I recognize that there are people who have legitimate beefs with the Senate bill and with the notion that the House should just pass it. But for those Democrats who think it’s okay to punt now on health care reform, I think this question is in order.
I post a lot of goofball music videos I know, but hearing this one sends chills up my spine.
General Winfield Stuck
I will be pushing them to pass it, and calling them daily. But I will not blame them if they don’t pass the Senate bill as is.
mcc
I am not kidding, I have had this song stuck in my head on and off all week.
I always liked the Freedom Riders version
John Cole
@General Winfield Stuck: I will. They have two options- bad and unthinkable, and they need to go with bad.
DougJ
I always liked the Freedom Riders version
Do you have a link? It’s a great song.
Michael Bersin
Which side are you on?
Heh. And then there’s this from Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO:
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole: Fair enough, I will still call them and urge that they do, and hope they do, and I agree with the unthinkable part of doing nothing. We shall see how it shakes out.
mr. whipple
@John Cole:
I’m with this guy :)
Enough of this whining. Get it done.
Tomlinson
I will blame them, and I will act on it.
I know it sucks that they are in that situation, but I’m not paying them to make easy choices. I’m paying them to make hard ones.
So suck it up.
And then send weekly bills to the senate patching the thing up, if you like. I totally support that. I’ll support primarying any senator who doesn’t vote for them.
Jim
@mr. whipple: Me also too. I generally scoff at slippery slope arguments, but if Dems let this go, they (we, me) are fucked for years. The momentum they had coming out of the ’08 election shifts against them. If they pass it, there is, indeed, no guarantee the Senate will reconcile HRC into a better bill; if they don’t, the mid-terms might well become the bloodbath so many are salivating for.
Jody
It’s true. We have two options now. You gonna side with the folks trying to get anything they can salvage from this flaming trainwreck, or are you going to side with the folks that caused the wreck and are jeering from the sidelines?
eastriver
There are options other than Just Pass The Fucking Senate Bill or Not. Let our Glorious Reps explore those before Just Passing The Fucking Senate Bill. Or Not.
Like reconciliation.
Bad. Unthinkable. (Well, it is actually thinkable, so that’s not even good hyperbole.) And there’s Better Than The Other Two Options.
Okey-dokey, Smokey?
General Winfield Stuck
@mr. whipple: I want to see them pass it too. But it may be the last big thing dems pass if they do. Unions are a vital part of the dem machine, in more ways than one. Piss them off by passing a bill that will hurt them, and dems will pay a price at the polls. Political reality 101. Maybe or maybe not more than not passing something.
I am still where I was, that saving lives, and the senate bill will do that, is the trump card and out plays monetary issues of union workers or anyone else, every time. What a big clusterfuck this is. Jeebus.
arguingwithsignposts
I would be remiss if I did not link to this Billy Bragg version.
Also, Harlan County, USA is available on Netflix instant. Watch it. But be prepared to weep.
chrismealy
Don’t forget Billy Bragg’s version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yylvib5oW4c
Osprey
Considering how poor it is, and the fact that the insurance cos will probably still find a way to fuck people…I’d still be for it just for the fact that people with pre-existing conditions can get in on it.
And I do know quite a few folks, with jobs, that don’t have coverage, that really can’t afford an extra bill, subsidies or no. In the long run, this will probably do more to hurt lower-income families than help, but for the children who need health-care, and pre-existing conditions, and for catastrophic accidents (like idiots who fall on the ice and bust a shoulder :-) just kidding), let’s get it done.
Finally, trying to be clairvoyant, if the Dems lose this, what happens to the country when the voters say Fuck It?? Hell, I voted for the O-man and every D-ticket I could click (will continue to do so), did some local volunteering, and convinced who I could because what’s the alternative? 2012, repub pres/congress, war with Iran? Yemen? Privatization of Social Security? Taxes for more military giveaways? What other horrors can you imagine?
I’ve never voted thinking somebody was going to make my life better. I’ve voted for the people who I think will fuck up the least.
Svensker
Mind meld!
(re Billy Bragg)
mcc
Little late here, Mr. Trumka! The people who want to tax health benefits instead of rich people and are all for health care reform as long as it doesn’t hurt insurance companies or rich people were the ones holding the bill up last week. And as I remember, that group of people eventually caved, on your pet issue if nobody else’s, and were going to with your carefully tailored union benefit. But then we lost one seat in the Senate and that option doesn’t seem to be there anymore. This week the people holding the bill up from its one option of passage have opinions on the bill much closer to that of Mr. Trumka’s.
So who am I supposed to blame here? The corporate dems who are only okay with health care for all as long as it doesn’t inconvenience corporations? Or Mr. Trumka, who is only okay with health care for all as long as it doesn’t inconvenience the labor union he runs? From my perspective they seem to be doing the kind of hockey shuttle routine. Group one causes the Senate to emit a bill unacceptable to Mr. Trumka’s allies in the House, Mr. Trumka’s allies in the house reject the Senate bill. What’s to indicate either group cares about me at all?
(To be fair to Mr. Trumka, I saw a statement from him earlier this week endorsing the Senate bill conditional on the reconciliation “patches” bill passing first. Still doesn’t change the fact that he is gating my potential access to health care based on the marginal utility of his health insurance plan past the mark of $23000 for a family plan. And he’s using the phrase “they’re all for health care reform so long as” to refer to someone else?)
Stan of the Sawgrass
Well said, Florence– and Doug for bringing it back.
I spend too much time arguing with my relatives about the value of unions. But the last generation had more than a few Union men in it, and they knew what things would have been like without it.
Mary
@Osprey: But John saved Lily’s life. I guess that means that he saved her life twice.
rdalin
They need to pass this bill, and we need to keep pushing them hard on it, and not give up in a day or two.
If the House is worried about the Senate not following through on compromises, how can they even consider starting over or pushing for more?
We can’t let this one slip through our fingers…
mclaren
Let’s be clear: the current HCR bill represents no change from the status quo. None. Zero. Zilch. Diddly. Napa. Zip. Bupkiss.
The current HCR bill allows recission (just under a different name), cherry-picking of healthy people by insurers (just under a different name), it lets insurers refuse to pay for treatments to insured patients if their treatments are too expensive (just using a slightly different procedure than the one insurers currently use), it lets insurers jack up their premiums endlessly and without limit, and the current HCR does nothing meaningful to limit health care costs.
So your question is meaningless.
Whose side are you on? Would you prefer Jim Crow laws or just segregation? Do you want to be raped, or would you prefer them to stick their dicks up your ass?
Counting down to the kooks screaming lies and claiming that I’m “uninformed” for stating the documented and proven fact that the Senate bill maintains the status quo in…3…2…1…
sparky
sorry, not buying.
1. this is not health care reform.
2. i am not on the side of corporatist Ds who are more concerned with their lobby buddies than providing health care.
3. there are always other options, like letting the states do it themselves. after all, that’s in the existing bill as it is.
4. attempting to pass the senate bill is a reward to the Rs not the Ds. certainly shows that intransigence pays dividends.
and, i maintain that when the public does find out how bad this is, you will all be explaining how you knew it was bad but….
mclaren
@Osprey:
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh you naive lad, you. You, sir, have been short-haired. You’ve been duped. You’ve been suckered. You’ve been lied to.
The Senate bill permits insurance companies to deny coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions.
How?
By reclassifying it as fraud. You see, in the Senate bill, someone who has a pre-existing condition and fails to notify the insurer of it, even if they’re not aware they have that pre-existing condition, is guilty of fraud.
Ergo, such people can and will be stricken from the insurance rolls.
More details here.
You people really need to keep up. The Senate bill is a giant scam. It allows recission, permits denial of insurance to people with pre-existing illnesses, permits every abuse and outrage currently perpetrated by the health care system today.
Wake up and smell the latte, chumps. You’re being scammed.
General Winfield Stuck
@sparky:
Yea, we know sparky, dems are gonna die at the ballot box. They likely will anyway with the SCOTUS decision. They will at least die with their boots on, or something.
You left out pre existing conditions, but did include corps getting richer. It will still cover a lot more people, all the bill killers purple smoke notwithstanding.
yada yada yada yea.
sparky
@mclaren: yup. but it’s not fair to call them kooks. understandably, they want things to be better, and they haven’t, for whatever reason, come to the realization that we are just being fed a bundle of crap.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Maybe people would take you more seriously if you linked to this “documented and proven fact” instead of airily assuring us it exists.
