If I were a member of the House of Representatives, I would have voted with the blue-dog Democrats and the Republicans against the so-called health care reform bill that squeaked through this past Saturday night by only five votes.

That’s because the Affordable Health Care for America Act is a 1,990-page farce orchestrated by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and too many naive and/or self-centered House members concerned more about their re-election than the health of their constituents.

H.R. 3200 would force Americans to carry health insurance either through their work, a government plan, or by buying their own coverage (at subsidized rates). During a three-year transition period, $5 billion in federal money would help people who can’t get private coverage because they can’t afford it and/or have pre-existing conditions. The bill wouldn’t become fully effective until 2013 (conveniently after the next congressional election).

And, in a political bone thrown to conservatives who otherwise wouldn’t have voted for it, an amendment was tacked on to the bill banning the use of public funds to pay for abortions.

The House bill’s estimated price tag is $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Why did blue-dog Democrats and Republican members of the House, including U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., oppose the bill? They will couch it in all kinds of statesmanlike terms, but most of them don’t want health care reform at all, especially if it means the government would be involved.

Here’s what Rep. Rehberg had to say about his no vote on what he called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “trillion dollar government takeover of health care”:

“Once again, House Democrats put their Party ahead of doing the best thing for our country. Instead of immediate and targeted reform to fix the national health care crisis, Americans will get 118 new federal bureaucracies and a solution that doesn’t even go into effect until 2013.

Now we must hope that any Senate action will be more reflective of the folks I heard from at 18 listening sessions around Montana.”

Taking the extreme opposite view was Democratic candidate Dennis McDonald, who wants to replace Rep. Rehberg in the congressional trough. In a statement sent out Sunday entitled “Rehberg Blinked,” Mr. McDonald opined that Nov. 7 was an “historic day” in the House when “this great body spoke on behalf of ordinary Americans and voted to fix our broken health care system.”

It would be nice if House members were genuinely trying to do that, but most of them weren’t. Most were trying to position themselves to look as though they were doing something momentous to heal the broken health-care system when they were really positioning themselves to climb back in the trough at the next election. It must be a pretty comfy spot since so many people avidly want to occupy it.

If Congress really wanted to reform health care and help the general public get effective and fairly priced medical care, they would have supported an expansion of Medicare to cover everyone. This way, they’re only tinkering around the edges of the health-care insurance industry, which is a far different thing.

It sounds like President Obama was personally involved in keeping a single-payer amendment to the House bill from being voted on this past weekend. He had pledged to get a reform bill passed this year and didn’t want to look like he couldn’t get the job done.

Mr. Obama said Sunday that he had called cancer survivor Katie Gibson of Bozeman that morning to tell her about the House vote and that the bill would “protect Americans just like her from the kinds of insurance company abuses she had to endure.” Ms. Gibson, whom the president met this past summer, apparently had her insurance coverage canceled despite paying her premiums on time.

Significantly, the president called the House legislation exactly what it is: “health insurance reform,” not “health care reform.” Single-payer advocates equated the House-passed bill with taking aspirin for breast cancer.

HR 3200’s next stop is the U.S. Senate, where Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has already called it “dead on arrival.” U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said he wouldn’t allow the bill to come to a final vote there as a “matter of conscience,” something I’m surprised he knows anything about. What seems to irk many senators is the idea of government competing with private insurers in any way.

Now we will hear a chorus of overblown verbiage from talking heads and self-serving candidates about how great or awful the House bill is. But you’ll rarely hear the truth: how the corruption of Congress has gotten so bad that, despite how they spin this bill, it won’t help anything except the insurance industry.

One clue ...

… To why we’re so sold out by Congress is a recent Center for Responsive Politics study showing that 44 percent of all members of Congress are millionaires, compared to 1 percent of the general public who fit that category.

Rep. Rehberg is on that exclusive list, with a 2008 net worth of between $6.5 million and $56.2 million, putting him at No. 13 in the U.S. House. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., had a 2008 net worth of between $600,002 and $1.25 million, ranking him No. 71 in the Senate, while U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, only listed about $110,000 in net worth for that year.

Quote of the week

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
–  George Washington