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The AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka has been very strong in his rhetoric about settling for nothing less than a public plan. But as we all know, "public plan" means different things to different people, and "triggers" seem to be a key feature of the Emanuel/Snowe plan (as in, "if you insurance companies don’t get your act together in a few years, dad will get the belt!")
Not quite sure why the insurance industry deserves a "chance" at the expense of the public when they’ve consistently acted in bad faith. Blue Cross has been furiously raising their rates this year to max out profits before health care reform is passed:
- Anthem Blue Cross in California has notified about 80% of its 800,000 individual policyholders of double-digit increases, many above 30%. Spokesman Ben Singer says rising medical costs are prompting the increases.
- Blue Cross of Michigan is seeking state approval for a 56% increase in individual premiums. Spokesman Andy Hetzel says the company needs to offset losses stemming from state rules making it the sole insurer required to take all applicants.
- Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon will raise rates for approximately 10,000 Washington state customers by 27.1% on March 1.
So, when Trumka was recently asked about triggers, this was a bit disconcerting:
In a post-briefing interview with ABC News, he refrained from stating a position on whether a public option with a trigger could be an acceptable compromise.
Since Trumka is appearing with Obama on labor day in Ohio, the suckage would be hard if he used the opportunity to promote triggers. David Chalian reports that Trumka was more critical about triggers on Top Line today:
"Well, Trigger was a great horse and I"m sure Dale and Roy really liked Trigger," joked Trumka. He went on to express concern about when such a triggered public option would take effect. "How far down the road? And what do we say to those people?" he asked. "Is it 10 years down the road? Is it 8 years down the road? What do we say to every American who declares bankruptcy every thirty seconds because of this?"
What do we say? How about "triggers are completely unacceptable?"
Trumka wouldn’t be going as far as he is without the support of the AFL-CIO member presidents like AFSCME’s Gerry McEntee. Trumka is running to replace retiring AFL-CIO head John Sweeney at the union’s convention in Pittsburgh on September 15, so he needs to preserve backing from those like McEntee.
Things seem to be shaping up quite differently over at Change to Win, where Teamsters President James Hoffa is now saying that a public plan is not vital for health care reform.
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Hoffa: “I think it’s important to get something done this time and declare a victory.”
Oh great, let’s pass any shitty bill, declare victory, and go have a party cuz that will really help all those Americans having to declare bankruptcy or worse dying without access to adequate health care. Yes, please, let’s have a victory party. Hoffa has a great health insurance plan and gets paid enough not to worry about anything. And heavens, Congress certainly has a peachy-keen insurance plan and in-house doctors ready to run over if a Senator gets a paper cut.
“Get something done… and declare a victory.” Isn’t this the same plan Bush/Cheney had for Iraq? Right, heck of a job, Jimmy.
they really dont seem to understand that if “something” means mandates with no PO ,and some of the latest talk is even of no subsidies or refundable tax credit bullshit THE FUCKING JOHN MCAIN PLAN, then its political suicide.
Shove the public option up some Blue Dog @ss, and let them vote against it. What a lovely way to purge the Democratic Party of their stench when they get primary challenges as a direct result of their voting behavior.
By the way, do we have a primary challenger to run against Harry Reid in 2010? The Senate Majority is in severe need of a spine transplant.
I’m now confused. Which song should be the official Democrat song.
There’s this:
Yeh, it’s sad, believe me, Missy,
When you’re born to be a sissy
Without the vim and verve.
But I could show my prowess, be a lion not a mou-ess
If I only had the nerve.
I’m afraid there’s no denyin’ I’m just a dandelion,
A fate I don’t deserve.
I’d be brave as a blizzard….
I’d be gentle as a lizard….
I’d be clever as a gizzard….
If the Wizard is a Wizard who will serve.
Then I’m sure to get a brain, a heart, a home, the nerve!
Or this:
Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away away
When danger reared it’s ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
If the unions are split, then it’s over. Mandatory HC insurance for all.
It was a lovely fight while it lasted.
Anything you can think of as a trigger was tripped decades ago.
As an outsider here, it’s fascinating to watch this super-slo-mo train wreck taking place.
You know, we ought to do that post — how close the final bill is to the McCain plan.
That ought to be popular.
We already have a trigger, and it’s been in place for fifteen years. That’s how long the insurance companies have already had to get their act together, and to prove they are serious about being responsive.
In the words of the woman who was asked by the judge why, after fifty-five years of marriage, she wanted a divorce,”Your Honor, enough is enough!”
