Ezra Klein and Nate Silver have posts responding to various FDL complaints about the health care bill. Ezra’s point-by-point rebuttal is very well-done. Silver writes:
I’m sorry, but debating the kill-billers on the policy merits of their position has become a bit like debating the global warming denialists. The denalists operate by picking and choosing which evidence they cite and what arguments they respond to. Sometimes, they raise fairly good points or expose legitimately sloppy work on behalf of “consensus” scientists. Sometimes, they are being contrarian for contrarianism’s sake. And sometimes, they’re just throwing a bunch of sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, hoping that the underlying truth or lack thereof is lost in the fog of debate.
Do you think that’s going too far? Or do you think that after Jane Hamsher’s “we are all teabaggers now” column, these comparisons are fair game?
General Winfield Stuck
The gloves came off with the HCR debate recently, and they fit.
There is no going back, but I think the break up has long been in the making, it just took an emotional issue for critical mass to occur.
Is comparing those of us who support this flawed bill because it saves lives, to the Iraq war supporters that took lives, in line?
You decide.
bloomingpol
I know I have been driven off an e-mail list that supports a wonderful candidate by the nastiness of some of the people who didn’t get what they wanted, NOW! There is a certain queen baby (all of the nasties are women, which is very disturbing to this woman) air about it, banging on the high-chair tray and screaming. Except they can talk, and accuse those of us who would like to see a start on getting others healthcare of “settling for less” and “tap-dancing,” and shaming the people on Medicare who don’t want the bill killed, I am not sure exactly why.
When people have to be nasty about something, I always suspect they know they are wrong in their hearts, but just can’t give up on getting exactly what they want right now. I understand the frustration, but the nastiness is harder to bear.
r€nato
I think y’all know how I feel about Jane Hamsher, so I won’t bother repeating it here.
Zifnab25
Oh please. The kill billets have one main note, and that’s the mandate without the public option. All objections stem from that issue.
To compare liberal bill opposition to global warming nuts is to compare anti-isreali settlement guys to holocaust deniers. They aren’t even in the same ballpark. Erza knows it. He’s just trying to provoke a response.
Hunter Gathers
OT
America’s Clown , Michael Steele, gets caught double dipping.
r€nato
The only time you get everything you want is when either you hold near-absolute power or you have some seismic event which overwhelms the opposition (see “9/11”).
The Democratic party has become a very big tent, and that’s a good thing overall. One of the drawbacks, of course, is we have some Democrats in the caucus who are very conservative on some issues.
Maybe Hamsher would like to review the electorate of Nebraska and then tell us how Ben Nelson could possibly vote for FDL’s dream health care bill and still keep his job at the next election. I’m sure Sen. Nelson would appreciate Hamsher’s superior judgement.
Politics is the art of the possible.
FDL is the art of the tantrum.
Napoleon
Hamsher needed the beat down, and Silver did a masterful job at it (and I am less then happy with Obama and Congresses performance to date, but I am realistic). Nates whole post is worth the read.
I took my self of her e-mail list (and some others) yesterday.
Dave Ruddell
Does this mean that the tea-baggers are the Jane Hamshers of the right?
r€nato
@Hunter Gathers:
what, Republicans got issues with a little entrepreneurial spirit???
Ed in NJ
Pissing off the far left was necessary to get this bill through, that’s the bottom line. It made it more palatable to the moderates and the sane right. I contend that this was the strategy of the last week.
Given the dishonesty of Hamsher’s arguments, losing her for the time being, is not a big loss. Most will see it as a desperate plea for attention, or a tantrum, and dismiss it. And if it helps bring independents back in the fold, it may help in the long run.
General Winfield Stuck
@r€nato:
Nelson would have voted for Jane’s dream HC bill, if only Obama had given him an Atomic Wedgie on teevee.
beltane
One of Hamsher’s defenders referred to her as a chess player. Do chess players usually pick up the board and hurl it across the room when they are losing?
ds
Hamsher is objectively pro-conservative. With the teabagger column, at least she’s being honest about it.
As for the war comparisons, the people advocating “killing the bill” in the hopes of getting something better are indulging in the sort of wishful, almost magical thinking of the Iraq war proponents.
If you truly believe the bill is so bad that it’s worth putting off reform and putting up with the status quo for another generation, fine. Advocate that position.
But don’t claim that we’ll be able to get a better bill through in an election year, or after the midterms. That’s insanity.
DougJ
Do chess players usually pick up the board and hurl it across the room when they are losing?
If it were allowed, it wouldn’t be a big strategy.
r€nato
my objections to the HCR bill in its current form, fall along the lines of the criticism that the taxes are front-loaded but the really good stuff doesn’t happen until 2013.
I’m hoping that gets addressed prior to or by 2012. That’s just electorally dumb. Move that shit up a year, even if it takes borrowing the money from elsewhere temporarily.
r€nato
@DougJ:
Ha! the kid next door to me when I was growing up, did that ALL. THE. TIME.
El Cid
As an observer who mostly thinks the bill is a mixed bag with not only some good things and some not so good things but some possibly very bad and risky things, it’s fair to point out that those disagreeing with Ezra would likely say roughly the same things about him.
Robin G.
The analogy isn’t invalid, but Silver’s also losing his composure a bit. It wasn’t a comparison that had to be made; he chose it for maximum impact. This entire debate has become very personal and nasty, and Nate’s showing strain has much as the rest of us. (For the record, I’m not saying he’s wrong to use it, just that it’s not being used from a calm, level-headed place.)
Napoleon
By the way I like the recommended diary over at Kos that is titled something like “Jane Hamsher convinced me to support the HCR bill”.
jibeaux
@Zifnab25:
Ezra didn’t compare anything to global warming anybody, that would be Silver [edited]. The most flamingly controversial thing he wrote was “At this point, I’m not sure there’s much in the way of productive dialogue to be had here.” And he’s absolutely right about that. You didn’t even read the link, just as factual and wonky as everything else he writes, before talking about what Ezra’s intentions were.
ronin122
@ds: This is what I never understood of the activist left. Kill the bill and get a better one? Yeah sure that’s a great idea. Here’s a couple questions though: a) who is going to write this bill? b) who is going to vote on this bill? Considering that we already put out the ideas we wanted in there and yet the same people are going to vote on it (if before the midterms, otherwise there will likely be even more “just say no” GOoPers), the first question is almost irrelevant. It’s deluded thinking and given the rabid decay of the debate, I disagree with comparing them to the teabaggers, but only because the teabaggers are so violently out-there and loony that they are in their own realm.
Noonan
This is getting a bit sad. Hamsher’s need to be relevant has overwhelmed any attempts at honest debate.
El Cid
Irrespective of Hamsher, who often doesn’t make the clearest of arguments, I think there ought be recognized a difference between an insane view that liberals / labor / etc could ally systematically with the Teatard right, and taking a more general approach to try to use ‘populist’ left and liberal policies and outreach to people who might ordinarily lean toward the Teatards. Any confusing of the two is a massive mistake, but that doesn’t delegitimize the latter.
Litlebritdifrnt
Once Hamsher has finished chucking her fucking toys out of the pram she is going to get really pissed off when the grown ups ignore her screeching to pick them up and give them back to her.
Hunter Gathers
@r€nato: On second thought, that story is bullshit. Nobody would pay Michael Steele 20 grand for one speech.
beltane
@Napoleon: That diary speaks for a lot of us. I was leaning in favor of killing the bill until Hamsher and her crew urged me to forge alliances with the very same people who want to kick my kids off of SCHIP.
Sam
@Hunter Gathers
Don’t think of it as a speech, but instead, a magical ride.
kid bitzer
eh. i come not to praise hamsher, but to ask: does she play a productive role in the progressive ecology?
i’m not asking if she’s playing chess, or where her heart is. assume she means exactly what she says. are there benefits to having someone out there saying that stuff (at that volume, with that vehemence, etc.)?
seems at least possible that we benefit by having our own crazies way out to the left of us. or not–i dunno.
but i think there is some point in debating “jane hamsher: useful or not?”
and rather less point in debating “jane hamsher: good human being or not?”
Steeplejack
@r€nato:
Yeah. I thought “privatizing” the job would be right up their alley.
jibeaux
Just speaking to my own evolution here, I began following health care reform talk in, I believe it was this past summer. I had a lot of impressions that were factually wrong, going into it. Such as if you’d asked I would have told that all the other industrialized countries with universal health care did so with a single-payer system. I would have told you that the reason health care costs were so high was because of the huge profits run up by private insurance and that if we went to Medicare for all the cost problem would be mostly fixed. Obviously, the more I learned about this, the more complicated this narrative got. I mean, early on I read Atul Gawande’s piece about McAllen, TX, which concerns the enormous amount of money Medicare spends per person in McAllen, so pretty soon my views on this became more, shall we say “informed by facts.” I also learned that of all the countries in the world with universal health care, that they are essentially all doing it a little bit differently. There are a lot of models mixing private and public funding that work well enough. The essential requirement is governmental regulation and oversight. Sometimes I wonder if some of these folks just haven’t really evolved very much from that initial hostility to private insurance and they aren’t going to be happy with anything that doesn’t wound it good, because they see it as the root problem that has to be fixed. Whereas I see people going without health care as the problem that has to be fixed, and at this point most other things to me are negotiable.
Guster
I didn’t read both of the linked stories, because I’m getting pretty tired of this, but I think the quote is telling:
How’s that working for the denialists?
jeffreyw
The HCR posting will continue until until morale improves.
aimai
I just can’t bring myself to care, at this point. I agree that Jane and the others –not all women, by any means–have gone off the deep end. But I actually think they have a crucial role to play in what has descended to the level of bad political theater. Only by having an intransigent, active, opposition from the left (and remember: what they want is actually good politics and good policy from a democratic party perspective as well as from a poor person’s and a woman’s perspective) can only be good. Either it makes Obama and the Dems seem more centrist than they are, or it enables them to make more strikingly progressive moves than they are inclined to do.
The current leftist demand to take out the mandates until they are matched by a robust public option seems like a really good strategic move with little downside, to me.
But that’s just me. I find it makes sense to ignore people who get your blood pressure up, whether on tv or the internet.
aimai
J.W. Hamner
I certainly agree with Nate Silver on substance. I’ve been very frustrated by the types of arguments brought out by Hamsher’s crowd… they use the exact same talking points I’d expect from the GOP and ignore any facts and numbers you’d care to present. I mean, there have been some powerful rebuttals (in my mind anyway) from the usual suspects like Silver, Klein, and Cohn… and yet it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
I feel like an old man, but I wish the tone was a little more chill. It’s interesting how much the progressive left has internalized the “shrill” meme. Now I feel like if I turn my music up too loud my DKos neighbor is going to compare me to Stalin.
Guster
@aimai: I’m starting to take offense at your ability to write what I’m thinking more eloquently than I’m thinking it.
General Winfield Stuck
My argument to pass this bill centers on one thing. Getting more people insurance that can’t get it. That’s it. It’s not reasoned on science, or economics, or politics, etc….
And I haven’t defended it in any calculated way, other that that simple reason. It is emotional and bleeding heart, and I admit it. And I have heard the same reason from others.
So when people tell me I am a clueless sycophant (which could be generally true), it still makes me mad because that is not why I am supporting this particular bill. This is not a Farm Bill, or Roads Bill, or whatever. It is a health care bill, and lives are on the line. As far as politics go, it may be better than passing nothing, or it may not. I don’t know really, but it is not why I am going along with this highly compromised HCB that will cover up to 30 million American souls.
mr. whipple
@Noonan:
This.
But what can she do? I think if I was her, and had generated a big acivist list and raised a lot of $, and then drew the line in the sand at the PO, etc. I mean, where do you go from there? You’ve become bigger than the issue.
Bob In Pacifica
I see insurance for the insurance companies, I see a big hit for the middle class with no appreciable gain. I see people still getting screwed over on coverage. I see a split among working class people with and without the ability to buy insurance. I see oodles of money in the pockets of insurance company execs. I see more politicians being bought off by corporations. I see the Democratic Party essentially doing what it takes to give back the reins of power to the worst of the Republicans.
Lots of anger towards Hamsher now for raining on the parade, but I suspect in a few years there will be a lot of “I told you so’s” that will be ringing true. Take a few minutes and read Luke Mitchell’s piece in Harpers:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0h&oq=under&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GWYE_enUS310US203&q=understanding+obamacare+luke+mitchell
arguingwithsignposts
Remembering good times when the GOP was who we kicked around.
The Grand Panjandrum
I’m with Robin G on this one. Nate may have lost his composure a bit. We all think some pretty outright means things about people, even when they are normally allies. But sometimes in the heat of an argument we lose our cool and say things that are best left unsaid. Discretion is always the better part of valor.
Speaking to the larger issue at hand, it seems to me the fundamental divide is whether we accept being mandated by the government to send money to very large corporations. That, many on the left are just philosophically opposed to. I would include myself in that mix, but I live in the real world and accept the fact that an individual mandate makes sense when you don’t have a single payer system.
I would propose that the most meaningful change, other than single payer, would be to require all health insurance companies be reincorporated as non-profits in order to sell basic health insurance. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that allows insurance companies to profit from basic health insurance. They would be allowed to have a former profit affiliate that sold coverage for things like cosmetic surgery and any other elective surgery that comes to mind. But basic health insurance should be funneled through, and sold by, non-profit entities.
kid bitzer
aimai–
thx. my 28 agrees w/ your 33.
MikeJ
@beltane:
Blackburne threw Steinitz out of a window at the Paris tournament in 1867. Fortunately, they were on the ground floor.
jibeaux
Let’s talk about this mandate thing, because that is one of these new things that has cropped up out of nowhere as a sudden objection. As I understand it, no one cares about the mandate if there’s a public option for (some) people to buy from. If there’s no public option, people don’t want a mandate. So my question is, is it honestly worth it to you to scrap the mandate if it means that insurance companies can reject you for pre-existing conditions? Because this is the trade-off. Also keep in mind the following, via that very same Ezra link:
Steve Balboni
Fair game and an accurate depiction of their tactics.
Zifnab
@mr. whipple:
You’ve become exactly as big as the issue. And when the issue dies, what does that mean for the work you put forward?
There is more to the bill than the public option, but a lot of that will see the inside of a court room and I anticipate that at least some of it won’t survive.
The bottom line is that you’ve got progressives that have some modicum of faith in the insurance industry and progressives that don’t. For those that don’t, the public option / medicare buy-in / single payer program / what have you, is the safety valve that new mandated insurance consumers can flee to when the insurance industry starts trying to screw it’s clients again.
