It never stops:
Landrieu said she would not support the final legislation if negotiators tinkered with the Senate proposal for taxing high-cost insurance plans.
“I can only support a bill if the Cadillac plans are taxed at the level they are in the Senate [bill,]” said Landrieu. “It’s not because I’m thrilled about taxing those plans, which I’m not, but it is the No. 1 cost-containment measure in the bill. It’s what is going to drive costs down over time.”
Nelson said he would not support the final bill if it included the House proposal to impose a tax surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million.
“I’ve already said that would be a deal-breaker,” said Nelson.
Lincoln also said she has great concern. “If it moves very much at all from where we are, it’s going to be hard,” she said.
Shorter blue dogs- it is imperative we tax union workers and others making 60k a year with good benefits, but leave Paris Hilton alone. I’m sure Broder and Hiatt will love this definition of “sacrifice.”
Why do we even have a House? They simply are not co-equal branches.
The Raven
The Raven’s more radical twin sister sez: because the country-club Republicans of the late 1700s (aka Southern slave-holders) had to offer the public something to get the public to sign on to their new constitution. The Southern slave-holders then saw to it that the Senate was unable to resolve the conflicts that ultimately led to the Civil War. So it has been since the beginning of the Republic: the Senate deadlocks until matters are desperate, and then does too little.
Hey, sis, isn’t that a bit much?
Oh, probably. But there’s at least some truth to it.
As the name suggests, the Senate was intended to be a council of wise elders on the Roman and, probably, Iroquois Confederacy model. Perhaps we can figure out a reform that will make it so. (The idea of a Senate of scientists and grandmothers sounds rather neat, but somehow I doubt it would fly.)
Croak!
ericvsthem
They aren’t, and the House or Democratic leadership should challenge the current Senate rules on cloture and filibuster in court on the basis that it those rules are unconstitutional. Otherwise, welcome to the new dark ages.
azlib
The only way this changes is when more of the middle class realize Senators like Landrieu and Nelson are not serving their economic interests. This also could be a lot of posturing. At this point Nelson and Landrieu have so many goodies for their own states in the bill, they will be less inclined to walk away. They have every incentive to stick it out.
geg6
Fuck these assholes. The only thing I really like a lot in either bill is the idea of taxing the rich mother fuckers who are the ruin of this country. The idea that only union workers and the middle class are responsible for funding this country is profoundly immoral. I’m so sick of our government’s sucking up to the least responsible segment of the population, I could just go postal.
PeakVT
Why do we even have a House? They simply are not co-equal branches
The two chambers would be a lot more equal without the supermajority requirement in the Senate.
If I was a Representative I’d be royally pissed right now.
ETA: Here’s an interesting set of posts on the topic.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Prior to 1932, the federal gubmint didn’t care about whatever we might have defined a middle class to be in this country. Since 1980, the Great War on the Middle Class, led by Reagan and his ilk, has worked to bring the middle class back to it’s pre-1932 position in ‘Murkin life, that being inconsequential.
This is what a generation of Republican politics has meant to this country. And Landrieu is a Repub in everything but name.
Rey
My question is now that the Democratic Senator from Nebraska and the Democratic Senator from Louisiana have secured some pretty big gains for their states through this Health care bill, will these two states change to BLUE on the electoral map? If not, I think Obama should tell them to fuck off– With a smile of course….
Brien Jackson
I’m pretty sure bringing a lawsuit that won’t even get a hearing it’s so transparently ridiculous isn’t going to help the House vis-a-vis leverage on the Senate.
Anyway, of course they’re not equal, even accounting for the filibuster. There’s 4 times as many members in the House, so it’s generally much easier to put together an opposition bloc in the upper chamber, and it’s structured to resist an real swing left-to-right.
Brien Jackson
@azlib:
Yeah, everything will get more progressive when the middle class realizes they still really don’t like poor people, and lead a middle class revolt against Landrieu and Nelson for getting their states extra Medicaid money/more federal money to fund it.
MTiffany
Time for a constitutional amendment flat out telling the Senate they have to go with a simple 50% + 1 majority rule. No more filibusters!
General Winfield Stuck
It’s a good thing these red states are so independent minded and against govmint largess. You have to admit, it’s a pretty cool scam to claim being against higher taxes for paying for health care, while at the same time extorting a ransom of the federal government providing complete funding for medicaid in your state. My hat is off, and my blue state wallet is open.