The dollar dems are faced with being the party identified with getting the greedy corporations out of our lives. They won’t really do that, but it will be interpreted as that in the board rooms. And the dollar dems see that the cash flow and the revolving door might be closing in the not too distant future.
Rational analysis leads to a single pay not for profit health care system as providing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. That sounds too good and too much like communism.
America is branded as the “wealth nation” where you can make, hold on to it, and if you don’t tough nuggies. We’re the winner take all society.
The health care debate will reveal if the above is true, The financial crisis “solution” seemed to align with this.
The dems can’t seem to remember that this nation was built on the belief that freedom and justice is for ALL.
We need to ask the big questions.
What is America? What are the principles we live by?
How does our policies reflect these principles?
What principles do our policies reflect?
Let’s call a spade a spade.
“Blue Cross has been furiously raising their rates this year to max out profits before health care reform is passed”
If and when this dogshit insurance industry bailout passes, do you suppose the companies will then lower their rates? Of course not. Net effect? Margins just got wider, and they’re very likely to stay that way.
Fuckers.
Sadly, I’m affraid we already know the answers though no one wants to say it out loud.
BO needs to use the power of the presidency to ask these questions, preferably in a joint session. Will he do so? The smart money is betting no. A little tap-dancing (at best) and then business as usual.
Change we can believe it? Of course. Chump change.
Clever!
I can’t believe those increases in rates. Are people going to pay them? It’s almost better to gamble on not getting sick and bank the money instead.
Apparently the memo went out to my local undeclared blue dog, Mr. Murphy of NY 20:
http://www.poststar.com/articl…..192173.txt
If this thing goes as sideways as seems likely, when its all over and the dust settles, I want to see our leadership go after these cruds with every tool in the book. There should be comprehensive and retaliatory rate and competition regulation. Sure you can scare people about healthcare reform, but scaring people into not regulating greedy corporations is quite a different thing politically. I’d like to see how they defend themselves against a concerted attack along those lines. Beyond the legislative domain, court dockets should be filled with RICO lawsuits from sea-to-shining-sea, and the USAG should investigate every nook and cranny of the industry for illegal collaboration, conspiracy and anti-competitive behavior. McCarran-Ferguson Act (15 U.S.C. § 1011) should be immediately repealed, although the repeal should be effect the ability of state governments to sue the insurers for bad faith behavior and for conspiracy during the period when McCarran-Ferguson was in effect.
The insurance companies aren’t the only ones to blame for spiralling costs in the healthcare industry, but they’ve emerged with this debate as the biggest obstructionists to economically necessary reform. If they succeed in this obstruction, we have to get them.
far more likely (because of the bad publicity that raising rates right now generates) is that rates are being raised to establish the “baseline” that the parasites want to use for the “trigger”.
The “trigger” will not be based on lower rates, but on “bending the curve” on medical costs, which is just another way of saying “reducing the rate of increase. All that the parasites will have to do to prevent the trigger from being activated is keep the increase in rates below the trigger — and the higher the “baseline” rates are, the easier it is to keep within the “trigger”.
This is a quote from the article I linked above:
In an interview after the forum, Murphy said he is open to a compromise proposal discussed in recent days in which there would not be an immediate public option, but there would be a provision for a public option if certain goals were not met within a set period of time.
“I think that a public option adds competition in some marketplaces that don’t have it. That could be beneficial,” he said. “If you do it as a trigger where you kind of say, ‘OK,
the reforms that go in now, do they get us to good competitive options for everyone, then maybe we don’t have to have a public option.’ That could work.”
Oh, that’s scary. And, now I’m wondering about something. Obama won the election, but if the health plan ends up being (close to) McCain’s plan, do we have another shadow government? Am I being paranoid?
Actually until we air our now dirty laundry in a robust national debate we will continue to see:
People struggle to get the system to work as it was intended
Repeated setbacks in getting accountability for wrong doing
People disillusioned and drop out of the process’
People take advantage of the new game and pay lip service to the constitution
A movement to fascism regardless of what we call ourselves
more poverty
more concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few
more militarism and oppression by force
more boldface lies and disinformation
YIKES what a future.
What you fail to understand is that you (and millions like you) are getting royally fucked here, too. You’re being led right down the garden path, and instead of placing your energy where it might do some good, you’re deliberately choosing to enable the most vile elements in the country.
You’re being ass-raped here, too, bud, so I hope you can afford a lubricant because Vaseline ain’t part of the deal..
Tell that to your buddies over there at Fox, while you’re at it.
the repeal of M-F should NOT effect, I meant to say (in #17) above.
Nice to have something to look forward to, ain’t it?
