For what it’s worth John didn’t ‘pimp’ the health care bill or really spend any energy on it one way or the other. After Scott Brown sent an august figure like Barney Frank running headfirst into a tree, John mostly gave it up for dead. Most people did.
I pimped the hell out of that bill, and I certainly did not think the bill was perfect. I pimped it because no national politician can bring back rescissions or pre-existing condition exemptions and expect to keep his seat. Weaker points can get ironed out later (or made worse), but major protections that affect large percentages of the public are a one-way ratchet. They quickly get fixed in the national character and people move on to fight about other things. Republicans always knew this. That’s why they fought it so hard. The good things got fixed so fast that even the GOP’s half-baked pledge promises to keep them. More will come later. Even if it doesn’t we’re a far sight better off than the status quo ante.
What else? I’ve always been a Democrat. I never heard of Journolist before I read about it in the news. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, good job with the blog post.
John Cole
Ahh, but you don’t understand. You didn’t mount highly publicized and ineffective broadsides against the man, so that means you are a neoliberal sellout cheerleader.
Punchy
But Cole’s a god dammed Ms. Oggenest. Cuz he never dates any broads or something. Or names all his female dogs after flowers, instead of real chick names.
I will say that the teatardness will be so strong in the GOTea next Congress, that I fully expect them to zero out the funding of the entire statue.
Moses2317
Thank you again, Tim F., for all you did to pimp the health care reform legislation. For those of us who have significant health problems in their families, the legislation is a real improvement in our every day lives. Yes, more needs to be done, but that is why we need to fight to protect and expand our progressive Democratic majorities, rather than return the car keys to Republicans who oppose our progressive values.
Winning Progressive
JWL
All is well, so long as Americans can root kernels from manure trickled down from above.
jibeaux
Folks with better reading skillz than mine noticed that actually, they didn’t. Three little words: “with prior coverage”
4tehlulz
Your inability to see how Grover Norquist could be an ally in the fight for the public option means you should not be taken seriously.
jwb
@John Cole: I think you’d do better pounding her on the Norquist connection. That’s a point that should make even her most ardent supporters queazy, because, well, everyone knows that Norquist would only make alliances with those he thinks could be useful to his cause. And it must be fully admitted that Jane has most definitely proved herself useful to his cause.
JCT
Another thanks to Tim F — the health care fight was exhilarating and it really did look like all was lost after Brown was elected. I sat up with my college student daughter and watched each vote, it felt like a hammer blow against all that had gone wrong in the preceding 8 years of Republican “rule” — I couldn’t remember the last time that anyone had a paid attention to those among us who needed help.
And hey, I’m a physician, I know damn well that it could have gone farther and wish that it had (all the way to a real public option). But I am also a realist and understand that the current political climate in no way supports the full scale top to bottom health care reform (as opposed to the insurance reform that we really received). But here we go again, nuance is lost in this country — everything has to be “my way or the highway” — and this is what makes me as angry at the FDL loons as I am at the Republicans (especially the MDs in the congress who are a very special brand of pond scum for supporting a status quo that they know fails a huge swath of this country).
We have the capability to do so much better regarding health care in this country– if it has to be done incrementally, than so be it, just as long as it gets done. Good god, it took Obama being elected to even bring the freaking subject *up* after 8 years of silence as more and more people were in need. This nonsense the FDL guys are spreading is grotesque.
And LOL at
. How can this be given all those girl dogs John has saved?
jibeaux
Misogynist.
/ducks
valdivia
Seconding the thanks for the pimping. It *is* a big fucking deal.
Joe Beese
Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. What is the sharp-toothed regulatory agency that is going to vigilantly enforce compliance with the new “no rescissions, etc” policy?
JPL
@valdivia: I am the proud owner of a tshirt that expresses that sentiment.
BTD
@John Cole:
John. Remember your post last week criticizing my take on the claims that the health bill’s most progressive provisions were threatened. (You mischaracterized my argument as I explained yesterday – Link. We no longer have the blog fights of yore, so this one probably escaped your attention.)
But I find it funny that in a post below you state you knew there were not 50 votes for a public option, but here is Tim F., by all accounts a great guy BTW, writing:
I’m curious, do you agree with that? Do you really believe that, for example, the funding levels in 2014 for Medicaid expansion (easily the most progressive and important part of the bill and reason enough to accept the rest of it) can’ be reduced?