Brien Jackson
@MTiffany:
They do have a 50+1 rule. I know that sounds snarky and nitpicky, but for all of this Constitutional nonsense it’s important to remember. Cloture is a procedural rule that deals with moving business forward, it is not, in a strict sense, the bar that has to be cleared to pass a bill. It needs to go (as does the entire Senate), but people continually going to lazy route and deciding someone needs to proclaim it un-Constitutional isn’t helping any effort to get rid of it.
moe99
A friend noted the other day, that 17 Senators representing 5% of the population control 51% of the Senate.
He also remarked that the guiding philosophy of the Republican party has become that of Leninism. He explained that now everything is in service to the party, including the truth.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Rey:
Only when most of the current residents move away. Dubya did that already in Louisiana but he made sure most of those moving away voted Dem. That’ll make it doubly hard to turn the state back to blue.
DZ
Sorry John. I am not a union worker (although I am a member of multiple unions), and I earn a lot more than 60K per year. I have been willing to pay higher taxes, even considerably higher taxes, for single-payer for more than 40 years. I would welcome that today.
I will not, however, pay higher taxes for the HCR piece of garbage on the table today.
1- It does not eliminate the fundamental employment basis of health care financing
2- It does not eliminate private insurance companies from the financing of core benefits
3- It does not establish simple best practices to control costs – e.g. no antibiotics for viruses, no antibiotics for adult strep throat, etc. Sidebar: If you have ‘restless leg syndrome’, which I do, walk.
4- It does not prohibit drug advertising in non-medical venues
5- It does not force loss of license on physicians who engage in real malpractice – incompetence, criminal negligence, etc.
and on and on and on and on and on.
Give me those things, and I’ll gladly eat the tax bill. Otherwise, no.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@moe99:
This. And something somebody here said sometime in the last week:
kay
Call them on it. Offer to tax high dollar benefit plans and income over 500k.
Individuals earning over 500 also have high value insurance plans, so they’ll get hit with either provision.
That’s a compromise, and it’s more fiscally responsible than either tax provision alone.
There’s no rule that says a compromise has to be either/or.
JD Rhoades
@MTiffany:
How do you propose getting an amendment like that passed?
geg6
kay: That sounds all fine and dandy, but the idea that I will have a higher tax bill because I gave up wage increases to keep good benefits isn’t exactly something that will have me cheering on this bill. The fact is that I can barely make rent and utilities while gassing up and insuring the car and attempting to eat. Fuck compromise on this. Those who have should be responsible for those who have not. I don’t have, except goddamn health bennies. And I don’t have the option of taking cash instead of the bennies, especially now that we’re stuck with a mandate.
Brien Jackson
@geg6:
Except that’s kind of the point. The tax exclusion on health benefits encourages employers to provide more compensation in benefits and workers to take said deal. On top of encouraging over-spending in healthcare, that leaves the average worker with less wages that can be spent more flexibly.
jeffreyw
Breaking into this previously announced post with some breaking news: Pictures of a gang of thieves stealing Xmas dinner have been recovered from a surveillance camera. “This is terrible news for all chipmunks”, said a spokesman for the National Alliance for Cute Little Furry Animals. Mr Alvin added “I weep for the little children who will go to bed tonight hungry.” Noted spokesman Gen. Winfield Stuck could not be reached for comment.
Montysano
@DZ:
So: if we give you a complete up-ending and revamping of the entire existing system, you’re on board? Gee, thanks…
kay
@geg6:
Except if you had negotiated a wage increase instead of higher-value insurance you would have been taxed on that wage increase as income.
All the tax benefit did was take your wage increase and convert it to non-taxable income, which gives you a higher-value insurance plan, but also directly benefits private insurers. It’s a tax break to buy a lot of insurance, essentially.
I recognize that all of this is water under the bridge, but I think it’s poor tax policy, and poor public policy. Those with the high value plans have no better medical outcomes than those without, and the nature of insurance is such that you’ve essentially left wages on the table. Only a small percentage of people are going to max the insurance benefit. Everyone would max a wage increase, because it’s money in your pocket instead of a guarantee of covered services that you may or may not use. I don’t even think it benefits workers, long-term. I think workers are better off negotiating at actual income, rather than taking a possible future benefit.
Kristine
I despise Landrieu, Lincoln, and the rest of Team DINO. I wish there were things that could be held over their heads. DSCC support? Future appropriations for their states. Strippage of committee chairs?
