Quoted without comment:
SCHULTZ: Senator, you’ve been fighting hard for the prescription drug reimportation amendment. You had 30 Democrats vote against you on this recently. President Obama, when he was in the Senate, he was a co-sponsor of that with you. When he got to the White House, they were silent. In fact, there was a lot of talk that they were talking to Democratic senators not to vote for it. Does that leave a bad taste in your mouth and is that something that you would remember on the way out?
DORGAN: Well, try as you might, I’m not going to tell you I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get that amendment passed. That’s $100 billion in savings to the American people. We’re going to get that passed this year. And I tell you, it didn’t get passed in health care for a lot of reasons and a lot of strange bedfellows but I’m going to get it passed this year in the United States Senate and save the American people $100 billion on their pharmaceutical bill because we shouldn’t be paying the highest prices in the world for brand name prescription drugs. That’s outrageous, in my judgment.
Can we stop with the Obama/Rahm betrayed him crap at the Great Orange Satan and elsewhere?
donovong
“Can we stop with the Obama/Rahm betrayed him crap at the Great Orange Satan and elsewhere?”
Sorry, but I am not going to hold my breath. Rahm is to blame for everything, doncha know.
MikeJ
No. It’s what they do. Of course Rahm betrayed him. Like a Judas kiss. It’s what those people do. /firebagger
Comrade Jake
The key to every conspiracy theory is that the absence of evidence is used as evidence to support the theory.
How come Dorgan didn’t say anything about Rahm in his response? ? ? ? ? ?
See how easy that is?
EvolutionaryDesign
I hope this indicates that all the stuff we’ve pissed and moaned about not being in the HCR bill will come through other ways. I think Obama needs a big legislative accomplishment (whatever form that may take), and then hopefully we’ll see a lot more little things passed in various ways. With a bloated bill, we’re bound to be disaapointed by something, and smaller bills are easier to slip by intransigent republicans.
Turgidson
While I definitely share the frustration (and sometimes amusement) about the neverending hysterics at the GOS, I don’t necessarily think the fact that Dorgan refused to be a WATB on the Ed Show, means he didn’t get snowed by the administration on the drug reimportation issue. He might just realize that throwing a hissy fit about it wouldn’t help anything anyway.
edit: Of course, maybe we can just take him at face value, too, and laugh at the couch-fainters. That works for me. Dorgan seems like a pretty straightforward dude – I’ll take him at his word.
General Winfield Stuck
This is so O-bot. Unable to see the corporatist forest for the Black Olive trees.
Zifnab
They didn’t betray him. They came out very publicly well ahead of time and stated that they were going to protect pharmacy profits in exchange for political support on the broader insurance bill.
Dorgan didn’t like the deal. And the White House and the Senator went their separate ways. That doesn’t mean I like how Medicare Plan D still put a gaping hole in the budget.
Complaints get hyperbolic, but either you support Dorgan’s bill or you don’t. And it doesn’t take a Rahm-hater to dislike how this country currently spends its money on pharmaceuticals.
Zifnab
They didn’t betray him. They came out very publicly well ahead of time and stated that they were going to protect pharmacy profits in exchange for political support on the broader insurance bill.
Dorgan didn’t like the deal. And the White House and the Senator went their separate ways. That doesn’t mean I like how Medicare Plan D still put a gaping hole in the budget.
Complaints get hyperbolic, but either you support Dorgan’s bill or you don’t. And it doesn’t take a Rahm-hater to dislike how this country currently spends its money on pharma.
MikeJ
And the Jane Hamsters of teh left want to make sure he doesn’t get one since it happened without their approval.
capt
No way, Obama/Rahm betrayal of everybody and everything has become a cottage industry.
Why do you hate America? (/snark)
HumboldtBlue
Remember Obama’s ad criticizing big PhArma, you don’t? OK, here’s a quote
I am so glad Obama hammered those fuckers at big PhArma by making sure they were part of the phony health care reform bill … oops, that’s right, he didn’t.
JGabriel
I agree.
Furthermore, the re-importation bill is non-sensical policy wise. It basically says: We won’t let Medicare or our gov’t bargain for lower prices from pharmaceutical companies, so we’ll let Canada do it for us instead. In what world does that make any fucking sense?*
That said, I don’t personally oppose the bill. I just think going through someone else’s government is a weird, roundabout, inefficient way of getting lower prices through gov’t bargaining.
That so many people prefer re-importation, or think it’s the only politically viable solution, to letting our own government bargain on our behalf, says something deeply bizarre — and I’m not quite sure what — about the health care debate in this country, and about our approach to government services vs. capitalism, in general.
(*Obviously, a world where anti-government propaganda from one of the two main political parties has completely undermined any kind of common sense).
eric k
What I don’t get is why people act like if something wasn’t in the health care bill it is dead. Lots of things stand on their own and can be passed on their own in another bill, drug re-importation is a great example.
Sly
In more uplifting news, Dodd’s seat is staying in Democratic hands.
cat48
This is exactly what happens when folks have to deal with a “cool, detached president who never shows any emotion” who could care less about real mericans. Rahm, the chief betrayer for the prez (who went to Sarah Lawrence & studied ballet) is pure evil. They are just common Chicago street thugs & neither one of them have a “long birth certificate.”