TigerJane is working her tail offfor The Public Good
here is my backup plan
http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//lub17.jpg
me doggies cat horse and turtle …will Exodous
Don’t mind the use of triggers as long as we recognize that the trigger was tripped in about 2001.
1935 with FDR
what Cleaveland and his ilk don’t seem to understand is that this isn’t just about the millions getting fracked and living without healthcare. It’s about an industry that simply does not work – where we pay twice as much for healthcare services than we should, where an entire industry is performing far below the production-possibility curve, where costs are spiralling upward at double digit rates (underlying costs for service, and not just premiums) and that an industry heading toward 20 or 30% of GDP by 2030 and 50% of GDP past 2050 simply means EVERY OTHER SECTOR of economic activity will be adversely effected and probably squeezed out. In short, the structural dysfunction of the American healthcare industry threatens the very foundations of the system of free enterprise on which this country depends. By refusing to fix it, for purely ideological and religious regions, you’re endangering not just millions of citizens but the very market system that you claim to affirm. That’s how bad things are, and we’re way past the point where behaving like an ostriche will result in anything other than suicide.
So fine, rethugs, libertarians and religious extremists, kill healthcare reform, kill all necessary reforms to cure the massive and sundry market failures ripping this country apart now. Keep on confusing economics with religion, and hard mathematical calculation wiwth blind zealotry…. and then try to make a better deal with your new Chinese masters in 50 years. Go ahead, make that choice. I’m moving to Canada if you do, though. Because there won’t be much of a country left for your ilk to rule.
Insurance is not an option. Period.
okay off toseethe wizard…i loves yall
http://www.evolvefish.com/fish…..roLife.gif
Trumka should stand with his member unions and support single payer. You’d think, with the MSM reporting on Trumka, that the ALF-CIO member unions were with Trumka on this, however, several of the member unions want single payer, some have gone as far as to write resolutions for the upcoming fall convention forbidding the AFL-CIO from supporting the public option as a fall back position from single payer. Would be nice if these people listened to the little guy, ever.
I was thinking of the line from the movie “The Great Race”:
“He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.” (Of course the fellow who says that then jumps out a window, and right through the hull of the rowboat waiting for him below.)
Here ya go. The dead horse they want to beat…
The way the shards of broken glass flicker in the sunlight as they spin away from the point of impact . . .
(Sorry. Can’t help it. But it’s your so-called friends who are driving the two trains. It’s just mesmerizing to watch the Left turn on itself.)
And you know what happened to Trigger? He died and they stuffed him.
“…how close the final bill is to the McCain plan.”
Maybe we should call it the Animal Farm plan. I can almost hear George Orwell saying, ‘I told you so’.
Jane! Thank you, thank you, for leading and fighting the Good fight for a strong Public Option!
I think we’re in for a struggle over the coming weeks, but thanks in large part, imvho, to your efforts, the sense I have now is of a movement beginning to come together. Sentiment for a Public Option amongst the citizens, it seems, has reached the tipping point.
Thanks, again, for all that you do!
Also, jmho, but you ought to consider throwing something like a black and white photo shoot party to capture this great moment in time!
Your monolithic disingenuity is noted.
We used to be much better at refraining from feeding trolls. It’s hard, I know, they seem so hungry, but it’s just wingnut welfare after all.
Getting a piece of crap bill signed for the sake of signing something is NOT acceptable.
Trumka came our of grass roots organizing in SW Virginia a couple of decades ago, and has risen like a shooting star through the ranks of organized labor. He is political through and through. He is ambitious. Can he be trusted to represent the working man? Don’t know.
a topic of regular discussion btw oldnslow and I
Chuck Shumer and Dick Durbin are next in line for Reids job! Yippy!
Insurance companies are spending $1.4 million a day for lobbyists. Is this a healthcare cost that the insured are thinking they are buying? Will this show up as an expense on insurance companies tax returns?
If there is a trigger Obama and the Dems are as dead as Ronald Regan!
I’m not spending one dime on health insurance without a choice of a public option without triggers!
You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. It’s obvious that you’re unfamiliar with the idea that, rather than revealing your ignorance, it’s better to just shut your yap and listen. You never know: you might actually learn something.
So who’s paying you, or are you this ignorant of your own volition? Either way, you should be ashamed of yourself.
[Moderator requests that we all please be careful to maintain decorum and speak to other commenters with at least a modicum of respect. This was borderline, so it remains unedited. However, just a reminder, the best trolls are those who starve from lack of interaction with the regulars. Giving them attention is giving them a platform.]