Do you agree that the Republicans can’t hollow out the health bill, as Tim F. seems to think?
Republicans are different than Democrats. In a legislative standoff, the Democrats always blink – except of course for the detested Bill Clinton in late 1995 (not to mention during the 1993 tax bill debate.)
These two thoughts (yours on 50 votes and Tim F.’s on the impregnability of the health bill) do not jibe. And In fact, I think both are incorrect. It is POSSIBLE that 50 votes could have been achieved for the public option, but it did not happen. Was it faulty political execution or was there really no way? Reasonable minds can differ. I wish everyone would stop being so sure at this point. There is no purpose to it.
By the same token, the GOP CAN roll back major progressive portions of the health bill and certainly make it impossible to make it better.
At the time of the passage of the health bill, the rallying cry was this was a first step. Too many seem unwilling to push on for more because well, “there aren’t 50 votes.”
You and I are not activists, thanks Gawd, because given our cynicism, nothing would ever change.
EconWatcher
It will be interesting to see how Obama handles a Republican Congress. My guess is, he will be good at it. The crazier his opponents get, the cooler and more reasonable he appears, which makes them look and act even crazier.
It’s going to be a two-year circus, though.
beltane
I’m not much of a people person or a phone person, so it was kind of a big deal that Tim inspired me to call my nice, progressive Rep’s office and deliver an emotional diatribe on how they had to pass this bill, deeply flawed as it was. I got a couple of other people to call, too.
For the record, I happen to take offense when I’m told I’m somehow not a real Democrat because I generally support the president. To those people, I have only two words to express my feelings; one starts with F, and the other starts with Y.
Now may all of you have a wonderful day.
valdivia
@JPL:
I so wanted to get that one!
Michael
One, two, three, four, lets have a Blog war….
John Cole
I don’t have any interest in pounding her over anything. All this nonsense the last 24 hours was because I simply responded to a heaping helping of bullshit she offered up. I didn’t go crazy and attack her, I just rebutted it and let her go frothing insane all over the place. She’s her own worst enemy- all I need to do is give her a microphone if I wanted to “pound her.”
As it is, I’m hoping she gets a lot of her readers to vote Democratic. I fail to see what the point of launching pointed attacks at her would be.
eemom
Gentlemen — as much as I’m enjoying this (and believe me, I am REALLY enjoying it), I must regretfully suggest you take a deep breath and aim for some Zen.
The reason — and the only reason — being that Lady Hamtwat* REALLY is not worth your time, energy and blood pressure meds.
TimF, you did great work herding us cats to the phones during those anxious months when HCR was fighting for its life before its own multi-headed Death Panel.
John, you did a great job doing what you always do — talking sense, calling bullshit, and providing a happy home for a certain snarling pack of vicious vitriolic jackals.
Jane Hamsher, on the other hand, was and is just a lying sociopathic parasite who would willingly drink the blood of 40 million uninsured children if it would get her on one of the Sunday talk shows.
*Yes I’m a MISOGYNIST! And a SEXIST! But you can’t hit me cuz I’m a GIRL!! (suck on it, BeeTeeDee).
Crockpot
The push back against the health care plan is already well underway here in Mississippi. I’m getting e-mail complaining that state workers deductible just doubled from $1000 to $2000, with the tagline “How did Obamacare affect your wallet? ”
I’m not sure that losing their seat by fighting against popular pieces of this legislation is really a problem for congress critters. There is only one ‘national politician’ and that is the president, all other elections are local and many locals will happily support the removal of ‘obamacare’ and the politicians that work for that removal.
I honestly believe the fact that the healthcare system was/is broken never even enters into the Republican mindset.
eemom
@EconWatcher:
oh please, STOP with the defeatism already. I hate that shit.
kay
@BTD:
The GOP can roll back major provisions of any law. The GOP privatized a good portion of the supposedly bullet-proof single-payer, federally funded Medicare when progressives weren’t looking.
I don’t understand this thinking. Democrats have to pass a health care bill that is absolutely impervious to the possibility of weakening by conservatives, or it’s a failure? How is that a legislative reality, in our system?
We’re always, always working on two fronts, because conservatives have an agenda, and it’s not just to stop progressive legislation, it’s to move forward on their own agenda. Obama and the Democrats have to protect what we have while trying to move forward. Always. Everywhere. That’s a constant. That progressives don’t see this obvious reality amazes me.