General Winfield Stuck
He didn’t need 60 votes to be a candidate or to give that speech.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Putting on my pedantic hat, you then proceeded to comment.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Elkins Act, Hepburn Act.
That’s all I have left to say on the subject of HCR, so rinse, lather, repeat. Nothing else longer or more nuanced is getting thru the shrieking anyway, so I might as well keep it short enough to fit on a bumper sticker.
HyperIon
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): exactly
mcc
It’s bizarre that this is even something we have to discuss. In fact someone who doesn’t follow the blogosphere very closely would probably be unable to determine why we’re discussing it.
Remember that thing where we used to make fun of the right-wing blogosphere for perpetually speaking in a sort of internal code that to non-initiates would tend to look like gibberish?
kay
He’s been in government since he was 26 years old. He’s now in his late sixties.
If he were the type of person who went stomping off in a snit every time he lost a round he never would have lasted that long.
They really think he’s not running again because his amendment didn’t make it in?
scudbucket
@John Cole: You missed the punchline, which makes the firebaggers point at least plausible: Dorgan said that the plan Obama negotiated with PhRMA, and which took re-importation off the table, was ‘outrageous’. It may not be why he’s retiring, but it certainly pissed him off.
LT
John, I agree with you, but man, it feels to me like you’re keeping this argument going mostly from your side. Let it die, please.
LT
@scudbucket: FuckingA right. It was an outrageous plan.
Keith G
Where is the Canadian gov on re-importation? I remember that some time ago there were concerns/threats about re-importation leading to a price increase in Canukistan.
AhabTRuler
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): Phew, I almost said that. Thanks, for taking the pedantic bullet, metaphorically speaking.
mistermix
@JGabriel:
Jesus Christ, YES!
At best, the bill is a cudgel to hit big pharma. And, even though Byron Dorgan is a saint, and the Senate was not made for one as beautiful as him, he probably was pushing the bill because there are a bunch of North Dakotans who ride buses into Canada for whom this issue would resonate.
kay
@mcc:
That’s what watching Ed Schultz is like. A (huge) talking head that all but fills the screen screaming comments.
I can’t draw any distinctions, or put it in any kind of order. He’s equally outraged about everything.
Martin
@kay: But Rahm said ‘fuck you’ and hurt his feelings. The Senate is a very respectful place according to McCain.
EvolutionaryDesign
@kay: And aparently Democracy For America is trying to recruit Schulz for the Senate. Lovely.
LT
JGabriel:
Because it would work. Period. If you have a better solution – let’s hear it. (Price controls here? No fucking way, not soon anyway.)
scudbucket
@General Winfield Stuck: You keep repeating this 60 vote thing as if that excuses Obama from any responsibility in the HCR bill. If Obama was aware that getting 60 votes would result in the crap-bag of legislation we ended up getting, then you’re ’60 vote’ mantra puts him in an even worse light, and increases his culpability: he should have scaled back the scope of the bill to something that Dems and progressives would perceive as an actual victory.
FlipYrWhig
It seems to me that if the whole health care reform package hangs in the balance and relies on pharmaceutical companies _not_ working to torpedo the whole thing it kinda makes sense not to set out to antagonize them. This time pharmaceutical co.’s paid for “Harry and Louise” to be on the side of reform, depriving teabaggers and other nimrods of a deep-pocketed ally.
It’s ridiculous that such things are necessary, but I happen to think that this sort of appeasement/bribery device will continue to be worth it for as long as American politics is dominated by somewhat dim, very gullible, and somewhat elderly white people, i.e., for a sadly long time to come.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@scudbucket: If the bill were scaled back from the start, I don’t think anybody would have been pleased.
Comrade Mary
Huh? Do less, but have better optics?
General Winfield Stuck
@eric k:
It’s the worst possible political chemistry. An impatient oft hysterical base mixed with a “No Drama” Obama. The rest of us just work here.
Ailuridae
I’m all for cramming some price controls down Pharma’s throat but I also realize that drug re-importation from Canada is basically a coward’s way of addressing a complex issue that has a single outrageous consequence: drug prices are higher in the US than anywhere in the industrialized world despite the US taxpayer already subsidizing the shit out of Pharma’s R & D.
I like Dorgan (although I can’t really stand this ‘progressive’ business the last 24 hours) but I fail to see where the move to re-import drugs from Canada has to be part of the health care bill. Its not just deficit neutral; it would clearly decrease the deficit. Pass it through the house and then the Senate via reconciliation as a stand-alone bill. Heck with its being unattached from the broader health care bill you might get a vote from the Voinovich/Lemieux/Gregg/Snowe?Collins group of “reasonable” Senators.\
No piece of legislation can bind a future or current Senate’s hands by design. If Dorgan finds the deal unsavory pass the legislation separately. Now, we all know he can’t do this and it has nothing to do with Obama but with the 30 Senators from his own party that killed his amendment. But let’s keep pretending its something else.
BillCinSD
My question is, if it was not possible to get 60 votes to include this in the HIR bill, why is there any expectation that there would be 60 votes for it on its own? Or is this going to be a rider on something that must be passed?
Demo Woman
It’s a good idea to have a separate vote for Pharma. I want to see a public record of those supporting and opposing the bill.
Pharma receives a lot of research money and tax benefits. It seems fair that the federal funds they receive be decreased by the amount they spend on advertising.
