the house bill [hr3200] is ~1000 pages long, approximately 200 pages of which are devoted to health insurance exchanges, health insurance reform, etc for those of us who are NOT in public programs [medicare, medicaid, schip, etc]. the remaining 800 pages are all medicare and medicaid ‘reforms’ with about 500 of those pages devoted to medicare [the payment for end-of0life planning is in this section].

the bill [bills, if you include the senate] look suspiciously like their main purpose is to ‘reform’ any and all ‘entitlement’ programs [remember that the slogan earlier in this process was health care reform is entitlement reform, also stated as entitlement reform is healthcare reform]]. call me cynical, but this is all about [1] gutting ‘entitlement’ programs, and [2] providing yet another another bailout for the corporate fatcats.

all of the republicans, and many of the democrats, want the govt to spend less money [and less and less and less…] on old people and poor people, and they want it enshrined in actual law.

If I were drafting, I’d require every insurance policy to include advance directive instructions from the policy holder. I’d insist on a requirement that each of us think about how we’d like to live and how we’d like to not live. Whatever instructions the policy holder wants. But instructions.

Why did the issue become not ‘who receives’ or what one receives but ‘who pays’ ?

Who introduced the reimbursement option into the health care legislation?

Was the motivation provider greed? Or uproar creation?

Is this a Trojan Horse? That backfired?

The result was to be a payment for a service to providers, and the chance for counseling twice a decade, for seniors and people with disabilities, if one wished. But the first reaction was a scream about killing seniors, forcing people to choose to die, euthanasia, Nazis, … And then a counter, it’s counseling, it’s optional, …

And now the country is having a discussion of end of life, planning, advance directives, extraordinary interventions, …

What was the hoped for consequence, and what the unexpected?

How did that clause get into the suggested legislation?

Walter Karp’s 1988 book Liberty Under Siege was equally controversial. Following the line of several articles he had penned for Harper’s, he argued that the two parties had colluded to undermine the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a “feeble democrat,” and replace him with Ronald Reagan, whom he deemed “a liar and a tyrant.”

Read this excellent book, to learn how the Democratic party undermined Carter, and brought the corporations back into politics.

So, that’s either the President, or Emanuel or other high-up policy guys.

I still think it’s because they’re burned out. Marathon electioneering and then a whole bunch of political problems.

If the Health Care bills were short, then the Republicans would be complaining that they’ve “left out a lot of the details!” and make stuff up to fill it in.

They don’t play fair, they don’t fight fair, they don’t argue fair. So great that the site is organizing to promote Public Option.

In late ‘91/early ‘92 I hung with the Clinton crowd, so it’s fair to argue that Rahm may be pushing people under the bus. His boss won, and he calculated that he didn’t need you as strongly as before. So now maybe he thinks twice.

(P.S. President Carter was the first material victim of the modern Republican attack machine, which really got its genesis in the 1970’s. Before that era, the Republicans were the milquetoast guys, always playing by the Marquis de Queensbury rules. And often on the “unpatriotic”/anti-populist side of the issues: Prohibition, no New Deal, Isolationism. Carter’s mistake was that he didn’t see what hit him. I don’t think he would have made the same one later.)

Get over it and be part of the solution. Otherwise stay out of the conversation cause you’re dragging others down with you into your half-empty-ness.

However Carter’s Administration represented a return to the Eisenhower Administration in economic policy. He tried his best to balance the budget, at the expense of Government programs for the needy. He let the Federal Reserve run economic activity, which is why he really lost in 1980, since they crashed the economy to get control of inflation. He refused to use price controls when oil prices and interest rates went out of sight. He didn’t help unions very much. He wouldn’t stimulate the economy. He botched up health care reform. His foreign policy wasn’t very realistic, and was ineffective in many areas All in all, he was the worst Democratic President in the 20th century.

It’s as if Obama had stepped into the transmogrification pod with Rhambo and what emerged in the other pod was a DNA infusion of the two.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you:

RHAMBOBAMA!

I think the lesson they should have learned is “don’t get caught with a bill that’s too complex for people to understand, is very easy for the right to target and lie about, and that you can’t message very well. The Hillary Clinton Ira Magaziner bill was exactly that. Of course, the Clintonites had a hard time admitting that the content of their bill was flawed and their real mistake was the initial political calculation that “Medicare for All” wouldn’t fly and that they had to propose a very complex compromise between public and private to succeed. They took this reluctance to admit a fundamental error with them into the Obama Administration and advocated against Medicare for All there and for the PO.

And so they’ve made exactly the same error, but now compounded by the fact that they’ve allowed the lobby-vulnerable Congress to write the bill. The result is that we have bills that are over 1000 pages in length. The public can’t understand them. They are easily lied about. And they are easy targets for communicators like Frank Luntz and the health insurance industry, and Obama spends all his time attempting to debunk lies, rather than positively advocate for a bill that is not even his.

If Obama didn’t want to write a Medicare for All bill; he should have backed John Conyers’ HR 676 bill. It’s simple, only 30 pages in length, easy for people to read, easy to message about,and hard to lie about successfully.

I’ve written about this in more detail here, here, and here.