Put up, or shut up.
jim
Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize.
sparky
@General Winfield Stuck:
i keep seeing this but have no idea what it means. no one is prevented from buying health insurance now provided they have enough cash. assuming the senate bill is enacted, no one will be guaranteed anything, other than that the IRS will dun them for not having proof of insurance, whether they can afford it or not. that is neither insurance nor health care.
maye
@mclaren:
The burden of proof for fraud will be on the insurance company. However, I do forsee disaster in the short term. Trying to regulate the health insurance industry is like trying to regulate organized crime. But if some kind of expansion of Medicare (public option if you will) can be done i(pronto) n reconcilation, it will iron itself out eventually, and the insurance companies will have to stop killing people because it will be bad for business. Right now they kill people with impunity.
rdalin
@mclaren
The bill has plenty of reforms in it, give me a break. This has things the public has been demanding for years and years. This would be a huge victory for the Democrats.
The perfect bill would never pass.
sparky
@jim: yes, that IS an excellent suggestion. really. the mistake, IMO, is that we (and i include myself) wrongly assumed that our elected representatives were on our side. they have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they are not.
@Mnemosyne: i did, a couple of threads ago. read the bloc quotes–it’s the text of the senate bill as passed.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
You do realize that the two links to your “proof” in that article link to the same HuffPost article by the woman from Nurses United, right?
arguingwithsignposts
I’ve never seen the names Sparky or McLaren on this board before. Trolls to the left of me? (it’s possible I missed this before, because I’ve avoided some of the HCR threads after the 900+ Greenwald extravaganza)
General Winfield Stuck
@sparky
Mnemosyne and our other trusted wonks, by me anyway, will debate away yours and Mclarens disinformation for the eleventy hundredth time. I just work here and dabble in politics from time to time.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Is that the same one where you misread it and didn’t realize it said these things only applied “prior to 2014”?
mcc
@sparky / @mclaren: Pure imagination. The bill doesn’t do anything it says it does and people who want access to health care are “corporatist”. I had a lot more patience with this Sarah Palin email forward crap a week ago, when (other than making the blogosphere kind of annoying) it seemed harmless.
mcc
@arguingwithsignposts: I think mclaren does a driveby every week or two
Kobie
The chance of them passing the Senate bill is as mathematically close to zero as possible. And then they will get absolutely thrashed in November, and deservedly so.
It’s over.
clonecone
@Michael Bersin: Is that the same AFL-CIO who, according to exit polls, voted for Brown on Tuesday? I guess that makes Brown a leader who isn’t afraid to stand up for workers since that’s the only type of candidate AFL-CIO claims they will elect. I’m sure demanding passage of EFCA will be his first act as the GOP’s newest superstar.
mclaren
And we have a winner! The first kook has stepped up, and now it’s time to rip your head off (rhetorically speaking) and sh*t down your neck.
Here’s the proof, kook:
As the NNU has said in its statement on the bill, the loopholes include:
* Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail “wellness” programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
* Permitting insurers to sell policies “across state lines”, exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.
* Allowing insurers to charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
* Insurers may continue to rescind policies for “fraud or intentional misrepresentation” – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.
The NNU is the National Nurse’s Union — people who actually know something about health care. As opposed to kooks like Mnemosyne, who has provided…nothing. NO evidence. No proof. No facts. No logic to demonstrate the Senate bill represents any kind of meaningful reform.
Source.
So you’re an insurance company and you want to deny coverage to a patient with an expensive illness. What do you do? Redefine what you consider a “high” cholesterol level. And when the patients screams in protest that hi/r cholesterol level is perfectly normal? “Oh, too bad, we have our own definition of `high’…” It’s just a scam.
So you’re an insurance company and you want to cherry-pick only the healthiest people to insure? Dump anyone at risk into the public pool. Oh, but wait — only the sickest and least insurable people will go into the public pool created by the Senate’s trigger option, and it’ll have no power to negotiate lower costs with big pharma or hsopitals because only a couple of million people nationwide will be in that public exchange — as opposed to the hundreds of millions of people who would be in a public option system. But, of course, the public option is “off the table.” So the state-run public exchanges created by the Senate trigger option will clog up with insurable chronically ill people and they’ll all go broke, and the states will shut ’em down, and the sickest people will wind up uninsured and uninurable. Exactly as they are today. Just another scam.
Hey, crackpot — which of these documented facts are you not clear on? Nothing to say, ignorant kook? Or perhaps you’d care to ridicule the National Nurse’s Union for their “lack of knowledge” about our current health care system?
What an ignorant fool.
DougJ
mclaren was here saying things like this earlier. He’s not a Johnny Come Lately.
Comrade Luke
Right now I’m of the opinion of “Fuck it, pass it”
But honestly, the last week has really shaken me to my political foundation. I’ve been defending Democrats my entire life, trying to talk to people, sell them, on Democratic principles, and now that I see what they’re really made of I’m just fucking embarrassed.
And I can’t help thinking that if they didn’t fucking piss away single payer, Medicare for all before the debate even began they would have been able to articulate a clear message to the people and be done with this already, and we’d be swearing in the newest Democratic Senator from Massachusetts in a few days.
And finally, when everything was falling apart, the SCOTUS ruling drove the nail in the coffin.
I don’t know how we recover, and by we I mean America.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Unfortunately, no. There are thousands of people who cannot get insurance at any price. If they’re lucky, their state has a high-risk pool that doesn’t have too long of a waiting list. If they’re not, they’re shit out of luck and get to pay everything out of their own pocket.
rdalin
Kobie, it ain’t over. The House managed to pass climate change legislation – you don’t think they can manage to pass this?
sparky
@General Winfield Stuck: it’s not disinformation, but you can keep on going “lalalalalala” all you want.
and i think it’s kind of amusing that i am now accused of being a drive-by troll. i’ve been reading this blog for years, though i don’t usually comment. it’s only on points like these where no one else offers up an opposing viewpoint that i comment, assuming i have an opposing view, that is. :p
Guster
@John Cole: NOW.
Liberty60
@mclaren:
In order to refute the argument that the Senate bill isn’t “real” health care reform, and that it won’t do a lot of good would demand a level of policy wonkery which I don’t possess- I haven’t read both bills, and compared the various provisions,and looked at the loopholes, etc.
But what I know is this- that Jim Demint was correct; If this goes down, it will be Obama’s Waterloo, and every item on his agenda- banking reform, consumer protections, everything- will be destroyed.
I read the E.J. Dionne piece, and a few others, that all spell out a complicated two-step side-slide shimmy shimmy dance of how to get things done. And honestly, I don’t give a crap which version they pass, but they have to GET SOMETHING FUCKING DONE.
The entire concept that the government can do something right, something that is a positive step forward, is really in the balance here. The Teabaggers and their glibertarian allies would love to put forward the notion that government is best operated in gridlock, and everything from fighting wars to paving roads should be outsourced to Blackwater and Halliburton.
I am calling my rep every day with one simple message- GET SOMETHING FUCKING DONE.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Why have you linked to the exact same article three times? Do you have any other backup or are you relying solely on the word of the NNU?
maye
@Mnemosyne:
So true. Except in Vermont where they have universal healthcare. It’s where I’m headed eventually with my long list of pre-existing maladies.
Comrade Luke
@sparky:
Let Me Google That For You.
inkadu
@clonecone: Unions as instititutions support Democrats; that means they phone bank and give money. Individual members may vote however they want.
And it’s a serious problem that we’ve been having for a while, since Nixon at least. Dems are losing union members to Republicans for culture war issues, even as we’re losing unions as jobs get shipped overseas. It’s a big structural problem I wouldn’t want to exacerbate.
Sly
Is there some central repository of asinine arguments against the Senate bill?