MikeJ
@LT:
How about: http://www.rx.wa.gov/discountcard.html
No, it’s not price caps. You will, never, ever pass price caps in the US. It will. Not. Happen. Negotiating lower prices, using the power of buying in bulk can bring down prices.
Note that I’m actually in favour of allowing re-importation, mainly because I think the more people do it the more they’ll think the whole idea is stupid and press for negotiated costs in the US.
FlipYrWhig
@scudbucket:
As I understand it, if it’s not a big honkin’ bill, it doesn’t have enough of the “bend the cost curve” elements that assuage the Democratic deficit hawks and entice them over towards support. I’m not sure it’s possible to craft a smaller scope but more progressive bill that stands a chance at passage. Expand a program like S-CHIP, say, and all the deficit moaners will say, it’s a good idea, but in this time of troubling economic conditions the government has to tighten its belt, blah blah blah. Expand it by taxing something and all the deficit moaners will say, that’s a bad idea, because in this time of troubling, etc. It needs to be vast to keep all the constituencies together.
Martin
@LT: Uh, price controls pretty much defines Medicare.
Ailuridae
@EvolutionaryDesign:
It would be awesome if DfA weren’t so fucking ignorant. How, exactly is Ed Shultz eligible to run for the ND Senate seat?
FWIW, I think Ed would likely be a fine Senator.
JGabriel
LT:
I’m not saying it wouldn’t work, to some extent anyway, LT. I’m saying it’s a pretty bizarre solution that’s completely non-sensical the more you think about it.
Your rejoinder that price controls here (actually, bargaining in bulk is more likely) aren’t possible, combined with the possibly correct belief that letting Canada do it for us is a politically more viable approach (though that has yet to be proved), pretty much sums up my argument exactly. You honestly can’t see that that’s a very weird approach?
.
Thess
Keep those guns turned inwards, Cole. That’ll teach ’em not to turn their guns inward.
burnspbesq
@Zifnab:
This. There is no good reason why US consumers should be funding the entire world’s drug research, with the rest of the world getting a free ride because their patent laws have more holes than Sonny Corleone’s corpse.
Ailuridae
@scudbucket:
I don’t really care what other progressives think is a real victory. I know that 400B to the poor for Medicaid is a progressive victory as is the community health expansion, as are out of pocket caps as is community rating, etc.
Here’s a really easy rule of thumb that is repeatedly illustrated on this blog’s comments section. If ten progressives comment on something that is intricate, involves budgeting, taxes and finance nine of them will have absolutely no idea what the fuck they are talking about.
mcc
@scudbucket: The health care bill doesn’t go far enough because of the 60 vote threshold, so the Democrats should have done less so that it could have passed the 60 vote threshold.
But not, you know, the less that they did. Some other less that I’d like better.
??!?
Martin
@Ailuridae:
But RAHM! And a CEO got a bonus somewhere!
EvolutionaryDesign
@Ailuridae: Supposedly he did a lot of radio in ND. I’m sure he can find a way to be a resident again, if he isn’t already a part timer. I’m sure he’d do OK, but the last thing we need in the senate is another bloviator
General Winfield Stuck
@scudbucket:
I keep repeating it because it is reality, the rest of your comment is a grab bag of subjective non-sense. We have just gone thru the sausage making process with the peculiarities of the US Senate dictating what is possible and what is not. Though there is still some wrangling to do before a final bill.
Most dems will see an “actual victory’, with more battles to follow for this never ending war. What you don’t or won’t get, along with the tiny tiny contingent of internet progressives or whatever you are, is that this is a process that while Obama is an important component, he is not the only one. It is an equal three part mechanism to make laws, he is one mechanism and there are two others, senate and house that also have a vote and a veto.
Ailuridae
@BillCinSD:
Its deficit neutral. It could pass by 50 votes plus Hellraiser Joe.
This is a very simple fact that is also true of the public option or a Medicare buy-in. What the FDL bots will never, ever answer is why if there were almost 60 votes for any of these things if Obama just willed it, why they don’t just introduce these portions separately (they don’t affect anything in the existing HCR bill) and pass them. And that’s because they are intellectually dishonest twits.
The fact is the PO had strong support from 44-46 Senators and the other 12-14 (Bayh, Dorgan, etc etc) were willing to swallow hard and to pass a larger bill and not buck their own party and President. Two, Lieberman and Nelson, the latter of whom agreed to a very reasonable compromise, were unwilling to do so. Ergo, it didn’t get included.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
If John keeps making this mistake he’ll split the Left.
Ailuridae
@EvolutionaryDesign:
I’m almost positive both of the Dakotas have a five year actual residence requirement for running for national office as they are provincial backwaters. Ed worked from Fargo while living in a small country town in MN.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t think scudbucket’s point is that far wrong; I can imagine a controversial bill with a popular provision being defeated because of what it does across the board, while the Popular Provision Act stands a good chance on its own. But I’m not sure that the popular provisions that are part of the overarching HCR package _would_ actually be ratified on their own, because they’re all potentially demagogue-able for being over-generous and/or over-costly.