General Stuck
@eemom:
LOL
BTD
@kay:
I don’t understand why your question is addressed to me. I think it should be addressed to Tim. I never said that the bill should not have been passed. He said the bill can not be rolled back.
Please address my arguments instead of making up your own to rebut. John Cole did that the other day as well.
Nicole
For those of us who first learned the term “pounding” as slang for something other than “criticizing in a blog format,” the image of Jane Hamsher “pounding” with a microphone is making us giggle. Because deep down inside, we are a twelve-year-old boy.
El Cid
Some good news. A Berkeley economist continually studying and revealing the drastic economic inequality of the US favoring the rich and super-rich, Emmanuel Saez wins a MacArthur “genius” award and grant.
ruemara
I personally, don’t remember what Jane Hamsher looks like, nor care what she says. She’s just not important. Let’s use that as an operating philosophy.
John Cole
It’s just BTD keeping it real by downplaying any accomplishment.
Steve
The other thing Republicans can do on health care is get rid of state consumer-protection laws (this is what they mean with the innocuous phrase “buying insurance across state lines). This would effectively make the exchanges in the health-care bill a moot point, but beyond that it would just be a disaster in general. Imagine where we would be if states couldn’t mandate coverage for maternity care or similar matters.
JCT
@Crockpot:
This. Even for the poor Republicans who do need better health care but are happily running off the cliff to support the Republican party line.
There was an interesting article written about the problems faced by big city EDs. The author was an ED doc and the article was largely dead-on (I trained in a NYC public hospital). The comment section was a horror show of people making terrible comments about illegal immigrants “crowding everyone else out” in the ED. It was ridiculous (and wrong) — but these idiots will all vote for Republican lawmakers who think the existing system is just fine (except of course for the tort issues) because they have $$ or excellent government-subsidized health care. Unlike their constituents.
It’s like Alice in Wonderland.
BTD
@John Cole:
That’s John Cole doing his thing of mistating what I have argued. The accomplishment has to be fought for in the future.
I notice you don’t address my points about Tim F.’s post as compared to your “no 50 votes” shrewdness.
This is when I find fault with you. You don’t want to address me arguments, then don’t address them. But stop mischaracterizing the argument I make.
El Tiburon
At this point I think all of this is one big Gigantic “Maybe”.
I have no faith in the oversight from this administration and a lot of faith in the ability in the insurance Mafia to find loopholes or otherwise keep it business as usual.
The history has yet to be written, but at the end of the day I doubt anything will really change for the “large percentages of the public…”.
Senyordave
The other thing Republicans can do on health care is get rid of state consumer-protection laws (this is what they mean with the innocuous phrase “buying insurance across state lines). This would effectively make the exchanges in the health-care bill a moot point, but beyond that it would just be a disaster in general. Imagine where we would be if states couldn’t mandate coverage for maternity care or similar matters.
Steve,
I’m not an expert in this, but I did work in the insurance industry, and insurance is state regulated. The insurance industry has an anti-trust exemption (McCarran-Ferguson), and almost all of the insurance regulation is at the state level.
I suspect Congress would be loathe to try to do much that would interfere with the states because of that fact. Very conservative states like Miss and OK will undoubtedly try to gut as much as possible (because we need the freedom to have no or bad insurance coverage), but states like MD (where I reside) would more than likely expand upon it.
kay
@BTD:
I read your argument the other day. Your claim is that Democrats didn’t create a new federal entity, so the law is vulnerable to roll-back.
But Medicare was very vulnerable, and in fact was gutted, in 2002, with privatization, which was one of the huge problems Democrats in the Senate attempted to fix, while drafting a health care law.
I don’t agree with you, BTD. I think states are great lobbyists for federal funding, and the new health care law expands the portion of federal funding for Medicaid. States, even conservative states, are going to fight like hell to keep that money. They’re going to be able to use it immediately, if they have an approved plan for expansion of Medicaid, which Connecticut has already done.
There are pitfalls along the way, but characterizing this thing as poorly designed to resist conservative attempts to gut it simply isn’t true.
Obama and the Democrats have bigger problems, in any event, and I suspect Obama is aware of them.
Smiling John Roberts wants to roll back the whole administrative state, and Justice Kagan has a specialty in administrative law.
I think they see the threats, big and small. I think they saw the threats when they drafted the law.
El Cid
I would suspect that if they captured the power to do so, Republicans would realize that instead of simply ‘repealing’ bill elements, they would propose ‘improvements’ claimed to fix problems with the new law’s approaches in ways which would effectively repeal them.