Who am I kidding? They didn’t even do this with Lieberman.
I knew I should have sworn off these blogs until after 1 Jan. It’s just too depressing. I think I’ll drown my sorrows in baking. Chocolate chip pumpkin bread, here I come…
ChrisNBama
The senator’s in question are telegraphing the House what they will or will not accept. I think that’s helpful. It doesn’t undermine the “co-equal” ness of the House. The House does not have to take their advice. It just means that the bill may not ultimately pass if they don’t.
The real threat, as I see it, continues to be Bart Stupak. He’s busy creating a bloc of representatives to back his version of the abortion language in the bill. He’s got a harder time of it, because the senate bill is more moderate than the House’s version, and to that extent, more blue dogs may be open to voting for a compromise bill that takes more senate elements into it.
So, the news out today is encouraging: Catholic hospitals support the senate abortion compromise language. We need to wedge support in the Catholic Church to provide political cover for blue dog democrats in the House.
ericblair
@The Raven: As the name suggests, the Senate was intended to be a council of wise elders on the Roman and, probably, Iroquois Confederacy model.
I gave up on the “wise elders” thing a long time ago. It seems that after a certain point, wisdom has nothing to do with how many breakfasts you’ve managed to have in your life. Picking your leaders by how white their hair is mostly ensures that they are unlikely to screw with the structures they’re familiar with and obviously worked for them. In a world that’s changing quickly and constantly, this is Bad.
Letting the upper-class greybeards have a veto on everything is demanded by, well, the upper-class greybeards, to make sure that none of those damn kids get any ideas that would screw with the upper class until said greybeards are off singing with the choir invisible.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
“[A] single legislature, into the hands of whatever party it may fall, is capable of being made a compleat aristocracy for the time it exists: And that when the majority of a single house is made upon the ground of party prejudice, or fitted to be the dupes thereof, that its government, instead of comprehending the good of the whole dispassionately and impartially, will be that of party favor and oppression. To have established the present [unicameral] form as the best, it was absolutelty necessary that the prejudices of party should have no operation within the walls of the legislature; for when it descends to this, a single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rapidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarchy. The present [unicameral] form was well intended, but the abuse of its power operates to its destruction. It withstood the opposition of its enemies, and will fall through the misconduct of its friends.”
– Thomas Paine, On the Affairs of Pennsylvania, 1786 (emphasis added)
Brien Jackson
@Irrelevant,YetPoignant:
Ya know, I like Paine well enough, but I think it’s safe to sat that a hundred plus years of successful parliamentary government proves he was rather mistaken about the preferability of bicameralism.
geg6
kay: I didn’t negotiate anything. I am not union and I don’t have any say so in the matter. I’d gladly give up my health care bennies for more wages. I generally don’t use them anyway since it’s too expensive to pay the co-pays. I get glasses every two years because otherwise I can’t see, but I haven’t seen a doctor in about 5 years. I get bp and cholesterol checks at the campus health fair for free and my flu shots also on campus for free. That’s it. I really don’t give a damn about why I’m stuck in this boat, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay higher taxes because somebody else decided I needed this fucking health care plan.
Brien Jackson
@geg6:
But, again, the fact that health benefits are un-taxed compensation is why they choose to offer more compensation in the form of health benefits.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
@Brien Jackson: Oh, I definitely agree. I just wanted to point out some of the reasoning behind the adoption of a bicameral legislature (especially as Paine originally supported a unicameral body before the Bank of North America controversy in Pennsylvania).
geg6
Brien Jackson: I am well aware of the reason I have benefits rather than wages. Why the fuck should I be punished for decisions I have no power over? And why is it okay for me to carry the financial burden of this “reform” and not the people who can most afford it? There is no way you can convince me it is. I’d gladly give up the fucking bennies for wages I’d be paying taxes on. And, to get real here, if you think my employer would increase wages if they didn’t provide these bennies, you’re insane. Nuh guh happen.
ericblair
@Irrelevant,YetPoignant: To have established the present [unicameral] form as the best, it was absolutelty necessary that the prejudices of party should have no operation within the walls of the legislature; for when it descends to this, a single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rapidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarchy.