For instance, banning the use of preexisting conditions in a separate bill would be initially popular among the public, but the health insurance co.’s would set out to explain to politicians and the public that it was too open to abuses, and probably succeed in poisoning the whole thing. The way insurance companies, who are just atrocious entities with a terrible public image, managed to _win over_ the public in 1994 has to be (sadly) instructive. That’s why IMHO it’s defensible to buy off as much of this opposition as possible, because, unfairly and more than a little unaccountably, _it works_.
mcc
1. I could imagine an argument that drug re-importation or drug price negotiation could be passed via the budget reconciliation process, if it in some way reduces health care costs paid by the government. This would not have been possible with the larger health care bill.
2. The health care bill is an extremely complicated piece of legislation containing hundreds of compromises stitched together. Any one of those compromises failing could have the potential to stall the entire bill. A piece of legislation which is simpler, or on a different subject, might be able to put together a different set of compromises and pass more easily, or pass provisions that would have stalled the HCR bill itself. Such a bill also might be able to pass with a different set of Senators. For example, at least at one point John McCain and Olympia Snowe co-sponsored a bill with Dorgan to allow drug re-importation. McCain and Snowe are not going to vote for the HCR bill. But if they would vote for some hypothetical future drug-reimportation bill, then that’s two fewer Democrats you have to find to get that provision by itself passed.
For a big, heavily debated provision like the public option, the “if we don’t have 60 votes now, why would we later?” question makes sense. For a fairly minor provision like drug reimportation, not as much.
3. A rudimentary google search turns up this comment by David Axelrod, speaking for the White House, claiming that the White House opposes drug reimportation in the current bill but supports it in general and supports passing it later in a separate bill, specifically because the FDA has objections to the version of the provision that was proposed for the HCR bill. Axelrod claims that given some more time to work on the drug reimportation language the FDA’s objections could be addressed and then the White House would support passing it at that time. One assumes at least some Senators would take the FDA’s position into account in a similar way.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
Medicare doesn’t negotiate prescription drugs well to the extent it tries. And I am not sure that the independent Medical advisory board will have the power to recommend something as obvious as negotiating prices.
mcd410x
Progressive bashing has jumped the shark.
General Winfield Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
The thing about single provisions is that because they are that they can be passed into law by ancillary means, sometimes by amendments to other bills that must be passed, say like Defense Appropriations. Or they can be inserted into equally must pass bills like Omnibus, or budget reconciliations, or other vehicles not directly related to that provision.
They can still be demagogued and opposed, but they will not be in the national spotlight like with the sweeping change HCR legislation.
General Winfield Stuck
@mcc:
I should have read your comment first, you say what I was trying to say better. And the matrix of interdependent provisions that must be viewed in their cause and effect totality is spot on for a highly complex basic change legislation like we have with the HCR bill.
scudbucket
You guys really are amazing. Stuck continues to excuse Obama for anything, apparently presuming that the 60 vote threshold must be met for executive branch policies, like indefinite detention, rendition, bailouts, the Fed, DADT, states secrets privileges. Ailuridae says that this is the best bill we Dems could get, but then says that reconciliation is an option for ‘improving’ the bill, which begs the question: why not use reconciliation to expand medicare and medicaid and let the refunding chips fall where they may down the road? Isn’t that closer to what Obama and others campaigned on: a viable public option which expands coverage to the poor and elderly? Instead we get pre-legislative deals with PhRMA. mcc repeats the canard that progressives are baying at the moon by demanding their pony of a better bill. Not a better bill, better politics: push through what you can get without getting into bed with PhRMA (remember, those are supposed to be the bad guys here?), expand what already exists (isn’t this the incrementalism argument that all you Obots keep rehashing?), impose regulations (a simple regulatory agency tasked with reviewing denials of claims would be better solution than kicking regulatory oversight to the states, as the Senate bill does). The apologetics and mental contortions exhibited here are amazing.
kay
@Ailuridae:
I’m now worried about the merger of the two bills, because Pelosi’s House bill ended SCHIP. I’m worried she got her number to where it was by including savings realized by ending SCHIP. The Senate bill includes and expanded SCHIP, and the cost for that is included in the final figure.
They’ll be way the hell off on cost. I hope I’m wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@scudbucket:
Actually, while they _are_ bad guys, they’re not the bad guys du jour — the insurance companies are. The Obama strategy (IMHO) looks like it was designed to coopt pharmaceuticals into staying on the sidelines this time, rather than linking arms with insurance and the Chamber of Commerce, because that’s what destroyed the 1994 effort. You can find that to be a repugnant act of bribery or appeasement, but it did allow for one fewer potent enemy force.
Malcontent
“Can we stop with the Obama/Rahm betrayed him crap at the Great Orange Satan and elsewhere?”
Good luck with that, the GoS and the rest have fought hard to make that the current conventional wisdom, and it has just started to take root. Unless you want to start fighting against them, I don’t think there is any chance of it happening/
General Winfield Stuck
@scudbucket:
I am not excusing Obama for everything, jeebus, enough with the strawmen. But I am not blaming him for what is not under his control either. Divided government, remember it? It’s what we had before Bush and his unitary executive, or my way or the highway,. and it seems some of you miss those days.
danimal
I’ll say this slowly.
Drug….reimportation….will….pass….in…. a….separate….bill.
Dorgan hints at it in his comments, and besides, the idea is popular (even though it is sub-optimal from a policy perspective). When the Dems are looking for bills to pass that make Republicans squirm later this summer or fall, the bill will be introduced again.