I ask because I see the same bullshit being posted over and over and over and over again, and I’d like to save some time and go straight to the source. That, and I’m getting rather tired of being called an insurance company shill / paid employee of Rahm Emanuel / part of a Cass Sunstein Daisy Chain (or whatever the 9/11 Truther argument of the day is) every time I try to talk some sense into some anonymous fuckwit on the internet.
maye
I’ve got plenty of cash, and I am uninsurable at any price.
sparky
@Mnemosyne: did you read what i wrote and what you quoted? i said they could buy insurance IF THEY HAD ENOUGH CASH. the LAT piece you cited says exactly the same thing. and so does the Senate bill. there is a fixed sum allocated, and if that runs out, that’s the end of it.
have you read the bill? it requires the states to pony up if they want to have access to the federal pool. no one has even discussed how the bankrupt states are going to pay to participate.
Guster
@Sly: Is the NOW argument one of the asinine ones?
Malron
And right on cue, sparky and mclaren arrive to spew the necessary vitriol required to graduate at the top of their class at troll university.
Ringers aside, I sympathize with Mr. Trumka. I’m a former member of USWA and UAW and I know how hard unions fight to protect their benefits. Apparently Mr. Trumka is not recognizing political realities here: the promised avenue of protecting his Cadillac plans was just closed down when Scott Brown won in MA and we are trying to find a new avenue to suit his concerns. Then again, I hope he’s directing his ire at the members of the senate to pressure them into fulfilling their earlier promises through the use of reconciliation and not threatening to withhold support from House members if they pass the senate bill and send it to the president.
cfaller96
I’m under the impression that Speaker Pelosi could hold the Senate bill until the last day of this Congress’s term (January 2011). So in terms of “trusting” someone on how to fix the Senate bill, House progressives could simply be asked to trust Speaker Pelosi to hold the bill until the cleanup/reconciliation bill is passed by the Senate.
It’s entirely understandable to say no to the Senate bill without any kind of REAL assurance on fixing the problems with it. There is no reason to trust that cancerous body. But can Speaker Pelosi persuade reluctant reps to trust her to hold the Senate bill hostage until a fix is made? I don’t know.
sparky
@Comrade Luke: ok, fine you don’t like my rhetoric? fine. recission is NOT going away under this bill.
sorry you people are so deluded you think i’m a troll. failure to even consider points when they are pretty clearly laid out for you suggests a problem in the viewer. but if it makes you feel better to call me a troll, feel free. maybe i can get some DougJ lessons. please?
note on edit: if #57 above is correct, that MIGHT be a way to fix things. i don’t have the knowledge as to whether it is a plausible option. if it is, it would be worth considering.
arguingwithsignposts
@sparky:
Hey, I’m just asking because there’s been an influx of firebaggers recently who mouth the same ideas. Like I said, I’ve avoided a lot of the HCR threads precisely because of the back-and-forth.
clonecone
@mclaren:
Do you know what the current age based cap is?
There isn’t one. Insurers can charge whatever they want and since there’s no medical loss ratio, they don’t even have to spend the premium on actual care. The senate bill caps that at 4x and it requires that 80% of every premium dollar be spent on care.
General Winfield Stuck
@Guster: Weren’t you a bill killer before, or I could be in lalalalalal land. Though it seems so real.
Tomlinson
@Comrade Luke:
This.
They do not seem to realize they have two paths. Not pass it, certain doom. A percentage of their base is *gone*, and they look like utter wimps who wasted a year doing nothing. The policy wonks know they could have passed it and the non-wonks just know they had solid majorities and couldn’t do shit.
Or they can pass it and defend it. There’s daylight here.
Most disappointing of all is Obama. I guess it just got too tough for him, because I can’t see any other reason for him to suddenly go AWOL just when his party was in the process of self-destructing.
mcc
This sounds like a pretty good plan– a better plan, actually, than anything based around passing reconciliation first. If it’s actually that simple why is Pelosi not just standing up and making that promise?
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
No, the LAT piece says that some people cannot be insured in the private market and have to turn to their state’s high-risk pool (assuming their state has one). Most of those pools have long waiting periods to get into, and you don’t get to buy your way to the front of the line. Unless they get into that pool, they have NO INSURANCE.
You said that “no one is prevented from buying health insurance now provided they have enough cash.” That is absolutely false. If you want to compare the state high-risk pools to the one you say is going to be formed in the Senate bill, please do so. But some people are uninsurable and cannot buy insurance at any price in the world we live in right now.
General Winfield Stuck
Fort Knox. Everyone thinks it’s where we keep our gold, but it’s really full of asinine arguments.
Guster
@General Winfield Stuck: No, I was worse than a bill killer, I was a ‘I’m so conflicted I’ll argue both sides’ guy.
I supported–and still support, whatever that means–the bill. (You probably remember the two days I spent typing, ‘there _is_ no bill yet, goddammit!’ over and over.) I just think that the ‘firebaggers’ don’t deserve constant infantile jabs, because they at least have _some_ strategy other than ‘oh, shit, we’re fucked!’
And the fact that the National Organization of Women wants to kill the bill makes me think twice. I know they’re only chicks and all, but still.
jenniebee
Olberman is reporting that CEOs are asking Congress to do something about the Supreme Court ruling. The unintentional consequence of opening up government to any voice is that very quickly, one moves from being able to extert influence to being compelled to exert that influence to keep parity with your fellows who have the same influence. The Supremes have given corporations another Rat Race to keep up with, and a number of CEOs are reporting that they’re already tired of the fundraising calls from pols, they don’t need the courts to take away their best polite answer for why they can’t empty their bank accounts into a campaign fund.
Michael Bersin
@Malron:
The quote from Richard Trumka was from a speech for the Sheet Metal Workers on August 11, 2009.
Sly
@Guster:
No. Bills can be taken up anytime within the legislative calendar. As cfaller96 said, this ends at the beginning of January a year from now. I’m not sure about the logistics of the Senate passing a reconciliation amendment to a bill that hasn’t actually been passed into law, but they at least have time to drum up support and work out a deal with Reid for 51 votes on the things that can pass through reconciliation.
I think all the “now” talk has to do with how utterly discombobulated the House caucuses look at the moment. While it isn’t necessary to pass anything, if this approach is taken, within the next thirty days or so, the fact that the House looks like a chicken running around with its head cut off kinda lends itself to being treated as such.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
You are never going to be able to remove rescission from contracts, because it is actually necessary. If I have four car accidents but tell my new insurance company that I have a clean driving record, should the insurance company be allowed to cancel (ie rescind) my contract for lying to them? Or should they have to continue covering me at the low rate because rescission is a bad, scary thing?
Rescission exists in every contract. What’s happening is that health insurance companies are currently abusing it. Are you arguing that people with pre-existing conditions should be allowed to lie to the insurance company to get a lower rate and the insurance company should have no recourse?
mcc
@Malron:
I think if you interpret his statement carefully he’s making promises to cause really intense problems for people like Kent Conrad or Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman, the people who watered down the health care bill because they couldn’t bear to see reform actually hurt a corporation’s bottom line, when they come up for re-election. This actually sounds like a pretty neat plan to me. But I see two problems with making this exact statement exactly right this instant. One, by going to an angry crowd and hinting at what he wants to do rather than being explicit about who the enemies are, it seems like he’s almost most likely to just encourage the angry crowd to go vote for more Scott Browns, weakening the [pro-public-option] Coakleys of the Democratic Party and strengthening the Nelsons. Two, it doesn’t really seem like this is the most logical time to be making plans like this. Before swearing to go out and take revenge on the conservadems in the Senate I would like to see whether the progressives in the House turn out to be better or worse for reform than the conservadems in the Senate.
cfaller96
Co-signed. Up until yesterday, I wouldn’t hesitate to discuss HCR with friends and colleagues in my red state. Now I’m so embarrassed I just want them to resolve this quickly so the American people can forget how awful the Dems are when cornered.
maye
@jenniebee:
it will take a constitutional amendment. This Congress can’t find it’s way to the latrine.
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Luke: You may not have been around during the Carter Admin., it was even worse. I had started to get interested in politics as a dem, but the preening and bickering of dems amongst themselves, with holding the WH, House and Senate was too much. I ended up registering as an independent and didn’t look back until George Bush scared the bejeebers out of me.
Always been like this. Nature of dems to look like a Chinese Fire drill doing governance. Sometimes, they end up getting something done, and many times not. But it always is a three ring circus, no matter the end result.
Guster
@Sly: I’m sorry, Sly. I missed my periods. I should’ve written the ‘N.O.W.’ argument. I mean that the President of the National Organization of Woman apparently said, ‘”women will be better off with no bill whatsoever.”
