Call your Senator to thank him for giving Republicans a critical bonus month to whip up lies and hate over health care. Make sure to mention how you appreciate his crippled compromise bill that netted the same zero Republican votes that single payer would have done.
If you do not live in Montana (i.e., a constituent) or run a health insurance firm (i.e., a supervisor) then Baucus does not care what you think. Call your own Senator and yell at him or her about something else.
robertdsc
I think we need Crazy Joe Biden to say out loud after reading the bill: “What the fuck is this, Max? You want to fail on purpose or what?”
J.W. Hamner
Uhm, single payer wouldn’t have gotten many Democratic votes either.
That said, Baucus has definitely constructed a terrible bill… at least it seems Rockerfeller is saying NO to the current framework, so hopefully it will get better.
David
I feel so sad every time someone tells me to write my senator. I live in Arizona. My senators are Kyl and that other dude. I might as well write to Santa Claus. At least that would give me hope.
jibeaux
No one lives in Montana, Tim. One of the most frustrating things to me lately is that the fate of hundreds of millions of people is being held up and manipulated by people from places where very few people live.
Kryptik
If you do not live in Montana (i.e., a constituent) or run a health insurance firm (i.e., a supervisor) then Baucus does not care what you think. Call your own Senator and yell at him or her about something else.
You sure about that one, Tim?
Because I’m pretty sure pubilc opinion on the option in Montana actually supports the Public Option. So I really doubt it’s a case of listening to constituents there.
norbizness
A lot of Democratic Senators need to publicly say “No thanks, Max,” unless Max controls the conferees for the House/Senate conference, in which case why the fuck did we even try to begin with?
Punchy
Baucus has a raucous caucus.
Dork
Mad Max and the Thunderdumb.
Comrade Jake
How much of all this is kabuki theater though?
It seems to me that the key question is not how many Republicans are going to vote against the final bill, but how many won’t support a filibuster. Do we know if any of this song and dance is associated with the latter question?
Col. Klink
Win @ jibeaux # 4
The elk are pissed though!
PeakVT
You want to fail on purpose or what?
Baucus did want to fail. There is no believable way to explain his behavior otherwise.
The Grand Panjandrum
Max Baucus: A Senate of One. (I’m assuming he supports his own bill.)
linda
i’m just guessing, but all those bazillions of folks constantly cited as very pleased with their current policies, may be reconsidering:
As businesses contend with rising costs, many workers face an erosion of health benefits next year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.
Nine percent said they plan to tighten eligibility for health benefits; 8 percent said they plan to drop coverage entirely. Forty-one percent of employers said they are “somewhat” or “very” likely to increase the amount employees pay in premiums — though that would not necessarily mean employees would pay a higher percentage of the premiums. Employers could simply be passing along the same share of the overall increase that they are doing this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091501175_pf.html
Ash Can
Maybe now that Baucus is finished with his Bipartisan Theater production, the rest of the Dem legislature can get to work on getting a signable bill to the president’s desk.
El Cid
Baucus has not done anything foolish or incompetent.
He has very effectively used the inordinate and ridiculous amount of authority he was given (i.e., not only White House and Party respect, but eliminating most of the Finance Committee by cutting it effectively down to equal 3 Dems and 3 Repugs) in order to advance an insurance industry bailout and protection bill which (a) if is passed will screw consumers in favor of Baucus’ insurance industry funders and help unelect many of the Democrats, thus favoring the industry again or (b) if not passed will have helped screw over health care reform under the propaganda guise of bipartisanship.
Stop thinking all politicians with a (D) behind their names are secretly trying to work for your best interests but somehow foolishness or cowardice are getting in their way. I can see how the fantasy is desirable, but it’s just silly at this point.
Morbo
I hate to say it, but at this point I hope they pass a bad bill and Obama vetoes it on principle. I know I’m probably giving Obama more credit than he deserves judging by how this whole thing has played out. Just maybe it would make the “moderates” ashamed enough to craft a better bill. OK, yeah, now I’m giving too much credit to the moderates.
tinat
I wish I had a Senator in Arizona to call…but mine are the ones whipping up the lies.
And funny thing they ignore my e-mails and the few times I have called John Kyls office I get mysteriously cut off LOL.
Crashman06
So, what happens next? Are we basically stuck with this steaming turd or is there a chance something better can come out of it?
Ailuridae
@linda:
Its not that people are “satisfied with their plan” as the pollsters so glibly put it. Its that they are terrified at the alternative of not having health care at all. Anything is almost always better than nothing when you are dealing with issues of immense economic security.
It would be interesting to see a pollster phrase the meat of the issue as follows to more accurately represent that reality.
As you may know your employers contribution to your current health insurance is tax deductible. Would you like to be able to have that deduction returned to you in its entirety with the option of buying into Medicare and keeping any additional monies. Once into Medicare you could re-enter the private insurance market if you find it unsatisfactory. However, no matter your economic or job status you will never have Medicare taken from you.
I would guess 3/4 of the currently insured would take this “public option” immediately.
kay
@El Cid:
Okay. I agree. But that raises a question. Baucus has been very effective as a Senator, on behalf of the insurance industry.
Where are the Senators who drafted the HELP proposal?
Don’t tell me they’re Senators, so helpless, and waiting for leadership from the White House, because there is Baucus.
A Senator. Leading us off a cliff, surely, but right out there, in any event.