Obama made a deal to avoid inclusion of drug reimportation in the HCR bill. Maybe the armchair politicos are better at legislative strategy than Obama, but that’s the strategy he chose. He bought Big Pharma’s tepid support, and it appears to have worked so far.
This type of chronology is EXACTLY the reason many of us have been saying pass the bill and make improvements to it over time. HCR will spawn winning issues like drug reimportation for years as long as the initial package succeeds.
General Winfield Stuck
@scudbucket:
It seems to me scudbucket, that you have given up on supporting Obama for your own reasons. That is cool, it really is, but once someone makes that turn, it often becomes self realizing with predetermined bias looking for the shit, as it were. And that is OK too, if true. Find yourself a candidate you can support and we will have that primary debate. Otherwise, I just see you as another troll bringing nonsense arguments.
mcc
No, no. I think you are baying at the moon by demanding the pony of a vague better bill that you don’t specify what it looks like, don’t seem to have put any thought into how it passes, and probably wouldn’t like even if you got it.
The claim that “progressives” are doing what you are doing and I am criticizing you for… that claim is yours alone.
I can think, for the record, of a number of things that could have been done earlier on that would have made me like this bill better than the state it’s passing in. However I can’t make those things happen because I don’t have a time machine, and even if I did I’m not sure how I’d go about convincing a hypothetical Harry Reid of July that the outcome we got is one worth avoiding. Maybe I could wave around an iPod 3G to dazzle him with the wonders of the future and it would just sort of shock and awe him into doing what I wanted? I don’t know.
eemom
“Can we stop with the Obama/Rahm betrayed him crap at the Great Orange Satan and elsewhere?”
Wait a minute, I’m confuzzled. The Janebots said the Kossacks are Obama-bots.
Oh, right…….that was LAST week.
Goodbye, “Libertarians.” Hello, Kossacks.
Ailuridae
@kay:
Jay Rockefeller isn’t going to let anything happen to S-CHIP. Also, its a wildly popular and well-received program. Now if a child who was previously covered under S-CHIP’s entire family is now covered under Medicaid they are most likely going to end up covered on Medicaid. And that stinks from a policy and politics perspective as Medicaid might be the least popular program the government runs and S-CHIP is better insurance.
It’ll be interesting how they treat families from 133 or 150% of poverty to 300 or 400% of poverty who don’t have employer insurance. If they allow the parents to buy as individuals while allowing the children to remain on S-CHIP that’s probably the best from a not punishing the middle class sense as well as a public health sense.
scudbucket
@General Winfield Stuck: It seems to me scudbucket, that you have given up on supporting Obama for your own reasons.
See, that gives away the game. I support policies, not a person. Obama has made some good changes, and I support those. Congress has introduced some good legislation, which I also support. You apparently want to support the Leader come hell or high water, which is just baffling. I don’t see any psychological (or whatever) merits in that view, nor do I think it’s healthy for representative politics in particular. If anything, it reduces policy decision-making to a single axiom: trust me. Maybe you’re comfortable with that. I’m not.
mcc
@FlipYrWhig: This was something I couldn’t decide whether to mention or not.
Frankly? Figure out how I’m going to afford health insurance if I lose or change jobs, and THEN I’ll start caring PhRMA exists.
ruemara
@scudbucket:
What would scaled back look like, btw? Just curious. Basing it on what you knew about this current congress back when Obama was just a candidate, what would you think was possible? And wasn’t the fact that candidate Obama liked single payer but was only pro-public option as policy one of the reasons progressives weren’t sure about him?
General Winfield Stuck
Since we only have two choices for who sits in the Oval Office, I admit I prefer a dem. It isn’t a zero sum game, It’s either a wingnut or an imperfect dem. And the one with the least support loses, always.
And the cold truth of the matter, is the things you list as Obama failures or shortcomings, I see as either wrong, or utter made up bullshit. We have debated them many times here at BJ. And given the fact of still less than a year in office of a four year term, I honestly think he is doing it right. with some caveats and disapproval on drone attacks and such.
The whole financial mess and how he has gone about it gives me eternal heartburn, but when honestly looking at the problem, I don’t think anyone else could do any better without likely making things a lot worse. And I am not that concerned that there are things left to do. For what should be obviously time in office reasons.
And further, that it looks like to me that you and the “other internet progressives” are not just unhappy about things, but that you Need to be unhappy, and actually spend your time searching for things to be disappointed about. this is baffling to say the least.
Ailuridae
@scudbucket:
You have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, do you? You don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of the issues you are hammering the administration on and accusing others of apologetics because of. Why exactly should anyone engage you especially since I have explained this exact shit in the past in depth to you and the other FDL-bots.
To quote you:
why not use reconciliation to expand medicare and medicaid and let the refunding chips fall where they may down the road? Isn’t that closer to what Obama and others campaigned on: a viable public option which expands coverage to the poor and elderly?
You can’t use reconciliation to expand Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP because those programs are deficit creating (combined they form fully 1/5th of total government spending). So you introduce them with the funding measures as part of a non-reconciliation bill and they aree subject to cloture.
The elderly don’t need a fucking public option as they already have one. Its called Medicare. What exactly is a 40 billion dollar a year expansion of Medicaid if not expanding a public option to the fucking poor? Do you even understand what you are typing?