If you can’t recognize those concerns, I’m not sure how Jane Hamsher is the one with the problem.
TR
FireDogLake lost me a couple months ago. They’ve joined Talk Left in the realm of blogs I can no longer read.
Noonan
@mr. whipple: Well, she could start by putting forward a sincere argument and not resorting to fear-based generalities (and dry humping teabagger logic). Like @The Grand Panjandrum says, her aversion to sending tax dollars to corporatations is totally understandable. But we needed to hear about that sooner for it to be a credible attack.
donovong
Look. Hamsher is in it for the clicks. She and Markos are now the toast of the beltway town. They are getting invites to all the cool news shows. They have become the “Lefty” versions of Matlin and Carville, except they are on the same side. Their own.
Well, come to think of it, that hasn’t changed much, has it?
Robin G.
@J.W. Hamner: I agree. I feel like I’m back in the dorm, watching upper-middle-class teenagers in Ché shirts talking about fascists.
I think the kill-billers are less like global-warming-denialists and more like the commune peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Content to sit in the mud and feel superior in their rightness, but not offering up many *realistic* plans on how to fix things, because incremental change is offensive to their sensibilities. “Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!”
Or I might just be cranky this morning. Hard to tell.
Fr33d0m
Without regard to the facts–whatever they be. I stopped reading FDL some time back so I can’t really say. But Nate had been one of my regular reads until he started treating the kill the bill crowd like children. His 20 questions post simply pissed me off and I’m not a bill killer. What I wanted to see was a substantive point-by-point post about the issues Dr. Dean brought up. I think it was Ezra Klein who finally did that. Ezra is still in my feedlist.
People need to make their point without degrading the debater–especially when the debater is on your side of the great divide.
Guster
@kid bitzer: Yeah, that’s the point people seem to be missing. (The same one I tried to make in my wonderfully oblique comment upthread.) I’m by nature somewhere in the range of Kevin Drum and John Cole, but I’m not sure that saying, ‘people are being unfair to the poor president’ or ‘this is about as good as we can expect’ really moves the ball down the court, even when absolutely true.
John Cole
I don’t think that is fair to say about Hamsher and Kos at all. I think they honestly believe what they are saying, and I think it is stupid to conflate Kos’s and Hamsher’s positions right now. Dave Sirota is in it for the self promotion. Kos and Hamsher are true believers, I think.
I think Kos is feigning complete disgust to get the bill made better (he said as much on KO last night), while Jane really, honestly, with every fiber of her being wants the Senate bill killed.
I think Jane could serve as a really good source of pressure from the left, but she just blows it by going too over-the-top. For the life of me, I can not figure out what she thought she was doing going after Joe’s wife.
But for every time she blows it by going too far, she does something wonderful, like emasculating Lanny Davis in front of millions.
Rhoda
Dropping mandates unless there is a public option makes no sense given the weakness of the public option in the house bill and the small numbers of people it will affect. Mandates are the law in MA and there has been no revolt. In point of fact, MA health care reform has paved the path to greater reform.
Most folks won’t be affected. Most folks will find their insurance improved and 31 million people will actually have coverage. In between times, Medicare expansion is very popular. This is a great way to set the next stage for reform IMO.
FDL/Huffington Post IMO have adopted the Obama is weak and giving the country to corporations meme. The attacks on this administration are baffling. This is the administrations first year, every administration screws up in in the beginning. It’ll take two years for everyone to get into place and the whole executive branch to really start clicking. A good president will adjust for his failures and mistakes. I think this White House has learned a lot and managed their failures. Hopefully, 2010 will be better.
Sarcastro
Yea Bob, the hard left has this thing about grasping for wild-eyed policies that are unworkable, unpopular and have the only redeeming quality of being absolutely correct.
Steve Balboni
Why does anyone think that Jane Hamsher or any other individual blogger or activist actually matters in the big picture?
We’re talking about the long slow march of human rights and social justice. This fight is bigger than any one individual. It’s bigger than Ghandi and it’s bigger than MLK, bigger than Teddy Kennedy and it is certainly bigger than Jane Hamsher.
If Jane Hamsher wants to get off the bus she’s free to do so but her participation, while certainly welcome, isn’t critical to the overall cause. Not by a long shot. This entire debate is about people with an entirely over-inflated sense of self worth who clearly lack any sense of perspective. They’re petulant children and if Jane Hamsher and friends want to take their ball and go home they should do just that. The rest of us will still be here, doing what we can to make progress on the issues that matter… the work goes on, the cause endures
Something I wrote on my blog last week,
r€nato
@John Cole:
yeah, that’s called a ‘loose cannon’
sometimes a loose cannon hits the mark squarely
but too often it hits your own side.
overall she’s a liability. I wish she would go away.
numbskull
I’ve been told many times that mandates are absolutely necessary for this all to work, but I have not read, heard, or seen convincing arguments. Instead, I get argument by declaration (uh Rhoda).
I still can’t get my head around the federal government forcing me to buy something from a de facto monopoly with nothing in place to assure me (and to, in fact, ensure) that the force-fed product will be even as good as what I have now.
I understand that, for those who can’t afford what the federal government is mandating, the federal government will pay for them. As far as I can tell, this is the one good thing in the bill: More people will have insurance. OK, but why does this absolutely require mandates? As near as I can tell, the mandates may be required as part of the political calculation, but are not actually necessary for increasing the number of people who are covered.
I know I’m a numbskull, but there are a lot of use out here in fly over country. We need it spelled out for us. And saying that folks in Mass didn’t mass revolt when mandated to buy insurance is not an answer, is not a justification.
mr. whipple
I’d put it another way: when you’ve drawn a line in the sand, and that line is erased, how do you deal with that?
You can thank people for fighting so hard, and tell them that the good things in the bill are partly their reward, and urge them to not give up but overall this is a step forward, or you can urge them to blow the whole thing up.
I notice virtually all of the Dem Senators are in the first camp, and some of the activists are in the second.
Joe Beese
Currently the most recommended diary at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/22/817876/-How-to-Change-the-Subject:-Manufacturing-Hatred-of-Jane-Hamsher-%28updated%29
Steve Balboni
The term “narcissistic” keeps popping into my head.
Guster
@John Cole:
How hard is that to figure out? Lieberman spins his evil web in an absolutely consequence-free environment. Hamsher was trying to threaten something that actually matters to him–more than Americans dying as a result of inadequate healthcare does.
Not saying it was strategically wise, but the motivation is pretty obvious. And for myself, I’d _love_ if Hadassah Lieberman lost her job and stopped getting invited to cocktail parties because her husband the senator–the only reason she _has_ that job–worked against improving the lives of millions of Americans.
ding7
Jane exposes the pig (it is NOT a health care reform bill)
Ezra puts lipstick on the pig (it mandates health insurance coverage to the uninsured by giving subsidies and imposing penalties)
gex
@J.W. Hamner: I don’t understand 1) the acknowledgment that in our current environment progressive legislation requires a public hippy beat down to pass and 2) the demand by pro-reform people that the hippies shut up. (Except for now, after the bill has been up for a vote and passed. Time to move on to anything other than gay issues.)
For all those who are calling out the shrill saying “politics are the art of the possible”, you seem to gloss over the fact that betraying the hippies is part of what made the moderate bill possible.
You don’t see this on the right. When the far right gets shrill, they don’t get chewed out by the moderates. Unfortunately, they have actually coddled their extremists and mainstreamed them. But on our side, I see very little acknowledgment that 1) there are no SIDES in a circular firing squad and 2) everyone is firing rounds in that circle not just the hippies.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
I’ve said this before. That Kos is a pragmatist at heart. I don’t know what Hamsher is exactly, except very angry. For all I know, she has a right to be, but Balboni is right. The big picture is bigger than us all, and our petty feuds. I generally take the position that things are where they should be at this particular point of making America a more perfect union/ Even if, it don’t seem so to me on my little half acre. FSM/
Brien Jackson
Ezra’s takedown of Hamsher is pretty good, especially for coming right out and calling it on its dishonesty, but Hamsher fancies herself an activist, so I’m not terribly offended by all of that. Although I do wish more people on the left could still distinguish between activists and analysts, but I guess the days of the reality-based community are over in some quarters.
The Raven
It sounds like the argument of people who can’t defend their position with reason. What has come out of in the Senate is a bad deal, far better for the insurance companies than the general public, and denying this is hypocrisy. Now, it may be that this is the best bad deal we can get, but that is a failure of democracy, not something to crow about, and not something to defend.
Brien Jackson
@Joe Beese:
I’m pretty sure a lot of progressives have hated Jane Hamsher since well before HCR came up this year. I’ve got two very liberal acquantinces who were on the Lamont campaign, and I haven’t heard either of them ever say a good word about her in the last 3 years. One of the gets visibly red in the face anytime you so much as mention her name. Of course, Jane seems to think your value is measured by how many people you piss off, and how powerful those people are, which is probably why I can’t think of a single “campaign” she’s waged that was successful largely because of her.
Tomlinson
Well, that entire line of argument is specious, at best. Do the math:
85% of the country has employer-provided healthcare, and they don’t give a rat’s ass. Just leave their health insurance alone, which the bill basically does – unless they are on a seriously, seriously RICH plan.
Another 10% or so will be covered by either expanded medicaid or will get subsidies, so they don’t really give a rat’s ass either. Most likely, they are ecstatic.
Of the remaining 5%, almost all of them know they need health coverage, or they won’t say shit about it, because everyone else knows that these no-coverage people are rolling the dice, and if it doesn’t work out, we, the covered, will be paying the piper.
In Mass, the mandate just was not that big a deal, IAC. Yes, that’s Massachusetts, but I don’t expect much different everywhere else – for the reason I laid out above. For almost everyone, it’s a non-event or a wildly good thing.
That a public option would somehow make this better is magical thinking that is truly epic in scale. Sure, it will make the death-by-spreadsheeter’s happy, but their counterparts on the right – the teabagger’s? How do you think they will feel? Being forced to buy insurance *from the government*? *From Obama*? By all that is holy, that would be a shitstorm to end all shitstorms.
Guster
@Brien Jackson: Yeah, I don’t know why we have such trouble with that.
Saying that someone is acting like a ‘global warming denialist’ is a terrible and offensive insult–even though the global warming denialists are doing an _amazing_ job pushing their agenda
And unlike the Jane Hamshers of the Left, there’s absolutely no merit to their arguments at all.
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
Well yeah, because it doesn’t really impact the majority of the population. So that makes for a rather odd baseline of comparison.
Napoleon
@numbskull:
It is very simple. In the insurance market that we had pre-reform you had what was in effect an arms race of type between insurers and the insured. The insured have a reason to hide any problems they have, refuse to buy coverage that is basically paying more then they need to into the pool to cover others problems and in extreme cases, particularly if they are young and healthy, simply not participate in the system because they think they will never draw on it.
On the other hand the insurers want to eliminate anyone they think will make a claim on their coverage or has been less then honest with them.
In steps the Government who now disarms the insurers in this war by requiring that they take everyone, no matter what. That leaves the insurance companies totally at the mercy of the insured who if they think they are paying more then they should for the risk they represent will not participate, which causes the pool of people with insurance less healthy then average, which means insurance companies have to raise rates, which means more people drop coverage . . . . You get the idea, it is perfect conditions to set up a negative feedback loop which will crush private insurance.
I have no use for the insurance companies and think that single payer would be better, but if we are going to have the system involving private insurance and we are requiring them to take everyone, then you need to set the rules to make it a sustainable system, and a system without mandates is not sustainable.
Brien Jackson
@Guster:
Well…they are. They’ve even turned on Krugman. So on one side you’ve got pretty much everybody who has spent years working on and learning about the policies of healthcare reform, and on the other side you have people putting their fingers in their ears shouting “nuh-uh!’ Global warming denialists” is the perfect comparison for Hamsher and Kos, at least at the moment.
MikeJ
Everything is a terrible insult to those who want to be offended.
mk3872
Fair game. Nate & Ezra are SPOT-ON here.
FDL, HuffPo & DK have been exposed during the HCR debacle for what they are: amateurs who are only effective during specific narrow-focused grass-roots campaigns.
When it comes to the ugliness of governing, deal-making and legislating, their lack of expertise and compromise shows and they become like angry little children.
JGabriel
DougJ:
No, I don’t. I think Ezra and Nate have done their own share of cherry-picking, and that both sides in this debate serve a function above and beyond the the debating points.
RJ Eskow speaks for me over at Crooks and Liars, pointing out that Ezra and others have been silent regarding apparently legitimate criticisms of the excise tax, and that the lefties like Dean, Hamsher, and Taibbi are accomplishing a lot to improve this bill by keeping up the pressure from the left.
That’s not to say I agree with them — personally, I’m with Krugman: let’s pass the thing now, but keep pushing for more even after it’s passed. But I’m also glad Hamsher, Dean, et. al., are out there arguing from the left and continuing to push for improvements until the final bill is passed; don’t forget this bill still has to go through reconciliation with the House bill before a final vote.
.
gex
@numbskull: There are two kinds of people in the health care system: young healthy people who need little care and older people who require more care. We all progress from one category to another in our lifetimes. What a mandate does is make everyone pay for insurance cradle to grave. When you are young, you absolutely pay for more than you are getting. But as you get older, you will start getting more than you are paying for.
If you take out the mandate, young healthy people are the ones who will opt out of insurance. They are the ones who provide the money to cover the more expensive patients. Your rate levels will be much much higher without a mandate.
It sort of the opposite of the problem where letting insurers refuse for preexisting conditions breaks the system. The current system self-selects out people who need health care in order to cut costs/increase profits. They’d rather only have the young healthy people.
We need mandates and no refusal for health conditions in order to fix rebalance the insurance system and see if we can get it to work correctly, particularly in making insurers push for efficiencies in ways other than refusing to pay for services.
Zifnab
@jibeaux:
WOW! Welcome to the party, buddy. The insurance mandate was possibly the most controversial issue in the bill dating back to the Democratic Primary. But please continue…
I think this is one of the first points of legislation that will go to court. And I think it’s possibly got the best chance of Scalia Co. overturning it.
The insurance mandate is what lures the insurance companies to the table. It is supposed to mean 30 million more customers for the industry. But if the industry decides to exploit this opportunity to force people into god-awful expensive policies… :-p What then? We all just take the 2% tax, call that an insurance policy, and sleep happy? Is this really the practice you want to encourage? Only buy coverage the moment you need it?
That sounds like a system primed the fuck up to me.
Tomlinson
JGabriel
MikeJ:
You sound just like a right wing global warming denialist when you say things like that!
