This idea doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and I’m getting dizzy trying to decide (like my opinion matters) if I should support a “strong public plan” in the absence of real reform with a single-payer plan. And then I realized that there are two questions that hover in the back of my mind whenever I read an update about the health reform issue – how much will it cost ME and what will I get?
And boy-oh-boy no one is letting that information leak out!
How much will it cost me?
Then (from TNR, believe it or not) comes THIS idea:
Every time we mention the impact of a health reform proposal on the federal budget with a CBO score, we should also give an estimate of how the proposal impacts a family budget. Call it the Consumer Budget Impact–the CBI. It would indicate how a family’s premiums would go up or down–and how much their exposure to significant medical debt would decline.
True, no single number can capture this. So we may need to come up with a set of numbers and perhaps compile them into an index, the way Dow Jones uses a mix of stocks to demonstrate the performance of the market as a whole. Elected officials should know if John’s family at just over the federal poverty level will be able to get coverage–and if we are expecting too much for Alice the 60-year old who is around 400 percent of the poverty level.
Remember, the subsidies in health reform don’t simply help the uninsured get coverage; they also help people who already have coverage but are struggling to pay for it. Think of the early retiree who spends over $1,000 a month, and thus over a third of his or her limited income, to keep coverage. Or the underinsured young adult who can only afford the bare-bones, high-deductible health plan. Or the workers who would lose coverage if not for the assistance and new affordable options their employer is being offered.
All of these people are insured, but in a way that is inadvisable and/or unsustainable. Depending on their income, they and millions of others will get help, so they don’t have to pay over a certain percentage of their income for premiums to get a standard package of benefits.
And while we’re at it let’s Tell Rangel to Score HR 676 so we can properly evaluate the Consumer Budget Impact of that along with all the rest.
. . . there are approximately 47 million Americans without health insurance and that is unacceptable to me – as it should be to you. We must look for solutions. We must listen to each other, since no political party has a monopoly on good ideas. And, we must work together, with all possible solutions on the table for discussion, to reform our current health care system so that we improve the quality of care, reduce costs and increase access to care for all Americans.
But, wasn’t incredibly surprised to read this clarification in an interview published today in a local paper:
“When you have 47 million people without access to health care, we have a huge problem and we need to address that,” he said. “Can we correct it all in the next few months? Probably not. But we do need to address that as a nation.
“I certainly want to preserve private insurance companies and I don’t want a government-run (health care) program – absolutely not.”
I called his office today to point out that his website confused his priorities and to thank him for clarifying the issue — that to Congressman Moore the bit that is unacceptable is that 47 million Americans aren’t paying for private insurance. . . . . NOT that 47 million Americans don’t have access to health care.
José Guillen returned to the lineup — but as the designated hitter — and could spend time this weekend battling the Green Monster, the big left-field wall at Boston’s Fenway Park, in an effort to reduce strain on his aching legs.
“Our familes, our communities, and even our economy have seen the many important benefits that have come from recognizing equal marriage rights and, frankly, no downside,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said this afternoon at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “However, we have also seen how many of our married residents and their families are being hurt by a discriminatory, unprecedented, and, we believe, unconstitutional law.”
After years of consideration, republican Charlie Baker has decided to quit his lucrative job as CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care so he can devote his full time to a 2010 Massachusetts gubernatorial bid.
“I am pleased by the progress we’re making on health care reform and still believe, as I’ve said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest,” read the statement. “I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals.”
The vague reassurance came hours after Obama’s own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel suggested that the White House would be comfortable with legislation that had a public plan “triggered” in only by worsening economic conditions.
Wow! In an interview with Huffington Post over the long weekend, Chuck Schumer said that with Franken seated, there is no more need for compromise on health care legislation.
Schumer offered a detailed and frank assessment of the political landscape of the current health care debate. Predicting that the final bill will include a public plan, he painted the Republican Party as rigid to a fault when it comes to negotiations.
“This is where we are going to end up,” he said of a health care overhaul that included a public plan. “And I think, it would be much better for the Senate Finance Committee if we did it in the committee… I think the Senate HELP committee compromised already, because you have a lot of members on the HELP committee who would’ve liked [the public option] to be much closer to Medicare. The idea seems to be catching everybody’s imagination, and sense of fairness. And the only holdouts are sort of ideologues on the Republican side of this saying no government involvement whatsoever.”
Schumer didn’t add, but I will that we have a President who is too wimpy to stand up to the Republicans and fight for a public option and who opposes singer payer because it would “suddenly upend” the current health care system.
