy. Anyone who is serious on this issue has to denounce the Baucus bill and its cousins now, as a sell-out to the insurance companies and pharma that will prop up their profits while doing nothing to improve your health care or make it more affordable. And the failure of this "reform" will bite tens of millions of people hard. No one who gives "critical support" to this plan will have any credibility when it comes time to clean up its failures. The manifest failures of this reform - and I assume that some version of Baucus will get through - will give everyone reason to think again about this. We need to make as many of them as possible think, "why can't I just get Medicare like my parents (or grandparents) do?" instead of "see, the gummint has fucked it up again" as the brownshirts would have it.
So there you have it - a potential mass base larger than anything the Left has seen in decades, a capitalist class paralyzed by its own inability to coordinate action in its collective interests (and therefore potentially neutralizable, something that almost never happens!), and the opposition led by a bunch of mouth breathers that even the pathetic American Left should be able to take on. And yes, if we win we will be saving capitalism from itself, at best shifting the terms of political discourse in a social-democratic direction. Not the Revo, but the best chance we've had in a very long time.
MM
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com> wrote:
> MM writes:
>
>>Capitalists, unable to overcome the collective action problem needed to
>> safeguard the interests of Capital, need the State to step in and act on
>> Capital's behalf. (Think Marx on the Ten Hours Bill if Poulantzas isn't your
>> cup of tea).
>
>
> Which is why we have Baucus' Insurance Company Profit Protection Act. The
> state is probably going to step in, with more cash subsidies for insurance,
> and a requirement that we all purchase that defective product. You mean
> that what's imploding is the job-based insurance system, and pay-or-play
> rules are efforts to shore it up and remove the provision of health
> insurance as a competitive factor? (Is that your 10 Hours Bill point--the
> factory owners following the law complained of those who didn't, and wanted
> more enforcement?) Maybe you could explain why you say it's our strongest
> lever, though.
> Jenny Brown
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>