Steve
@Senyordave:
But if the Republicans make it legal for everyone to “buy insurance across state lines” then it doesn’t matter if Maryland has great consumer-protection laws and requires things like maternity coverage. Everyone who doesn’t personally need maternity coverage will buy cheap out-of-state insurance from states like MS or OK, and soon Maryland’s policies will become unaffordable.
The only reason Maryland’s consumer-protection laws have any teeth is that any insurer who wants to sell policies to Maryland residents has to abide by those laws. Republicans want to change that.
lawnorder
Ignore Jane and the haters. You fought for what you thought it was best. Wish all of us would do that, the world would be a better place.
To me the current HC bill is little more than a “Mission Accomplished” banner picture, a premature commemoration in a long arduous fight. But marking a victory nonetheless. And Obama is more competent than Chimpy McFlightsuit so hopefully we get a better outcome.
That doesn’t mean you were wrong to fight for this accomplishment/ victory. You were right. Passing something is better than nothing. I was just so furious at the time I couldn’t get myself to cheer.
OT, did I get this link from here ? http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1
valdivia
@kay:
thanks for that Kay. Love that you focus like a laser on what matters.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Beese:
The Department of Health and Human Services. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? Sec. Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to insurers a couple of weeks ago that sent conservatives into a frenzy of fearmongering because she actually warned them that lying to their members could lead them to being banned from the exchanges. She’s just like Hugo Chavez!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Elkins Act, Hepburn Act – 1903-1906.
This is how railroad regulation went in TR’s time – first we legislated non-discriminatory rates, then we regulated the rates themselves to push down costs, all in the teeth of fierce lobbying against by some of the most powerful industrial interests in the US. It took 3 years from when the first act was passed for it to become evident to enough people in Congress that the Elkins Act didn’t go far enough, eventually leading to passage of the Hepburn Act. I expect we’ll see a similar dynamic with health care reform. We’ve established a fundamental principle in the form of non-discriminatory coverage, which is half the battle. The stage II legislation to roll back costs will come up sometime after the 2012 election.
BTD
@kay:
Thank you for addressing my point. You write:
“There are pitfalls along the way, but characterizing this thing as poorly designed to resist conservative attempts to gut it simply isn’t true.”
The essence of your argument appears to me to be that the plan to increase the federally paid portion of Medicaid (you seem to agree with my premise that Medicaid expansion is the key progressive accomplishment of the bill) is the key protection for this initiaitve.
The problem with your theory is that the funding is subject to approval by future Congresses.
In the guise of “Deficit Reduction” and “reducing government spending” ( I know the CBO would disagree but this has never stopped the GOP), a GOP Congress and, Gawd forbid, future GOP President, with the approval of a Catfood Commission, could reduce the federal funding for Medicaid.
Moreover, if health care costs continue to increase, even if federal funding levels remain high, the state portions could be so high after 2016 that cuts at the state level would occur anyway.
In the end, a huge fight is ahead. Patting yourself on the back is waaaay premature. And indeed, if you do, you make it less likely that you will have something really worth patting yourself on the back for.
Treat it as a first step and your chances of preserving even the first step are much better.
Steve
@Mnemosyne: HHS oversees the exchanges because they are a federal program. There was a similar flap a little while back when HHS imposed similar speech restrictions on participants in Medicare Advantage. However, I don’t know to what extent HHS is empowered to enforce the other provisions of the Affordable Care Act. For example, if I get denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition, or my policy gets rescinded, can I file a regulatory complaint with HHS? I’d like to think so, but this is a legal question rather than an intuitive one.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BTD:
When, in US political history, was this not true? You could say as much, and in fairness a great deal more harshly, about the 1957 Civil Rights bill that is the centerpiece of Cato’s biography of LBJ, Master of the Senate. The 1957 bill was watered down to the point of near tragedy, almost useless, and the main fight was still to come in the future. Yet as LBJ bragged at the time, the opponents to getting any civil rights bill thru the Senate had lost their virginity. And it turned out he was right.
Steve
@BTD: Carl Paladino, not that he will win, is campaigning on a pledge to cut Medicaid by 40%. I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with this country when someone can run on a platform of huge cuts to health care for the poor.
Chris G.