Back to Schumer:
“My bottom-line criteria is that it has to be strong, national, and available to everyone on day one, to keep the insurance companies honest and I’m not sure we can get there,” Schumer said. “I’ve been talking to [Sen.] Olympia [Snowe] about this,” he added, referring to the trigger option’s main proponent in the Senate, “but I’m not sure we can bridge that gap.”
Similarly critical remarks were offered for the idea of replacing a public plan with health care co-ops, which Schumer described as insufficient and unpractical.
“[Sen. Chuck] Grassley hasn’t closed the door, but it seems in general that his model of co-op is little co-ops popping up like they do in farm country,” he said. “And the model that we are saying we need is they have to be strong, national and available everywhere from the first day. And I think we are very far apart on this.”
I wonder if the Senator from New York has discussed this with the big boss. Hasn’t Obama been making noises about compromising on the public option in order to get Republication votes? And then when people keep complaining, “expressing concern” about grass roots effort to get single payer health care?
Can Schumer withstand the presidential blowback? I just hope he sticks to his guns, even after Obama returns from his latest trip and starts talking about compromise and trying his best to make sure his buddies in the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations are well taken of. I’m not going to hold my breath, but I do have hope.
And maybe Shumer has been hearing from his constitutents. Today’s Washington Post has an interesting on-line post by Doug Feaver on the views of “health-care lobbyists vs. real people
Our Readers Who Comment are nearly unanimous this morning in condemning the news that more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress are lobbying for major health-care firms in the legislative attempts to reform the broken system.
Feaver provides a sampling of reader responses. Here are a few examples:
sashab1 wrote, “…Single-payer, universal health care is the only reform that will actually work. The insurance industry is going to water down the public option until it won’t work, and they will be back in business (and we will be wringing our hands again) in a couple of years.”
lionelroger predicted that “Obama will most certainly be a one-termer if he falls in with a corrupt Congress and does not deliver a public option Plan or single-payer universal health care… It is a monumental travesty for Congress and Federal employees to enjoy a cafeteria-style Health Benefits Plan subsidized by taxpayers but not available to all our citizens. Enough of this injustice.”
texanrme said, “This a war for the survival of those that have profited at the expense of the sick and elderly for generations… They want to argue how government can not handle healthcare administration, but they have proven beyond a doubt that neither can they…”
Of course some commenters still think that Obama is looking out for their best interests, but it does seem that generally people are starting to wake up and smell the corruption.
He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.
I thin that’s right. Framing effects are important in politics. The public-private competition is supposed to be a compromise between the pristine vision of single-payer and the desire of private insurers not to be put out of business. It creates a situation in which insurers are challenged to prove that single-payer advocates are wrong, rather than simply assert it. But with no single-payer plan in the mix, this gets lost, and the compromise becomes the leftmost anchor of the debate. A single-payer plan couldn’t possibly have passed, but I think having hearings on single-payer and having one committee draft a serious single-payer bill that gets a serious CBO score would have been a useful exercise. In particular, it would have focused the mind on the costs involved in rejecting this option.
I don’t know why the Dems never learn this lesson. If you start with the compromise position, you will and up compromising on that. They prefer a strategy of pulling together a coalition and getting them all to buy in on something they can agree with, but than that of course gets watered down into crap no one actually supports.
The entire premise of the Yglesias post is bullshit—give me a break, that Republican-wannabe Baucus didn’t somehow have the magical ability to give up on single payer from the git-go, hell, single payer was given up on in stupid weakness because of this moron Baucus—but the point still vividly stands that giving up on single payer before we ever started was a terrible, terrible mistake.
I do think the precise mechanics of this flaming fuckup would good to know for the liberal community, accountability is a good thing. The first I ever heard of it was last year in Texas at Netroots Nation from Ezra Klein, who actually had the youthfully obnoxious arrogance to state having single payer as a goal “was a naïve pursuit of perfection.” Well, Ezra, just where did you learn that? Who gave you that strategy to push that was and is so stupid? It’s not just me, your old companeros Atrios and Yglesias say it too. Well? I suppose graduation to the establishment big time means the badass Ezra can ignore the lowly blogger question, but we’ll see.
The obnoxious sneering from a hopelessly wrong fool isn’t the point, it’s that even a nobody from nowhere like me knows never to give up crucial goals in negotiation before you even start, so how come professional politicians like Democrats don’t know?
Are we all Professor Rosen now? Having asked, let us offer a fairly obvious speculation:
In all likelihood, Baucus took single-payer off the table for a very good reason—because he isn’t trying to create a progressive health reform package. His statement to the Times was pure BS. After all, Baucus is a corporate man (data below). He wants health reform near the “center.”
After the fact, he was covering his keister for those on the left. Our other professor bought it.