Link: http://rawstory.com/2010/01/kill-bill-entirely/
Which seems in keeping with the NOW’s website, though they’re not as explicit there. Can Raw Story be trusted?
mclaren
@Mnemosyne: Love it!
I gave you proof. But now it’s not enough proof.
Yeeee-hah! Ride ’em, cowboy!
Just like the creationists and the global warming deniers and the flat earthers — you provide ’em with evidence, but then they said, “Yeah, but that’s only one piece of evidence. Do you have any more?”
So you provide ’em with more evidence…and then they retort, “Yeah, but that’s only two pieces of evidence. Do you have anymore?”
See…no evidence is ever sufficient for the crackpots like Mneomsyne. I’ve provided evidence, I’ve given the links, you can study the HCR bill itself in detail…but of course, for the kooks, that still won’t be enough evidence.
No, no, nooooooo, there’s never enough evidence to prove that the facts are what they are. We always need “something more.”
Bullshit.
Cut the con, kook, and either provide hard evidence that the provisions I’ve cited are not in the Senate bill, or stand revealed as an ignorant liar.
As for the argument that “we have to pass something, or Obama and the Democratic party are toast”…y’know, that’s got a severe underpinning of bad logic.
Let’s talk hypotheticals — what’s the line in the sand? How bad would the bill have to be to make you chuck it? According to your argument, there is no linein the sand. That makes reform impossible. Because the insurance companies and their paid whores can just keep moving the goalposts and making the bill worse and worse and worse — “Okay, but we need a new provision…parents must perform human sacrifice on their own children in order to qualify for health insurance. Oh, and remember: WE HAVE TO PASS SOMETHING. Otherwise the Democrats are toast!”
When Obama said the single-payer option was off the table, it was game over. Now it’s just a matter of watching the corpses rot.
Health care reform will occur. It will occur when no one in America can get insured and angry mobs drag doctors out of their cars and lynch them and hospitals get firebombed by parents whose children are dying in agony. The insurance companies and greedy doctors and greedy hospitals sowed the wind…now they’re going to reap the whirlwind.
Will there be a pandemic so severe that most U.S. cities depopulate because, let’s say, something like the Spanish Flu cross-mutates with something like H1N1 and creates another Black Death, and most Americans can’t afford preventive care because of our insanely overpriced health care system? Or will the entire U.S. medical-industrial complex simply hollow out as Americans charter mass airline flights to third-world countries like India or Singapore for high-quality but affordable operations and treatments? Or will the entire American medical-industrial complex merely bog down and collapse like East Germany, because it’s totally unworkable and over time only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population can get insured, and even then insurance companies simply never bother to actually pay for the procedures?
I don’t know. What I do know is that the current U.S. health care system is unsustainable. Continue the U.S. trend line in this graph to the right — it blows up. There’s not enough money in the entire U.S. economy to sustain the current increases in health care spending. Before very long, the amount America spends on health care goes above 100% GDP. Hint: you can’t spend more than 100% of your GDP on health care. It’s impossible. The elites will try to maintain the status quo — and they’ll high-five one another and think they’ve done exactly that after this current HCR effort fails. But the status quo can’t be sustained. It’s only a question of when, not whether, it collapses and falls apart, and the only real issue is the amount of human misery incurred in the process.
NR
@Tomlinson:
I disagree. As much as you all here like to complain about us progressives, what you need to realize is that we aren’t your biggest worry. Not even close.
Remember all those young voters who turned out in record numbers for Obama and put him in the White House by voting for him 2 to 1 over John McCain?
How do you think they’re going to feel if all they get out of health care reform is a mandate to buy private junk insurance without any kind of meaningful cost containment?
Yes, passing nothing will hurt the Dems in November. But this bill is the kind of thing that could put an entire generation of voters off the Democratic party.
Mnemosyne
@Guster:
Not me. I still remember their PUMA bullshit during the primary and their complaints three months ago about Obama playing basketball with his male aides.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
So you don’t have any other proof and I can safely ignore you. Got it.
ETA: “Links” would imply that you’ve provided more than one link. What you’ve done is provide multiple links to the same article. You seem a little confused about what “more evidence” actually is since you keep producing the same exact thing over and over again and claiming it’s more evidence.
rdalin
@Tomlinson
It was less than a month ago that the Senate bill passed, and until last week, there was a lot of good plans on how they were going to reconcile the differences. It was also only 7 or so weeks ago that Coakley won the primary. The only thing self-destructing right now is disheartened liberals – it’s time we all buck up, take a deep breath, and gain some perspective.
And btw, when your comments mirror the Republican talking points, red alarms should start flashing.
Comrade Luke
@General Winfield Stuck:
I was 9-12yrs old. All I remember was the failed rescue mission, followed by some guy who sounded like he was literally acting at the podium getting elected president and my dad saying “We’re fucked”.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
I think he really did give Hillary the finger though. At least I hoped he did.
Comrade Luke
@Guster:
That hissing sound you hear is the juice leaving NOW’s credibility balloon.
inkadu
@Sly: Cass Sunstein Daisy Chain? Wasn’t that the set piece in Taboo 2?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@mclaren: Are you getting paid by the word, or by the insult?
Mnemosyne
@Tomlinson:
And by AWOL, you mean “gave a major speech about it in Ohio today,” right?
I can’t say I’m thrilled with Obama’s reaction, but at least he didn’t tell reporters that we were all doomed like Barney Frank did.
Guster
@Mnemosyne: Oy. I forgot those. Re-reading them, though, I kinda get the sense that O’Neill would say, ‘See? Obama _did_ screw us. Maybe if he played ball with a few women, we wouldn’t have to pay 38% more for insurance in these bills.” (Or whatever.)
If you had to choose between the current Senate bill, abortion restrictions and all, and no bill, which would you choose? Are the restrictions not that onerous? I read somewhere–forgot where, now, and Google is not helping–some projection about the Senate bill shutting down abortion coverage entirely within five or six years, or some such. That’s a myth?
Jim
The first comment in the raw story article is “Single Payer or nothing!”
They may well get their wish.
cfaller96
I am desperately (delusionally?) denying the reports that Obama is willfully staying out of this. Holy nutbuggers if he’s cutting and running I won’t be able to describe my disappointment in him. No no no, he’s still working on this, come on cfaller96 hold it together deep breath…
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
And I have to re-quote Tim F. about Barney Frank from yesterday, because it was funny as hell:
Stroszek
@Mnemosyne: You’re conceding way too much to these goons. Insurance companies can only rescind coverage on the basis of information relevant to setting your premium rates. Basically, this is limited to who you are, your age, whether you smoke and where you live. The bill explicitly bans rescission on the basis of disclosure of preexisting conditions.
This notion that we should make it legal to commit wanton fraud should tell you who the real “kooks” are.
That aside, these goons have yet to show how reform maintains the status quo. The whole rating limits and subsidy thing kind of throws a monkey wrench in that canard, but again, trolling… do not feed.
mclaren
@mnemosyne:
Fixed.
Meanwhile, Mneomsyne spouts more gibberish:
Oh? Really?
Where’s the provision for recission in the British National Health system?
Where’s the provision for recisison in the Canadian national health care system?
Where’s the provision for recission in the French national health system?
There isn’t one, because those single-payer national health care systems remove profit from the health care system. You only need recission if the goal of the health care system isn’t to keep people healthy, but to make money for insurance companies and doctors and hospitals.
The ignorance and dishonesty of your statements about health care is enough to kill a horse. Let me guess — you’re a paid insurance company lobbyist, right?
Ailuridae
@mclaren:
The current HCR bill allows recission (just under a different name),
Bull-fucking-shit
cherry-picking of healthy people by insurers (just under a different name),
Bull-fucking-shit
mcc
@Michael Bersin: Hah! Allow me to heartily apologize to Mr. Trumka for my “why the hell are you saying this this week” comments above. Great speech, agree with every word, assuming it was given in August :P
Sly
@Guster:
Oh.
NOW’s objection is gender rating and the abortion language. That’s a reasonable objection on its face. But there are ways around it.
The House bill gets rid of gender rating altogether, but the Senate bill gets rid of it only for individuals and small employers (<100) by allowing them to go through the exchanges. They basically leave the question of who else is allowed to get into the exchanges to the states in 2017. In other words, it will mostly impact large employers.
