Kill Bill Vol. 1 (or, Thune’s Goons)
December 6th, 2009
As reported in It’s Too Early to Celebrate the Senate Health Care Vote (Huffington Post 11/22/09), GOP Senator Pens Obstruction Manual For Health Care (Huffington Post 12/02/09; download a copy of the “Obstruction Manual” here), and Senate pushes ahead on long-term care program (Washington Post 12/05/09), Republicans (and some Dems) continue to snipe at healthcare reform. On Friday, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) introduced an amendment to eliminate a new long-term care support program from the Senate healthcare reform package.
Sen. John Thune
And his Republican goons
Are trying to kill
The healthcare bill.
Their weapon of choice is the amendment,
Which is traditionally offered in the spirit of assent.
But Republicans are using them the bill’s passage to prevent,
And it’s supporters to painfully torment.
Sen. Thune lead one such attack
To eliminate the CLASS home-care ACT,
The Senate rejected Thune’s amendment to strip it out,
But that’s not really what the amendment was about.
CLASS stands for Community Living Assistance Services and Support
Which its opponents have tried to distort
As a dangerous drain on the Treasury
(But not until sometime after 2023).
CLASS allows people to buy insurance
To help cover at-home nursing care.
The coverage can also help pay for nursing home stays
(As a supplement or replacement for Medicare).
Of those two, in-home care is generally much less expensive
Because home is a cheaper place to live.
So it seems to me that CLASS makes sense
From the perspective of dollars and cents.
From the human perspective, it’s even more compelling
To help people keep living in their own dwelling.
It lets them stay closer to family and friends
Which their quality of life extends.
So anything that helps people remain
Master of their own domain
Should be good for them and for the country,
And in the long run should save us money.
CLASS will raise $70 billion over the next 10 years,
But then might start to run at a loss, the GOP fears.
But the real reason for their amendment, of course
Is to rob the bill of a funding source.
Thune et. al. tried to do the same by stopping Medicare Advantage cuts
That will save $120 billion – what, are they nuts?
Medicare Advantage gives little value to retirees
But big payoffs to insurance companies.
So please Senator, make up your mind and commit,
Are you for higher spending, or against it?
Oh, never mind, now I see the pattern–
You’re for increasing the profits GOP contributors earn.
Too bad neither amendment made it through,
But I’m sure Big Health can still count on you.
And if I know you, Senator Thune
You won’t be giving up any time soon.
In your floor speech you did on CLASS’s imperfections dwell;
In that case, try to improve it, not destroy it, and the bill as well.
Senator, given your actions I’m afraid it’s a fact,
That you sir are no CLASS Act.
***
Here’s a video of healthcare reform supporters fighting off Thune’s goons.
Oh, sorry, I got my videos mixed up. That last one was of course from Kill Bill Volume 1. Here’s the Senate video.
Read the next installment in our Kill Bill series here.
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Tags: Healthcare, John Thune, Kill Bill, Movies, Republicans
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December 8th, 2009 at 3:21 am
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