I accept Baucus. I accept the media adulation of Baucus-bullshit-bipartisan.
Where’s the other side? He’s running away with this, because no one is opposing him.
Ailuridae
@El Cid:
Don’t forget that his initial gang of six was a gang of seven as Hatch was at the table before walking away the second week.
He took a committee comprised of 56% Democrats and formed an ad hoc sub-committee to reach a compromise that was 43% Democratic without nary a strong progressive voice (and there are some even in Finance) and one fucking Lunatic (Enzi) and then Hatch and Grassley on top of it.
Ash Can
@El Cid: I’ve heard the argument before that a senator such as Baucus, from a sparsely populated area, is dependent upon big donors, such as industries, to keep his campaign fund flush. Unfortunately, it makes sense. Maybe it’s time to link Senate representation to population figures, just like in the House.
El Cid
@kay: Harkin is saying very feisty and positive things as the new chair of HELP, but we’ll have to see whether or not he’s able to use the full weight of that position or if the White House and the Party establishment move to undercut him and HELP in favor of the looming disaster. I’m remaining optimistic until evidence appears.
Woody
My senators are Kyl and that other dude. I might as well write to Santa Claus. At least that would give me hope.
Mine are Bingaman (one of the gang of six) and Tom Udall, who has proven to be far more feckless and useless as a Senator than he was as a mere Congresscritter…
ericblair
@Crashman06: Right. I’d like to hear from a legislative wonk about what this actually means. I understood that we knew a steaming pile was going to come out of Baucus’s committee, but as long as the steaming pile was actually dropped it didn’t matter what kind of stinky stuff was in it. Otherwise, you get stuck with some restrictions on financing that you don’t want. So now, as far as reconciliation goes, can the reconciliation committee use an “a”, a “the”, and possibly even a “health” from the finance committee bill as their input?
I’m kind of surprised that the GOP isn’t trying to dangle the bipartisanship carrot any more. Surely they could have dragged it out with a couple of waffling “centrist” senators for a bit more before yanking the football away from Charlie Brown. If bipartisanship is officially now dead as a doornail, I shall raise a toast as soon as the sun is over the yardarm. Hopefully Broder’s servant has obtained the correct smelling salts for him.
Bipartisanship is a wonderful thing for the unelected elite. You’ve got two main political parties, which the great unwashed lumpenproletariat can’t do anything about. Then you demand that, whatever the results of the election, you must have support from both of them to get anything done, which means that those pesky elections can be rendered meaningless. Then, since the more left-wing party is by nature less cohesive than the fall-in-line right-wing party, you can always count on a lefty for a fig leaf. Great idea, that bipartisanship.
El Cid
@Ash Can: It wasn’t Montana who empowered Baucus to be the representative of all that would be holy on coming up with a Senate bill — that was the White House, the Democratic Party establishment, and the idiot right-fetish punditariat. Baucus could have been an industry whore all on his lonesome, but it wouldn’t have meant that anyone else had to play this awful shit up.
The Grand Panjandrum
@kay: I think the reason Baucus is getting so much attention is because the other Senate committee with jurisdiction, and the three House committees with jurisdiction all have some form of a bill ready for hearings, while his committee has nothing. So the media is hyping something that doesn’t exist because the other four bills could actually be looked at and would require some thought and discussion about issues and not just process stuff.
(Sorry I can’t recall all the other committee titles but I do know the only other bill getting any press is H.R. 3200)
Brian J
I don’t remember where, but a few weeks ago, someone brought up the possibility that someone could launch a primary campaign against Baucus running solely on the health care reform platform he used to believe in. That’s not a bad idea, if there’s any remote possibility of it making a difference. I’m all for trying to operate as if this isn’t a dictatorship, but this is bullshit, to quote my mother when she gets upset. The only question is, who would run?
Cat Lady
OT – but when did Dylan Ratigan become the voice of relative sanity in the MSM on the health care debate? Two mornings in a row he’s provided substantive discussion on the health care bill issues, and hasn’t had wingnut talking point spewers on. And he has Elliot Spitzer on who really does know his shit, sadly.
jibeaux
@Ash Can:
Would take a constitutional amendment, with states like Montana voting to restrict their own representation. We’re stuck. It’s dispiriting how often I long for an oligarchy (oligarhy, if you’re Glenn Beck) of wonks to run the country based on good public policy and lots of charts and stuff. Our representative democracy is making me crazy lately, it’s just a recipe for getting nothing whatsoever done. A few more months and I would be positively cheerful at the idea of turning the entire place over to the benevolent dictatorship of Ezra Klein. Or Canada.
ericblair
@Ash Can: I’ve heard the argument before that a senator such as Baucus, from a sparsely populated area, is dependent upon big donors, such as industries, to keep his campaign fund flush. Unfortunately, it makes sense. Maybe it’s time to link Senate representation to population figures, just like in the House.
The small state Senate seats seem to be having the same corrosive influence on legislation that tiny Caribbean nations have on international banking. They’re really small in comparison to the main finance countries, but these islands have all the rights of the large ones and can be bought for a pittance. Nobody has to pay attention to the local citizens, since they haven’t got any money, so whatever Big Money wants they get and the supposed constituents can go screw themselves.
Reason number six zillion why the Senate is a complete mess.