.
r€nato
@General Winfield Stuck:
This.
Brien Jackson
@JGabriel:
How in the world could anyone who regularly reads Ezra Klein claim he’s been silent regarding the excise tax?
And I don’t really feel it’s “legitimate” for what it’s worth, and while I generally hate to play the “No True Scotsman” game, I do have to question the veracity of the “progressivism” of anyone who thinks the excise tax is a bad idea.
Silver Owl
I wish congress had fought harder for what America needs. I have zero problems with Americans still fighting for what America needs. If that makes them the “icky left” so be it. I’m cool with that.
Congress does not have a good track record for addressing issues that benefit the American people. For the last decade especially they have gone above and beyond the call of duty to cater to corporations. It’s a broken system.
Corporations in America have not proven to be all that beneficial to whole economic system either. Their performance leaves a lot to be desired, specifically the health insurance industry.
While I do read Ezra and Silver and appreciate their information and opinion, they are not the be all end all of accepting whatever Congress deigns to deliver on the people in my opinion. Wanting to fight to strip out the chit in my opinion is way better than swallowing it and hoping that it gets changed later when performance records are dismal. I do not recall if Ezra or Silver actually contacted anyone in the Senate to fight for better legislature for the people. Didn’t they just analyze?
JGabriel
Brien Jackson:
Not really. Howard Dean, just for instance, is certainly someone who’s worked for years on healthcare policy but would be “on the other side”.
.
Tomlinson
Apparently the teabaggers are now reaching out to the bill killers.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/hail_mary_racist_e-mail_doc_reaches_out_to_liberal.php
Lovely.
Jason
@Tomlinson:
My wife and I effectively chose and remain in our respective jobs because of healthcare. It’s been a serious constraint on our mobility and our happiness – I love my job, but I can’t say the same for her.
So I think a pretty big chunk of that 85% really does give a rat’s ass, because “being uninsured” is at this point as bad if not worse than “being unemployed.” Employers and employees are both starting to wonder why the two are so closely related, and the effect of separating the two presently has a very different effect on either group. HCR is a priority for people with health care, and I’d say the political motivation for HCR should consider people with employer-provided care as a priority, as well, because these are people one pink slip away from being the “uninsured,” the US’s next great underclass.
Brien Jackson
@JGabriel:
What has Howard Dean done in terms of working on systemic policy in healthcare, health insurance, etc.?
Anya
No DoughJ, it’s not too much. Someone had to say it. Pesonally I was also cheered by Alex Pareene’s take “News of First Major Progressive Legislation in 30 Years Enrages Liberals”
Apparently God answered that jackass Family spiritual pimp Coburn’s prayer and Inhofe, the biggest moron in the Senate missed this morning’s cloture vote.
JGabriel
@Brien Jackson:
What the fuck is wrong with your reading comprehension? I didn’t say he was silent regarding the excise tax, I said he was silent regarding criticisms of it.
Or do you just enjoy twisting other people’s arguments to strawmen to make yours look superior instead of addressing them legitimately? Why don’t you cite specific columns addressing those criticisms, instead of reactionarily mouthing off?
.
Jay B.
@Tomlinson:
So what? You get to take the side of Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, two bought and sold whores for the insurance industry — which everyone hates because they kill people and routinely deny them necessary coverage.
What’s your point?
D. Aristophanes
Some bill-killers may not be thinking clearly right now. But it’s been like a week or two since Lieberman and Nelson took away all the ponies. Global warming deniers continue peddling their bullshit despite a solid decade or more of scientific consensus working against them. This makes the comparison blow major goats and makes Silver a bit of a douche to make it.
Anyway, I support passing the bill. But I can’t get over how frustrating it is that two assholes were able to derail a better bill. Especially when everybody from Obama to John Cole to Ezra Klein to Nate Silver to nearly all the relevant senators are on record saying they want a public option or at least the medicare buy-in.
Lieberman is the original bill-killer. The anger should be directed at him.
Tomlinson
Yes, and very true, and for that to (realistically) happen, we need a mandate, since mandating that healthy people be in the pool supports ant-rescission clauses, guaranteed issue, and community rating.
I absolutely agree that we need a mandate.
I just don’t think a mandate is a big deal for 90% of the population since it simply will not effect them in any way whatsoever.
mo
@numbskull
Basically, all you need to know about how necessary mandates are for this to work is the current state of the market for individual insurance – it’s atrocious and absolutely impossible for anyone that is not young and healthy to get decent insurance.
This is a combo of a few factors: 1) insurance companies don’t cover pre-existing conditions; 2) they charge high risk individuals/families exorbitant amounts; and 3) young and healthy don’t always buy into the system.
If you outlaw #1 and #2, you’ve got to make sure some healthy people buy insurance or you completely unbalance the system. AND #3 becomes a bigger deal than it is now – I was unemployed and was able to get high-deductible insurance, as a young and healthy person, for $60-70 a month. So I did. Under a system where everyone is paying roughly the same amount, my insurance costs would have gone up and I might not have gotten the insurance. But the more and more the healthy stay out of the system, the more and more the costs go up.
Basically, insurance “spreads and pools risk”, which means the price of insurance is the average cost of healthcare of all the people in the pool. You need healthy people to bring that average down. Otherwise the insurance companies won’t offer insurance on the individual market at all. And individuals can game the system, only buying in once they need it (like buying flood insurance the hurricane hits), which makes it no longer “insurance”.
Anya
@mk3872: they sound like angry little children who are desperately wanting attention. In Huffpo’s case, it’s all about traffic. I mean why let the teabaggers get all the attention. As long as they keep up this teabaggers from our side will have face time on teevee because our media likes nothing more than dem on dem violence.
The Raven
@Brien Jackson: “Well yeah, because it doesn’t really impact the majority of the population. So that makes for a rather odd baseline of comparison.”
So if it only harms 25% of the population, that’s OK?
You probably write that because you think you are part of that majority. Only, you know, you may not be. The excise tax will affect people who have good insurance through their employers; CBO estimates 19% of people with employer health care in 2016 and, since the the limit is not inflation-indexed, that will rise. At the other end of the range of wealth, it is likely that unregulated market insurance rates will rise to make it extremely difficult for anyone with an income of less than $50,000/year to save.
Roger Moore
@numbskull:
It’s very simple: adverse selection. This is insurance jargon meaning that one of the risks of selling insurance is that your potential customers know their risks better than you do, so you’ll only get customers who are likely to need a payout.
If you let people buy insurance after they already know they’re sick, people will do just that. When they’re healthy, they won’t buy insurance because it’s expensive and they’re not getting much for their money. But as soon as they get an expensive illness, they’ll sign up so that somebody else will get stuck with the bills. Pretty soon, the only people with insurance will be people with very expensive illnesses, and premiums will have to go through the roof to pay for it. That’s pretty much like not having insurance at all. The only solutions are either to not let people buy insurance once they know they’re sick- the current reprehensible “preexisting condition” rule- or to force everyone to buy insurance.
John Sears
@John Cole: Hamsher is working to close the spouse loophole, where big interests buy influence by ‘hiring’ the spouses, particularly of Senators, for sinecures that pay very well and require absolutely zero expertise or ability.
The Komen Foundation is a particular sore spot for Hamster, as a cancer survivor. I signed her petition; I’m not sure how this outrageous practice can be fixed, but it has to be or we’ll never run out of Liebermans and Bayhs.
See the Conason article here; Bayh makes Lieberman look almost clean by comparison. I admit, if I could have found a way, I’d have gone after Bayh’s wife instead of Lieberman’s. She sits on the board at Wellpoint and has cashed in millions in stock options while he fights legislation that might cut Wellpoint’s profits, and nobody raises a stink.
As for Nate Silver, he’s just an asshole. He’s been fluffing for the insurance companies, going on and on about their low profit margins, which is a crock as we all know because ‘profit’ for a corporation doesn’t include executive pay, perks, or stock options. He got caught saying that a Wyden-style open exchange is equivalent to single payer, which makes him remarkably uninformed; he got caught saying that 20% of your income for healthcare is ‘affordable’, and that made him look heartless and out of touch. He’s embarassed by it, or should be at any rate. Walker and Kos tore his little ’20 questions’ exercise into bloody ribbons. It was like watching professional boxers beat a toddler.
Brien Jackson
@JGabriel:
There’s no legitimate criticism of it to address. It basically amounts to “don’t tax x group of people.” It’s a preference, basically, and there’s nothing there to argue with. Although I have seen Ezra note more than once that the problem with ditching the Senate’s excise tax for the House’s surtax is that the latter does absolutely nothing to control healthcare costs.
And incidentally, when even self-fancied progressives are screaming about the levying of a tax on a socially inequitable reality because they and their friends are benefitting from said inequality, in what world are they living to think this is a country progressive enough in the aggregate to do anymore than buy off corporate interests? They’re the posers who prove the rule.
The Raven
@Jason: “My wife and I effectively chose and remain in our respective jobs because of healthcare. It’s been a serious constraint on our mobility and our happiness – I love my job, but I can’t say the same for her.”
And how are you going to feel if you find that, while theoretically insurance would be available to your wife if she leaves her job, in practice your family cannot afford it?
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
I’m in my 20’s, so it’s rather hard to say what the situation will be in 4 years.
Good. The excise tax is a feature, not a bug, and it’s a highly progressive one. Anyone who doesn’t think so may be a lot of things, but an American progressive simply isn’t one of them.
PS
I think Silver is spot on. They started with a strong emotional conclusion and went looking for the facts to support their case. They consciously and unconsciously omit the facts that do not support their case, While Silver, Ezra and crew dutifully take on every single issue.
geg6
Well, I’m not a bill killer or a Jane Hamsher fan. But I hate this bill. And it is not going to be improved like all the pie in the sky-ers claim. But it’s gonna pass, probably in the exact form of the Senate bill, and I just don’t see the point in having a hissy fit and joining up with teabggers over it. It’s just another sell out to corporate America and punching hippies in the solar flexus was the cherry on top. So we move on, knowing that. And also knowing that when we disagree with our Dem congress and preznit on policy we don’t go along meekly at the start, hoping they do the right thing because they won’t. We start agitating HARD from the start and hopefully get a better compromise next time. And keep in mind that our fellow Dems, whether left or moderate, hate us as much as any Republicans. I will fall in that hated group of contrary Dems who are sometimes leftists and somtimes very moderate, depending on the issue, so I have resigned myself to nothing changing much for me in this new Democratic world. I’ll still be told I’m an idiot, just like under our former GOP overlords. Funny that. Nobody likes people who think for themselves but that’s how I am. And FTR, if Nate Silver said people who don’t like the bill are the same as global warming deniers, he’s an idiot. But he’s good with polling analysis so I guess that makes him a genius on everything. Whatever, I’m sick of it and done with this stupidity.
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: The Senate’s excise tax does next to nothing to control costs; the CMS says it will only reduce national health expenditure by .3% in 2019, while it will reduce the quality of, or tax, the benefits of 58 MILLION PEOPLE in that year.
So, err, Ezra Klein is selling a load of bullshit, according to the CMS. The Excise tax does no significant cost control. Reimporting drugs would have saved more money and not made a single person’s care worse, but that would have made Billy Tauzin mad, so we can’t have that.
The Raven
@Silver Owl:
Thank you. I am struck by how willing many commenters here are to accept not-enough, but probably a bit more, as good-enough. After a decade or so of not-enough that’s probably going to wear very thin.
BTW, a radical left position would involve arresting insurance company execs for “crimes against the people” and confiscating the insurance companies. That may get to be a more popular position as the plan begins to bite. You-all just don’t know what radical is, anymore.
mk3872
@Anya:
This is why I warn my Republican friends of this:
If you embrace the teabaggers as a central part of your political party, you will NEVER please them. In order to do so, you will have to end all govt regulations, end all taxation and purge the nation of all imigrants.
Because as we are seeing with the fundamentalists on the Left, it is an all-or-nothing proposition.
Democractic leaders will get NO props from the progressive activists unless they install single-payer healthcare, shutdown the big banks and immediately remove all troops from Iraq & Afghanastan.
Davis X. Machina
Much of our politics, and the lion’s share of internet politics, is just taking the general American propensity to perform social signaling by choice of consumer goods and applying it specifically to politics.
“Public Option” is as much a brand as “9 West”.
mo
One of the reasons I tend to agree with Nate is that the argument pushing for reconciliation because this is just a “give away” to insurance companies is illogical: A bill that emerges from reconciliation would likely be MORE of a give away to insurance cos because they would receive customers on subsidies with NO regulations.
I posted this yesterday at the end of a dying thread (and probably doing so once again!):
What would come out of reconciliation would be better for insurance companies and worse for the sick, EVEN WITH A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION (which probably doesn’t have 50 votes): Because reconciliation wouldn’t allow regulation of insurance companies, any bill that emerged would force all older people and those with pre-existing conditions onto the public option. Insurance companies, in turn, could offer attractive rates to the young and healthy, especially those who qualify for subsidies. (They do this now, but this customer base would expand because of the subsidies.)
Basically, without insurance regulations even a robust public option would end up being really expensive because it would be the only “option” for the sick and so would probably be much worse for them than under the current bill. AND insurance companies’ profits would increase because they would receive subsidies for new customers but only have to cover the healthy.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Joe Beese:
The Wreck List at Kos isn’t indicative of anything since it is abused regularly and as I have recently learned, for sale as in Hamsher bought 25% of the space from Kos. I saw that posted at Kos with nobody disputing it and some there disparaging it and Kos for having done so. I have seen stuff pop up there with less than 10 recommends and 30 posts in total, this current diary has over 400 comments and only 133 recommends. The Wreck is just that, a wreck, nothing that really reflects anything of worth usually except to inform you of the latest outrage du jour at Kos (or more recently, FDL).
Her fans are trying to defend her but the smart people are not buying what she is selling; or as Slinkerwink, FDL’s paid rep at Kos, said to Al Franken in a diary he posted the other day at Kos, ‘I’m not buying the shit that you’re peddling here’, which is one hell of a nasty greeting for Minnesota’s newest Senator. Describing the disgust that those like myself have with Jane and her actions as hate is just a distortion from her camp followers that is designed to dismiss her detractors as unreasonable and not to be listened to. That is not an honest description of the feelings of those like myself, it’s just more worthless propaganda from the pro-Jane crowd.
El Cid
@The Raven: Indeed. The standard for “radical left” has simply vanished while what passes among the mainstream right used to be the utter fringe. Heck, even the Communist Party USA supports this health insurance reform effort.