The problem with this idea is that it hasn’t worked like this. The Senate hasn’t been a dispassionate body functioning as a cooling saucer for legislation. It simply has a separate set of more reactionary issues on which it will act impulsively and with little thought. Look at all the disastrous crap that got through the Senate in the Bush administration when the House’s kneejerk prejudices aligned with the Senate’s.
The parliamentary system in Canada has a completely toothless Senate who would cause a huge constitutional crisis if they ever actually used any of their power, and that hasn’t sent Canada down the road to ruin. If your society has a tendency to elect irresponsible morons who periodically blow up the country, an upper house from that same society doesn’t seem to help.
Brien Jackson
@geg6:
Well, I don’t accept the notion that taxation is punishment, being a progressive and all.
If you don’t like your compensation package, why do you want to perpetuate a tax code that encourages employers to structure compensation that way?
kay
@geg6:
Okay. I know you don’t like the plan and you don’t want to pay for it.
But, I don’t think it’s accurate to say this tax only affects union members (as you just pointed out), or “the middle class”.
A lot of people have high value employer provided health insurance, including masses of people who make much more than 60k a year.
If your complaint is that it takes from the middle class and transfers to the rich, that isn’t true. High income have high value insurance and high income.
They’re trying to bring down the cost of health care. I’m convinced that this is one way to do that, but you’re not.
Brien Jackson
@ericblair:
And, on top of that, the construction of the Senate makes it harder to repeal bad policy.
geg6
Brien Jackson: You are twisting my words to say shit I never said. I don’t support the way my compensation is structured. AT ALL. But I have no power over it. Since it is the way it is, I find it hard to believe a progressive would support a bill that places a relatively high tax burden on the middle class when there is a proposal out there to tax the highest incomes for the same purpose. I had no idea it is the progressive agenda is to make life harder on the middle class in favor of the rich. Guess you learn something every day.
Lolis
I have a hard time believing Landrieu or even Nelson will blow this whole thing up over financing. I think the only way this bill goes down is if the Nelson abortion amendment is withdrawn and a public option is added. After all, Nelson and Landrieu will still be pummeled by Republicans for supporting the bill at any stage. I think some Senate Dems are merely posturing and begging for attention, like they always do.
SiubhanDuinne
@ericblair: Canada’s Senators are appointed, and they come from a range of professions and circumstances (ie, not only politicians), and they serve only until they turn 75 (although it used to be for life, and I don’t know whether that provision got grandfathered in when the rules were changed). My point is that Senators in Canada don’t ever have to worry about their constituents or being re-elected or raising money. In fact, I think pretty much the only thing that can make you lose your Senate seat is if you never show up. Seems to me we could learn a thing or two from our neighbours to the north.
geg6
kay: I understand that. Those wealthy people with the cadillac plans, however, have plenty of cash to cough up. Where exactly is my new tax supposed to come from though? Do I give up heat? My car? Food?
Brien Jackson
@geg6:
Yes, I get that. So if you don’t like the structure of your compensation package, you ought to support rolling back the exemption for health benefits, since it’s the fact that they’re tax free that creates those structures. If compensation in the form of health benefits was taxed the same as wages, there’d be less reason for employers like yours to move compensation from wages to benefits.
Except it won’t accomplish the same purposes. A general tax on high income earners won’t do anything to balance incentives between wages and benefits, or to end the preference for diverting compensation dollars to more and more benefits at wasteful levels.
geg6
Brien Jackson: And I’ll ask you the same question I asked kay: what do you propose I give up to pay my new tax that is magically going to change the insane compensation system I am in? In the meantime, I mean, while I’m waiting for the compensation gods to work their miracle?
ericblair
@SiubhanDuinne: My point is that Senators in Canada don’t ever have to worry about their constituents or being re-elected or raising money. In fact, I think pretty much the only thing that can make you lose your Senate seat is if you never show up. Seems to me we could learn a thing or two from our neighbours to the north.
Sure, and in return the Senate makes sure that it rarely interferes with the rest of the government. I don’t think having powerful legislative bodies who don’t have to worry about their constituents is exactly consistent with a democracy.
Beej
There is a mass Republican freak-out going on here in Nebraska over Nelson’s “sell-out” to the “libruls”. No Republican is ever going to vote for him again according to the Repugs, and here in Nebraska that is a pretty serious threat. What they are missing is that the negative polling that’s coming up on Nelson contains a lot of dissaffected Dems too. We’re not happy with him, to say the least. Right now his re-election chances look pretty grim, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got “primaried”.
nicteis
Landrieu: “It’s not because I’m thrilled about taxing those plans, which I’m not, but it is the No. 1 cost-containment measure in the bill. It’s what is going to drive costs down over time.” —
(Of course, that means “drives down costs to the government”; it does nothing whatsoever to drive down costs to the policy holder.)