GReynoldsCT00
@David:
Don’t feel bad, I’m in CT, the home of Loserman
Bertie Wooster
@David, Woody
I’ve got Cornyn and Hutchinson. You are not alone.
burnspbesq
@El Cid:
Baucus’ insurance industry funders
Can you provide a link to reliable information on Baucus’ campaign financing, that shows a statistically significant difference between insurance industry support as a percentage of total contributions for Baucus vs. the Senate as a whole?
Or are you just talking out of your hindquarters out of entirely justifiable frustration?
Facts are useful.
When we make shit up, we are no better than the other guys.
Max
I don’t understand the focus of the media and the Obama haters on the left about this bill.
It’s one bill from one committee in the Senate.
The bill carries the same weight as the bills out of the other committee’s and the final bill the senate will vote on has yet to be written.
Then, the senate’s bill still needs to be reconciled in conference with the bill that passes the house bill.
So, why is everyone clutching their pearls? What am I missing?
Brian J
@linda:
I’ve been thinking about this recently as I’ve been looking over my paychecks from work. Back when I started to be covered by my current job’s health coverage, it was $42 every two weeks, or $84 a month, or $21 every week. Not a massive amount of money, and perhaps it’s a steal compared to what other people pay. Granted, I’m young, healthy (as far as I know), and don’t have anyone on my plan. I’m pretty certain I don’t get coverage for vision, but I have a great dental plan. Regardless, I haven’t used the plan except to go to the dentist. As in, unless I was hallucinating for a few weeks and don’t remember something, I have never been to a medical doctor under this plan. Not once.
Now, of course, I get charged $26.50 a week. (They changed the way they do paychecks, and I get one every week, as opposed to every two weeks.) Now, it’s $106 a month, as opposed to $84. Perhaps there’s some change in the plan itself that I forgot to pay attention to, but while I remember getting a new card, I don’t think we switched providers or anything, as it looked the same as the old one.
Again, these numbers aren’t huge, so it’s not as if I am struggling to pay, and the percentage increase looks bigger because the base is so small, but still, in two years, when I haven’t used the doctor once, my health insurance has gone up by almost 25 percent. Can someone explain how this system is sustainable?
someguy
You should call and yell at your senator for the FBI (and NYPD) whipping up bogus Hate Teh Brown Peepul / Phony Tear-Wrist stories.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens_terror_suspect_trained_with_Yr8m1YzDtc2eLr972VPilL
(Sorry, no hotlink after my repeated HTML fail).
This is a downright Asscroftian “they could of done something wrong so we busted them before they managed to do anything wrong” sham case. I guess as long as it keeps a thin sliver of confused wingerz on board the Obama Train (Chris Buckley, Doug Kmiec) it’s okay, but still, the Senators need to be talked to about this pants pissing fear mongering.
ericblair
@jibeaux: A few more months and I would be positively cheerful at the idea of turning the entire place over to the benevolent dictatorship of Ezra Klein. Or Canada.
You should have been around in Canada for their attempt at fixing the Constitution via the Meech Lake Accords. That was a real fun time. Drove everyone nuts for months while regional powers pissed on each other for tactical advantage, exacerbating every historic grievance you could find, and eventually blowing up in one of the smaller prairie provinces where they needed unanimous legislative agreement. The bridesmaid for all this crap (Quebec) acted like a teenager getting dumped at the prom, and put new life into a moribund Quebec separatist movement. Good times.
If you think the healthcare reform debate is bad, it ain’t nuthin on a full-blown constitutional convention.
Ailuridae
@Cat Lady:
Dylan Ratigan’s understanding of the Health Care debate is better than most especially on MSNBC. Howeer, his harping about people’s inability to get the best plan from “market forces” demonstrates he has little more than a surface understanding. And his insistence despite repeatedly being corrected by Cohn and Klein at various points the last month that opening up the ability to buy insurance across state lines would be a good thing is either stupid or openly dishonest.
Molly
My respect for Olympia Snowe continues to grow. The fact that she told Baucus that this bill has inadequate subsidies, that it doesn’t go far enough…
An Odyssey of Fail.
Ailuridae
@burnspbesq:
Its probably a good idea to not accuse somebody of craven dishonesty when the information you seek is readily available from a simple google search.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/real-problem-with-senates-small-state.html
The reason that the poster in question didn’t cite the source of this information is that its a known fact.
BR
@Molly: It could just be an attempt to raise the price of the Baucus bill, to then kill it.
Molly
@Max: “What am I missing?”
I think it’s because some of us see this as a microcosm of what will happen when this goes before the Senate at large. It’s a leading indicator.
GregB
Buck Faucus.
-G
jibeaux
@Max:
It’s not that Baucus’ bill is going to become law as written, it’s the frustration factor. Because for lo these many months, us shrill lefties have been politely pointing out that Republicans have no intention of voting for health care reform. They’re going to water it down, and water it down, and water it down, and then they’re not going to vote for it. See Lucy, Charlie, football. It does not take the Amazing Kreskin to see this, but apparently does take someone sharper than Max Baucus. So after months of wrangling away for bipartisan “compromise” at any cost (what do you guys want? Okay, sure. What are you giving us? Nothing? Oh, okay.) he gets something that apparently no one actually likes AND has no bipartisan compromise. Olympia Snowe actually said she doesn’t support it in part because the subsidies don’t go far enough for affordability. In other words, it is too conservative for her. I have no way of knowing whether that is sincere or whether the playbook just says “reject and think of a reason later”.