As for the actual public option or a Medicare buy-in (both of which I would welcome) they can pass via reconciliation at any time if the Senate has the 50 votes (they don’t) so why hold up the massive amount of public sector spending to aid those existing in immense economic insecurity to please Jane Hamsher and people like yourself who keep prattling on and on about shit you clearly don’t fucking understand? Why hold up community rating, and out of pocket caps, and the exchanges and the subsidies to the working poor to pass either of those when you can just pass them through reconciliation at any point?
justinb
@Ailuridae:
How is he not? All he (or anyone old enough) has to do is be a citizen of the US for 9 years, 30 years old, and a resident of the state as of the election.
FlipYrWhig
@Ailuridae:
Considering their threats to jump, shouldn’t that be “FDLers on the roof?”
scudbucket
@ruemara:
Well, briefly, if policy is what you want to do and politics is how you get there, the Obama administration dropped the ball here. ‘Health care for all’ is easy to accomplish: legally mandate it. But the supposed purpose of HCR was to provide greater (near universal) access at an affordable price, while (ostensibly) improving the quality of the insurance company’s coverage model. Well, that all failed. But what we did get was a subsidy to help low-income people cover their mandated premiums.
I think the better path would have been to expand medicaid and medicare, funding it with a tax on the top percentiles (or whatever), thereby increasing at least one truly government-run program, ripening it for a later shift to universal, government run health-care. This legislation could have been done through reconciliation (with some attendant compromises), and the future refunding seems to me to be more politically likely than the hope that Democrats incrementally expand the current bill.
Martin
@Ailuridae:
On drugs (or anything branded), Medicare sucks. But outside of that, Medicare says ‘this is what you get’. They need to do that with drugs. Blood pressure meds: this is what you get. Brand, generic, whatever. This is what you get.
Martin
@scudbucket:
No, the supposed purpose of the first round of HCR was to save Medicare and the Senate bill buys us 10-11 years. All the other stuff you’re talking about comes later, as well as further reforms to Medicare.
Principally, this was the Democrats effort at entitlement reform, with some other goodies tacked on to keep the left from totally freaking out. You guys freaked out anyway.
Ailuridae
@Martin:
Agreed. But, again, that doesn’t need to be part of a larger health care bill. I’m not sure if the Medicare commission coming out of this bill will allow for recommendations on things like negotiation drug pricing or not. Regardless a lot of these steps would pretty readily extend Medicare’s funding horizon out as far as Social Security so they can be passed through reconciliation.
scudbucket
@Ailuridae:
You have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, do you?
As for the actual public option or a Medicare buy-in (both of which I would welcome)
That was my point. Call it a medicare buy-in – effectively an expansion of the current program funded by new tax revenues. Was that so hard?
J. Michael Neal
@LT:
No, it wouldn’t. Drug re-importation isn’t saving anyone $100 billion. Let’s assume it passes. Then, we have to assume that the Canadians don’t get pissed and ban re-exportation in order to try to protect their price structure. Then, we have to assume that the pharmaceutical companies don’t just add a clause to their sales contracts forbidding Canadian pharmacies from selling back to the states, or simply refuse to sell more drugs to Canada than Canadians need.
Thus, we have achieved a farcical system in which American drug companies sell drugs to Canadians for lower prices than they sell to Americans in order for the Canadians to become their competitors to sell to Americans at a price advantage. What in the world makes anyone think that the pharmaceutical companies won’t just renegotiate their contracts with the Canadians, either immediately or whenever their up, depending upon how their written, in order to raise the price?
The Canadian government loses all of its leverage in negotiating prices the instant such a bill passes, because the pharmaceutical companies no longer need them if it effectively means that they have to sell to the US at those prices, and thus lose all of the US profit. They’ll just tell the Canadians that they can die of whatever diseases they have, or pay more for their drugs. Given that Canada has roughly 10% of the combined population of the two countries, my best guess is that the drug prices in the two countries rapidly equalize, with US prices making about 10% of the move, and Canadian prices about 90%.
Why do you hate RedKitten and Comrade Mary?
Corner Stone
ISTM that he pretty forcefully said the drug re-importation idea was killed for many reasons and by strange bedfellows and he’s determined to get it through this year. Sounds like an issue that matters a hell of a lot to him. But more than likely not why he chose to retire, if you take him at his word.
And this part:
Was due to Ed asking him several general political questions about his decision and ending with, “Does that leave a bad taste in your mouth?”
I think you’re just trying to start a little shit Cole, and beat a dead, dead, dead horse to death.
George Johnson
IMO this used to me a blog worth reading and I spent some enjoyable time here in the past. Not anymore, just lots and lots of finding ways to ridicule any Obama policy dissenters anymore. Obamabots indeed–if the shoe fits.
I think the wit and strength of this blog was only really at its best in the days when the Republican party was in power.
So here is hoping for better days for this blog to be coming soon.
***hey as a side note–did you start getting a monthly check (cut from the administration PR department) sometime in the last few months? Because you’re really doing a good job of towing the line these days, and if your not on their payment list–you should be.
reality-based
@Ailuridae:
you said:
30 Senators from his own party that killed his amendment.
um, sorry, but those 30 senators were acting at the direction of – sorry, John – Rahm Emanuel
(he got the FDA to send a bogus letter to the Senate raising “safety concerns” – yeah, people are dropping like flies in Canada from bad drugs, didn’t you hear?) – which provided cover for Dems from Big Pharma states to oppose the bill:
from the WaPo:
damn it, John I was an Obama fan while you were still a wing-nut, I worked for him, I supported him, and no, I don’t think he’s the spawn of Satan.
