This might not be as bad as I first thought. Now, keeping in mind that this is not the final version, I'm linking to stories about the Senate healthcare bill here, here, here, here, here and here.
News reports state that Howard Dean was working behind the scenes to push the Medicare buy-in as a compromise (just as he suggested when I interviewed him a few months ago).
I do think it's possible to get good, affordable coverage without the public option - under some circumstances. Bill Clinton told us as much when we met with him back in June, pointing out how French and German plans included regulated private insurers.
The Franken amendment setting a mandatory medical loss ratio is about the only thing they could do that would work as well as a public option in creating competition - and it's in there.
And it's certainly a win for our side if it turns out that people aged 55 to 64 can buy into Medicare. Of course, none of us know what those actual premiums look like because Medicare is so heavily subsidized for its current population. Here's the estimated premium. My guess is, once people get into the plan, they'll start lobbying their reps for more subsidies - and to open the plan up even more.
One of the problem areas that's a national disgrace is how the handicapped have to wait a couple of years before they can get Medicare coverage. It would be great if something in this bill fixes that, but we don't have the details yet.
Oh, and the Chamber of Commerce and the GOP will hold a press conference today urging Congress to scrap the entire bill and work on lowering costs. (Not your costs - their costs!) My rule of thumb is, if the Chamber hates it, I'm for it.
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What a week. We've already seen Blue Dogs take women to the back of the bus (or was it the alley?) with Stupak's impressively Stupid Amendment. Now we're hearing that those who supposedly worry about "too much spending" when it comes to health care--you know, the meatloaf-brains who rejected the public option, which would create competition and actually bring down costs--are now blathering on about embracing "tort reform."
Because you'd really want to take away the rights of victims in a democracy to lower the health care costs by...wait for it...wait for it... ".5%" (according to the CBO).
All you really need to know is that Blue Dogs/GOPers (is there any difference?) are those in favor of this counterproductive course of action, yet if you do indeed need more, watch the heart wrenching videos recounting the tragic results of medical malpractice. To learn more about the 98,000 lives lost due to medical error each year--or 268 every day--go to 98,000 reasons, a website set up by the American Association for Justice. Once there send a message to your Senator: Remind them you won't have your rights further stripped away so they can scarf down more caviar with their contributors at Big Insurance.
I can draw only one of two conclusions: Either the Obama administration's economic advisers and their Congressional enablers are as dumb as a box of hammers and completely oblivious to the history of the first Great Depression, or they do know and are gambling with the nation's economy anyway - because they're afraid the Republicans might draw blood in the next election cycle:
WASHINGTON — Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts.
But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats, including in the White House, are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans’ willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain adamantly opposed to tax increases, leaving the prospects for any bipartisan approach limited at best.
The proponents, however, are pressing for a Senate vote this month. “If we have the same process and the same people, we are going to get the same results,” said Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, who recently met with Mr. Obama to discuss the idea. “The Democratic Party wants to spend more than we can afford, the Republican Party tends to want to cut taxes more than we can afford. So we are stuck.”
And of course, the grandstanding Mr. Bayh is the man who loves to agree with the Republicans.
Concerns about the deficit are building even as the White House and Congress continue to add to it with tax cuts and spending to stimulate a still-fragile economy. Yet those one-time costs do not trouble most economists and market analysts.
The main driver of long-term deficits is the chasm between the benefit programs Medicare and Medicaid, which are growing faster than the economy, and federal tax collections, which are at one of their lowest levels in many decades relative to the size of the economy.
Mr. Obama’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, now at work on the president’s next budget, due in February for the 2011 fiscal year, declined to comment about a bipartisan commission and instead promised that the coming budget would propose additional ways to reduce the deficit beyond next year, when the economy is fully recovered.
Paul Krugman referred us to this just the other day:
A lot of politicians and political operatives in DC are very impressed by polling that shows people concerned about the budget deficit. I think it would be really politically insane for people to take that too literally. If congress makes the deficit even bigger in a way that helps spur recovery, then come election day people will notice the recovery and be happy. If, by contrast, the labor market is still a disaster then people will be pissed off. It’s true that they might say they’re pissed off at the deficit, but the underlying source of anger is the objective bad conditions.
But the political argument against focusing on the deficit is even stronger than he realizes — because there are very good odds that even if Obama exhibited iron fiscal discipline, voters wouldn’t notice. There’s a remarkable, depressing paper by Achen and Bartels that includes an analysis of voter views of the deficit in 1996 — by which time the huge deficit that Bill Clinton inherited had been drastically reduced.