Tomlinson
BTW, speaking of mandates, something else to consider. If you are currently insured, you probably are already under a mandate to purchase that insurance. Try going to your HR people and swapping your coverage for cash. Chances are, you cannot. I know we could not do that – in order to get the insurance we have today, we had to deliver the entire pool.
That’s a mandate, kids.
Brien Jackson
@John Sears:
What’s .3% of the total healthcare spending?
And you can save the outrage. I frankly don’t see any justification, certainly none grounded in progressivism, for the idea that compensation in the form of healthcare benefits, especially at levels well above average, should be exempt from taxation completely and forever.
John Sears
@PS: Ezra consistently and repeatedly refuses to acknowledge that the excise tax is improperly indexed and will cover more people over time, spreading through the entire private insurance market eventually. (58 million people by 2019 alone). Ezra also refuses to tell his readers that the precious excise tax he pushes as a ‘cost control’ isn’t one; the CMS, as I’ve mentioned about a hundred times on this topic, says it will have a very minimal impact, .3% of NHE. But they also say it will cause tens of millions of people to lose quality of coverage, forcing them into plans with higher co-pays and deductibles.
Silver thinks that a family of four making 54k a year can afford 20k in premiums and out of pocket costs. He’s just plain nuts.
Wannabe Speechwriter
Jane Hamsher jumped the shark for me when she went of Maddow and talked about how she would primary Blanche Lincoln out of the Democratic Party. He predominance on “the cables” just makes me believe she is little more than a talking head. I just find it telling all the policy people (Klein, Cohn, Krugman) are adamantly opposed to killing the bill. Hamsher and Dean and the rest of the talking heads make their living off of perpetuating conflict. That is all they’re doing and I haven’t seen anything that would prove otherwise. The fact our news media doesn’t provide serious in-dept discussion and is merely a place to throw a food-fight is cause for serious concern for our democracy. However, that is for another discussion…
JD Rhoades
Constant sense of victimization and betrayal? Check.
Deep and bitter conviction that some “other” is getting all the goodies? Check.
Insistence that the only reason we didn’t get everything is that our leaders weren’t ideologically pure enough? Check.
Asserting that if we just yell louder, stomp our feet, and threaten to primary anyone not sufficiently pure, we’ll get everything we want? Check.
Yep, we’re all teabaggers now.
The Raven
@Brien Jackson:
Oh, being hit hard by the plan, probably. Unless you are quite successful, it is probably going to cost you at least five years of savings.
It’s a tax on plans that come close to providing what, in every other industrialized economy, is the standard of care. It’s going to reduce care to a substandard level, not costs to a reasonable level.
Jason
What fascinates me about threads like this one is my lack of engagement with the so-called “Kill Billers” and the Tea Partiers both. Every once in a while I see somebody call them out, they look stupid? Silly? Mostly only the latter group. I can understand wanting to start over, not wanting to make concessions, wanting to force a public option into HCR. I can understand not understanding why the bill just can’t be reenvisioned until it is right. I don’t agree, necessarily, but I can understand that kind of intellectual posture.
I just haven’t read a lot of it. I don’t even know where this rhetoric is coming from, or what Jane Hamsher supports. And in that sense, it is a bit like global warming denialism or whatever – not because the two groups are intellectually similar, but because the collective shitfits that dominate these discussions are operating at so far a remove from what I can read every day. I feel like all the political conversations are like a barfight down the street, with cop cars and shouting, and I’m at a polite little faux-edgy cafe called “Serious Centrist” complaining to the waiter that Fafblog isn’t on the menu, and he’s like, “You’ll love the Wonkette!” And I am satisfied.
I can’t read Atrios, you get into the comments, and it’s all “blargh TPM sux” and so what? That is just like freaking Hot Air or whatever. So I can tune out, just like I do with TV news. Why care if Kos is a counterweight to the shoutfest if I’m not watching? The only part that I care about is that these people keep their media organizations going, and I understand the general purpose of these organizations is going to lead them, occasionally, into Crazytown. So … uh … necessary evil? Where am I going with this?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Rhoda:
This is a really important point. It isn’t easy getting landmark legislation thru Congress, especially when Dems control both ends of Penn Ave. In order to get this done without making mistakes the WH would need to be staffed by people with experience from the last round of progressive legislation directed from the WH. And there aren’t many folks left with much in the way of practical experience in doing it successfully. Not much got passed in the 2 years that Bill Clinton had a Dem majority, nor during the Carter admin. You have to go all the way back to LBJ circa 1964-1966 for that.
A 30 year old staffer in the middle part of the Johnson admin would be 74 years old today. The last time the Dems moved something this big thru Congress all by themselves, Obama was 4 years old. Most of the readers of this blog hadn’t been born yet. For some of the real yung’ens, maybe even your parents hadn’t been born yet. Man hadn’t set foot on the Moon yet. The NFL champions were the Green Bay Packers, but not in the Superbowl, because it hadn’t been named yet. Most geologists didn’t believe in the theory of continental drift. David Broder was young. That’s how long ago it was.
And yet somehow we are supposed to duplicate all that now without making any mistakes along the way?
Jason
@Tomlinson: Ah, I see now. That is a good point.
Brien Jackson
@Wannabe Speechwriter:
Hamsher and Kos are just, ironically, serving their function in the corporate media machine.
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: About 100 billion.
Drug reimportation would save about the same per year. A lot of minor technical reforms would also save about that per year; getting off of paper medical records alone saves a ton more than that.
As for it remaining untaxed, healthcare benefits being untaxed income is a uniquely American fuckup, because we’re the only people stupid enough to retain our murderously inefficient private health companies and let them make a profit off of basic health care. I agree it’s not a progressive system; I’m opposed to our current system of employer provided healthcare.
But I’m also opposed to losing every election for the next 20 years while robbing an estimated 17 million people of their insurance plans (that’s the number the CMS projects will lose what they have now, due in large part to the weak employer mandate; others will gain new employer coverage, but the net result is still 5 million fewer overall will have employer coverage).
ding7
@Jason:
I’m also insured and one of the 85% who gives a rat’s patootie.
John Sears
@The Raven: This. A ‘Cadillac Plan’ is a plan that gives you the care you need, at prices 3 times that found in Europe.
Plus, the excise tax is on the cost of premiums, not the level of care or coverage. A ‘Cadillac Plan’ for an old person covers a lot less than one for a young person, due to age rating, which, by the way, is perfectly legal under this ‘reform’ bill, at a 3:1 ratio.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Ed in NJ:
Fixited. Hamsher is all about Hamsher, promoting herself, her nascent “brand”, her pundit credentials. Plus, she’s proving herself to be a watered down version of the certifiably loony Maryscott O’Connor back in the early days of Left Blogistania.
J.W. Hamner
@John Sears:
See, this is not a substantive critique or rebuttal. The key phrase is “as we all know”. The same charges of “fluffing for the insurance companies” have been laid at the feet of Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn. It’s sort of amazing that the lefties who’ve spent the most time trying to understand the issues and politics of HCR have been simultaneously co-opted by the insurance industry. Quite the clever conspiracy!
If you are interested in the profits in health care, I suggest you check here… note that drug manufacturers, medical labs, home health care providers, medical information, etc are all sitting from 8.2% up to 16.5% profit margins.
The Raven
@JD Rhoades:
It’s easy when you are victimized and betrayed.
Considering how the banks and insurance companies are getting a subsidy, while the rest of us can’t even get a break on our mortgage payments, let alone decent support if we’re truly poor, I think that’s pretty easy, too.
Getting angry and acting on seems to me a perfectly reasonable response in these circumstances. Why do you think it’s irrational?
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
Jason
@The Raven: What do you mean “if”? That’s exactly what we face. Daily. PA just laid off thousands of employees, and Rendell is threatening to lay off 1k more, so you aren’t proposing a hypothetical situation. We can’t afford good private (I don’t know if we can afford basic private), I’m nearing my 40s, my wife has the dreaded “preexisting conditions.” So I’ll tell you how I feel: fuck everything. EDIT: Or, what you said a few posts later, about what a real “radical plan” would look like. That.
Napoleon
Well since this thread carries a “good news for conservatives” tag I should mention that TPM is reporting that some southern Dem representative has just defected to the GOP.
BlizzardOfOz
Um… Ezra’s “rebuttal” is to write “yes, this is correct” after every point. Nice.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Noonan:
Another fix.
Hamsher’s no different than Sirota, she just hasn’t had the same background, ie, being around lefty publications for a bazillion years, as he has.
@TR:
So true except FDL lost me over a year ago.
JGabriel
I strongly suggest that everyone here take a moment to read this post from D. Aristophanes at Sadly, No! for a bit of perspective.
Edited to add: Basically, we’re all arguing about a shit sandwich vs. two shit sandwiches, when we could be arguing about 3 ponies vs. half a dozen shit sandwiches. See link for graph.
.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@JD Rhoades:
You sir, win the internetzes today.
Alex S.
As long as the Republicans still want to kill the bill it can’t be that bad.
Brien Jackson
@J.W. Hamner:
It’s basically the sign of a simple mind you normally see in wingnuts. Since insurance companies are evil (and I won’t dispute that, incidentally) anything that sounds like a defense of them must also be evil or false, whether it’s simply an accurate estimation of reality or not.
El Cid
This is interesting from some business school researchers at U Mich Ann Arbor (news article only, original article for journal subscribers). One initial question for me would be whether or not there’s a causal mechanism in which members from areas with large and influential banks tend to be more likely to be on key finance committee seats (sort of a reverse, or perhaps co-equal, direction of causality than that suggested in the summary).
I suspect this will be cited quite a lot in the coming days.
****************************************************
****************************************************
Researchers from the University of Michigan have confirmed what many have long suspected: Politics played a key role in deciding which banks received billions in government bailout money and how much each one got.
According to a new study released Monday by Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura at the university’s Ross School of Business, banks with strong political connections were more likely to benefit from the government’s $250-billion Capital Purchase Program, part of its Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP.
The study found that banks fared better if they had executives holding board seats at any of the 12 Federal Reserve banks or if their headquarters was located in the district of a U.S. House of Representatives member serving on key finance committees. And the amount of government investment was “strongly related to banks’ political contributions and lobbying expenditures.”
The findings are likely to intensify criticism of the bank bailout program, which has already come under attack for aiding the biggest banks while leaving many small and struggling ones without any help.
“Our results show that political connections play an important role in a firm’s access to capital,” Sosyura, an assistant professor of finance, said in a statement.
TaosJohn
Hamsher is right.
It’s astonishing how many of the people on this page are willing to empower the enemy (your insurance companies) in order to accomplish what, exactly? Speaking as one of the supposed 30 million who would be “helped” by being forced to buy shitty insurance or pay a fine, what on earth is wrong with you? No vision, no soul. Complete capitulation, not even an attempt to escape. Clutching your equity and your flat-screen teevees, walling out the world of other possibilities. Life inside the fragile bubble of civilization, slow death by “realism.” Etc. etc. Wow.
Insurance is the problem. We have a right to universal health care. This bill will mean that never happens. It was written by lobbyists. I thought people understood what that means. The whole direction of this is flat-out wrong. Your own premiums could skyrocket. You will have 40% copays.
I will go on Medicare soon and stay on it as long as it’s around. Might not be there for you guys, I guess, since they plan to gut it to shovel money to the corporations.
But then you have “insurance,” right? Woo-hoo!
Anya
@John Cole: John, I agree with you about Kos, though I was not impressed with his performance on MTP. Hamsher on the other hand is loose canon and she will only hurt or embarrass our side. Her purity crap is a lethal poison for big tent Dem Party and it will only divide us. As for “emasculating Lanny Davis,” I did not think he was their was anything left to emasculate.
John Sears
@J.W. Hamner:
He thinks this is an actual position you can have, that 9k in premiums alone, ignoring out of pocket costs, is ‘affordable’.
Where did I argue for a conspiracy? You’re putting words in my mouth, whereas I’m providing quotes for Silver.
What does the profit margin of other companies have to do with the profit margin of insurers? The one can be too high and wasteful without having any meaning regarding the other; correlation is not causation.
Plus, insurance companies provide nothing for their profit. Absolutely nothing. They skim and deny claims. A device manufacturer makes something, a hospital provides care. Insurance companies are information brokers that steal money that should be going to care to line their own pockets, or that of their highly paid executive staff. Their low profit margin just means that they’re not reporting much profit to their shareholders so they can fuck them on dividends. It doesn’t make them more moral to steal from their owners as well as the rest of us.
Sentient Puddle
@BlizzardOfOz:
You cut off that quote. His rebuttal is “yes, this is correct, but terribly misleading.”
gex
@mk3872: Close. Except the progressive accepted, from the beginning, that single payer is off the table. But don’t let that get in the way of a good false equivalence.
Wannabe Speechwriter
@Brien Jackson:
I wouldn’t go that far but one thing I especially find ironic is in their attempt to demonize the Administration and the Democratic leadership, they’re making them seem more powerful than they really are. It is clear major mistakes were made both tactically and strategically. The major strategic mistake was not starting with single-payer. If they had done that, they could have achieved greater success. The biggest tactical mistake was of course the “Gang of Six.” Had all 5 committees gotten their bill out before the August recess, there would have been much more time for negotiations and also Democratic activists would have been better prepared against the teabaggers. It’s clear Reid doesn’t have much pull over the members of his caucus and Rahm’s “let’s please Ben Nelson” strategy is not all that effective.
However, when I read Greenwald’s whole “health care was merely a ploy by Rahm to get campaign contributions by the Democrats” or Hamsher’s “Obama is really a conservative who doesn’t care about progressive ideas” I have to laugh. They’re making these guys out to be more effective then they really are. It reminds me of when we all treated Karl Rove as this evil genius when now it turn out he was little more than a buffoon who got really lucky.
Ultimately these guys loose my respect because they are not bringing anything constructive to the debate and are merely throwing a temper tantrum because things didn’t go as planned. The fact these folks are treated as respect leaders of the progressive movement makes me fear for the future of the movement.
The Raven
@Brien Jackson:
It is relevant in a world where international trade in the norm. Companies and countries with poor business models (which is one way of looking at the current US health care system, as well as the one proposed in the various reforms) go under.
So the rats should fight over the heel of the loaf?
Croak!
jwb
@geg6: “We start agitating HARD from the start and hopefully get a better compromise next time.”
This. And don’t confuse working inside baseball with larger mobilization efforts (which I think the progressives and even the administration did with HCR).
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: Yes, we’re wingnuts for wanting to improve the quality of care rather than make it worse.
Again, from the CMS:
But gee, other than demonstrably making care worse for tens of millions of Americans, more every year, this bill is super, and only wing nuts could oppose it.