Tim F., thanks once again for all you did on HCR. Your posts were absolutely inspiring. I don’t think I would have called my congressfolks if not for what was going on here, and I know that it was shortly after I called Al Franken’s office and referred his health care LA to passthedamnbill.com that he confronted David Axelrod and wanted to know why the White House wasn’t doing more to get the House to pass the Senate bill.
Maude
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This.
BTD
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Never. Precisely why I do not understand the desire by some folks to declare victory on the progressive agenda (see Yglesias, Matt) and move on.
BTD
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Let me also address the Civil Rights bill of 1957 analogy.
Now, like you, agree that the health bill is superior “progress” than the 1957 bill, but it also is not the civil rights bill of the 60s, not even close.
But too many people are brandishing their signing pens on the health bill AS IF it was the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (or the Medicare Act).
Time to stop that. This was a starter home bill and should be treated as such. We have a longer journey to travel than the distance we have already gone on this issue.
kay
@BTD:
I was involved with expanding S-CHIP, BTD, at the state level. You don’t have to warn me about “patting myself on the back”. It took years.
My complaint was that you linked to a NYTimes article that actually discussed how difficult it was going to be to roll back key provisions, and characterized that as proof-positive that you were right, and that the law was vulnerable.
That wasn’t what was in the article. That isn’t what the experts in the article said. You ignored those, and seized on the conservative politicians blathering in front of a microphone. Why? Why spin it?
Steve
@BTD: Matt needs to put health care to one side so he can move forward with deregulating barbers.
kay
I also have to say I love, love, love the “progressive” argument that there won’t be sufficient physicians to serve those covered under the expanded eligibility for Medicaid.
Had we had “progressives” like this around when Medicare was passed, would they have made the same argument?
“There aren’t enough doctors for all these old people!”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BTD:
I think you are misunderstanding the dynamic. People who are celebrating the passage of the ACA do so not because they think we’ve reach the top of the mountain, but because you have to celebrate accomplishments along the way as a spur to futher efforts. That is a natural and very common psychological dynamic when ever people are dealing with some large, long process which is going to be a difficult slog. You have to break it up into smaller chunks, to get some sense that the task is not endless and no progress is being made.
Did the Allies celebrate after Stalingrad and the 2nd battle of El Alamein? Yes they did. Was the war over? No, of course not. Were they wrong to celebrate partial victories, despite future battles (including some bitter defeats) still to come? I don’t think so – that’s just the way human beings are. To not celebrate until it is all over, which is what you are asking of people, is to ask for a superhuman level of mental discipline which few people are capable of, and which has little precedent in our past politics.
FlipYrWhig
@Steve: I think his vision of utopia is barbers on bicycles in very expensive parking places.
Steve
@BTD: I think you are ignoring human nature. The health care bill took a huge push to get across the finish line, including the “pass the damn bill” movement from the blogs when most people were inclined to give the thing up for dead.
First, the only way that got accomplished was by people talking about what a big deal this bill was. When Obama would go down to the Hill and rally the troops for the umpteenth time, he did it by telling people about their place in history, not by calling the bill a good start. It was necessary to play up the significance of this bill or it never would have become law.
Second, now that it’s done, most Democrats do in fact talk about the bill as good but imperfect. Unfortunately, this is part of what accounts for the enthusiasm gap; the Republican base thinks the law is the spawn of Satan, while the Democratic base thinks it was somewhere on the spectrum between weak tea and a good start. That may be a fair assessment but it’s not exactly getting people out in the streets.
Finally, I think if progressives want to keep moving the ball forward on health care, they’re probably going to need to fight for one or two specific reforms rather than just saying “we need to make it better,” or, worse, going into a defensive crouch. The public option is a logical place to start. Unfortunately, everyone seems to subscribe to the logic that if we had the votes for something in the current Congress, it would have happened; and since we’ll have fewer votes in the next Congress, there’s no point in pushing for anything to happen.
kay
@valdivia:
Anytime. Hope you’re well.
My current thing is the Ohio governor’s race, and that’s getting interesting:
We were hoping for a two point race by election day and we’re already there, so good news.
BTD
@Steve:
Making good progress is a selling point.
Needing to make more progress is a great motivator for voting.
I disagree with the approach in terms of policy implications going forward and as politics for this election and the next.
BTD
kay:
I simply disagree with you on what the article said and how hard it is going to be to not fund Medicaid expansion. You are mad at me for not agreeing with you on something that is, by definition, a matter of opinion. That does not make sense to me.
People disagree. It happens.