Here’s what voters thought they knew... Yep: after one of the biggest moves toward budget balance in history, a majority of Republicans, and a plurality of all voters, believed that deficits had increased.
Not to put too fine a point on it: if Obama succeeded in reducing the deficit, would Fox News or the Washington Times report it?
The truth is that the truth about budgets plays almost no role in real politics. Right now, Meg Whitman is campaigning for Governor of California on the claim that state spending has exploded over the last decade — when the fact is that it has fallen drastically in real per capita terms. Will she pay a price for this? Probably not.
So if I were a politician, I’d focus on providing real improvements in peoples’ lives, rather than seeking deficit reductions the public won’t even hear about.
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From Face the Nation, Russ Feingold has to remind Bob Schieffer that the "public option" is not a "liberal" position on health care reform. It's a compromise. What liberals want is single-payer.
SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about health care. Where do you think health care reform stands in the Senate right now? I know you want the public option, the government-run insurance program, like Medicare for older people. The majority leader now seems inclined to include that in the bill that he’s going to bring to the floor. Do you think that has any chance at this point of passage? Because for a while now, people have been saying the votes are just not there in the Senate.
FEINGOLD: Well, I want to give my majority leader, Harry Reid credit for seriously considering putting this public option in there. I think it’s very important. It’s a sign of strong leadership on his part that he has the guts to do that. Because the American people are for some alternative that will create some competition for the abuses of the insurance industry. So I believe that there’s a good chance it will be in the bill that comes before us in the Senate. I think we have some chance of prevailing in the Senate on it and if we don't I think there's a chance it will come through the House. So I’m becoming increasingly optomistic that we will have a health care bill that will not frighten the American people, that they'll be able to see as reasonable -- it's not a complete government take over health care, but will provide an option for those that don’t have health care or are unhappy with their health care to do something else and I'm frankly getting excited that we may have some momentum for something very positive.
SCHIEFFER: As I understand it, the liberals want the, want the public option. The conservatives don’t. Do you think there’s a possibility that this thing may just end up in a log jam, that liberals won’t vote for this plan without the public option and the conserves won’t vote for it if it includes the public option, and so we wind up with nothing instead of something?
FEINGOLD: Well, that could happen, but the truth is, what liberals want is a single-payer system. Medicare for everybody. So the idea of a public option is really a very moderate idea. Within the current context of a continuing private system, it’s a tough one to swallow for many people who want a single-payer system. So this is a very reasonable approach that I would think people who are both conservative and liberal and in the middle would say, let’s try this; let’s see if this can control and bring under some reason of measure that the insurance companies could finally improve their act.
That is exactly what -- what this is. It is not a liberal or left-wing concept at all.
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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.
Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...
Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...
Right...
...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.
Yeah.And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.
Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.
WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.
This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.
What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!
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Here's another portion of Michael Moore's interview with Wolf Blitzer from Sept. 24, 2009. Michael is exactly right about one thing here. You're not seeing the passion on the left in support of the President because he started from a compromised position instead of starting with single payer and compromising from there if need be. He is also correct that if, not when, the President ever came out for single payer, you would see massive amounts of people coming out and supporting him. You're not going to see that passion on the left for a watered down giveaway to the insurance industry.
BLITZER: That's what President Obama said back in 2003. But now he's backed away from that as president of the United States and he seems to be backing away even from the so-called public option, which would allow the government -- a government-run health insurance company to compete with the private insurance companies. Is this what you wanted?
MOORE: Well, here's the -- here's the problem with President Obama on the health insurance proposal. He's a nice guy. You know, I mean, really, I believe he came into the White House with an olive branch to the people on the other side of the aisle. He believed in bipartisanship. I mean you've got to give the guy credit. He really -- he did not come in wanting to fight. He came in saying, you know, we're all Americans here and we need to fix this and we need to put aside this partisan stuff.
The other side didn't want to put it aside. The other side wanted to fight him tooth and nail. And -- and as part of his nice guy thing, he -- he backs a half measure, a public option.
BLITZER: But that might not even...
MOORE: And we (INAUDIBLE)...
BLITZER: That might not even make the final bill that he signs.
MOORE: And that may not. Well, of course not, because any time you don't fight for the thing you want, any time that you start off compromising, you're never going to get what you want. He started off with a compromise position -- let the private insurance companies still sit at the table, have a public option. He should have started with what he truly believes in, what he believed in, what he said in 2003, a single payer, national health care system, like all other Western countries have. We should have the same thing.
I know he believes in that, but he was trying to reach out and say, you know what, I'm not just going to come in here and ram this, so I'm willing to work with you and listen to your concerns. They don't want to listen to him.