Brian J
Shinobi
Our CEO very nicely informed us yesterday that they could save .5 Million if they cut our health care benefits and had us all get the public option. (even with the fine they would pay.)
Then of course there was some argument about whether there would even BE a public option.
But now I kindof don’t want there to be one if it means that jerkoffs like him can just cut people’s benefits and make more money.
Cat Lady
@Ailuridae:
I doubt I’d agree with him about what the bill should look like, but he’s discussing policy not politics and not screeching about it, I’ve learned something, and the participants on the show all appear to be debating in good faith. It’s refreshing, which is all I’m saying.
SenyorDave
I have to ask this question:
WTF is Obama’s end game on this? Up to now, almost everytime I doubted him on something big he’s proved me wrong (eg. I thought he was going to lose the election by not attacking Palin during the first few weeks after she was named when there was a ten point swing, but he waited it out and that was clearly a good strategy). But I don’t get what he is doing on HCR. Baucus has all but promised a terrible bill.
The only thing I can imagine (and hope) is that at a certain point the House steps in and says the hell with bipartisanship and writes a bill that the Democrats want, and Obama says we tried, but the Republicans won’t even come to the table.
I say let the GOP filibuster the bill. I think Beck’s minions are a lot less people than are perceived. Let Beck become the face of the party. maybe they’ll get 60% of the white vote, but they’ll lose 95% of the ethnic vote. See many Hispanics at the tea parties?
burnspbesq
@Ailuridae:
And his insistence despite repeatedly being corrected by Cohn and Klein at various points the last month that opening up the ability to buy insurance across state lines would be a good thing is either stupid or openly dishonest.
Must respectfully but firmly disagree.
Nearly everyone who has given any systematic thought to issues relating to the delivery and financing of health care in this country in this country has concluded that one of the factors contributing to the current mess is a lack of competition in private health care insurance. In most states, health insurance is close to a monopoly, or at best a duopoly. Under such conditions, the health insurance companies have no incentive to compete either on price or service.
Allowing consumers to shop across state lines is one possible way of increasing competition. Is it a panacea? Of course not, and if Ratigan is selling it as such he is mistaken. Is it worth a try? Abso-bygod-lutely.
Ailuridae
@Brian J:
It is simply an inevitability that insurance companies would flock to one state with no real regulation and fuck the great majority of those of us that actually buy our own insurance. Not me as an individual as I would benefit but the class of people who buy insurance.
Krugman’s piece on this was pretty good a while back:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/demint-offers-a-teachable-moment/
Also, I think a national community rating will get a constitutional challenge within a day of being enacted. And it will be filed by precisely the people arguing to open up insurance sales across state lines.
jibeaux
@Shinobi:
In a different bill in a different world very far from here where we were actually trying to overhaul the asinine employer-based system, you could require that employers pay what they are currently paying for health insurance directly as wages and not allow them to add it to their bottom line, but also not require that they raise it upwards annually. (Then this very different plan would pay for health care through taxation.) This would be a huge boon to employers who provide health insurance and every year have to evaluate how much of the ever-increasing premium cost they’re going to shoulder and how much to pass on to their employees, not to mention the shopping around for insurance providers, etc. They could just be done with the whole mess. If I were running a business, I would want to spend as little time and money as possible on things that didn’t have anything to do with my business.
gbear
@Bertie Wooster:
I’ve got Betty McCollum, Amy Klobuchar, and Al Franken. I do call their offices fairly often to let them know that what I want is what they’re already working for.
All my bitchy, WTF phone calls go to media whore Tim Pawlenty’s office.
I know there’s been some talk about stripping Baucus of his chairmanship. How radical (or possible) a move is that?
Max
@Molly: There was an interesting discussion on Hardball where they were looking at potential republican votes to allow us to put health care on an up or down vote. I think its called cloture?
Anyway, as I understand it, if a bill can be put together, then we get 60 votes for cloture, then, the bill can be modified and we only need 50 plus Biden.
Tweety and Chuck Todd seemed to think the Maine girls and possibly Voinavich would be on board for that.
So, I still don’t see what the harm is. Meanwhile, the President is out there selling a public option and getting the poll numbers up.
I understand the frustration, but the Congress ain’t a fast moving body. Obama’s gotten far farther with health care than any other president.
Brian J
@Ailuridae:
So then, I more or less have the argument right about why it’s not a good idea, right now, to allow them to do so. But what about if standards are universal across the country? Of course, that would be fought, but let’s assume that there was a way to get regulations to look the same across the country (as in, no challenge or one that is beaten back). (An idea world, to be sure, but go with me for a moment.) Wouldn’t it then be good to have insurers competing? Or at least, wouldn’t it not be bad? If that’s the case, why not counter the resistance to the public option with the possibility of allowing a number of competitors in each state?
I have a hard time believing I’m the only one that has thought of this, so there must be something I’m missing.
Trevor B
Montana resident here, yes people do live here, just called and voiced concerns with his local office, I will try to get Baucus on the phone later today.
burnspbesq
@Ailuridae:
Nice try, but wholly inadequate.
The 538 post to which you linked shows only aggregate PAC contributions. It says nothing about contributions from particular industries.