And as to who will be right, I hope neither of us gets to crow in that I am hoping for IMPROVEMENT, not just holding back retrenchment.
BTD
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
“I think” and “you think” are the keys here. We disagree. The world does not come to an end.
As for the WWII allusions, well, let’s keep this all in perspective shall we?
Steve
@BTD: I don’t think “more progress,” in the abstract, is much of a motivator. I think you could use something specific like the public option as a motivator, but no one seems to be doing that, probably because everyone already assumes we aren’t getting anything good out of the next Congress. I suspect most Dem representatives would throw you out of their office for suggesting more health care legislation at this point.
BTD
@Steve:
Sure. But if the point is to motivate voters, pretending to try matters. And sure – you need something easy to understand.
valdivia
@kay:
good news on the Ohio governors race. That’s the kind of info that we need to know!
kay
@BTD:
You can’t really “disagree” with what the article said, BTD.
You ignored 90% of it, in order to crow that you were RIGHT!
Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and a physician, acknowledged that repealing the law became more difficult with each passing week, as various provisions took effect and were woven into “the fabric of American life.”
Michael A. Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action for America, who is leading a campaign for repeal, said, “There will be technical challenges in unwinding the legislation.”
Efforts at repeal face several hurdles:
¶ Not even the most optimistic Republicans expect to gain the two-thirds majorities that would be needed to overcome a veto.
¶ The law responds to a genuine need. The Census Bureau reported last week that 50.7 million people were uninsured in 2009, an increase of 4.3 million or nearly 10 percent over the previous year.
¶ The health care law saves money, by the reckoning of the Congressional Budget Office, so Republicans would need to find ways to achieve equivalent savings if they repealed the law. (The budget office affirmed last month that the law would “produce $143 billion in net budgetary savings” over 10 years.)
¶ While trying to repeal the health care law, Republicans do not agree on what to replace it with.
¶ Popular and unpopular provisions of the law are intertwined and difficult to separate. People like the idea of being able to buy insurance regardless of any pre-existing condition. They dislike the idea of being compelled to do so. But without such a requirement, people could wait until they got sick and then buy coverage — a situation that has proved unworkable in states that have tried it.
As an aside, I think it’s adorable that progressives finally noticed that Medicaid is partially funded at the state level.
Panic!
To many of us, that wasn’t a big shocker, because the Medicaid funding battle goes on year after year, reliably, like rain. States bitch they don’t get enough money for Medicaid. That’s what states do.
It’s usually conservatives that promote the idea that it’s a dying program, just so you know.
kay
@valdivia:
Strickland is a tough individual. He’s religious, but I think his general peaceful exterior is little deceptive.
I didn’t think he was just going to concede, although the local and national media were sort of insisting he call the race lost.
I was wondering if maybe voters were going to resent being told the election was over prior to voting. Maybe that’s what’s going on.
Anyway, two points is great, and I’ll take it.
BTD
@kay:
As a general point, I can disagree with 90% of what an article says.
But that’s not what I did. I disagreed with YOU about what the article MEANT.
Let’s consider your snippets:
“Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and a physician, acknowledged that repealing the law became more difficult with each passing week, as various provisions took effect and were woven into “the fabric of American life.”
Oh well, Michael Burgess says so so it must be so now? Really?
“Michael A. Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action for America, who is leading a campaign for repeal, said, “There will be technical challenges in unwinding the legislation.””
Oh there will be technical challenges? Well, that’s it then. Just lack the Byrd Rule stopped the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
“Efforts at repeal face several hurdles:
¶ Not even the most optimistic Republicans expect to gain the two-thirds majorities that would be needed to overcome a veto.”
To pass a budget requires a majority vote. Repeal is not the issue, Not funding at the levels the law contemplates is.
“¶ The law responds to a genuine need. The Census Bureau reported last week that 50.7 million people were uninsured in 2009, an increase of 4.3 million or nearly 10 percent over the previous year.”
Oh well, that settles it. Congress has always taken care of the uninsured problem. Especially GOP Congresses. Yep, you got me with that one.
“¶ The health care law saves money, by the reckoning of the Congressional Budget Office, so Republicans would need to find ways to achieve equivalent savings if they repealed the law. (The budget office affirmed last month that the law would “produce $143 billion in net budgetary savings” over 10 years.)”
And yet somehow the prescription drug benefit was passed. Yes those CBO scores have stopped the GOP in its tracks time after time.