Brien Jackson
@TaosJohn:
Well that’s nice you got yours.
jibeaux
@JD Rhoades:
Bingo.
JGabriel
Wannabe Speechwriter:
Evil buffoon. We were right about the evil; we just mistook luck for brains. Which, to be fair, happens everywhere quite frequently.
.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Anya:
This.
Markos is no rocket scientist. Good ideas, good execution but as a talking head pundit, I see his military background in terms of talking point “how to speak to the press” training (having been thru it).
So, he’s not a deep thinker, we don’t need deep thinkers. He *is* a team player in that he’s not so far out in la-la land that he overlooks the politics in a political situation.
As I said above, Hamsher’s well into Maryscott O’Connor territory anymore and that will hurt her brand in the long run. Sirota, self-interested schill that he’s always been, was smart enough to realize that being over-the-top like that hurt one’s career advancement.
Guster
@Brien Jackson: Global warming denialists” is the perfect comparison for Hamsher and Kos, at least at the moment.
Well, if you think that opposition to this healthcare bill is perfectly equivalent to denying global warming, I guess we don’t have enough common ground for discussion.
But that wasn’t my point at all.
My point was that the strategies of global warming denialists _work_. What Silver is saying is, ‘you’re acting just like those irrational and effective people on the right.’
Tomlinson
As for the public option, can someone explain this:
The initial Senate Public option covered, what, 2% of the population? Pretty damn toothless. But it was somehow critical.
Then that went away, to be replaced by the medicare buy-in for people 55-64. This was just insane – if you want to find a way to shovel profit at the insurance companies, under our current system, this is about the best you could do. We already cover the most expensive population segment for them, so let’s cover the *second* most expensive segment of the population for them, too. Brilliant policy.
That was OK, too. Somehow.
But when Lieberman killed it, he was burned in effigy. Well someone should have burned him in effigy, but it probably should have been the people in the insurance company boardrooms.
Eh?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@JGabriel:
That dipstick posted here the other day that he would bet his “firstborn’s” life that Lieberman would not vote for cloture even after getting everything he wanted. I asked him how that worked out in another thread last night but he either missed it or declined to respond.
I hope his kid is still alive. Pretty hazardous in that family with one of the parents betting the kids lives in political matters. As far as any advice this person might give?
I’ll pass. ;)
JD Rhoades
Because all I’m seeing is “getting angry”, finger-pointing, insistence that if we just clap louder, we’ll all get ponies, and the thing that really chaps my ass: threats to stay home and let the Rethuglicans re-take Congress and the White House. That’s what’s fucking irrational. That’s on a level with the RedState and LGF idiots who were dreaming of a terrorist nuclear strike after the 2006 elections to “teach the country a lesson.”
I’m not seeing action or calls to improve the bill down the line. I’m seeing tantrums.
John Sears
@The Raven: This. My wife’s work has an office in Denmark, and if they offered us a chance to relocate there we’d be packing our bags tomorrow, just for the chance to move to a society where healthcare is seen as a right, not a privilege you beg for from your feudal lords at Wellpoint.
Brien Jackson
No. No. No. NO! I don’t care how many times this is said, it’s still the single dumbest meme floating around the leftysphere.
Think of it this way; Bernie Sanders estimates there are about 5 members of the Senate who would vote for a single-payer system. Lets be exceptionally generous and estimate there are 40 votes for it. So when 50+ votes start out opposed to the idea, how are you going to “negotiate” that? The opposition has no reason whatsoever to negotiate, they’ve already got it beat altogether.
gwangung
@geg6: I agree with the resulting tactical plan entirely. I suspect almost everybody does.
So how come we’re not getting along?
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: None of us ‘have ours’. Nobody in this entire country has secure affordable healthcare. We could all lose it, at any time, at the drop of a hat.
That doesn’t change under this bill, which expects you to pony up with up to 20% of your household income for substandard care with high deductibles and copays.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@TaosJohn: “Hamsher is right.”
We agree on something TJ! She has gone so far left that she is hooking up with the far right.
Good on you for catching that! BTW, how’s that freedumb thing coming?
D. Aristophanes
DougL – go back to that post. I responded.
Just Some Fuckhead
Constant sense of arrogance of purpose? Check.
Deep and bitter conviction that there is a fifth column trying to subvert our goals of hegemony? Check.
Insistence that the only way to save health care reform is by destroying it with a corporate giveaway? Check.
Asserting that if we just clap louder the masses will thank us with flowers in the street? Check.
Yep, we’re all neocons now.
JGabriel
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
The post I linked to is a joke, dude — about graphs and ponies and poop. And Nate Silver. The self-righteous response pretty much proves my point: that we could all use a little perspective here.
.
The Raven
@Brien Jackson:
Brien, I don’t. In four months, I expect I will be paying around $5,000/year for poor insurance.
Rather than working to raise up the health care of all Americans to the level that every other industrialized nation has managed, you would prefer to pull down the people who have come close to it. Why?
Sentient Puddle
@Tomlinson: Speaking as someone who knows he doesn’t know a lot about the bill, I think this is all because the people outraged didn’t know that they didn’t know a lot about the bill. I remember feeling pretty damn depressed when Lieberman killed the public option in the Senate, but looking back, the damn thing was watered down so much that it wouldn’t have done half of what I thought.
On the other hand, it did give people an excuse to burn Lieberman in effigy. And come on, who doesn’t like doing that?
John Sears
@The Raven: This. We’re in a squeeze play between China with its low wage, low freedom society and Europe. We could compete by moving our standards up, or by dropping down.
I guess the bill-pushers want us to drop down. Lower standard of living FTW.
Calming Influence
Nate Silver? Sadly No!
JGabriel
@Sentient Puddle:
Exactly. You take your moments of joy where you can find them, not with the moments of joy you wish you had.
Wait, what?
.
JD Rhoades
In case you’ve forgotten what kind of people we’re fighting against.
jibeaux
@Calming Influence:
That already got linked. The graph makes some sense. What doesn’t make sense is their conclusion, flowing from their graph, is that 6 poop sandwiches are better than 1.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@D. Aristophanes: “Yeah, there’s this little fella that keeps banging on my door, goes by Rumplestiltskin, I believe … but I know how to deal with bill collectors.”
lol! Sounds like you have lost this bet before? ;)
Sorry but I had to rib you on this because as a parent I couldn’t even jest that I would sacrifice a child on the altar of a political argument.
Great hyperbole though! :)
@JGabriel:
Maybe I should have said “comic” instead of “dipstick”? “Jester”? Umm, SadlyNo has a rep that precedes itself. I am aware of most internet traditions and that is one that I am very familiar with. :)
snarkout
@138: It’s not $9000 in premiums for a family earning $54,000; it’s $5,800, with an out-of-pocket maximum of an additional $6,300 (and that’s for a family earning $60,000, not $54K). Is that too much? Yeah, probably, but you’ll note that Gruber’s calculation has it at literally twice as much without reform.
The Raven
@JD Rhoades:
Well, at least you’ve stopped arguing that we have paranoid fantasies of victimization. What we want, what we say, doesn’t matter anyway; we’ve lost. So stop being a sore winner.
…or are you perhaps suspecting that we are right?
Also, there’s also still a chance that making a lot of noise will get us some improvements. There will be time enough, later, to think calmly about long-term strategy.
D. Aristophanes
DougL – not my wisest post ever … heat of the moment and all that. Anyway, the kid’s fine, gearing up for Christmas, blissfully unaware that his dad’s a rhetorical loose cannon.
Mnemosyne
@Guster:
But saying that anyone who supports the bill is just like an Iraq war supporter is not insulting at all?
John Sears
@snarkout: You’re right, I was thinking of the 350% FPL bracket there. I apologize.
Their costs (for the family of four at 54k) are about 10k total, or about 20% of their income, for both premiums and out of pocket.
If you look at that top bracket in Cohn’s chart, the highest earning example, they pay 10k per year in premiums alone. All example families risk at least 17%; one has to risk 23% of their income.
This is no way to fund a healthcare system.
Mnemosyne
@John Sears:
Where are you getting 20% from? Everything I’ve seen says 8%, or a 2% penalty if you choose not to buy insurance. Links, please.
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
Because something along the lines of what most Western European nations have isn’t achievable at the moment.
Anya
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Did I miss any of Sirota’s rants? He seems to be taking a low key roe in this whole anyone who is not calling for the bill to be killed is a sellout corporate shill or something?
Mary
Hamsher went on Fox News to further push for killing the bill. She has previously bashed Democrats who appeared on Fox, so the appearance only adds to the destruction of her credibility. Why is she hurting her credibility like this? I suspect that she has obligated herself to this destructive course of action by accepting health care lobbying money from the likes of FreedomWorks, which she did not deny when I flat out asked her. She said she’ll take money from anybody. It must have been a lot of money and there is little doubt that she has some heavy duty lobbying help trying to clean up after her.
John Sears
@Mnemosyne: Actually the global warming denier analogy works a lot better for bill-pushers than killers. This ‘reform’ package is a lot like doing nothing on Climate Change, and hoping that magical pony making corporations will solve all our problems down the line, rather than taking relatively simple, if difficult, governmental action now that has been empirically proven to work (in real world conditions with health care).
Dr. Squid
And now we’ve got someone at the top of the friggin rec list no less claiming that the point-by-point rebuttals are just hatred of Hamsher.
@Mnemosyne: Of course not. If they say it, it’s OK! If it’s said about them, it’s hate speech.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne:
Perhaps, but there’s a spooky amount of folks going to bat for this bill that sold us the Iraq war. OTOH, I don’t know that there is anyone on the left pointing out what a bad bill this is that is also a global warming denialist.
JD Rhoades
Oh, don’t worry, I still feel that way. It just wasn’t germane to my response.
Oh, for God’s sake….
I agree with you there are problems. I don’t on the solution. This all-or-nothingism just proves the point.
Dr. Squid
@John Sears: So is saying that you’re wrong about this hate speech?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@r€nato: Do we really know what Nelson could get away with voting for? Because we know he’s a corporate whore. Is that what Nebraskans really want? Don’t you think they could be helped by the public option? And I suppose you think it is no big deal that Nelson is a former health insurance company CEO.
gex
I love watching straight people fight about whether or not they should have to pay taxes on their employer provided health care benefits. I have the luxury of not giving a rat’s ass about that provision because I pay taxes on 50% of my benefits regardless of whether it reaches a threshold or not.
@Brien Jackson: Listen, I want a Mercedes-Benz quality plan. I don’t care if it requires the fucked up system we have to support it. I could never settle for a Toyota if it meant the poor could drive a Yugo instead of having to walk everywhere. Plus, where’s my pony?
What some people don’t seem to get is that one reason this system is so out of control is that there isn’t price sensitivity at the right points for competition to provide better results. We try to introduce price sensitivity to the consumers (employers and their employees) and people starts crying.
Never mind the fact that we know that the large Mercedes-like plans get the absolute best prices through a negotiating ability that other people don’t have, thus they end up being subsidized by the uninsured or the individually insured. If the uninsured/individually insured pay $350 for something that costs the Mercedes’ plan insured $125, those Mercedes drivers sure as shit can be taxed to help out those uninsured.
J.W. Hamner
@John Sears:
I think everyone in this thread thinks that the idea of for profit medical insurance is evil. Yes, they make money by denying claims and dropping coverage when people get sick. Nobody that I’ve seen here is defending this.
However, the idea that all our health care reform problems are contained in the Evil Insurance Industry is false. The vast majority of money to be saved to make health care affordable is on the Provider side… and everyone who has spent a second looking into the problem knows it. It’s even very likely that you know it, but the reason why everyone readily admits that Single Payer is the most effective way to contain costs… is not because it eliminates the evil of the insurance industry… but because it has the leverage to tell Doctors, Pharma, et al exactly how much money they are going to get and how much they are going to like it.
As you might expect, this approach is not politically tenable.
The Raven
@Brien Jackson:
My very first comment in this discussion @The Raven:
But also, see Digby.
Finally, I am astonished that no women in this discussion are raising the problem of the anti-abortion elements that will probably be in the final bill. Those may be the most destructive failures.
gwangung
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Well, I had thought the polling in Nebraska (which didn’t go for Obama) had the public option and more progressive elements going in the 30 percent area, but perhaps I’m taking the wrong lesson from that.
kay
Unless I’m mistaken, I believe I saw Hamsher on “Fox and Friends” this morning, having a serious policy discussion with the morning crew there.
I don’t know if they used the word “Obamacare” because I turned it off.
John Sears
@Mnemosyne: Sure.
John Sears
@John Sears: In fact,
You can have all the links you want.
The Raven
@JD Rhoades:
What solutions, exactly, do you disagree with and why?
John Sears
@John Sears: I had a post with a bunch more links but there’s no chance it gets through the system.
You could also look here or hereor read the actual bill yourself.
TaosJohn
All right, geniuses, read this:
http://www.copyblogger.com/fight-for-your-ideas/
Not about health care, but very relevant.
MattR
Does anyone have any actual numbers that support the necessity of the mandate? I am looking for something that talks about the estimated additional costs from banning annual/lifetime caps and forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions as well as estimates for the amount of “fat” that can be trimmed from insurance companies while keeping them profitable.
How about a triggered (possibly phased by income) mandate if insurance companies are paying out more than 90% of premiums in medical costs?
gex
@The Raven:
Because the employer based insurance system is perhaps the most dysfunctional aspect of our system. The plans that go to employers use exceptional bargaining power to get prices that the uninsured and the individually insured DO NOT GET. The system you are concerned about requires that some people pay more, in some cases several times as much for a therapy or treatment than you or your insurer would pay under your plan. Because the really great coverage you have would and should cost more if you had to buy it individually instead of having your employer lean on the insurers for better rates on your behalf.
You just might have to pay a little bit of taxes on that compensation you are receiving so that others can continue to afford to subsidize your awesome coverage.
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
As always, anyone who wants to spnd the next half century campaigning to abolish the Senate with me is readily welcomed.
Silver Owl
Nelson having been a health insurance CEO explains quite bit about why the industry is a failure and he wants congress to prop it up.
You have to admit than when a huge portion of your customer base would rather not even deal with you and find your product/service pretty shitty and the only thing left is to have congress force people to purchase your product/service or face penalties. That is failure in spectacular fashion.
John Sears
@J.W. Hamner: Of course I know that the majority of cost excess is found in the provider side.