Drilling several levels deep into Open Secrets, one finds that the top five sources of industry support for Baucus do include the insurance industry. But it also includes pharma, the legal profession, and health care professionals. Those industries’ interests are not necessarily aligned in the current debate.
So I say that the case against Baucus, on the charge of being in the pocket of the insurance industry, remains to be made. He may be guilty of nothing more than stupidity.
Ash Can
@Max:
We’re the blogosphere. That’s our job. (And, a little more seriously, what jibeaux said.)
Completely seriously, I’m with you. This thing’s far from over, and given the fact that the prez lately has been pounding the table, often and consistently, for the public option, I continue to be optimistic. At this point I’m seeing no real evidence that he’ll sign something without a PO (let alone Baucus’s pile of manure), and plenty of evidence he won’t.
Having said that, if he were to turn around and sign a 99.99%-pure piece of crap, I’d have a conniption, because it would show just how deep his political cynicism runs (all pols have it, I know, but part of Obama’s appeal is that he seems to keep his in reasonable check). In the meantime, though, I’m not going to wail about getting blindsided unless and until it actually happens.
Napoleon
@Molly:
I have seen what you have said repeated by people like Benan, but that is not what she said. She said that cost have to come down, but there are 2 ways to get there and everyone is assuming she was talking subsidies, but she never said that.
El Cid
@Max: This is a weird bit of snark, and not backed up by a particularly incisive question. I guess I was supposed to be scared away by the mention of statistics.
The first ridiculous suggestion would be that there would have to be a statistically significant difference between Baucus’ level of insurance industry funding and his other sources of funding.
What would be your causal chain of argument for such a statistical approach? Are you arguing that, if, say, tobacco or coal industry donations were equivalent or greater in impact to Baucus’ concentrated corporate funding that this would affect his work on health care legislation? Really? This is a use of statistics? And, likewise, should insurance etc. related interests be vastly dominant, is this to be argued to affect Baucus’ views on coal or pollution controls?
However, I’d gladly clarify that the industry money –> causal change to Baucus’ behavior is not some sort of limiting factor in looking at such political behaviors.
I’d happily concede that Baucus is genuine and heartfelt in his preference for insurance industry policies, based on a typical shitty ideology found among lots of politicians, for shitty pro-corporate policies, and might have in no way been affected in his decisionmaking by a single presence or absence of a dollar or from insurance or pharmaceutical etc. interests.
Or that maybe he really thinks the idiot Republicans around him like Grassley et al truly ache in their heart to improve Americans’ experience of health care payment systems and if only some bold Democrat would craft a plan to their liking we could have better off Americans and happy Republicans.
Perhaps, for example, Max Baucus just hates hippies and likes insurance companies, and would do so if he had never received a dollar.
I’d certainly appreciate a policy-based explanation for the apparent reversal of Baucus in offering a previous plan with strong insurance company regulation and extending a Medicare buy-in down to age 55.
Maybe Baucus is, or has just become, an anti-regulatory ass. Maybe he thinks large insurers are the best judges of what’s best in health care reform. Maybe he has come to love the smell and feel of rolling around in corporate earnings reports.
It is my personal view that the greatest impact of campaign finance involvement by corporations and the super-rich are not to change the minds or perspectives of politicians who otherwise might not agree with their interests, but to increase the probability that candidates more in line with their interests are likely to successfully run and win.
In the U.S. we waste lots of time discussing CF as though it only matters if it changes the mind of an individual politician. What silliness.
It’s probably in part because questions about the corrupting influence of Big Campaign Finance are often approached from an inane look at an individual legal and ethical impropriety perspective rather than the sane view, which is the larger look at CF effects on the likelihood of candidacies and the likelihood of their success.
gypsy howell
I hate to say it, but at this point I hope they pass a bad bill and Obama vetoes it on principle.
Obama has pretty much signaled that he really doesn’t care what’s in the bill, as long as one gets passed. I wouldn’t get your hopes up about Obama suddenly having an attack of principles.
As for the idea that Baucus is being stupid and getting played by the republicans – that assumes that he’s “on our side.” He isn’t. He’s on the side of the insurance companies. He’s getting what he wants out of this — some nice funding from the insurance lobbyists. I imagine at this point, it doesn’t even really matter to him so much if he gets re-elected. Why be constrained by the Senate salary and campaign finance laws (such as they are) when the big bucks are almost within his grasp? He’s just teeing up for his big payoff, which is to make his bones with the insurance industry and pull a Billy Tauzin.
Napoleon
@Brian J:
Its the differant standards across state lines. If you operate in another state you then need to meet all of their requirements for what you offer (and capital ratios and loss reserves, etc).
Jacy
I’m a Democrat in Louisiana, so I fear yelling at my senators would have the same effect as yelling at my husband’s dog:
He cocks his head and looks at me and thinks, “I don’t know WTF you’re saying, lady, and I don’t have to listen to you anyway.”
I’m not going to get worked up about Baucus’ bill — I’m just treating it like busywork you give the disruptive kid in the class to go sit in the corner and do by himself, while everybody else does actual work.
There’s still plenty of time to panic when we get closer to having something that actually resembles what will come to a vote, instead of the crayon scribblings we’re seeing now.
Brian J
@Napoleon:
I know that’s the case, at least for individual insurance. Krugman says it’s different for employer-based insurance, but I’m not sure how.
Tsulagi
No one could ever have predicted.