But I DO think that Obama, and Rahm, have made a critical error – in both policy and politics – in not tackling, loudly and up front, the corporate control of American policy.
and you know, I used to sign on to this 11 dimensional chess meme – but we’re a year in, and look at the results it has actually got us.
We passed a stimulus that was way too small to work, 40% of which were useless tax cuts to appease Republicans, who all opposed it anyway. Since this country has the attention span of a gnat, guess who now OWNS the lousy economy and 10% unemployment? Obama and the Dems.
Great strategy for 2010, Rahm.
The Rahm/Geithner/DLC wing of the party refused to allow bankruptcy cram downs of mortgage principal, refused to break up the mega banks, and is now busy effectively gutting ANY attempt at re-regulation fo the banking industry. So guess who will be portrayed in the 2010 elections as Wall Street’s best friend? The Democrats. Again, great strategy, Rahm.
And the HCR bill – the Senate Bill, anyway – is going to be a HUGE great political albatross for Dems. Yeah, Americans are going to LOVE being forced to buy overpriced, lousy insurance from private insurance companies – and then going bankrupt anyway, because the bill has huge yearly and lifetime expenditure loopholes, as well as huge loopholes for recission of coverage. And those lucky enough to HAVE good employer-sponsored coverage are going to love seeing those benefits eroded away by a non-indexed tax on them.
Not just bad policy – bad POLITICAL STRATEGY!
If you think the GOS unfairly targets Rahm, I think you may be missing a little history here. You have to remember, while you were still wandering in the wingnut wilderness and obsessing about John Kerry’s war wounds, GOS progressives were fighting tooth and nail for Howard Dean, and watching these same corporate Democrats lose election after election..
Then, in 2006 and 2008 Dean’s 50-state strategy provided many unexpected pickups. Not that you would know this, however, because Rahm Emmanuel – the author of the “give me all the money and let me pour it behind my few favorite candidates” strategy – was taking victory laps in front of every camera he could find. (cf the Tammy Duckworth race in Illinois. )
Which wouldn’t matter, if the legislation that was getting passed was either a.) effective or b. ) politically useful. But it’s neither. So while of course I think the FDL crew are nuts to join up with Grover Norquist – they have a legitimate beef (although they are going about this in an extremely counterproductive way )
Part of the reason progressives are so pissed is that they see Emmanuel squandering political capital that they spent years to build. To us, it looks like more DLC “Let’s all pretend we’re really Republicans” and “let’s all secretly support our good buddy, Holy Joe Lieberman” shit.
Which means, God damn it, Democrats lose more elections.
Been there, done that, really tired of it – and have earned the right, I think, to critique if I want to.
General Winfield Stuck
@reality-based:
Thank you for this comment. I had been having some second thoughts that maybe I was the one being divisive between the left wing and more pragmatic parts of the dem base I and others belong to. You have straightened my mind on this with your comment that no, in fact it is not me or Cole, or anyone else that are actually reality based. It is folks like you who are splitting the base, we are just reacting to it. Gracias Amigo for your honest wanking.
edit – and no, I have never been a republican, not for even a second of my 57 years on this 3rd rock from the sun.
reality-based
general – Jeesh! What did I do to hack you off so much?
first, my screen name was not meant as snark, or editorial comment, or anything of the kind – it’s just the name I’ve been using to comment here (albeit sporadically) for years. So please, don’t read snark where none intended – it’s just been my comment name here, for years, ok?
(from the Ron Suskind article where Karl Rove derided those of us who were “reality-based”when he was off “creating his own reality. ”
I would NEVER accuse you – or John, both of whom I adore – or NOT being reality-based. Thought never crossed my mind. If the post sounded snarky or divisive, I’m sorry – It was certainly not intended that way.
Second – as I thought I made clear – I am NOT condoning the base-splitting tactics of the FDL-ers, or the loony “obama is Satan” wing at KOS. (Which is why I don’t bother with KOS anymore – and I had a really low UID
But may I humbly submit, that my objection to this legislation IS pragmatic – I think it’s going to lose us a lot more seats in 2010 than we needed to. (and I’ve been a Democratic political junkie for most of my 55 years, so I’m not some whippersnapper Nader-voting lunatic. )
Believe me, if I thought either the bail-out or the HCR reform bill were POLITICAL winners, I would certainly swallow any objections I had on policy ground.
But my over-arching concern is that Democrats win/retain seats. And like you, I watched the Democrats lose election is 2000, 2002, and 2004 that we should have won.
You and I simply have an honest disagreement over strategy here. (which I think we can acknowledge without all the heat – believe me, none was intended on my part. )
You think that Obama and Rahm did the best they could do given the current situation, and that their strategy of co-opting corporate opposition was the best they could do, since we have a dysfunctional Senate . You may be right. I disagree.