The big target here would be school districts. Maybe some large hospitals, but mostly school districts. Being that states will control both the exchanges and, to a large degree, teacher benefits, I think its a safe bet that most states would put their employees in the exchanges to save money. That is, if they already don’t get good deals, because there a quite a few states where the state employee pool gets better deals and benefits than Federal employees.
As for the abortion language, its a tough pill to swallow. But the House bill is actually worse in this regard. And NOW would basically be giving up on improvements and cost reductions to preventing and prenatal care for… what exactly I’m not sure. This language in the Senate Bill requires that the state exchanges provide at least one plan that is non-profit and at least one plan that doesn’t offer abortion coverage, which is a fairly minor requirement. And, compared to the House Bill, the restriction on Federal funding for abortion is pretty lax. At worst, it maintains the status quo.
Stroszek
@mclaren: Goddamn, that’s some good rant. Can you do one about black helicopters?
gwangung
I do have a questions here, though. How do you write language that would ban fraud and not allow for the abuse of recission we see now? And how would it be different from the language in the Senate bill?
That might clarify my thinking.
Guster
@mclaren: I’m about as on the fence as you can get about this stuff, and have even written a few comments defending the Jane Hamshers of the Left here on BJ in the past few weeks, but I feel I oughtta tell you that, in following your conversation with Mnemosyne here, Mnemosyne clearly knows exactly what she or he is talking about. You’re coming across kinda … more passionate than informed.
Jim
@cfaller96:
cfcaller, I am a sad, pathetic O-Bot, but this gave me some measure of optimism that the WH is not as disengaged as some blogs suggest
I’m willing to give this some time. Sure as shit not six weeks a la Dodd, but the weekend, and I guess since it’s next week till the SOTU
gwangung
Be honest about your goals, though. If you want a single payer system, please say so.
But I thought recision was a tool to handle fraud. How do you handle it in a system that’s not single payer?
inkadu
@Ailuridae: I have to admit, after several months of people arguing about what was actually in (or going to be in or in one version of) the Health Care bill, I’ve stopped paying attention.
When’s the last time we even spent this much fighting over, not just the details, but if the details of a bill even existed? It’s like it’s not enough to march in the streets and call Senators and write letters. Now we have to micromanage congress as an amorphous activist mob. It’s really weird.
It’s almost enough to make you think we should have a small dedicated group of people to look at this carefully and make the big decisions. Maybe we could elect them or something.
Mnemosyne
@Guster:
Strictly on abortion coverage terms, I would take the Senate bill over the House bill in a heartbeat: the Stupak amendment is more restrictive than the Nelson one. In fact, Stupak got a little pissy that his wording wasn’t used.
They’re both odious, but it’s like the difference between a dog turd and horse droppings — they’re both gross, but one is much bigger and stinkier than the other.
Being a uterus owner myself, I would strongly prefer than neither amendment existed, but unfortunately they ride on the back of the Hyde Amendment so they’re just spelling out procedures for what would have to happen anyway under current federal law since current federal law bans public money from covering abortions.
Sly
@mclaren:
Insurance companies are supposed to use rescission in cases where there is person who only gets insurance when they get sick, and immediately drop it when they get benefits. Then, when they get sick again, they just get insurance from someone else and repeat the process. This kind of deception is what’s known as adverse selection.
Adverse selection doesn’t apply to compulsory state insurance with no private competitors. It isn’t because they “remove profit”. The NHS could be turned into a for-profit system and they still wouldn’t have to rescind coverage. This is because you can’t drop your coverage and you never stop paying your share of the cost. You have it automatically by virtue of the fact that you live there and pay taxes.
Grow the fuck up.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jim: Somebody will need to bring the muzzle for dumbass Joe Wilson, and the rest of wingers will likely body surf him during the speech.
Stroszek
@gwangung: You do it by only defining fraud in terms of things relevant to setting rates. Since you can’t adjust rates based on preexisting conditions, you can’t rescind coverage based on failure to disclose a preexisting condition. You can only rescind coverage if someone doesn’t accurately disclose their age, address, smoking history, etc. mcclaren makes reference to the fact that insurers will be permitted to offer premium discounts to people who participate in wellness programs but this has nothing to do with rescission. Your coverage can’t be rescinded based on anything to do with the wellness programs.
That said, he does have a point that the wellness programs can be potentially unfair by denying access to discounts for people with certain conditions but he’s grossly exaggerating it’s likely impact. It’s not a means of circumventing the community rating. It can’t be used to deny coverage, etc.
KCinDC
I don’t quite see how this threat of using claims of “fraud” to deny coverage for people who develop something expensive is supposed to work. Nowadays they claim you lied about some preexisting condition on your application and say they would never have covered (or would have jacked up your premiums sky-high) you if you’d disclosed it. After reform, then whatever preexisting condition you omitted for whatever reason is irrelevant to coverage anyway, so it’s not clear what the “fraud” would be.
As Mnemosyne says, there’s always going to be a provision for fraud because, you know, people do commit actual fraud sometimes, and something needs to be done about it in those cases. For anyone who’s not going to be satisfied until the bill states that fraud is allowed, I’m not sure what to tell you.
gwangung
Huh. I’d call that kinda fradulent, myself.
Osceola
Pass it. It will feel like a large kidney stone, but John is right: “bad” and “unthinkable” are all we have left. I was never ashamed to be a Democrat until this charlie foxtrot, though. And that includes Carter and the sainted Ted’s take down of Carter in 1980, Mondale’s pathetic run versus Reagan, Dukakis and the “No, Bernard, I wouldn’t” answer to that ridiculous question while running his campaign on “competence”, Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” statement, Clinton’s zipper problem, Gore’s “no controlling legal authority” legalism, Gore’s capitulation in 2000 despite winning by half a million votes, Kerry on that goddam sailboard, Kerry not contesting Ohio. In the past there was always the good Democrats are responsible for: every piece of progressive legislation that benefits our country as a whole, rich and poor, black and white. Most of that still stands. But now? I can’t abide Obama’s voice on the radio. One year ago I would have followed him and fought for him anytime and anywhere. Now, not so much.
Ailuridae
This is going to be fun. Running through dumb shit posted by McLaren in this thread
So you’re an insurance company and you want to deny coverage to a patient with an expensive illness. What do you do? Redefine what you consider a “high” cholesterol level. And when the patients screams in protest that hi/r cholesterol level is perfectly normal? “Oh, too bad, we have our own definition of `high’…” It’s just a scam.
Plans in the Senate bill are going to community rated without allowing people to be exempted for pre-existing conditions. The only relevant risk factors are age (up to 3X greater), smoking (2X greater) and family size. J Michael Neal covered this in a different thread but the only grounds for recission based on fraud would be lying about one of the three items above.
Like like the CNA and imagine I would like the NNA. But we have the bill’s text. Feel free to cite that.
mcc
As far as the NOW objection goes, I’ve read the bill language myself. I just don’t find their argument convincing.
I trust Barbara Boxer on this. Barbara Boxer’s standard is that any abortion language shouldn’t change the status quo. The Stupak amendment fails the Boxer test according to Boxer herself, and looking at it I agree. The Nelson amendment, despite being kind of asinine, passes the Boxer test according to Boxer herself, and looking at it I agree. What the Nelson amendment does is basically create extra paperwork for an insurance company wanting to sell a policy with abortion coverage to a person receiving government subsidies. That’s it. I don’t see how this is going to change their behavior. Insurance companies have a lot of paperwork already.
NOW is looking at a worst case scenario and trying to keep it from coming to pass. They’re trying to defend against anything that might limit access to safe legal abortion, or put undue pressure on Planned Parenthood’s funding. That’s fine. That’s their job. But they don’t have a convincing case that their worst case scenario will come to pass.
Guster
@Sly: Thanks for that. V. interesting. I grew up in a NOW household and I guess I still have some residual respect for them despite having endorsed a losing candidate and having said some silly stuff.
But from your comment, it sounds like they’re focusing on the ‘single issue’ thing–which is of course perfectly appropriate for them, but not perhaps decisive.