“¶ While trying to repeal the health care law, Republicans do not agree on what to replace it with.”
How about with NOTHING.
“¶ Popular and unpopular provisions of the law are intertwined and difficult to separate. People like the idea of being able to buy insurance regardless of any pre-existing condition. They dislike the idea of being compelled to do so. But without such a requirement, people could wait until they got sick and then buy coverage — a situation that has proved unworkable in states that have tried it.”
That paragraph is just wrong. While it may be irresponsible to eliminate the mandate, that does not mean it would not happen. The reason it won;t happen is the mandate has a constituency (as do the subsidies) – private insurance companies.
Believe me, I do not fear for the mandate and the exchanges, something I explicitly wrote, I fear for the Medicaid expansion.
What is so hard about that for you to understand?
Finally, condescension is an interesting approach to persuasion. You wrote “As an aside, I think it’s adorable that progressives finally noticed that Medicaid is partially funded at the state level.”
I think it is adorable that you think you know what “progressives” ( I guess you are excluding yourself) noticed or didn’t notice.
Your line reminds me of the new “Stop Whining” campaign strategy the Dems have adopted. It seems as likely to achieve success as your approach.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BTD:
That works for me. When it comes to analysis I try to take an IMHO, YMMV point of view.
As for the overwrought WW2 analogies, they come easily to mind for me because the current Dem leadership remind me so much of certain figures in the history of warfare, e.g. George McClellan circa 1862 and Bernard Montgomery circa 1942-45 in particular, what with their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and/or to slowly and cautiously assemble overwhelming resources to achieve an underwhelming result (which nonetheless represents a small step forward). Perhaps this is a style of leadership which tends to crop up when leading a group of people who have been conditioned to think of the opposition as tactically superior and who thus expect to lose by default. There is a lot of that in the Dems.
kay
@BTD:
I resented the attempt to use the funding mechanism that poor people have always relied on to claim it wasn’t a good law.
Medicaid funding has always come partly from the states. Constant, never-ending battle.
Where you guys been all these years? Not on Medicaid, that’s clear.
Part of the objective behind both the expansion of S-CHIP and the expansion of Medicaid was to make these programs middle class programs. Because middle class programs are less vulnerable to conservative attacks. This isn’t something new. It was endlessly discussed in the S-CHIP battle. Conservatives were scared to death that S-CHIP would become a middle class program as a result of the expansion, and you know what? It has.
Again, where have you been?
BTD
@kay:
Who in the hell argued that Kay? Not me. It is in my opinion, one of the single most important progressive achievements of the last century, ranking with Social Secuirty and Medicare.
It is that portion of the bill that earned my support.
I do not care for the exchanges and the tax on employer based plans.
I do not believe in the regulatory model that the bill contains.
If the bill were ONLY the expansion of Medicaid with a Medicare buy in for persons ineligible for Medicaid, it would have met my wildest dreams.
You’re confusing me with someone else.
BTD
@kay:
BTW, S-Chip is something I discussed constantly.
It was folks who hated Bill Clinton who chose to forget its existence, not me.
HyperIon
@Crockpot wrote:
My repub brother-in-law doctor just last week again reiterated his position:
It’s sad what ideology can do to otherwise intelligent people.
The mind reels.
kay
@BTD:
That’s my point, BTD. No “progressive” worth the label can reasonably argue this law doesn’t help poor people.
So they went to the funding mechanism for Medicaid, or the fact that Medicaid has trouble contracting with primary care physicians, to spin the achievement as a loss for poor people.
I resented the tactic. I think it’s dishonest. I think focusing on Medicaid cuts (again, a constant issue) is deceptive, unless progressive health care activists were always focusing on that, because it’s always been an issue.
Bob L
So Tim F is the thought criminal then? I suppose Tim was for health care before it was for it. Tar and feather the shrill scoundrel I say! To the veal pens with him!
I hope you and you buddy Obama are happy Tim F.
chrismealy
Tim F, thanks.
asiangrrlMN
@JPL: Me fucking too.
TimF, just wanted to throw in my thanks as well. I never call anyone if I can help it, and you got me to call my rep and make it known that this bill had to be passed (she was for it, anyway). You were relentless on the issue. You fucking rock.
I never saw the bill as the end. I knew it was the first step, but it was a step that had to be taken. It fucking passed. That is something to celebrate, goddamn it, as we continue to press forward.
gogol's wife
Thank you, Tim F. It was inspiring.