She says it straight out: What she loves about the Senate ‘Cadillac plan’ tax, is that it’s not indexed to inflation, and so will “drive costs down over time.” What she loves about it is that it will gradually change from a Cadillac plan tax, to a Lincoln plan tax, to a junker plan tax, until everybody in the country is paying it.
She’s proud to tell us that she hates taxes on the rich. She isn’t thrilled to be taxing the most expensive health plans. But oh, she’s thrilled to the bone at the prospect of passing a massive stealth tax on the middle class, which with any luck will eventually reach all the way down to the working poor.
Such a peach, she is.
CalD
I actually think taxing “Cadillac” plans is a good idea. They encourage over-reliance on expensive test and procedures by lowering the bar for them and we all end up bearing the infrastructural costs, whether we’re getting in on the goodies or not. For example, the more MRIs you think you need, the more machines you need to run them. The more machines the bigger building, the higher the energy and real estate costs and the more technicians, medical assistants, maintenance and housekeeping staff you need to keep everything humming along.
We need to keep in mind that not everything that’s wrong with our healthcare system can fairly be laid directly at the feet of the insurance industry, Big Pharma or any of our other favorite cartoon villains. Overprescritption of unnecessary services is a major factor in why wellness costs more here than in any other civilized country and we all bear some of the responsibility for that. Human nature and political realities being what they are, I can’t think of a single better way to begin addressing that particular problem than to raise the cost of lowering the bar for things whose real value ends up being marginal at best.
Beej
@Brien Jackson: A unicameral legislature works pretty well here in Nebraska. It’s also non-partisan by law. Party affiliation is not printed on the ballot and candidates cannot use their party affiliation in their campaigns. The result is that people vote for the candidates’ policies, not their party. Do those on the inside know the party affiliation of each candidate? Sure they do. However, the majority of voters do not. Of course, we are a state with a population of less than 2 million. How well a unicameral would work on the national level is another thing altogether.
Brien Jackson
@Beej:
Not really. There’s no reason the national government wouldn’t be able to function with only the House. It would probably function much better on the policy front without the Senate in fact.
ericblair
@Brien Jackson: It would probably function much better on the policy front without the Senate in fact.
This too. You can put a lot of the idiotic complexity of American legislation on the necessity for triple-bank-shot horse trading between two houses, the President, and their crack staffs of lobbyists.
UnkyT
If I remember correctly they were never seen as being co-equal, which is why the smaller states insisted on it being the Senate having the 2 reps per state and the House being apportioned by population before they would sign onto the Constitution.
kay
@geg6:
I’m having a lot of trouble getting the liberal ideological argument to hang with the liberal practical argument. I am a liberal, so this bothers the hell out of me. I want to be on the reality based side.
We were asking the 85% who have health insurance to give that up and take a flier on single payer.
But, we’re objecting to every minor change in the current system.
The House bill enshrined the employer-provided insurance set-up, by making the mandate apply to employers. That was a dodge, and a continuation of the status quo.
Every one of my concerns about that continuation of the status quo was met with “the public option will address that!”. But the public option was just an insurance exchange. It did nothing to address the cost of medical care.
You can’t simultaneously argue that you are hoping to upend the delivery (and perception) of medical care in this country while objecting to every provision that might affect you personally.
The Senate bill is arguably more progressive than Pelosi’s, if we want to start changing the way we approach and think about health care, from a “benefit” or “perk” (employer provided) to a baseline right of delivery to everyone. I’m convinced that has to be done.
jenniebee
Why do we even have a House?
Odd, I read this and wonder why we have a Senate.
Here’s some food for thought for you: proportionately, Nebraska has almost twice as strong a representation in the Senate (2%) as it does in the House (1.3%). Louisiana is slightly more equitable at a 2:1.6 ratio. Blanche Lincoln’s Arkansas is 2% of the Senate and 0.9% of the House. And Chuck Schumer’s Noo Yawk: the same 2% of the Senate but 8.5% of the House.