Saying that the solution isn’t politically tenable is an indictment of our politics, not the solution(s). You’re saying that we’re not strong enough or committed enough to face up to reality, even at the cost of our nation and our way of life. That’s a position to take, to be sure, but it’s not going to change the fact that we cannot afford the private insurance system we have now. Costs will continue to rise at over 5% a year from their already completely unmanageable level until we collapse. We can’t legislate private companies into being good corporate citizens, though we might be able to regulate them into at least not being charnal houses like they are now. The Senate Bill ignores the fact that the fundamental system we build our healthcare on is completely unsustainable; patching it over with some Medicare Advantage dollars won’t work. You also can’t legislate gravity away, or set the value of pi to 3.
itsbenj
@JGabriel: yes, this. RJ’s post at C&L is must-read for people to understand why this circular firing squad against progressives is stupid and counter-productive. he explains the terrain perfectly.
John Sears
@gex: The CMS says that employers won’t pass on the cost of the excise tax to employees, that they’ll slash benefits or drop coverage entirely instead.
Also, in other countries people pay far less per capita for truly universal care with better outcomes than our own, so your argument for forced austerity doesn’t hold water. Americans are not enormously sicker than other people; we don’t cost enormously more to insure for any reason other than our crappy, misguided healthcare policy.
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: See, now you’re just talking sense.
The Senate is a profound insult to basic democratic principles. California has the same vote as Wyoming; how is that not a giant middle finger to every man and woman in California?
Wyoming has 532,000 people, while California has 36 million. That means that the precious Senate says that a Californian is worth 1/72nd of a Wyoming… resident. I don’t know the cutesy name for living there.
That’s an absolute outrage.
Meg
Now that we’ve thoroughly discussed the politics of the bill, lets talk mandates. I want to see some analysis with numbers calculating the amount families will have to pay depending on their place in the ridiculous criteria for determining the poverty line. The Center on Budget and Priorities has an outstanding overview of these costs, comparing Senate and House bills. I get my data from them.
My parents – both of whom are 60 – do not have health insurance. Never have. My dad is a roofer who goes around the neighborhood fixing random leaks. My mom is a dental assistant for a small business that cannot afford health care for their employees. They both make about 70K a year combined. If my calculations are correct, they are living at about 380% above the poverty level for a family of two. For families at this level, this bill will have them spending 10% of their income on health care premiums. Moreover, the type of coverage they will receive only has an actuarial value of 70% – which I THINK means that insurance companies only have to cover 70% of the bill. So in other words, not only will they be spending $7,000 a year on health premiums, if they both end up with cancer or heart disease in the next five years, they would still be paying 30% of the bill. So lets see, if the “average hospital bill” for cancer is 50K, that’s still 15K out of pocket – IF THAT. Now we get into bankruptcy territory. For families on the border between “middle class” and “lower class,” a 15K bill will bankrupt them just as fast as a 30K bill. Why? Because one sick person has to drop out of the workforce, cutting family income in half. When calculating these arbitrary family income poverty threshold numbers, its really important to consider that in a medical disaster scenario, that family income is going to be drained by the loss of a healthy worker. In the end, it doesn’t matter at what level you are subsidized at, since this bill doesn’t consider how much income you lose when you get sick.
CaseyL
It’s sad to see what’s happened to FDL. Even though I first stopped reading the site regularly about two years ago, after it became mostly a Jane Hamsher Fan Club (i.e. most of the comments were all about how great Jane was and how wonderful it was to be commenting on her site), I came back to read emptywheel and TBogg.
I could say I saw this coming, but that would be a lie. I didn’t. I didn’t like Hamsher, or her apparent limitless appetite for praise, but it never occurred to me that she’d become an outright liability to a cause I know is genuinely important to her.
John Sears
@Meg: This is all absolutely correct. Your analysis is spot on, except for the cancer treatment costs. A single year’s supply of cancer drugs can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That’s drugs… alone.
Wannabe Speechwriter
@Brien Jackson:
I agree single-payer was not achievable. However, I feel the Dems didn’t set their sights high enough. One thing that got lost in the public option debate is how most people would not have access to the public option. My work gives me health care, so I’m still going to be stuck with what ever my company gives me. I would be willing to bet most people on this blog are either covered by work, parents, or some government program (Medicare, VA, etc). So most people here will not be that directly affected by the current health care proposal. This of course makes the FDL crowd look like complete assholes: they’re basically telling poor people they can’t have health care because the bill is not perfect.
However, I do think if the Dems had set their sights higher, we could have gotten more. If our platform last year had been we plan to transform how you receive health care rather than we’re going to give more people access to it, it would have given us more room to negotiate downward. Also polls have consistently shown the vast majority of Americans are open to expanding Medicare coverage. And you don’t even have to do single-payer/Medicare: Wyden-Bennett would have been just as transformational.
However, this is all speculation. You could be easily be right single-payer would have been a non-starer (however, even Baucus said they should have put this in play.) However, there is no doubt the public option suffered from the fact it was seen as the most transformational and left wing and I don’t see how it would have hurt to have something else there that would have helped frame the debate better.
les
@John Sears:
It’s really endless, on either side; ignore anything that doesn’t support your position. Klein even drew you a picture. If you want to fight about his sources, cool; but simplistic bullshit about the cost of the mandate is just that. Anyone who thought we were getting rid of for-profit insurance companies is smoking crack; but we will force them to spend more of their premium dollars for medical care and less on overhead (including executive comp and profit. also.), we’ll start curbing the more egregious customer fuck overs, we’ll get millions of Americans healthier. And people with $40K health plans will pay more taxes. Is the left suddenly in the “no more taxes, ever!!1!” camp? jebus.
les
@The Raven:
Citation needed. your bullshit pronouncements are deep enough already.
kay
@CaseyL:
Why go on Fox and Friends? To advance liberal policy? It’s not a news program, it’s a right wing opinion generator. It’s exempted from the FOX news lineup, because it’s recognized as explicitly partisan.
Sorry. That’s just flat-out stupid.
John Sears
@les: The left, if by ‘the left’ you mean me, is in favor of not making middle class people struggling to get by pay 20% of their income on what should be a fundamental human right, and in fact is so, in Britain, in France, in Denmark, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Japan, in every major developed nation in the world, in fact.
Every one except for us. I guess we’re special.
Enlightened Layperson
Here’s what I don’t get. Hashmer does, indeed, say that she and the teabaggers are fighting for the same thing, just with different emphasis. Does she seriously think the teabaggers would come out for public option, let alone single payer? Does she not realize that their reaction to those thing would be ZMG GOVERNMENT! Communism! Fascism! Socialism! Antichrist! The teabaggers are out there fighting tooth and claw for the status quo. (Of course, when you get right down to it, so is she).
MattR
@les:
Is there actually anything in the bill that does this?
les
@John Sears:
jebus on a popsicle stick. Facts please.
The Raven
@Wannabe Speechwriter:
Yes. Yes. You let them talk you down from the “crazy” position and you get a bit more.
John Sears
@les: Personal saving rate for Americans is currently at between 4-5%.
Health care costs/risks under Senate reform are about 20% of income.
Therefore, Raven is right, actually. Healthcare costs under this bill are about 4-5 times the rate Americans save money.
Brien Jackson
That’s because there obviously wasn’t enough support for much more.
John Sears
@MattR: Yes and no. There is a new provision requiring an 85% medical loss ratio for the small group market and 80% for individuals. This is a terrible, terrible rate. Medicare spends at about 97%.
There’s also an enormous loophole that allows them to handwave those requirements away if they ask nicely.
John Sears
@les: Once again, Ezra Klein is lying.
CMS says that the ‘cost control’ will only save .3% of NHE.
Meanwhile, they also say it will cause a sharp degradation in quality of existing plans, and that this degradation will both spread and worsen over time:
See here.
gizmo
I support passage of the healthcare bill, because failure would guarantee that we lose Congress in 2010. But Jane Hamsher is right– what this bill does is to lock in corporate dominance of our healthcare system for decades to come. The bill is a piece of shit, and it won’t be very long before the electorate figures out that we’ve been had– again.
MattR
@John Sears: Thanks. At least they got some minimum ratio in the bill, though I am not shocked that the minimum is low and there are loopholes to be exploited.
@Brien Jackson: Do you really think public opinion and the actions of Congress go hand in hand? ;)
John Sears
@Brien Jackson: In large part because of the Senate.
So, how do you favor getting rid of it? I assume we’re going to need to pass an amendment by state conventions, which has never been done before, as the Senate itself will never vote itself out of existence.
Actually, we’ll probably need to pass two; the Constitution bans amendments that eliminate the ‘equal suffrage’ in the Senate. Now, I consider 0 votes for all states in the Senate to be ‘equal’, but just to be on teh safe side we might need to repeal that clause first, then pass the Senate abolition amendment.
Are you in favor of having a higher house at all, or do you think we should move to a unicameral system?
kay
@John Sears:
Who’s going to pay for it? You’re flat out refusing to pay a 2% tax, which is what not complying with the mandate actually costs, despite the scare tactics of Olberman and others insisting people are going to be carted off to prison.
More and more, reading the objections to this, I feel as if the real objection is to anyone paying for anything.
Sorry. This is delusional. Health care isn’t free. We have the most expensive system in the world, and every cost control is met with screams of “rationing!” from both the left and the right.
You thought insuring 30 million people would involve no compromise or sacrifice from anyone else? And you’re insisting you’re the “real liberals”?
The liberal plan, as presented, did not include cost controls on providers or any limits on care. You dodged every single difficult issue, and insisted it could all be shoved off on for-profit insurers, and people who make more than 250k a year, and that is delusional.
John Sears
@kay: In Europe, most countries collect a progressive payroll tax to pay for insurance. Some compel purchase of high quality plans with government negotiated costs and terms.
None of them spend 20% of your income doing so.
Your insistence on austerity is patently false. US healthcare costs are rising at 5% a year. European costs are rising at about the same rate, but starting from a much lower base. Moving to a Canuckistani/European system, whether it be Single Provider, Single Payer, Exchange based or Private (ala the Dutch, with strong risk adjustment) would save us a ton of money and cover everyone at the same time.
Then our costs would continue to inflate, of course, but at the same rate as our counterparts, so we’d maintain competitiveness. This rate is too high of course, but a big chunk of it is the graying population, which will, sadly, take care of itself due to human mortality. The West is shifting into a lower rate of population growth, or even slow rates of population loss, and this demographic change has put a unique and hopefully one time pressure on everyone.
Dreggas
and now Jane is going on Fox and Friends
John Sears
@kay: Your insistence on cost control is interesting, since the Senate bill scrupulously avoids real cost control, relying on an excise tax that only produces a .3% reduction in the NHE.
How about drug reimportation, or better yet, government price controls on drugs? Ditto for all medical procedures in fact. How about we require at least a 90% medical loss ratio? (I like 92-95% myself). How about we require that all basic health insurance plans be offered at cost (many european countries do it that way). How about we provide truly universal care instead of the pathetic 93% coverage the Senate bill is projected to reach (CMS again), which would cut back on our charity care and ER expenses. How about we eliminate the enormous amount of paperwork wastage caused by having so many private insurers?
Etc. Etc. Etc. You’re the one not presenting serious ideas on cost control, not me.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
This. Another winner of today’s internetzez.
We on the left are ill-served by the so-called advocacy of people like Hamsher: they are not effective spokes people for movement politics.
John Sears
@Dreggas: I’d walk into hell with my eyes open to stop this bill. I’d sell my soul, but I don’t actually have one, and there’s no devil waiting to pick it up on a deal anyway.
Or God waiting to bail us out, or 11-dimensional chess master who will swoop in during reconciliation and make everything ok again. Just us.
John Sears
@John Sears: I’m out of here. This has worn me down, again. You can point out study after study showing no significant savings, you can point out analysis after analysis showing the subsidies are inadequate, point out glaring loopholes and giveaways and yet at the end of the day people are still shoveling shit aside looking for the pony.
Good luck with that.
les
@John Sears:
I’m in favor of that too. If your position, such as it is, is “nothing until I get German healthcare,” shut up and go away. You’re not part of the solution or even the conversation, ’cause it ain’t happenin’. Killing the current bill will not get you what you want. And, oh by the way, if you could get it, your taxes would go up. Your sparkly pony doesn’t exist in the real world.
les
@MattR:
yes. google is your friend.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Let me see if I have this straight; we should stop harshing on Barack Obama because he has no choice but to work with Nelson and Lieberman and Snowe and say nice things about them in the press. But then you ask if it’s OK for Nate Silver to call people he disagrees with a bunch of irrational conspiracy theorists. Ah, just another day on Balloon Juice.
That’s going too far as well, since it’s a strawman version of what she wrote. Just another day on Balloon Juice.
Don
I seriously do not understand the people who have gotten themselves into a froth over this mandate, or statements like this one:
“in favor of not making middle class people struggling to get by pay 20% of their income on what should be a fundamental human right, and in fact is so, in Britain, in France, in Denmark, in Germany, in Switzerland, in Japan, in every major developed nation in the world, in fact.”
I’d also prefer we deal with this through taxes and public plans, but this argument that we can’t have mandates because it’s going to cause people to have to spend money is just moronic. Those countries listed above all have higher tax rates because health care doesn’t just grow on trees. It’s going to have to be paid for somehow, and the reality – which Klein and others have acknowledged – is that the younger and healthier are going to be paying for the older and sicker.
Which is exactly how we handle social security. Where’s the Kossack uprising to shitcan that tax? How about unemployment insurance deducations? Nobody pays into that at the moment when they need to be collecting unemployment – why is it okay to force them to pay for something they don’t need?
Because that’s the way the social contract works, and any liberal who opposes asking the haves to step up and spend a little more to help the have nots hasn’t paid attention to which team they signed up with.
There’s plenty of subsidies and the 8%/2% deal (whcih is probably too low) to help out the struggling, but yeah, this is going to cost. In what universe do the opponents of the mandate live that they thought all this was going to happen and NOT cost us?
You’d rather it was all a single line item on your federal taxes, fine. Me too. You’re concerned about insurance companies lining their pockets? Me too. But there’s clauses to address the second part and the first part just wasn’t doable in this round. Maybe it will be later. Maybe it won’t.
But opposing doing anything – and a “kill the bill” is for sure a vote for doing nothing – because there’s going to be a financial impact on people? That’s just stupid, and it makes people opposing the mandate look like the stereotypical liberal willing to spend everyone’s money but their own.
les
@John Sears:
Point? my savings rate is lower than it might be, ’cause even with an employer plan health insurance is ridiculous.
this isn’t even apples and oranges–you’re picking an apple and an orangutan, and claiming it says something about molluscs. I’ll top ya–health care will cost a bazillion years of savings, ’cause if ya can’t pay for health care you probably aren’t saving anything.
kay
@John Sears:
Your argument is incoherent.