And likely the Rs on his committee will now tell him his bill still isn’t bipartisany enough, and he’ll buy it. Then continue to chase that mirage. Stuck on stupid.
Plus to add an insult cherry on top, he continues to be outsmarted by someone like Grassley. The guy who chuckled saying if Dems hadn’t courted Rs they could have had legislation passed and signed by last June.
someguy
So what’s the problem? You go public option, your boss doesn’t have to pay for healthcare, and you don’t have to pay for it because it pays for itself based on efficiencies realized by centralization. Win win, right?
jibeaux
If any Montanans (or Hannah Montana? Would she work?) have actually read this and called Baucus, de-lurk and let us know. It would be interesting to know about that.
burnspbesq
@El Cid:
This is a weird bit of snark, and not backed up by a particularly incisive question. I guess I was supposed to be scared away by the mention of statistics.
That was me, not Max.
You’ve effectively accused Baucus of being in the pocket of the insurance industry. I’ve asked you to provide evidence to support that allegation. If you choose not to, fine.
You’re entitled to believe whatever you choose to believe about the corrosive influence of corporate money on our political system. I probably share some of those beliefs. But when you accuse someone of being a whore for a particular industry, you’d better have something more than a high level of corporate support to back up the charge; a high level of corporate support is just statistical noise, because every Senator has that.
Kennedy
@David: I hear you. I live in Arizona as well and I think the same things whenever someone implores me to write my elected officials.
I think we can agree on one thing though: angry constituent letters are good for John McCain.
Ailuridae
@Brian J:
If you are going to argue for increased competition via more insurers in each state using federal standards than it only makes sense to have health insurance companies take federal charters and not state ones. Oh but wait, thats not even thinkable given the current make-up of the supreme court.
Medicaid is a good example of a state enforced application of a federal standard. The maximum income in Alabama for eligibility is 2400 dollars – I didn’t mistype that. The maximum income in Minnesota for eligibility is 48K. Umm yeah.
There is also the fact that a lot like the tort reform issue state eligibility can’t be much of a solution. Why? Because the states with the most competitive markets are still having health care costs accelerate at the same or greater pace than the national average. The answer to all questions is not to deregulate and cut taxes. This is painfully obvious in the health care debate.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
This.
Oh, and “bipartisanship“? That’s just corporate-Democrats speak for “the Devil made me do it“. Blaming the need to get votes from the eeeeevil Republicans for what the Dem wanted to do anyway but doesn’t want to take the blame for doing. Next time you hear a Blue Dog Dem talk about bipartisanship, visualize a kid who’s been caught red handed with the lid off the cookie jar and his hand halfway inside telling you “I was putting it back“.
jibeaux
@someguy:
You’re probably snarking, but I’m pretty sure the health care of hundreds of millions of Americans isn’t going to be free because of efficiencies of centralization. That’s kind of like an old SNL commercial for the Change Bank, where all they do is make change, and when people ask them how they make a profit, the answer is: Volume.
Ailuridae
@burnspbesq:
Drilling several levels deep into Open Secrets, one finds that the top five sources of industry support for Baucus do include the insurance industry. But it also includes pharma, the legal profession, and health care professionals. Those industries’ interests are not necessarily aligned in the current debate.
Am I really to understand that you are arguing that the bill Baucus is producing out of his committee hasn’t aligned the interests of the insurance industry, pharma and heath care professionals? Seriously?
El Cid
@burnspbesq: Bullshit. This is a god-damned blog post. I’m telling you that I think Max Baucus is a cheap whore for insurance industry interests and likely for both cheap whoring purposes and asshole right wing ideological reasons.
That isn’t designed to convince you. Fine. Don’t be convinced. Fuck off. I don’t care. I’m fucking telling people here what I think. Don’t believe. Demand stats. Do whatever the fuck you want. I don’t give a shit.
This bullshit notion that just because a politician receives significant campaign donations for an industry and produces a bill which does nothing but serve that industry’s interest somehow has to be proven more than the opposite case?
That’s bullshit for a legal argument. You want to debate it in court, fine. This is the public sphere, dumbass. Use whatever starting assumption you like.
Ailuridae
@someguy:
One of the big problems there is, as of now, those employees wouldn’t be getting a tax deduction on their insurance purchase as the self-employed do.
Ash Can
@SenyorDave:
From the very outset of this whole issue, he very explicitly put the responsibility for coming up with a HCR bill on the legislature. Chaos ensued, of course, which is par for the course for a diverse representative body (two of them in this case, in fact). In the meantime, Obama and his WH stepped back and took on the role of spectator.
Now, here’s my read on it. Since many, many people assumed (quite naturally) that Obama would continue to lead on the issue, his commentary on the process from his self-imposed seat in the bleachers sounded wishy-washy and inconsistent. Whether in response to this, because the legislative process is getting into the later stages, or because he’s getting impatient and wants to wrap this up — or a combination of all three — Obama lately has gone on the offensive, telling cheering crowds that he insists on having a public option in whatever he signs. HCR is still first and foremost in the hands of the legislature, but Obama seems to be saying, “OK, guys, the people of this country are getting antsy and so am I. It’s time to crap or get off the pot.”
Of course, as my old poli sci profs could tell you, my analysis plus a buck fifty will get you a dandy cuppa joe. Nevertheless, based on what I’ve seen so far, this is what I think is happening now.
bob h
Baucus has given new meaning to the word solipsism.