Densely populated states are always more liberal than small ones because in densely populated areas the value of pooling resources and working together is more easily seen. So the Senate is always going to be a disproportionately conservative body because it over-represents sparsely populated, and therefore conservative, areas. Add to that that the Senate then builds in more rules in the name of collegiality that give even more power to an individual Senator or a minority of Senators and you’ve handed the keys to the kingdom over to conservatives before you ever get started.
Isn’t being a progressive fun?
aimai
I believe the evidence is that employers never move money back from health care benefits to wages, they just act like they would for purposes of bargaining.
Second of all the notion of “calling the senators bluff” is absurd. The senators *aren’t bluffing.* They simply want the senate bill with no house input. Each senator will individually refuse to vote for any improvements to the senate bill for some other made up reason. No one can imagine that Landrieu, or Lincoln, or Nelson actually means what they say or has a logical reason for their spiteful, reactionary votes at this point. There’s no bluff to be called. They will continue to demand that no tinkering be done with their work in the Senate just because they can ask for that. And they’ll get it, too. My advice is to ping pong the bill at this point with an explicit promise to use reconciliation later to fix the bill in ways that will “bend the cost curve” in the budget and ram it through with fifty one votes at that point.
aimai
Corner Stone
At this stage don’t we actually only need 51 votes on the Senate side?
kay
@geg6:
And, if we’re going to talk about mandate, there is a mandate in the House bill. If your employer doesn’t purchase health insurance, they’re taxed 8% of payroll. Who doesn’t get health insurance as a “perk” or “benefit” now? Low wage workers.
I mean, reality-based liberals are really going to tell me this payroll tax isn’t coming out of wages? It’s a dodge. It’s a way to hide a mandate for lower wage workers inside payroll.
The House bill sort of skated over all the difficult questions, with “tax those over 500k!” and, “it’s an employer-mandate, not an individual mandate!” Oh, okay. I’ll just pretend payroll doesn’t affect wages, Nancy. That bothers me.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@DZ:
My first impression of your list is that it’s crazy, or else spoof. Probably crazy.
But, it really does bring home the tragedy of Restless Leg Syndrome.
Something that gets overlooked in the hurly burly of the holidays.
The Grand Panjandrum
@kay: In this thread you’ve made the most cogent I’ve read anywhere FOR the Senate bill over the House bill. Well argued.
geg6
And again, I put it out to all those saying that the new goal of this bill is to decouple health care coverage from compensation by taxing people with good benefits but not necessarily good incomes, where do these people cut back to pay this new tax? Because no wages will be increasing to pay for it. And if you are going to tell they will, that is not something for which I can find any evidence.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Why do we even have a republic? It’s just a pain in the ass from the get-go.
But more to your question, we have a senate because without it the government could not be a constant source of prolonged agita, without which demagogic manipulations would be much more difficult.
Without agita and manipulations, the political machines would be unable to extract money and votes from the apathetic masses.
Also, what would the cable news outlets do to attract viewers? Go around looking for flying saucer baloons and car chases 24 hours a day? That would get old. Although I suppose they could do more missing pets.
General Winfield Stuck
@aimai:
I agree with this mostly. There can be some tinkering around the edges, so the House can save some face as not rolling over completely, but I think you are right that the senators from red states won’t go for much tinkering. To bad that so many of their constituents are knuckle dragging tea bag fools, but those are the cards we have to play with.
Ironic that in several of these red states, the anti government tribes will be getting extra tax payer cash to pay for sockulist Medicaid. Mostly cash from wealthier blue states.
Rick Taylor
I was counting on the excise tax to be removed or modified in conference; this one thing is enough to make me question whether we should support the bill at all. If you wanted to encourage class resentment, to give right wingers new opportunities to exploit the meme liberals want to take your money and give it to lazy poor people, I don’t see how you could do better. Ironic that it’s a “centrist” that is threatening the filibuster if anyone touches it.
kay
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Thanks.
I think we would have gotten to the regressive nature and continuation of the status quo that the employer mandate in the House bill represents had the House bill gone further.
geg6
Rick Taylor: They should just be grateful that it will decouple health benefits from compensation and shut the fuck up about. It’s all gonna create a progressive paradise at some point in the future, so they should suck it up and be happy to be left with enough to buy the 24-pack of ramen noodles.
kay
@geg6:
But, geg, you were asking workers without health insurance to accept an 8% employer-paid tax on payroll, as a hidden tax and a mandate.