You object to the government funneling money to private insurers, and you object to the excise tax on employer-provided plans.
High value employer provided plans are the DIRECT result of the government and employers using the tax code to funnel money to private insurers. Why do you think employers took 20% of compensation and converted it to health insurance? Because they’re humanitarians? It goes directly to private insurers. From workers pocket to insurer, courtesy of the tax code.
Your objection to the excise tax is directly contradictory to your objection to the mandate.
Decide. You can’t have both sides of this argument.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@kay:
Unless the point is to drive traffic to your site, generate interest in you as a ‘face’ of something, ie., the lefty Islamocommiefascistfemminist anti-gun unpatriots. There are at least 5 booking agents who will see such an appearance and remember it for the next time.
Again, such appearances simply reinforce the idea that Hamsher is all about Hamsher.
Jay B.
@les:
Jesus Christ, John Sears is destroying the argument that the bill is even moderately not-terrible with what I think are “facts” and the best — the best — you have is to tell him to “shut up” and think it’s all sparkly pony to believe in a better system.
I’m slowly working my way over to the idea that, at least politically in the short term, this inevitability might marginally improve the Democrats’ standing in 2010 — because the Republicans are literally Lovecraftian horrors at this point, it’s literally the last semi-positive I can muster for it, having exhausted every other rationale — but I think one of Sears’ arguments, that this an electorally suicidal bill the Democrats because it sucks and produces a worse outcome than even the status quo is pretty sound.
You might disagree, but other than “but at least poor people can be forced to buy shitty insurance”, I’ve yet to be convinced there’s any kind of upside.
kay
@John Sears:
But no one seriously discussed having government set rates for procedures, John. No one. You want to pay less for health care, but you’re refusing to address how that might actually happen.
Incidentally (and this is no small matter) one of the benefits of our bloated, expensive for-profit health care provider system is lots and lots and lots of JOBS. Middle class jobs, like techs and nurses and support staff. If you’re really proposing that we go to a non-profit provider system, consider that.
terry chay
It was personal with them (though they claim not). And their words and force of personality carried a lot of low-information liberals along (yes, there are those).
What they have done is worthy of respect, especially if you believe in framing and the Overton window, but ends do not justify the means. Morally you can’t go justifying 40 million without insurance and thousands dead just because Lieberman is an ass.
kay
@Jay B.:
Medicaid is what poor people rely on for health insurance.
I really object to the continued insistence of opponents of this bill to 1. ignoring the Medicaid expansion and 2. insisting poor people are going to be purchasing private insurance.
It’s not true.
kay
@Don:
Agreed.
kay
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
It’s hard to believe this is “about the liberal base” when you’re appearing on Fox and Friends to bitch about taxes.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@D. Aristophanes:
Good to hear that the kid is doing just fine…lol! I know all about that loose cannon stuff too. Been there, done that, just different ammo. :)
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Thanks! First of all, I would like to thank my Mother… Hold it! I heard that the winner gets a week-old McDonald’s Happy Meal with an adult toy: Is there a choice in which adult toy I can pick and are they new or used adult toys?
Just making sure before committing myself to accepting this award. ;)
You are right, we are not served well by having Jane claiming to represent the progressive side of things. She is no kind of progressive I want to ally with, that’s for sure. IMO she is a bit too radical to be considered a true progressive and her more rabid followers only confirm that to me.
Her latest bit of going on Faux Nooz exposes her as an opportunistic headline grabber who is willing to be a tool of the right in exchange for their promoting and legitimizing her among the wingnuts as a leading voice in the progressive community. No thank you, that is not my kind of a progressive.
Mnemosyne
@John Sears:
That chart must be some kind of Rorschach test, because you look at it and say, “My God, people are going to be forced to pay $18,000 a year for health insurance!” and I look at it and say, “Oh, thank God, people won’t get stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills and won’t be on the hook for more than $18,000 no matter how sick they get.”
And, no, pointing out that the chart is showing a maximum, not a minimum, amount is not beside the point.
gex
@John Sears: Okay. I still don’t understand why some people get to pay for their health care pre-tax while others pay post-tax. I don’t see why the uninsured/self-insured should pay more for health care to keep these employer plans golden. That the taxes won’t be passed on is not relevant. I am arguing that these plans are unnaturally excellent because they are distorted by the taxation approach and the unequal bargaining power of various groups in the system. How do you propose to maintain that unnaturally excellent plan in the face of a reform that is going to try to address the uninsured and the individually insured? Those people are already subsidizing the gold-plated employer plans.
This is exactly why someone accused Raven of being a “I got mine” person. We need to keep gouging the disadvantaged groups to maintain the awesome system that he/she wants to preserve.
The logical conclusion to your rebuttal of me would be to “kill the bill” and wait for single payer if we didn’t want to degrade employer based insurance. And wasn’t that the scorched earth approach that started this thread in the first place?
The Raven
They’re regressive and the amounts are set by the insurance companies, who are already acting in bad faith.
See? It’s not complex. No 11-dimensional chess required.
Meantime, a few numbers:
JD Rhoades
@The Raven:
I disagree with killing the whole bill and starting over. I sure as hell disagree with the people saying “we’ll stay home next election” which is the same as saying “turn the country over to the teabaggers.”
JD Rhoades
@John Sears:
This degree of ignorance about history drives me to absolute despair.
Jay B.
@kay:
Wow.
That kind of rhetoric works for just about everything. We can’t lower our catastrophic defense budget, which not incidentally, laps the rest of the world’s combined — because it provides jobs! We can’t regulate the financial industry because that would cost people jobs! What will happen if we ever get out of Iraq or Afghanistan? Where will all those mercenaries find similar incomes?
Finally, you are right. They’re not “poor”. In my defense, though, people who are skeptical of the bill are being told we’re moral monsters who have forgotten our progressive roots because we’re working to “deny” these people the right to spend a ton of money on private insurance. The end result is kind of the same.
kay
@The Raven:
Why don’t you object to your employer funneling 20% of compensation to private insurers, using the tax code?
Why would you protect a compensation and tax exempt approach that operates as the uninsured subsidizing the insured, while opposing a bill that seeks to level that out to a small extent, while covering the uninsured?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Here’s an interesting one on the cult of anti-Hamsher.
And as is so frequently the case, Greenwald nails it.
PanAmerican
Mary @ 177:
@Mary:
I’ve been saying for awhile now it’s the same crazy shit that marked her “Hollywood career”. I can’t wait for one of her flying monkeys to take a swing at someone insufficiently ideologically pure. Booman certainly deserves it. Attempting to explain and predict the HRC legislative process in rational terms…. pffft. Cor-por-ate sell–ouuuut…. fap, fap, fap.
sparky
@Jay B.: one could argue that it will not have much of an effect in 2010 because the provisions will not have kicked in yet. so it is possible for the Ds to claim reform without anyone actually having yet had the “pleasure” of being taxed by for-profits. curious, no?
what is striking to me is that still, these arguments are incommensurable. on the one hand the accomodationists (the best we could do) and on the other the “this is a terrible mistake”. i am in the latter camp but i understand the appeal of getting “something” done. and yes, it is true that there are some good things in this bill, but at a terrible price. the poverty of vision on display here will produce a poor program.
i am also curious that no one seems to be talking about what could be a realistic possibility: that a significant sector of the newly insured either cannot or will not pay the premiums. at what level of non-compliance do insurance company profits disappear? or is the US obligated to pay them no matter what?
kay
@Jay B.:
It isn’t “kind of the same”. I heard the same nonsense with the anti-abortion amendments. “We’re denying poor women reproductive care”. Medicaid has never covered abortion.
So, leave “the poor” out of it.
And, if we’re going to be talking about the middle class, we better talk about the jobs generated with our huge for-profit health care industry, because those are solid middle class jobs. I’m not defending it. I’m just saying they exist, and they’re part and parcel of this monster we’ve created. We’re spending boatloads to “retrain” workers, and we’re sending them to health care.
mk3872
@gex: I just don’t get what your comment has to do with anything.
So, therefore, losing their minds over the public option is justifiable?
No matter how you frame the history, it seems that the Netroots have flown the coop in calling to “kill the bill” and joining with Glenn Beck & Michelle Malkin.
snarkout
@Meg – That’s not quite what actuarial value means. The idea is that 70% actuarial value is expected to cover 70% of the costs over the entire population of insured, not any individual people. Further, there’s an annual out-of-pocket cap on the amount your family would be required to pay (which would be somewhere around $9000 maximum if I’m doing the math right). And depending on how much your parents each make, if one of them had to drop out of the workforce, they might be eligible for Medicaid thanks to the Medicaid expansion.
Look, I think the subsidies, both on the exchanges (which your parents would be able to get, as their employers don’t offer insurance — which large employers would be penalized for, as a stick to get them to contribute their share) and particularly Medicaid, aren’t enough. A strong public option, like the Schumer plan, would have been a huge benefit for people. Medicare buy-in for 55-year-olds would have been a huge benefit for people. Those are two things that everyone should keep pushing for. But even with this watered-down version of health care reform, this plan means that your parents will be able to buy affordable, if not cheap, insurance, and serious medical treatments will be a difficult financial burden but not an automatic ticket to bankruptcy, and your parents aren’t even the group most obviously helped by this.
Jay B.
Funny, because it really sounds like you are defending it. And if you’re not, I trust you’ll agree with me that, since this is the case, and that the very existence of a bloated, inefficient, wildly expensive health care system becomes its perpetual reason for being, reform becomes literally impossible. And we’re fucked.
OK. Point won. So we’re not denying poor women. We’re denying Middle Class women. That’s better.
kay
@Jay B.:
I feel as if you want both sides of every argument.
Government policy that uses the tax code to prop up the bloated health care giant is good, and to be protected from even a small excise tax, but government policy that uses the tax code to create a pool big enough for the uninsured to get the same benefits the insured enjoy is bad.
Asking the uninsured to subsidize the insured is okay, but asking the insured to subsidize the uninsured in not okay.
You can’t keep the parts you like about this system, with no changes, while demanding revolutionary change.
Something somewhere’s gotta give, and you’re not going to be able to get all that movement out of a public option, or even single payer.
Mary
@Pan American
Well, didn’t Jane Hamsher basically get thrown out of Hollywood and then sued for libel (unsuccessfully) thereafter. Crazy stuff.
It’s been clear for some time that she has been trying to fashion some sort of Americans for Tax Reform or Club for Growth movement on the left. And I think Grover Norquist is her role model. She’s thrilled that she knows him. The possibilities for mischief and mayhem are endless.
geg6
guangung @151: We aren’t getting along because any criticism of this bill and of Obama’s abysmal performance on HCR gets me a couple dozen posts calling me stupid or just like Jane Hamshire or wanting to let people die or a crazed leftist. And because too many people don’t want to learn any lessons from this mess. And because too many seem to think that, having sold out for next to nothing, the people who sold us out will magically turn around and improve it. I wonder, when a shitty financial reform bill finally is passed, how many will be appauding it here and calling people like me names for telling the truth about it. I’m guessing, based on the threads lately, that about 80% will think it’s just fine. It’s like when someone says we should have started negotiation with single payer and then someone who thinks he/she is making a brilliant argument writes that it would never have passed. No shit, Sherlock. But that’s irrelevant. The point is to start any negotiation or haggling with your ultimate wish. And then negotiate down from that. No one who says this believed single payer had would happen. But you start wish the top of your wish list so that compromise gets you better than what we got in this bill or the optimal solution at least gets a public airing that might actually affect voters to see it’s merits. Instead, we get bad policy, no discussion of good policy, and an electorate that doesn’t understand which is which.
Chuck Butcher
This thread, and others just like it, are why I cannot be in a position in the Democratic Party. This is where opponents become smashers of the system and supporters are lick-spittle authoritarians. Leaving entirely aside the essential dishonesty of the GOP – this argument amongst “liberals” or whatever the hell is shot through with it.
I’ll be damned if I will be in a position as an official and make the arguments brought forward, particularly ones that call this thing Health Care Reform. Health care is something entirely different than health insurance which is aimed at protecting providers and providing a profit to insurance.
The first stop in health care improvement is to get people into doctors’ offices – not the fucking hospital. Then, when the doc can’t deal with it to get people into the hospital early and cheaply so they’re not destroyed by a day or two stay. You do not one fucking thing about either – you do strip the people closest to the edge of a month’s wage in order to protect providers of major services (up to a point) and spread your insurance risk pool – those who have insurance – to cover the things that insult you to pay for.
Now if you want to call this insurance reform, ok. Your insurance reform since the ones fucked now will be fucked under your “reform.” They’ll just pay for it.
That doesn’t address the monies mandated to private corporation or other insults, just health care reform. I won’t do the wonky shit around here, that’s been addressed and certainly I won’t bother with the philosophical or ideological basis of it.
Personally, I still give a damn that the bottom of the economy gets fucked once again but what I’ll do is look out for me and dodge the bullet you aimed at me, so no insurance here.
Martin
I don’t think it’s going too far. I made the same claim as Ezra here a week ago.
The climate denialists are basically arguing that any of our arguments are bullshit because it undermines their need to support a certain God myth.
The bill killers are basically arguing that any of our arguments are bullshit because it undermines their need to demonstrate that progressives have political power and to punish the corporatists.
What bothers me about the argument is that killing the bill can in no way buy progressives more political power. It’s simply taking your ball and going home. The situation we are in is the test of how much power we have, and in the Senate it’s not as much as we like – but we can’t change that now. And I’m all for punishing the corporatists, but health care isn’t the place to do it and there are more important targets.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
It’s not “any criticism” of the bill that’s getting you yelled at. It’s advocating that we kill the bill and start over from scratch that’s getting you yelled at.
There are plenty of things in the bill that can and should be fixed in conference when the House and Senate bills are reconciled, and most of us want to concentrate our energy on that fight. But we keep getting dragged back to the claim that we’ll all be so much better off if we kill the bill entirely even though history shows us that, if that happens, reform won’t even be discussed for another decade. Sure, ordinary people will want reform, but we will have scared off the politicians and shown once again that healthcare reform is a political loser and they’ll keep putting it off until someone finally steps forward who is willing to risk his/her career on a bill.
I’ll give you a big pie-in-the-sky metaphor: there’s a lot of shit in the bill, but you can’t grow roses without shit.
kay
@Jay B.:
One of the things the bill does is extend gender equity in health insurance. Women pay more than men. Up to half again as much. That’s not fair.
Mnemosyne
@Chuck Butcher:
Well, except for the community health clinics in the bill that will give people access to doctors. You did know that those were in there, right? Or is that just more “wonky shit” that you can’t be bothered to know about?