Yglesias penned a thoughtful piece about the meaning of Baucus’ move. He too failed to note an obvious possibility: When Baucus voiced his regrets to the Times, it was a big silly con! (emphasis added)
Here’s why Baucus is not doing the peoples business:
According to OpenSecrets.org over his career he has taken donations from:
The Insurance Industry: $1,170,313
Health Professionals $1,016,276
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry $734,605
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $541,891
Health Services/HMOs $439,700
That is a grand total of $3,902,785. Can we trust Baucus to put aside the profits of the industries that have kept him in the senate? Will he put the people’s necessities ahead of the profits of his contributors? Baucus has shown his bias and should be removed from leading the health care reform effort by the Democratic Party leadership.
In 2008 Baucus had virtually no challenger in Montana. A little-known Republican was on the ballot, Baucus won with 73% of the vote. But, Baucus sought big donations from big business anyway. He used his connections to corporations with business before his committee to raise an immense campaign fund of more than $11 million. In 2008, 91% of his donations come from individuals living outside of Montana, which is why he is more the “Senator for K Street” then the Senator for Montana. Corporate health profiteers who invested in Baucus will now benefit from his stewardship over health care reform. His 2008 donations from health care profiteers included:
Insurance $592,185
Health Professionals $537,141
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $524,813
Health Services/HMOs $364,500
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $332,826
That is $1,826,652 Baucus took from industries who he can now make wealthier by deforming health care reform.
Do you get it?
Not only are we not gonna get single-payer out of this motley crew, we’re not even gonna get a true “public option.” All we’re gonna get is a Rube Goldbergesque clusterfuck that guarantees the health care leeches will continue to grow fat on our blood.
Meanwhile some of the allegedly brightest minds in Left Blogistan will be bleating about the Democrats’ “bad strategy.” The problem is that it isn’t a bad strategy – it is a very effective strategy. The Democratic leadership (Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Baucus et. al) are accomplishing their goal – to avoid real health care reform at all cost.
We know the Republicans aren’t on our side, but the Democrats pretend to be our friends while selling us down the river. They are the political equivalent of the Washington Generals. They get paid to put on a show and lose.
Nothing will change until the lefty blogosphere quits making excuses for them
The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.
Which brings us back to health care. It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.
The astroturfing of the blogosphere continues. From “No Thank You” in the comments to my earlier post:
Universal Health Care = Rationed Health Care
Waiting lists are for dinner reservations, not doctor referrals.
No, thank you.
[…]
I used to be a citizen of Canada. My wife died of IBC 15 months ago. She was referred by our doctor to an IBC specialist. After waiting for an appointment for 4 weeks, her breast had swollen to nearly two times it’s normal size. We took her to the hospital, and she died two days later.
I am not in need of a lecture on universal health care. I know exactly what it means. Cheaper/Free insurance, and lots of pain.
What a tragic story. Only a heartless monster would dare to challenge it. A heartless monster like me.
First of all, “rationed health care” is a wingnut talking point. The catchy little line about dinner reservations was a nice touch – professional quality. But the comeback in the second comment was a classic troll move designed to squish any challenge with guilt and shame. Too bad for our visitor that I’m shameless.
A total stranger drops by to share a heartbreaking story of the evils of socialized medicine. Proof?
None.
Sorry, but I don’t believe it.
But even if the story was true it would be anecdotal and not necessarily typical. We’re not even provided with causation – an explanation of how the alleged delay caused death. Unfortunately when he discovered we aren’t sheeple our visitor skeedaddled without providing answers.
Canada has had single payer health insurance for over 30 years. They seem pretty happy with it. From “Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths” by Rhonda Hackett:
There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists’ care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.
America’s political scene has changed immensely since the last time a Democratic president tried to reform health care. So has the health care picture: with costs soaring and insurance dwindling, nobody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change.
The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.
[…]
The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around “centrist,” by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.
What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.
[…]
Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.
Gee Paul, for a really smart guy you can be kinda dumb sometimes. Your thesis is based on a false premise. The Democratic leadership (Obama, Pelosi and Reid et al.) have no intention of enacting any real health care reform. They never did. Their goal is and always was to preserve the status quo while giving the illusion of reform.
If they tried and failed that would be one thing, but they aren’t trying. There has never been a better time in our history to make single-payer a reality, but the Democrats took it off the table before discussions began.
What we are seeing now is just Kabuki – when the final curtain drops all we’ll have is some new lipstick on the same old pig.
You don’t need Daniel to read the writing on the wall – we ain’t getting a health care reform pony. Our last hope for getting real reform anytime soon died on May 31, 2008
Americans United For Change is a powerful movement bringing together independent voices for new policy priorities and real leadership – to focus our elected officials on the issues that really matter to the lives of everyday Americans and get America moving in the right direction again.