I think that, just as Generals always fight the last war, political operatives like Rahm may be applying the Clinton centrist strategy to what is, in fact, a vastly different country in 2008 that it was in 1994. And the “don’t piss off the corporations” lesson that he learned in 1994 is, in fact, the EXACT wrong lesson to apply to the current economic and political situation. I may be wrong. You, obviously, disagree.
Now, IF I am a respectable, middle-aged, pragmatic-as-hell political junkie, like you – and IF I happen to disagree with the political strategy being followed by the Democrats – Why can I not express that disagreement here? And bring up past history to buttress my points?
I have to admit, I as surprised at your post – I thought the points I made were well-reasoned, and accurate – where did the “wanking” charge come from?)
Tsulagi
@Zifnab:
__
Yep. And that has paid such huge dividends.
@reality-based:
__
You don’t see the big picture. Voters will welcome the new mandates from their Dem overlords greeting them as liberators showering them with flowers and candies. Slam dunk. Medals of Freedom are being burnished as we speak. But in case there are a few dead-enders, unsecured shoes will not be allowed within 50m of D-leadership.
reality-based
shorter reality-based –
yes, a lot of people who disagree with Rahm and Obama are unrealistic , Nader-voting, footstamping babies.
But there are also pragmatic, centrist, sensible Democrats – who are NOT appearing on Fox news, or signing up with the right wing – who ALSO believe that Obama has made some serious political mistakes this year.
Not liking HCR – or Rahm – does NOT, in the absense of loony-tunes behaviour, make you a loony
General Winfield Stuck
@reality-based:
The part i was thinking was wanking was the anti-Rahm part. If I remember correctly, Rahm was the DCCC guy for 2006 who was credited with the dem house gains in that election, to retake the house. By some good candidate recruitment and pragmatic ones suited to win in reddish districts. I am aware of his disdain for Dean’s 50 state strategy, that turned out to be a good one. But casting Rahm as villain to that and other stuff is wanking imo.
As far as we being in disagreement about the politics of Obama strategy, that is a fact, and so be it. But the reasons why dems will lose seats in 2010 is a common one for first term presidents and is primarily directly proportional to pissing off the other side, or wingnuts and energizing them to go vote, more so than pissing off a small contingent of activists on the internet. We just disagree with that. The base is much bigger than internet progressives imo and we will just have to see what happens. There are some good reforms in the HCR bill, such as ending bans for pre-existing conditions that will become effective immediately I think. And I do certainly believe that passing a flawed HCR bill, but with some good stuff in it, will be a political plus for dems, as opposed to failing to pass it.
But the economy will trump all of that when it’s time to vote.
And if I misread your comment and over reacted, then I apologize for that. We are all a bit edgy on the left side of the isle these days. :-)
reality-based
well, see , this is where we get into the “inside baseball” weeds – how much of the credit for the 2006 House pickups goes to Rahm, and how much to Howard Dean –
Dean was very much an “expand the battlefield” kind of guy, where Rahm was totally a “pick your targets” guy. He loudly disparaged Dean’s 50-state strategy all over Washington, and demanded that Dean turn over all the money to Rahm. When Dean refused, Rahm got out the knives (and he’s kept them out).
And Rahm’s strategy and tactics in 2006 are very much open to question – for example, the millions and millions he poured into Tammy Duckworth’s losing Illinois House seat race could have made the difference in a couple of districts in places like North Carolina and Missouri, where scrappy, underfunded progressives could have really used the money –
as to candidate recrutiment in Red States – what good does it to to spend a ton of Democratic money getting Heath Shuler elected, if he’s just going to vote with the GOP all the time anyway –
but like I said, this is all “inside baseball” stuff – that only hard-core, longtime junkies such as ourselves care about!
If you’re interested, here’s more –
There was a great article on the subject by Ari Berman at The Nation:
But ever since Dean became a presidential candidate, his relationship with the Clintons has been rocky. His campaign was a striking repudiation of Clintonian centrism, which had urged Democrats to support the Iraq War and throw piles of money at TV ads in a few key swing states every two to four years rather than systematically invest in long-term party building, from the local level up.
Harvard’s Elaine Karmack wrote kinda the definite paper on the subject –
god, what would us insomniac do without BJ?
and as a matter of curiosity, what am I doing wrong? Why don’t any of my links appear? Should I just type in the HTML link codes because the “link” function doesn’t work?
ok, it’s now officially past my bedtime –
Jason
@EvolutionaryDesign: That’s the Ed Schultz they’re trying to recruit for the Senate? What an utter fucking douche.
General Winfield Stuck
@reality-based:
Well, you see now. This all gets back to my original comment to you on this thread. I don’t parse who was or is better about the 2006 dem victories in the house. I basically believe both Dean and Rahm are good dems, and both contributed to the 2006 election. And that they had and have today different roles with maybe different styles and techniques. I do not pit them against one another, and am baffled that other dems, like you and Jane and some others are doing that now with Rahm. It is divisive and intra-tribal inside baseball, and is not a good thing for dems in general to be doing this. And it is mainly coming from internet progressives. Please stop it.
LT
@JGabriel: Yeah, sure, it’s weird. But that don’t mean it’s wrong.
Nick
@LT: No it wouldn’t, it would force prices to go up for Canadians, and do nothing to help us.
Nick
@scudbucket:
Because a reconciliation bill would have to start from scratch and be passed through all committees including Baucus’ finance committee, which is not possible at the moment, but could be in the future.