JD Rhoades
@Martin:
Exactly. And we sure as hell can’t change that by staying home, or by, as one loon over at FDL suggested, registering, showing up at the polls and NOT VOTING, to show the Democrats running how unhappy we are.
I shit you not, someone actually suggested that.
Chuck Butcher
So there’s one of those in every town in the US? Give me a fucking break.
geg6
geg6 @257: That should have been guangung @155. Goddam Blackberry posting.
Jay B.
@kay:
I’ll pretend that makes sense.
Here’s what I want — total reform. Decoupling insurance with employers and offering, at least, a robust public option, allowing for consumer choice and competition. Or single payer. Or whatever. The tax increases I’d be sure to see would be mitigated almost completely by the savings I’d have from my employer.
I didn’t get it. I understand the “real world politics” behind it. But it seems, and this is obviously based on the current Senate bill, that we are going to get a gerry-rigged bill which will penalize employer-based health plans with little or no cost controls (and certainly zero incentives for the insurance industry to comply) and while covering 30 million additional people, it compels them to purchase what will be an inferior plan, but possibly better than nothing.
It seems to be that what you want is to avoid talking about any potentially negative consequences that stem from the actual contents of bill in order to think that people who are rightly worried about them are “unrealistic”.
baxie
If being insured meant anything in this country they could call this thing “reform”.
I find myself wondering how many “realists” in this debate have ever been bent over the sawhorse by a serious illness and come face to face with the realities of for-profit insurance.
Getting people *insured* means fuck all.
The Raven
@JD Rhoades:
You may be right. The outcome is uncertain. I don’t know what’s best. By the same token, since I don’t know what’s best, I don’t hold anything against honest disagreement from my own side.
I can’t imagine Jane Hamsher or Digby or any of our committed activists doing that. Can you? But none of us have high hearts, either. Do you blame us for that? We have just suffered a bruising defeat and, insult added to injury, we are now being told we ought never to have fought by our former allies. And at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence, even, we are asked to continue fighting!
Some of the people who trusted Obama’s rhetoric of hope more than his policy language of conservatism don’t want to support him or his any more, and I can hardly hold it against them–he has broken their hearts.
You see the problem? I don’t want more wingnut governance. But neither do I have the heart to come out and cheer for the Democrats–I haven’t in years.
This is what the Democratic “centrists” have wrought. The Democrats have power in the legislature, but not power over the hearts of the people.
See also Digby: 1, 2.
Mnemosyne
@Chuck Butcher:
No, they’re going into underserved areas, especially rural ones. But I guess they should go without unless we can get clinics into every town in the US by 2011.
The Raven
@kay:
Mnemosyne
@The Raven:
I guess that’s the philosophical difference here: personally, I think it will be a net good that fewer people will be ruined and die than under the current system. Or are you arguing that somehow even more people will be bankrupted and die under the new system than under our current one despite all of the safeguards meant to prevent it?
I know I’ve seen all kinds of apocalyptic pronouncements about what might happen, but no one seems to actually have any evidence beyond, “Well, those health insurance companies are sneaky, so they’re totally going to screw us no matter what safeguards are put in place.”
eemom
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Greenwald has no credibility defending Hamsher. They’re two pissy peas in the same pod — the only difference is she’s loud and screamy pissy, and he’s dull and morose pissy.
Hamsher is NOT a “true believer.” She’s doing all this because she desperately needs to win at SOMETHING. She tried and failed to hit the political big time by campaigning for Lamont in ’06 and shilling for Hillary in ’08 (yes, I know she pretended to be neutral; even her most devoted groupies saw through it). Here in ’09, she was all set to take credit for any public option that made it through Congress…….victory was so close she could taste it — and, well, we all know how that turned out.
So now that her only chance at relevance is “kill the bill,” she’ll chase that sucker like a bloodhound, you betcha — principle, consistency, honesty and 40 million uninsured people be damned.
JD Rhoades
I can. I’ve read the comments at FDL, one of which, as I posted above, suggested showing up but NOT VOTING, to show the Democratic party how unhappy the left was, which was just inane.
Well, sorry if you voted for an Obama that existed only in your head. That’ll get your heart broken for sure. But then again, so will letting the teabaggers win because you’re enraged that your fantasy Obama didn’t come through on promises he never actually made.
Jason
@kay:
The perception of people who aren’t inclined to like such stereotypes in the first place shouldn’t be some addition to the burden of proof. I am completely happy “to spend everyone’s money” (whatever that means – is that like complaining about the gov’t spending “my tax dollars”?) in addition to my own, because the stereotypical not-liberal position seems to be that I should only control such money as I am lucky enough to be given, excepting of course those things that I have to spend it on anyway. Choosing between directing gov’t spending towards services of the most benefit to me and my family and being at the whim of a pricing structure that is not required to provide me any specific benefit is not a choice at all: I’ll be a stereotypical liberal any day, and worry about the health of the free market some time down the line.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne:
When my kids are afraid to eat the camamel apples they get trick-or-treating, I say, There’s a lot more apple than razorblade there..
Sentient Puddle
Alright, I haven’t kept up with this thread all afternoon, but seeing as it’s health care, mandates, Jane Hamsher, and breakfast cereals, I’m guessing that everyone needs to calm down for a minute, stop laying eggs, and take a breather to indulge in some sanity. (courtesy of GOS, of all places)
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
eemom, I don’t need yet another round of Hamsher Derangement Syndrome (topped with a dollop of Greenwald Derangement Syndrome).
kay
@Jay B.:
It compels them to purchase an insurance plan, with subsidies.
I’m sorry. More and more I just feel as if you’re objecting to any downside that might involve you.
Jane Hamsher wants everything. She wants first class care covered completely, for everyone, but she isn’t willing to even consider trade offs for that, unless those trade offs don’t involve her.
You’re passionately arguing against a 2% tax, while advocating higher taxes on some nebulous group of “other people”. You’re passionately arguing that the government has no right to insist you purchase health insurance, while arguing that the government should set prices for the whole health care sector, no matter the effects of that (again) on that same undefined group of “other people”.
It’s not that I love this bill so much. It’s that the arguments against it are completely incoherent and contradictory.
I knock off the “poor people” talking point, and you go immediately to the “middle class” talking point, but the group you’re defending have health insurance.
You want all the good of government intervention, and none of the downside risk. You want all the good of this lumbering monster of a health care system, but you don’t want to pay for any of it.
Jason
@Jay B.: I have to agree with you on that sort of rhetoric. It’s like: the larger ISPs are concerned that if you fight for net neutrality, we won’t get fantastic increases in internet speed and coverage! Industry representatives are concerned that if we fight for lower-cast pharmaceuticals, we won’t get closer to curing cancer faster, uh, than we already aren’t! I’m sure this is an industry that would never shed jobs on its own, right?
Just Some Fuckhead
caramel even
candy even
eemom
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
then why did you link to Greenwald’s post praising Hamsher? So we could all nod our heads in agreement?
The Raven
@Mnemosyne:
None of the deaths and bankruptcies are necessary at all–under either system they are results of policy. And this bill will probably keep it so, for at least another decade. It also creates an even larger incentive for the insurance industry to keep it so.
We are talking about the firms that invented “recission”–the practice of looking for any error in application paperwork to abandon the sick when they need care most. That is not “sneaky”–that is criminal. We are talking about a part of the industry that squandered trillions and then got a government handout, while the rest of us tightened our belts.
What safeguards? Against abuses by the insurance companies? All enforcement has been pushed down onto the state insurance commissions, unfunded. These agencies didn’t crack down on practices like recission to begin with. And even in wealthy states those commissions are outlawyered by the insurance companies.
Martin
People need to wait 2 weeks for the media to hit the downhill on this. It’s already started – shifting from solely talking about Republicans harping on death panels to actually talking about the bill. This is something they only do when it’s a done deal and there’s nothing they feel they need to balance against.
Within 2-3 weeks, there will be an entirely different view of this. I expect Democrats will virtually all come back and the world will smell like unicorn farts again and we can repeat the effort with financial reform or climate change.
The Raven
This is blaming the victims, big time.
Pre-election, I took considerable heat for pointing out that Obama’s stated policy goals were not likely produce the change a majority of Americans wanted. It seems I still am.
Point taken. But we’re never going to get good turnout by saying “hold your nose and vote.” We activists have nothing we can honestly offer people. “It may be better for you, but it will be better for the super-rich,” is not exactly a rallying cry.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
They might come back. But Obama will have to start raising the dead, or at least cluster bomb the senate.
I ain’t waitin 2 weeks for it to stop. This Squirrel Cage death match is harshin’ my mellow of holiday spirit. The War on Christmas was much more peaceable.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Since the only known Halloween death from tainted candy was a guy who took out a life insurance policy on his son and then poisoned the kid’s Pixie Stix, you are now officially scaring me. Does your wife know why it’s only your kids who keep finding razor blades in their apples?
The Raven
The real problems with health care will come when the mandates hit. But the conservatives know, now, that Obama will do anything to strike a deal on a major issue.
Dr. Squid
So the people who weren’t really lied to are freaking victims now?
The willingness to bleed oneself over people who refuse to keep up is why hippie-punching is an effective strategy.
Mnemosyne
@The Raven:
So, again, you would prefer to continue the level of bankruptcies and deaths that we’re at rather than reducing them if the system to reduce them is imperfect?
Yes, it would be nice to have a system where none of that happens. This is where people start pointing out that it would be nice to have a pony, too. If you’re willing to wait another 10 years for a perfect bill, despite the increasing number of accompanying bankruptcies and deaths that will happen in the meantime, just say so. Claiming that a perfect bill will somehow magically appear if this one goes down is, again, hoping for a pony.
Cigna and Healthnet got a handout from TARP? Links, please. Health insurance companies and Goldman Sachs don’t actually have much to do with one another, unless you count the health insurance companies making investments through Goldman Sachs. And if you count that, you’d better be prepared to call for the CALPERS system to be dismantled, because they were investing through Goldman Sachs, too.
Yes, rescission is evil. They can do it because they’re allowed to cancel people’s contracts if they have pre-existing conditions. If companies are no longer allowed to refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions, where does the rescission come from? What’s the rationale for canceling the contract if the contract says it has to cover pre-existing conditions?
I’m trying to find the part in the bill but my work computer won’t let me look at PDFs. You can download the bill itself and the summaries on this page.
Again, insurance companies are bad. No one is saying they’re not. But they’re not the only villains and shoving their faces into the dirt will only solve about 10 percent of our problem and do nothing to control healthcare costs. By becoming so fixated on the insurance companies, you’re ignoring everything else in the bill.
Jay B.
I told you what I wanted. Better health care, less cost. However you want to get there, I’d be willing to listen. This, I’d argue, doesn’t do that except on the barest of margins.
The rest of the fucking industrialized world has better or the same health care at less cost. That we can’t — and then told by “allies” that we’re living in a fantasy world because we want it — is great political theater and all, but the fact remains that until we actually do this, our system is going to STILL SUCK. And better still, the Democrats’ ineffectual sham of “reform” — even if I acknowledge it will help some people — are going to make people think “Democrats” every time they get shafted by any part of the health care system. And they will not vote for Democrats. It’s not the “perfect” and “the good” — it’s the “crappy” and “the worse”. And we get to own it.
This is a fact. Dressing it up in language about ponies and trying to guilt people into supporting it might make you feel better, but it’s not a good case.
Corner Stone
@The Raven:
They already knew this. Everyone with their eyes open did.
It’s been the essential message John Cole has been preaching regarding Obama since the primaries.
Go back to the week long ruckus regarding the FISA vote and how Cole portrayed it over and over.
It progressed from there. Every issue has been dealt with in the exact same way here. Stimulus, TARP, HCR, etc.
ETA – to clarify a little – it’s been sold as pragmatism and political reality.
Dilbatt
Look – I don’t agree with Jane, but I love her passion and the work that she is doing. I think that most of us learn that you drive to the best compromise you can get, and run with it. Jane simply refuses to think that this is the best bill we can get. I do think that this is the best that we can get right now. Time to hold our nose and get it passed. It would be foolish to kill the bill. Ideally we can still make it better in conference without Nelson or LIEberman killing it with a pocket veto.
Mary
I was all about loving Jane and her passion and was very much looking forward to what I thought would be outstanding work to help pass EFCA. Not anymore. It makes me both sad and angry. Mostly angry at this point.
The Raven
Except it may not reduce either, though I think that at least initially it will reduce deaths and increase bankruptcies. Regardless of how it has been sold, it is designed to make money for insurance companies; if it saves lives that is a side effect, not the goal of the design. I would prefer that we replace the system with one, which while still imperfect, leads to no more of either. The current Senate plan seems to me a devil’s bargain, and I think it is likely to have a higher cost in human suffering than either of us now see. I am haunted by the history of urban renewal which, through similar design failures, ended up creating much unexpected suffering. That said, I am not by any means certain that it will be so and do not hold honest opposition against anyone.
The Raven
Do you blame the victims of con-men, too?
The more isolated people are, the more vulnerable they are to skillful cons, because there is no-one with a different viewpoint to say, “Wait a minute.” If you want to be defended against cons, have friends who will warn you, and listen to them. To help defend others, pay attention compassionately and speak up in time. No guarantees, though.
The Raven
@Mnemosyne:
I advocate justice, not abuse.
The for-profit financial services industry, including the insurance industry, is comprehensively corrupt, and in bad need of reform. Give this people enough rope, and they’ll hang us.
& I think I’m out of this thread. I’ve probably written ten pages on this, and who knows if I’ve actually reached anyone?
Jason
Too bad, though. Just shy of three hundred. Though I started reading your blog, so maybe that counts?
numbskull
Thanks for all the discussion about the mandate(s). I just wrapped up with work (long day), so I’ll re-read them tomorrow.
kris
@The Raven:
There is a pretty impassioned attack on this aspect of the bill at the Left Coaster:
This bill is a compromise, and in my opinion, a really bad one. It strengthens the insurance and pharma industries, guts abortion rights while essentially giving away taxpayer dollars to insurance providers for perpetuity. Given that its advocates argue that it is too hard to pass anything more substantial now because of the power of these industry lobbies, I wonder how they think they will be able to improve health care when these lobbies are even stronger.
—–
Given that it is a pretty unpleasant compromise, it is not at all surprising, and is quite natural that there are so many prominent voices on the left who strenuously oppose it. I don’t understand the vitriol against them for this, especially given that it seems to me many of them have had a much better record of being right on major political issues in the past than many of the defenders of the bill.