I think what’d they’d say to this–“And NOW would basically be giving up on improvements and cost reductions to preventing and prenatal care for… what exactly I’m not sure”–is that they’re holding out for a bill in which women are treated almost as well as men, not just treated better. And I can’t say I blame them. But I’ll take incremental improvement every time, myself.
inkadu
@inkadu: I’m just being snarky… but I’m just remembering all the big fights we’ve had in the past few years and they’ve been relatively simple. No to war. Increase funding for body armor. Restore legal protections against wire taps. Impeach Bush. These were all simple things to describe and advocate for.
Health Care really does require a working political system, because it is so complex that it takes both people who know how things work and who can take take political risks in pissing off people who won’t understand the big picture (or are actually getting hurt in the short run). It’s tragic, because we had an energized base at the beginning of the year, and were almost immediately given a base-killing issue. Financial reform is another base-killer, and that’s next on the agenda.
Maybe Republicans have the right strategy: Centrally control your party’s legislation, and unleash the base for elections. The left seems to have the opposite strategy: use activists to micromanage legislation, and let Democrats fend for themselves electorally.
Mnemosyne
@Stroszek:
Where’s the provision for rescission in the German national health care system?
Where’s the provision for rescission in the Swiss national health care system?
Where’s the provision for rescission in the Canadian national health care system?
Not everyone has a single-payer system — all three of the above incorporate private insurance in some form.
Korea is actually a pretty interesting model since they went from private insurance to universal coverage in 12 years. And here we are getting all pissy because we didn’t get our pony within 12 months.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Oh, sweetie. I’m an administrative assistant who works for a Giant Evil Corporation that has fantastic health insurance. I really shouldn’t care about any of you because our costs only went up about 50 cents a month this year (and our mail-in prescription costs went down) but I guess I’m just altruistic that way.
Everything I’m telling you is easily searchable on the Google. Notice that I am trying to provide multiple references — you know, different articles that don’t refer back to each other — when I’m making claims. Do you have anything but that single article from the NNU yet?
cfaller96
Jim, this has got me close to reaching for ice cream, alcohol, mary jane, guns, etc. Money:
Deep breath come on Mr. President prove us all wrong…
gwangung
And that’s how it’s written in the Senate bill, right? (and, sorry, I have absolutely no problems with discounts for participation in wellness programs and I doubt 90% of the country would, either).
I’m sure at some point, a sufficiently high discount or a sufficiently arbitrary set of conditions could be problematic, but, as you say, I doubt it’ll be too bad (and that’s the sort of thing that’s relatively easy to adjust).
I’m trying to understand if there’s a rational basis for fears; just pointing to legal language (without examples, without a coherent legal theory) strikes me as ignorance of legal matters (and other parts of the bill that may take care of the objections…for example, where’s the burden of proof shifted to under the Senate bill? That’s NOT a trivial matter).
inkadu
@Osceola: I must defend Kerry’s windboard. First of all, he didn’t do a press conference from thing. Second, it’s fun and cheap; the media and the idiot nation misread windboarding as some elitist sport.
And you left out my favorite: Dukakis in a tank.
Ailuridae
@inkadu:
Again, I don’t think its a great bill. I think it will do a lot more good than harm and is a start to getting into a genuinely progressive place on health care.
What I hate is that in every one of these fucking threads there is always some new, nearly unheard of poster cranking off on easily disproven shit about the bill. There is plenty of room to gripe about the bill but that’s never what the other side takes.
The insurance reforms in the bill are really, really good. No, they aren’t perfect but yes they do put an end to the horror stories of people forgetting they had a staph infection or whatever two decades ago and losing coverage. And the community rating is solid (although it costs healthy people like me more in the immediate future) and it standardizes products. These are all clearly good things. The medicaid expansion is a basic piece of social justice and also will help cover some of the demand gap in the economy. The subsidies could be better but an adjustnment to those might actually pass the Senate with 60 votes as Collins and Snowe both thought they were insufficient.
Frankly, I’m just incredibly disappointed with a huge portion of the left who are knowingly duping their followers with outright lies because they feel betrayed about the public option.
danimal
If the claims about recission and other manipulations like cherry-picking are true, there is plenty of time to make changes to address the problems. There will be problems that arise after the bill passes. But the structure and the federal commitment to providing every American with health care will be there. That is huge. It’s ironic that DougJ posts a union classic in support of a bill that unions want to pass (with modifications) and it all the vitriol is coming from the left. I never thought I’d see the day.
Ailuridae
@Stroszek:
That said, he does have a point that the wellness programs can be potentially unfair by denying access to discounts for people with certain conditions but he’s grossly exaggerating it’s likely impact. It’s not a means of circumventing the community rating. It can’t be used to deny coverage, etc.
Well I think a lot of things could happen with wellness programs but I am happy that they are included and the intention of including them is to actually make people healthier (which also drives down risk for insurers).
Jim
@inkadu: I always say that if Bush had gone wind-surfing, the Commentariat would have gone into full wank mode on how remarkable it was that a man of his age would dare such a feat of athleticism, blahblahblah. And Chris Matthews would still have a hard-on from the sight of Bush in a wetsuit.
inkadu
@Ailuridae: This is part of the reason I want this bill to pass. With an individual mandate, the path will be paved for the politically easier improvements (which are probably in there anyway).
Right now, its the “comprehensive” part of the plan that’s killing it. People don’t understand it, and they don’t like change, and they narrowly understand the things that suck. It’s a political Cthulhu– unfathomable, and terrifying. But once we get it out of the way, we can start to do the one-by-one things that maybe hard legislatively, but by popular measures are quite understable, quite simple, and sensitive to activist pressure.
Ailuridae
@danimal:
They’re patently untrue. Its certainly true that a health insurer could look for healthier customers by advertising in Shape or some such thing. And, yes, a class of consumer would likely just buy their insurance seeing that ad. But that insurer has to provide the same coverage to someone less healthy at the same cost assuming that they are the same age and same smoking preference regardless of other physical dissimilarities. That’s what community rating means.
inkadu
@Jim: All I know is that if I there was even the slightest possibility of my unclothed torso being in the newspaper, I would shower with my clothes on.
But, yes, lots of critisicm of Democrats really is the direct fault of media distortion.
Stroszek
Well, the main thing is that a lot of the cherry picking is simply neutered by the subsidy mechanism. People who don’t qualify for a subsidy could end up paying slightly more due to some wellness program monkey business, but given that the mandates don’t apply if premiums exceed a certain percentage of income (8%, I think), you’re still drastically changing the system for the vast majority of people on the individual market while laying the groundwork for continual improvement.
Ailuridae
@inkadu:
The individual mandate is necessary. I’ve been self-employed for over a decade and I keep insurance despite not using it (I see a doc once a year for mole-checks and to get a flu shot) but because I know that when young, healthy people don’t buy insurance it makes it more expensive for older people or people with persistent conditions. Presumably I’ll be one of those people one day.
Now, since every grown ass adult knows the individual mandate is necessary why is it OK for people on the left to pretend they are arguing in good faith when they all sound like McMegan or whatever glibertard you choose. Oh yeah, its ok because they didn’t get their public option.
danimal
While I’m at it, the other complaint that I hear from the left (lately) is the “young people won’t like paying for crappy insurance blah blah.” This one has some grains of truth, because young people, at least most of them, don’t get a good deal out of insurance. Never have and never will. I wonder if the folks giving this argument were ever really in favor of universal health care coverage. It sure sounds like they have always been opposed. Health care is a right and a safety net, but it isn’t always a good financial proposition for the young and healthy.
CADoc
I’ve been lurking here since November and really appreciate everybody’s pragmatism and compassion for the real human costs our society is paying by not changing the status quo. I’m very involved in health policy so maybe I can direct mclaren and sparky (and anyone else interested) to some real data:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Blog/The-Costs-of-Failure.aspx
Pay attention to the chart halfway down the report, which estimates what would have happened to the healthcare cost curve over the years if any of the failed healthcare reforms of the past had actually come to pass. Along with all the moral and political reasons to pass this, it is also the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Oh and I really appreciate the lynching the greedy doctors image….that’s a great way to thank the thousands of doctors who really believe in reform and have demanded that their professional organizations stay at the table and support the bills.