Betsy
@SenyorDave:
I would speculate that it’s to look reasonable and let the Repubs show themselves as the crazies and obstructionists they are. Correct me if I’m wrong, but once Baucus released *something*, which was close to inevitable, he suddenly doesn’t matter much anymore, right? His bill is no more important than any of the others that came out of committees. So now, after letting everyone freak the fuck out when Congress was in recess and couldn’t act out of panic in reaction to the town hall nonsense, they can start putting together the actual bill.
Is this naive?
AkaDad
If Democrats aren’t going to get a single Republican vote, then I guarantee they will give us the most progressive, efficient plan possible.
I made it to guarantee before I lol’d.
Max
@El Cid: You appear to have cited me for statements I did not make.
joes527
OK. Fine. Everything is OK. Even though every step up to this point has been a complete fuck up, and totally controlled by the insurance interests … that’s no problem. It has all been theatre. When we get to reconciliation, that process will be pure and only goodness and light will flow from it.
Sure.
The problem with the bill as it stands is that by blindly pumping demand and subsidies into the system, the most likely outcome is that costs will go up. If this doesn’t get fixed in reconciliation then the healthcare bill won’t be suboptimal, it won’t be a neutral thing with the name “healthcare bill” that the democrats can parade as a victory.
It will be an act of evil that pus real health coverage farther out of reach.
So fine. I’m sitting. I’m waiting. I’m not pearl clutching. I’m not couch fainting.
But I’ll be curious to see this magical change in the process that will make it possible to fix this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@burnspbesq:
Perhaps I’m reading this backwards, but I thought the primary evidence of where somebody’s loyalities lie in Congress would be the content of the actual legislation that they write. That is the game that actually matters – everything else is just locker room talk, nicht wahr?
someguy
@ jibeaux and @ Ailuridae,
I was kind of snarking. I’m starting to see Single Payer and Public Option not as self-financed to any real extent but simply as cost shifting health insurance from ((mostly employer+consumer) + employee) to employee, who will pay for it through income tax or (direct payment + penalties for carrying non-conforming private insurance) or some combination of that. *Of course* employers would want to go public option. Duh. It takes expenses, and benefits management off their hands.
That the Single Payer or Public Option will work better in the long run depends on the correctness of the assumption that the government will run it more efficiently, with less overhead (costs + profit) and more equitable assignement of benefits and costs than the private sector would. I’m not so certain about that in light of the government being a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Don’t laugh about the notion of government trying to make a profit off you either; more and more government agencies are fee-based so that it doesn’t take appropriations to run them, and more fees = bigger agency. It’s not out of the question.
The more I think about health care reform the more I’m thinking I’d rather just fucking die. I am getting to the point where the more I learn the fewer actual solutions I see, and the more it seems like trading one set of bad outcomes for another.
Not that I’m despairing or anything, as long as my gin holds out.
Brian J
I didn’t think I was indicating that my intended solution was to deregulate and cut taxes. I simply thought that it was possible to have more insurers competing in each state if the possibility of them racing to the bottom was greatly limited by having universal standards–in other words, perhaps more regulation. But as you illustrated, it’s not as simple as I apparently thought it was.
You seem to know a lot about this. Did you come across this information from any particular source?
El Cid
@Max: Sorry, clicked the wrong thing. burnspesq noted it.
Maus
“How much of all this is kabuki theater though?”
All of it, for chrissake.
burnspbesq
@Ailuridae:
Am I really to understand that you are arguing that the bill Baucus is producing out of his committee hasn’t aligned the interests of the insurance industry, pharma and heath care professionals? Seriously?
Nope. I didn’t say that. You inferred it – and your inferences aren’t supported by what I actually said.
If I had meant to say that, I would have said it.
burnspbesq
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I thought the primary evidence of where somebody’s loyalities lie in Congress would be the content of the actual legislation that they write.
Fair enough. And I understand why some people believe that Baucus produced the crappy bill he produced because he is somehow beholden to some set of corporate masters. All I am saying is that for me, that case hasn’t been made to my satisfaction. I’ve invited people who do believe that to make the case, and all I’ve gotten for it is abuse. I guess arguments are down the hall.
I don’t rule out the possibility that Baucus is such a dumbass that he sincerely believes that his piece of shit is what’s best for the country. But I’m old-fashioned. I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt.
Gozer
Our government is ridiculous and the Senate is clearly the most ridiculous part.
ericblair
@Brian J: I simply thought that it was possible to have more insurers competing in each state if the possibility of them racing to the bottom was greatly limited by having universal standards—in other words, perhaps more regulation. But as you illustrated, it’s not as simple as I apparently thought it was.
There’s no perhaps about it. More competition by itself won’t do anything, for the simple reason that any insurance company that really tried to treat seriously ill people better than other insurance companies would, naturally, attract all sorts of seriously ill people as customers, and the company would go bankrupt. You have to regulate the crap out of the industry first, and then they can compete on paperwork efficiency or how cool their logo is or whatever. In a deregulated environment, the incentives are all backwards to solve any of the identified problems.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@burnspbesq:
Ditto that.
