The Beauty of the Bailout

So one of the things about Washington that I don't think will ever change is that it is full of opportunists. No where in the country is this more apparent than in our Legislative process. No time in the legislative process is it more likely to happen that when all hell is breaking loose and legislation has to be passed quickly. (Quick, for the record, isn't a word that appears in the body of the congressional dictionary.)

Knowing this I decided to wander out to our newly passed H.R. 1424. This bill provides "authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes."

I like economic and financial stability although I'm still hoping it doesn't mean that what we've stabilized is bad credit and people who got rich off of it. I think energy production should be incentivized although I'd like a clearer definition of natural gas (methane gas is natural but do we really want MORE of it?)

I'm wondering how much tax relief we'll really see individually if we are now having to fund an additional 850 billion (for what we've spent on this and the war we could have bought BOTH Iraq and Mexico - solving at least two problems and increasing our tax-base.) I was heartened to see, I think, that the Palin family paid the same amount in taxes as I did in 2007...although I made a bit less. But she has more deductions and lives in a much more expensive location. Oh, and she didn't get a stimulus check either.

It's the "other purposes" I think bear a closer look. So let's see what else the "bailout" gave us.

First, it made some improvements (depending on your viewpoint) to the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. Since Paul Wellstone died in 2002 I was immediately assured that it wasn't specific to his mental health. Which is good because otherwise I think we could be looking for more specific mental healthcare coverage for at least 435 representatives in the House and 100 senators in the Senate. I digress, but only a bit since this is the whole point of the what was the original H.R.1424 before it was changed to make economic stabilization even possible.

In brief, this "rider" makes it clear that limits are based on duration/scope of treatment - not dollars, substance-related disorders have to be included in mental health benefits (does lemon cake addiction count?), prescribes a bunch of minimums in terms of what all health plans must cover, increases medicaid drug rebates, limits certain types of physician referrals (mostly around ones that benefit the referring physician - like a practice run by the referring physician's "Uncle Louis.") and makes Congress responsible for investigating whether or not anyone is paying attention to this little piece of legislation.

Then we get the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 - Title I: Genetic Nondiscrimination in Health Insurance and Title II: Prohibiting Employment Discrimination on the Basis of Genetic Information - (Sec. 202) legislation. Basically it prohibits insurers and employers from forcing you to undergo genetic testing and punishing you in ANY WAY if you do - especially if the results of your tests might suggest you could cost them some extra bucks in the future. Furthermore, if you've undergone it already (or do at some point in the future) they don't get to punish you if the results aren't what they consider optimal. Not in granting insurance and not in determining what your rates are. I consider this piece of legislation possibly worth 850 billion dollars. I'm hoping they fund HHS, Labor, and Treasury sufficiently so that these three Departments can actually enforce their mandate. Oh, and I'm wondering if they've figured out how to test for lemon-cake addiction genetics. Do I have my mother to blame for this (because lately she's become the heir apparent for family blame - so much for personal responsibility dearest brother.) Maybe my father? I blame him for my love of travel, willingness to question what others tell me is truth, and my pot belly. Maybe my lemon-cake addiction comes from him...

The greatest irony, and the part that pleases me most, is that these two riders poke the insurance companies and their greed right in the eyeball. Why? Because insurance companies are part of the financial infrastructure and thus benefit from the economic stabilization act. Good insurance policies help Americans with healthcare and if we do it right we won't have to risk government nosiness into our very personal business. For every pro-choice activist this should come as good news.

There's a lot more that this bill does in the "other category." Things that aren't mentioned in the summary. That's research you'll have to do yourself because this thing appears to be about 451 pages long. If you want more information on the bill (and a chance to see partisanship in action - thank you Financial Services Committee) go here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.1424:


Thank you Paul Wellstone. May you rest in peace.

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