Stroszek
@Ailuridae: A lot of “progressives” have been depressingly upfront about the fact that they’re mainly in this for their own immediate self-interest and don’t give fuckall about anything else. My wife and I are successful assholes who have nice insurance and will likely have nice insurance until the day we die. We would likely get hit by the excise tax sooner than later and there’s virtually nothing in the bill that would benefit us directly. But amazingly, we’re not bill-killers, because despite our own self-interest, we still think providing health care to everyone is kind of a moral imperative.
@danimal: The thing that drives me crazy about that argument is the assumption that those young people would be happy if only they could have their paperwork handled by a government employee. Any damage the mandate deals politically will be dealt with or without a public option.
Osceola
Yeah, I did forget Dukakis looking like Rocky the Squirrel in that tank. A great moment in history.
BTW, I do think windsurfing is great, but you have to play by the rules. And the rules were that you couldn’t do that if you were a Democrat. And wasn’t that picture taken in Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard? QED. Agreed about the reaction if Bush the rancher afraid of horses would have done that, especially Tweety’s likely reaction.
danimal
I should say that I don’t subscribe to the arguments we’ve been hearing from the left lately. The real arguments from the left boil down to two tracks: 1) Single payer (or the public option) is the only acceptable way to provide insurance or 2) anything that prick Joe Lieberman votes for, I’m against.
I prefer single-payer and can’t stand Holy Joe, but I’m willing to put those aside in order to make the colossal step forward that this bill represents. There is a reason that hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to defeat the bill, and it’s not because the little guy can get a better deal if it fails.
Jim
@Osceola: BTW, I do think windsurfing is great, but you have to play by the rules. And the rules were that you couldn’t do that if you were a Democrat.
True, true, sickeningly and unavoidably true. I’m a big Kerry fan, but God love him, the man was even more out of touch with the political zeitgeist than Al Gore (who got it, but could never quite get into it). Kerry was made for radio, if not earlier.
inkadu
@Ailuridae: I agree. Asking people to sacrifice for the greater good does not work, which is why we have a government that makes laws like the individual mandate.
Personally, I think you’re nuts if you stayed with health insurance while young merely because you thought it was the Right Thing to Do. I don’t think people should volunteer to sacrifice themselves for a society which will gladly watch them die in the street, that being the society we seem to live in nowadays. In a society like this, it’s every man for himself, right up to the point where we get to politics, where we can decide to be civilized for a few minutes and build a better society we can all benefit from equally.
That will probably be misconstrued, but there’s a thought experiemnt I read about it: If you could be born in any nation on earth, which one would you pick? The only caveat is your parents will be chosen randomly from the population. The United States seems like a good choice, because you can become rich, rich, rich! But it’s extremely risky, because you can also be born poor and then you’re pretty much screwed. Most people would settle on a low-risk, medium-reward strategy — choosing a country whose citizens mostly tend to do well in life. Having a lot of money doesn’t make you happy. Having too little money, though, very definitely makes you miserable. People understand that.
But, anyway, that’s what I mean when I say, “better society that we could all benefit from equally.” Maybe I’m a political buddhist.
Anyway, fuck the selfish bastards on the left and the right (ok, so maybe not a buddhist, exactly).
@Osceola: That’s the thing– the only rule really seems to be Don’t be a Democrat. Who knew windsurfing was evil before Kerry got nailed for it? Why is Bush’s mountain biking considered “manly” and not elitist; also, remember he was a cheer leader at Yale? Obama got hounded by the press for going to his home state, and one press member asked why he couldn’t go to a more traditional place like Martha’s Vineyard. There is no human way to circumvent the rules because they are written on-the-fly to screw the Democrat.
These discussions are seeming as old as Rocky and Bullwinkle sketches, just not as funny. I’ve got to find some new material.
Ok, this edit feature is really making this discussion weird. Every time I refresh and scroll back up to review comments, it’s like I’ve entered a parallel universe where something was added to the comment. I’m just going to keep refreshing the page until I find the parallel universe in which Gore was elected. Then I am going to shut down Firefox and never blog again.
KCinDC
@inkadu, don’t forget Scott Brown’s nude centerfold, which would have killed him if he’d been a Democrat. The only difference there is that it would also have killed him if he’d been a Republican woman.
Jim
@KCinDC:
Did you catch Letterman last night? He was merciless on the Cosmo shoot. I was wondering what would have happened if Dave had seen that spread a week ago. Ah well, wishes and horses and mounted beggars.
inkadu
@KCinDC: I’m not sure even a centerfold would stop a Republican woman. Hairy legged feminists might be intimidated and homosexuals, but I think red blooded Americans comfortable with their sexuality would welcome a former Centerfold as a Senate candidate. Just as long as she’s Republican.
(Disclaimer: this is a joke about the Republican view point and not meant to disparage feminists, gays, or Democrats).
tam1MI
Hi, long time lurker, infrequent poster here. Just a few comments I wanted to address:
See, here is where I think the Just-Pass-the-Damn-Bill supporters arguments fall down. When the “Bill Killers” say that Congress should ditch the compromised-to-death Senate bill and start over, the Pass-the-Bill people say that isn’t possible. There isn’t time. The bill has to be passed RIGHT NOW RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE OR WE WILL NEVER GET ANOTHER CHANCE IN A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS!!!!!! But when the “Bill Killers” point out the genuinely shitty parts of the bill and/or the massively unpopular bits (Cornhusker Kickback, anyone?), they are smugly told, “Oh, there will be plenty to time to fix that later.”
Well, which is it? Either there is no time to think or consider or plan or strategize or do anything except blindly vote for the bill, or there’s plenty of time. Can’t have it both ways.
Here is where I want to step away from the policy arguments for a bit and talk about politics. A significant part of the Democratic Party base wanted just one thing out of a health care reform bill. Just one thing, that was all. A public option. They felt very passionately about it. They made their position clear, over and over again. (Many of the things I see people advocating here on Balloon Juice – calling their elected representatives, signing petitions, organizing whip counts, etc. – where being done by FireDogLake months ago when the legislation contained the public option).
So, how then, does it make sense to take the one thing that a passionate, committed, and (more to the point) electorally significant portion of your base has made clear is their dividing line between support and opposition of your signature initiative and deliberately strip it out of the bill? It makes no sense, it has never made sense to me. How does kicking down your base win you votes?
Well, all that is fine and dandy and your superior morality is there for all to see, but what about the people who, despite making “good” wages, are struggling along in this economy and who are now going be hit with a tax because they committed the high crime of actually having decent health care insurance? I have a friend in exactly that boat. She voted Democratic for 20 years because there were two issues she cared about more than anything else in the world: Health Care Reform – both she and her husband have multiple health problems, despite being a “successful asshole”, they don’t have much money left over at the end of the month once they get done paying for their various prescriptions (which, if they didn’t have the “Cadillac plan” health insurance the Senate Dems apparently feel she should be financially punished for, would cost them $10,000 a month) – and reproductive rights. What did she get for her vote for the Democratic party? She got a health care bill that, instead of alleviating her stressful financial situation, would add yet more expense to her already strained budget, and she got the Stupak and Nelson amendments.
She has said she will never vote for the Democratic party again as long as she lives and I really can’t think of an argument that will bring her back. And there are plenty more people like her out there – as seen in Massachusetts, enough to swing an election. I really don’t think scolding them for moral deficiency is going to be the way to win them and their votes back. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the Nader voters who kept justifying themselves by saying they were, “voting their conscience”. It’s real easy to “vote your conscience” or “uphold a moral imperative” when you’re not the one getting whacked by it. Just sayin’…
Mnemosyne
@tam1MI:
I’m asking because this has been a very frequent point of misunderstanding: does your friend have insurance through her (or her husband’s) employer or do they have private health insurance? Because if they have private health insurance, they are NOT subject to the tax.
Let me re-emphasize that: if you have private health insurance, you are not subject to the excise tax. It applies only to people who have employer-based insurance. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen freaking out about the excise tax when it wouldn’t apply to them.
If your friend does have employer-based insurance, does her company spend $8,500 or more per year for her premiums? That’s the threshold for individuals — families are $23,000 a yar.
General Winfield Stuck
@tam1MI:
Passing a bill that doesn’t exist yet is a lot different than amending one later on. And a lot harder to do.