I’m just not much into tea-leaf reading. Legislation is where the rubber meets the road. Campaign constributions are secondary evidence at best, as far as I’m concerned. If Congressman Blatherpest (D-Moneypit) wants to cash million dollar checks from Goldman Sachs, fine as far as I’m concerned so long as he writes banking regs with teeth in them. If the situation is the reverse then I really don’t care about what their hypothetical motivations are (that we may or may not be able to divine by crawling through spreadsheets of data on campaign contributions, etc.), the fact that he/she is writing crappy bills is the problem that needs fixing.
FlipYrWhig
@Max:
The opportunity to masturbate to your own sense of despair. The left blogosphere is addicted to auto-erotic desolation.
Brian J
@ericblair:
What I meant by saying “perhaps more regulation” is that I wasn’t sure if it came down to a greater total number regulations or simply a smaller number of regulations that simply applied to the entire country. It’s not am important distinction in the grand scheme of things, but still, I try to be precise.
I’m with you on the need to regulate these companies. But I don’t think it’s good to reject the idea that, in a regulated marketplace, competition isn’t worthwhile, as some seem to do. Perhaps it’s not possible because of the trade offs involved, but it doesn’t seem implausible that having a few insurance companies compete for customers–again, in a regulated environment–would be good. They’d have to want to try to attract customers, of course.
Cris
I repeat, for what it’s worth — I voted for Bob Kelleher. No, really.
KRK
@jibeaux:
Well, jibeaux, your first shot off the bow was to say that they don’t exist and imply that the congressional delegations from small (and medium?) states should STFU and let the folks from the most populous states decide everything, so I can’t imagine why a Montanan wouldn’t want to delurk and engage with you.
El Cid
@burnspbesq:
What I heard wasn’t “please make a case” and “my perspective is that there must be statistically significant differences in the amount of funding Baucus receives from insurance interests versus other interests before one is allowed to connect the content of a bill with Baucus’ funder vs. ideological ally interests” but “just talking out of your hindquarters out of entirely justifiable frustration” and “When we make shit up, we are no better than the other guys”.
I understand. You are more comfortable thinking about politicians’ souls and presuming them to be benevolent and well-intentioned and that people who do not share this ethics violation model of motivation assumption are ‘making shit up’.
Lots of people feel this way. It doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t place some undue, or illogical, or anti-empirical higher standard upon those who don’t necessarily share this approach.
Like the lawyer for the United Fruit Company wrote in his book An American Company after successfully working with media contacts to drum up a hysteria campaign so that its allies in the U.S. government would use the CIA to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz (and initiate a new phase of murderous and even genocidal military rule), he found himself stunned at how easy his PR task had been at getting all major newspapers of supposedly different perspectives to see things his way:
Likewise, I don’t think that a conglomerate of health and medical industry lobbyists faced a particularly difficult prospect in one Senator Max Baucus and that they had to practice rare funding voodoo arts to get him to craft a bill regarded by most reviewers (including former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter testifying before the Congress) as spectacularly helpful to their interests, and then convince him that this was really best for the country and Americans in general.
As for whether or not Baucus and others believe that what they are doing is in the best interests of the country, I think that’s a fairly worthless and empirically quite impossible road of inquiry.
I’m all for an increasing degree of empiricism and common sense assumptions in studying policy and political matters. I think that assuming corporate influence is not always the same as assuming bad policy. These days, it pretty much is, but it wasn’t always this way.
Someone should make an argument showing that it is indeed empirically significant upon the content of legislation whether or not a political leader does or does not believe their activities are or are not for the best interests of the nation. Most politicians backing any policy seem to convince themselves of that.
liberal
@burnspbesq:
The case for “corporate whore” is clearly more compelling than “actually that stupid,” even if not proven so.
liberal
@El Cid:
This.
liberal
@jibeaux:
But (apart from the tax deductibility issue), if you look at the relevant elasticities involved, it’s pretty reasonable that it would go towards employee wages and not the bottom line. If not, what’s stopping them from cutting (or not growing) wages right now?
Same logic shows that the employer half of the social security contribution is (mostly) really a tax on the employee (based on the known values of the elasticities).
El Cid
@liberal: Well, I’ll disagree a bit with myself, just to calm down my own rhetoric, burnspbesq isn’t a dumbass, I just felt like saying so in this informal and mainly humor blog because a few things he phrased irritated me.
I think there are different spheres of discussion, and in certain spheres, such as most arenas of actual government and certain elite pundit fora, no one is going to spend much time emphasizing a link between, say, Baucus’ bill and his insurance etc. industry contacts, because that will be treated or discussed (as I suggested) as a formal charge of some sort of ethics or legal violation. They probably wouldn’t invite you back to the PBS NewsHour if you said, ‘yeah, I think that’s probably where Baucus’ heart is mostly at, with his own donors and lobbyists.’
In the real world, I think we should make whatever initial assumptions strike us as the most logical and well-supported, no matter what we might do in certain more formal or limited discussion environments.
Corner Stone
I’m stunned that anyone would review the political arena of today and try to make the case that the Senators involved are *not* corporate whores. Or rather I believe the argument was “not necessarily” corporate whores.
Politics isn’t complicated. A+B=C is usually a good rule of thumb when a question arises.
burnspbesq
Just to close the loop.
I have certain habits of mind That grow out of how I was educated and what I do every day. They work for me. I understand and accept that people of different backgounds approach things differently. That diversity is a big part of what makes this a cool place to hang out.
No harm done.
And I am a dumbass sometimes.