It doesn’t say so but it’s a Democratic front group.
Brad Woodhouse former President of Americans United for Change, is now communications director for the Democratic National Committee under Barack Obama.
The video is meant to distract you from the truth. They want you to blame the Republicans for blocking health care reform.
It will be Obama and the Congressional Democrats fault. Blame them.
“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man,
in whom there is no help” – Psalm 146:3
Two pieces of news this week – Bill Clinton meets with some bloggers and tells them to apply pressure to Congress and the Obama administration from the left and the Washington Post fires liberal columnist Dan Froomkin who was pressuring Congress and the Obama administration from the left.
Last week the LGBT community got a lump of coal in their stocking and this week it was healthcare reform advocates’ turn in the barrel. Since he became the “presumptive nominee” Obama has broken so many promises that Arthur Silber advises:
Don’t try to keep a list of all of Obama’s broken “promises.” Instead, keep a list of the promises you think he made that he’s kept. In this manner, your work will be brief and undemanding.
So what are the nutroots focused on? Getting religion.
Netroots Nation, the big lefty political/blogging meeting, is organizing sessions for their conference in August. Unfortunately, they seem have given up on the idea of a secular nation, because this one session on A New Progressive Vision for Church and State has a bizarre description.
The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed–one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed, without criticism, to propose policies based on religious belief. (emphasis added)
I wonder if Carrie Prejean will be on the panel for that discussion.
Times are tough in the Kool-aid Kingdom. It’s like the epitaph on the hypochondriac’s tombstone says:
“I expected this, but not so soon.“
What I didn’t expect was that we would be left behind in Left Blogistan. Richard Nixon described the secret to getting elected President as a Republican as “run to the right as far and as quickly as possible in the primaries, then run back to the center as quickly as possible in the general election.”
Obama’s theory appears to be “run to the left in the primaries and then run to the center in the general election and keep on heading right after you’re elected.” Obama hasn’t just broken campaign promises, he has betrayed some of his earliest and most loyal supporters. Well, maybe not his earliest supporters and certainly not his biggest donors. His moneybags backers should be really happy since they got exactly what they paid for – a conservative wolf in a liberal sheep’s clothing empty suit.
Despite the fact that Obama quickly morphed into Bush III, the Republicans kept calling him a socialist and threatened to obstruct pretty much everything he proposed. This caused the sippy-kup kidz to rush to Obama’s defense, heedless of the fact that they crossed the border separating moonbat from wingnut, dragging the Overton window with them.
Those of us that never jumped on the Obama bandwagon Kool-aid kart are sitting here all alone in Liberal territory watching “progressive Democrats” defend the same policies for which they wanted to impeach Bush II, such as torture, indefinite detention and domestic spying.
Now, five months into Obama’s administration (and over a year since we warned them) some progressives are starting to wake up and smell the arugula. But are they apologetic and contrite, humbly admitting that we were right all along? Hell no! They have nothing but contempt for our “paranoid band of shrieking holdouts” and act shocked and surprised as they wail that “nobody could have foreseen” what is happening. They still think we are traitors for not supporting the man who betrayed them. Go figure.
For years I used to get so frustrated by the way Democrats capitulated to the GOP when it really counted. It was after the 2006 electoral tsunami that the truth begin to penetrate my think skull. Even though they had just finished kicking ass and taking names in November, the first thing Nancy Botoxi did in January 2007 was take impeachment “off the table.”
The 2006 exit polling showed that the voters wanted to end the war in Iraq. So what did the Democrats do? They voted to fund it with nary a whimper. All the GOP had to do in the Senate was threaten to filibuster and Dirty Harry Reid would fold like a cheap suit. “We need bigger majorities and the White House too!” was their excuse. Then Harry and Nancy (and Barack) led the stampede to pass the FISA revision with retroactive immunity in it.
Finally I realized the truth. With the Democratic Party, failure is a feature not a bug. They don’t want to win. That’s why they hate Bill Clinton so much – he screwed up and won. Twice. The Democratic victories in 2006 had more to do with the failure of the Republicans and the efforts of non-Villagers than it had to do with the DLC or DNC.
Now the Democrats have huge majorities in Congress and the White House but we’re still supposed to take an old cold tater and wait. Meanwhile they want mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.
The lesson here is : You can’t trust any politician.
Not any of them, not even Hillary or the Big Dawg. Put your trust in principles and ideology and advocate for the policies that reflect them. Support only those candidates that will commit to what you believe in. Demand promises from them before giving them your vote and then accept no excuses once they are in office.
Never cut politicians or political parties any slack. Keep up the pressure – even if they did good in the past, keep asking them “What have you done for me lately?”
The Confluence 