Because doing nothing will mean a lot of people will not get any insurance as is currently the situation, and people will die because of it. How does that stack up against the disappointment of a relatively small group of dem supporters?
If this is true, and that is debatable, again, how does that stack up against 45, 000 thousand people a year that cannot get insurance and will die needlessly for lack of medical treatment, that will be able to if this bill is passed. You are equating a degree of possible financial pain with the near evil condition of people dieing because they can’t get insurance, either because they can’t afford it, or have pre existing conditions, or get dropped from their plans because they change jobs, or the Insurance co. find some excuse to not pay claims for people over the slightest of reasons, or just because they don’t want to pay.
If supporting passing the senate bill makes me get called morally superior, or whatever insult, then so be it.
Mnemosyne
@tam1MI:
Only if you misunderstand the argument. The argument is that, flawed as it is, the Senate bill is a foot in the door. If the principle is established that the government has an interest in health care and can regulate it, then it’s that much harder for people to come along later and try to disband the program. If you don’t have a program at all, though, then there’s nothing to build on.
It’s like saying that the Civil Rights Act of 1957 shouldn’t have been passed because it didn’t create full civil rights for all citizens right off the block. But without that bill, we wouldn’t have had the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, or 1968, nor the Voting Rights Act.
We’re also looking at the history of healthcare reform in this country. Eight presidents have tried, and seven have failed, and it took at least 15 or 20 years between attempts. What makes you think it’s so certain that number 9 will succeed that we can just let this chance go by and wait another 15 years?
V for Vendetta
@mclaren:
So, you do realize I’m a work of fiction, right?
Yeah, a sort of hyberbolized critique of Thatcher’s England. Who, I might add, retired peacefully and continues to live out her days free from the fear of my ever-so whirly slow-motion knives.
Also, that kick ass scene where I get Evey to blow up Parliament and every one comes out with their masks and you’re all like, “Yeah! That’s what we need! Right NOW!’?
All CGI. No- I kid you not.
I’m going to step out now- just thought with some of the rhetoric being thrown around, I should poke my head in a make sure everyone was clear as to why my movie isn’t shelved under “documentaries.” Night mate.
tam1MI
I know she has employer based insurance, I don’t know how much her employer pays from premiums. I can say that she herself works in the insurance industry and says she has run her numbers and that she would be subject to the tax.
But what the progressives who oppose the bill are looking at is this:
In 1992, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress passed. At the time it was seen as deeply flawed legislation (some would say “bad”) that could destroy American jobs. We were told the bill needed to be passed now and there would be plenty of time to come back and fix the flaws later.
Later in the 90s, Clinton passed so-called “Welfare Reform”. Many people felt the bill would do nothing to help poor people, instead it would hurt them. We were told the bill needed to be passed now and there would be plenty of time to come back and fix the flaws later.
No Child Left Behind. Plenty of time to fix any problems that might arise.
Patriot Act. We can fix the bad parts later…
Military Commissions Act.
Bank bailouts.
And so on and so forth. Over and over, bad legislation with *some* good parts was sold on the basis that the bad stuff would get fixed later.
Only it never got fixed.
Once again, it think it’s where the Have-It-Both-Ways rhetoric of the “Pass-the-Bill” folks falls down. If this is one chance – the once in a lifetime, won’t ever come again opportunity – to get Health Care Reform, than I don’t think it’s unreasonable, given the history of how previous legislation never got fixed, that it be a bit more than a couple of good or not-so-bad aspects to an otherwise shit bill.
Uriel
Hey, does anyone know if changing your user name- You know, because you just thought up a really funny thing that everyone on the internet is totally going to get a kick out of and really has to see right now- would trigger moderation? Just wondering, because it seems to for me.
And then everybody, in fact, does not get to see it right now, and the world grows just that much darker, which is a shame.
General Winfield Stuck
@tam1MI:
You and they are not progressives, progressives accept progress. You do not.
General Winfield Stuck
@Uriel: Yes, one time.
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck: Well that is unfortunate.
On a completely unrelated note, this guy here seems to have a very sensible out look on some of the arguments being made, and I really think some of our readers should check out his reasoned and thoughtful commentary, (which somehow appeared out of posting sequence) because I, for one, hadn’t really thought about it in quite that way:
@V for Vendetta
Very enlightening.
Mnemosyne
@tam1MI:
I’d be curious to know. Part of the problem, of course, is that healthcare costs have much more to do with geography than quality, so people living in areas with a high cost of health care often pay more for lower quality care.
Hopefully she hasn’t made the common mistake of running the numbers on the full cost of her health insurance instead of just the amount over $8,500. If her health insurance costs her company $9,000 a year, $500 is the taxable amount, not $8,500. That’s what makes it an excise tax — it taxes the excess amount.
Actually, it’s interesting, because most of the legislation you’re talking about was itself fixes to existing legislation. Welfare “reform” was changes to the existing welfare system. No Child Left Behind was changes to the existing education system. NAFTA, same thing.
I wish I could say you’re wrong to be wary, but I understand it. I just think that 45,000 dead Americans and almost 1 million medical bankruptcies every year is an urgent enough problem that we should take the risk.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry, I just realized I forgot to post the most important part: your friend doesn’t pay the tax. Her insurance company does. So “running the numbers” doesn’t do a whole lot of good unless she’s also her company’s plan administrator and knows exactly what plans the insurance company is offering.
Joe Buck
The House should not “just pass it”. However, it could work to pass the Senate bill along with a second bill that could go through the Senate via reconciliation, and I think that this is the best strategy.
The most beautiful part is that if the Senate agrees to this, it makes Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson completely impotent. There’s 20 hours of Senate debate, max, and we can lose Lieberman and up to 8 other Democrats and it still goes through.
Best yet, as soon as the Senate tries it once, it might be addictive. With reconciliation, they have a huge, safe majority.
Ruckus
I like all the arguing about how bad this bill is and we should do nothing.
Nothing is what we have now.
Actually less than nothing is what we have now. So even crap would be a step up.
Yes I want single payer government insurance. Don’t see this happening in my lifetime.
Yes I want a strong public option if I can’t have single payer. Don’t see this happening in my lifetime.
And yes I am one of the 45+ million without insurance. And per-existing conditions out the wasoo. I can not qualify for any insurance plan, even if I could afford it.
The reality is that the senate plan is not all that good, but it is not crap. And remember crap is a step up. What’s the old saying – a journey starts with one step.
IOW pass the damn bill. Move on from there.
IOW 2.0 GTFU and realize that life sucks most of the time and recognize when a good thing walks up and smacks you in the head.
Uriel
@Ruckus:
Yes to this, and the rest of your post as well. But most especially this:
Stroszek
@tam1MI: That’s a mighty fine Republican-style argument. I guess your friend is grateful Bush beat Gore after all, otherwise her tax burden would just be unimaginably horrible.
That aside, I still think covering 30,000,000 people in exchange for a marginal tax at the insurer’s end on premium revenue exceeding $8,500 individually is pretty much chump change, even for those with some financial concerns… particularly considering a lot of the money is just going to be funneled right back into the pockets of insurers and won’t impact their bottom line to a terrible extent.
Should I feel guilty if that makes me feel morally superior? Or should I feel like, I don’t know, an actual progressive?
Stroszek
I would add that the argument against the excise tax is also an argument against cap and trade and quite a few other Democratic initiatives. After all, if we’re going to do the whole “the costs will just get passed onto you” thing, there’s not much that is an immediately awesome deal for middle class liberals.
debbie
I’m disappointed that many liberals/progressives seem more preoccupied with political posturing than with the reality that is today’s health care:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/one_readers_sob-story.php#more
Sly
@Stroszek:
What strikes me is that self-acclaimed Progressives are now using the go-to argument Conservatives have used for generations against any systemic help for the middle class. Even against tax incentives designed to promote long-term growth and responsible corporate governance have always been attacked along these lines.
The reality is in many sectors of the economy it’s very difficult to pass even part of a short term tax liability off on customers, let alone the whole thing. But it sounds intuitive, so it must be true.
Osceola
@Tam1 M1
Nice try. But it is difficult to have a reasonable argument with people who will not distinguish between a Research Grant and a Consulting Contract no matter how many times the distinction is patiently explained to them by different people using complementary approaches. Besides the General has written that you are not a “progressive.” So let it be written, so let it be done.