That’s a tax. We both know they’re passing that on to wages. It’s also a mandate, and one the employee has no control over, in terms of what she’s buying.
Admittedly, it may have been more politically palatable. It’s hidden, and it affects the minority who don’t have health insurance.
This is the liberal argument? Hide it, and make it regressive?
Brien Jackson
@Rick Taylor:
Um, liberals do want to tax people to extend benefits to poor people.
asiangrrlMN
The senate works when it has reasonable members who are actually trying to govern for the better good of all people. In other words, never.
It’s just that we currently have a crop of senators so corrupt and/or stupid and/or obstructionist, there isn’t a chance in hell of getting anything decent done.
This is the reality of having a sizable portion of our society being ill-informed and/or stupid and/or selfish bastards and/or racist/sexist/homophobic motherfuckers.
SiubhanDuinne
@eric blair:
I think in general that’s true. However, under our system in the US, seems to me many of the Senators don’t much worry about their constituents — that is, the individual voters and citizens of their states — except during the every-six-years election cycle (their big corporate constituents, of course, is a different matter).
Also, under the Canadian parliamentary system, all Cabinet Ministers are also elected Members of the House of Commons, and therefore have to cast votes and answer regularly to their constituencies as well as run Government departments. I think ultimately neither system is perfect, both work tolerably well (or not) for their countries, *AND* we could all stand to look at each other’s way of governing and see whether there are any lessons learned to be avoided or good ideas to be borrowed and adapted.
chrome agnomen
call me irresponsible, but i’d abu ghraib every one of those obstructionist cocksuckers if it were in my power.
Ailuridae
For the fiscal health of the country the upper tax bracket (or at least those incomes over 750K) needs to be restored to at least the levels Clinton had it. Further, the Estate Tax needs to be altered. Mercifully, as these both drastically improve the deficit immediately they are not subject to the Byrd Rule and can be passed with 50 votes in the Senate (plus Asskicker Joe) and a simple majority in the house. This is both great politics and great policy and fulfills a campaign pledge.
I like the excise tax as a means of cost containment for health care however I think its horrible politics and good policy
kay
@Ailuridae:
I think it’s time to call the fiscal conservatives on this. The House bill has a cost containment strategy for Medicare that is politically unpopular. It establishes a review board for outcome-based medicine in that program.
Providers hate that idea, and I am of the opinion everyone is ignoring the awesome lobbying power of for-profit providers in the Senate, because of the single-minded focus on the insurance industry.
I think providers killed Medicare expansion, not insurance companies. I think that because the head of the AMA crowed about killing Medicare expansion. He said he killed it. I believe him.
So, if the fiscal conservatives are really worried about “bending the cost curve” let’s see if they’re willing to do some hard things, too.
Raise taxes on wealthy people, excise tax on high value insurance plans, and outcome based medicine in Medicare.
Trade offs. Everyone takes a hit, except the poorest.
The Raven
Yeah, so the only plans that provide a level of care comparable to the standard in the rest of the world can be shut down. We really need poor health care.
In other words, if it’s turned into a decent plan.
Croak!
Ailuridae
@kay:
Raise taxes on wealthy people, excise tax on high value insurance plans, and outcome based medicine in Medicare.
I think we’ll see the last two of these in the final bill. I’m not sure if you are splitting hairs that the Medicare commission in the House bill is stronger or suggesting that the Senate doesn’t have one but my understanding is that the Senate Bill has one and its rather strong.
Here’s Arvid, err Peter Orszag
“Deficit neutral; got that. Deficit-reducing second decade, got that. Excise tax: That was retained. Third is the Medicare commission: has that. Fourth is delivery system reforms, bundling payments, hospital acquired infections, readmission rates. It has that. If you go down the checklist of what they said was necessary for a fiscally responsible bill that will move us towards the health care system of the future, this passes the bar.”
I haven’t read the bill just the many synopses but I trust the judgment of Peter Orszag, Here’s the link to Ron Brownstein’s piece:
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/a_milestone_in_the_health_care_journey.php
We aren’t going to see a tax increases to upper income earners pass cloture in the Senate ever again. Again, it only needs 50 votes so do that separately (and given the deficit situation the sooner the better) so pass the bill now with the excise tax mechanism.
As for Landrieu’s stance on this stuff she is a kleptocrat as is Nelson. Its pretty easy to look at the “Blue Dog” portion of the Democratic Senate Caucus and their votes on Medicare Part D (the single worst piece of legislation since World War II) and figure out who is serious about the deficit and who uses it as a convenient guise to punch hippies.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00459#position
Napoleon
I am convinced that one of the things that killed the Dems in 1994 (or at least made it worse then it needed to be) was that Clinton pursued the parts of his agenda that were not friendly to his base voters first (NAFTA) then to compound the problem a follow up bill that would provide for training etc that would cushion the effects on the working class (Dem voters) was never passed. This is the same kind of thing. It is the Dems first major bill since regaining the WH that isn’t an emergency type thing, and they can not keep themselves from sticking some of their most loyal voters in the process. Here is an idea, keep the benefit tax out of the bill and when (if?) you come back to clean up the bill and pass a public option or better subsidies add this at the same time.
geg6
kay @70: If the plan had all three of the proposals you have here, I’d back it to the hilt. If everybody but the poorest are forced to take a hit, I am all for it. The idea that it will be financed only by people like me with a few wealthy thrown in and who won’t feel it a bit is profoundly unprogressive. Sorry, but it is.
Glocksman
@geg6:
Exactly.
I’m perfectly willing to pay higher taxes along with everyone else as part of the shared sacrifice, but I’ll be damned if I’m singled out and expected to pay simply because my union manages to gain good insurance benefits.
Shit, starting wages at work are $8.25/hr and those assholes in the Senate want people making that kind of money to shoulder the burden while taxing those who make $500k or more a year is ‘unacceptable’?
Fuck that and fuck them.
If the ‘Cadillac tax’ remains, I’ll do my damnedest to see this so-called ‘reform’ go down in flames.
If its stripped out, I’m still not happy with all of the corporate giveaways but I won’t work to defeat it either.
kay
@geg6:
Okay. I think trading an insurance policy for wages is encouraged in our tax code. I think that ultimately benefits not workers, but employers and insurance companies. You’re a good example, because you told me you don’t use the Cadillac plan, but instead look for lower cost alternatives. You can’t even access these promised benefits without paying out of pocket.
You’re paying the premium, geg. They’re just taking it in a way that is less offensive to you, because we’re calling it a “benefit” rather than “geg just bought a really expensive insurance policy, that she can’t access unless something catastrophic occurs”.
geg6
kay: I find the entire thing offensive. I find it offensive that get paid shit in lieu of benefits and still have to pay a share of those benefits’ premiums. I find it offensive that even those benefits are too expensive for me to use. I find it offensive that I am now expected to pay more taxes in addition to my share of the premiums and the co-pays that I have to pay when I do use the benefits. I have no way to change all of this and I am being told I should be happy about all of this, by my employers who created this system and by people like you who have some sort of policy outcome they like whether changing compensation structures or financing poorer peoples’ health care. If someone like me, with a graduate degree and a complete understanding of the abstract political goals, is more than a little pissed about this, then you have no hope of getting my less educated and ideologically inclined neighbors of looking kindly upon it. But good luck with that, you’ll need it.
kay
@geg6:
I think liberals are having a lot of trouble attacking this bill on specifics, or policy goals. I’m comparing the House bill to the Senate bill, because that’s what I got to work with.
I think that’s part of the reason we’ve seen the over the top reaction from some noted liberals, and some walk-back on opposition from those who didn’t go right to hard-line opposition. There’s huge holes in the opposition argument.
They’re insisting something big and important was taken from them on ideological grounds, but I’m not seeing how the House bill advances a single new idea or change, with the exception of inserting a public option insurance exchange.
Even the objection to the mandate doesn’t hold up, because the House bill just hid the lower middle class mandate in a payroll tax.
The House bill also ended S-CHIP. It expanded Medicaid to 150% but ended S-CHIP. The response to the that when I asked about it was “middle class kids can buy insurance on the public option exchange”.
But is that a net gain for middle class families, or is the public option as an idea more important to liberals than the actual cost out of pocket? Three million middle class families lose S-CHIP, but gain “access to a public option insurance exchange”? I don’t know if that’s a good trade.
There were plenty of sacrifices made for Pelosi to get to “finished”. One of them wasn’t an excise tax, but they were in there. They were never discussed with the sort of heat I’m hearing on the excise tax, but they were there, and so were some pretty regressive mandates.
Ming
@jenniebee: thanks for the interesting and enlightening analysis —