ALmost anyone would be better than Hapless Harry—and he’s down in the polls to totally unknowns. Nevada voters may fix our problem for us.
You are correct. I apologize, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. What I can tell you for sure is that, in the dojo, people like this either learn some manners or they get their asses kicked….and I’ve seen it go both ways…
4 legs bad, 2 legs good.
Most trolls enjoy the fun. It’s pig wrestling—remember? Don’t do it. The pig enjoys it and you wind up covered in mud.
Natch. But what I would give for a few minutes in the dojo…
My weakness, clearly. Thanks for your kind words.
I don’t know either – a week ago I woulda bet he was with us – now, like you, I worry it could go either way (Jane’s words about “the goody bag” have a ring of plausibility to ‘em – blerrgghh)
commented the other day I’m worried he’ll do the deal and Mr Sweeney and other elders will claim they were the ‘bad’ cop and wanted WH deal, allowing Trumka the good cop to ascend without membership backlash
Trigger’s a dead stuffed horse. It’s not live, viable savior to our plight.
In fact, the way the the Insurance providers have been rapaciously shafting the policy-holders the last year (really since these issues were being raised in the Democratic primaries) it’s clear that they were moving the goal posts. This is Standard Operating Procedure when someone knows that they are going to have to face some evidence that they are “changing” from the “bad old days”.
Some rule will say “you must reduce costs for drugs by X%”. Or that “the charges for Procedure Y must drop by Z%”. But this will not have baseline like it was one two or three years go. It’ll be the new costs when the law takes effect. So if they’ve doubled the cost for Tamoxifen, and they’ve been ordered to reduce the costs by 20% a year or face a trigger…then you’ll take 20 years to get within 2% of where you were last year. It’s like Xeno’s tale of the race between Mercury and the Turtle…you never get back to a reasonable point.
They’ve stuffed Trigger.
No to triggers because when it comes time to pull it they will have weaken it so much that it won’t do any good. Public Option or Single payer. Now that we fucked around kissing the Repuks asses and got nothing in return we should pass Single Payer with 51 votes.
“Now that we fucked around kissing the Repuks asses and got nothing in return we should pass Single Payer with 51 votes.”
Seconded. Ram it right down their throats…
thank you Rev.
ShotoJamf – it is tempting – I am definitely up for a little mailbox baseball on their heads – but it is also exactly what they want – a response – so I don’t yield
Emptywheel has a new post up for our edification: “Obama to (Finally) Fulfill One of His Promises”
[Moderator requests that we all please be careful to maintain decorum and speak to other commenters with at least a modicum of respect. This was borderline, so it remains unedited. However, just a reminder, the best trolls are those who starve from lack of interaction with the regulars. Giving them attention is giving them a platform.]
Sorry, but sometimes it’s just painful to allow this rudeness to go unchallenged. I’ll try to keep my powder dry for fights that actually matter. Again, my weakness… Thanks.
Thanks. I appreciate the guidance…
Jeez, why would you want to get violent with someone just because he disagrees with you on a policy issue? That’s un-American, isn’t it?
I’m gonna wait until these guys make their appearances on faux Labour Day and in the hallowed halls of Congress next week. Then I imagine things should be clear as mud.
Trumka caving is bad, very bad. And somewhat predictable considering O will speak at a Labor event.
“Mailbox baseball on their heads”????????
I am going to assume that you ostensibly purport to abhor violence. If some wacko wingnut played mailbox baseball on a moonbat’s head, you would surely be outraged.
Why is your outrage selective? Are your ethics as malleable and situational as well? Why do you denounce in others what you advocate for yourself and vice versa?
Rhetorical questions, of course. I know you cannot answer them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_ethics
Absolutely. The best thing to do is ignore anyone who doesn’t agree with you or who challenges you. Just turn and run away. It’s so much safer in the cocoon, where everyone loves you and outside opinions can’t hurt you.
God Almighty, what are you folks so afraid of?
We need to put this song back on the Top 40.
fyi firedogs – there was an edifying article in the NYT Mag ’bout 2 years back about internet trolls – lengthy but worth the read. although those profiled were somewhat different to those stud field mice we’re now infested with, one came away from the article understanding how vitally important a reaction, a response was to them and how crushing it was not to get a rise from their targets
hmmm, maybe I’ll post a diary
I so totally agree with you. In fact, I do believe I’m hearing some gasping for breath, gurgling sounds already!
Mike Stark has bragged that he was a conservative talk radio troll. Why is it okay for him but not for me?
I know, you have no answer for that.
We will see. Trumka has been good so far.
I think he can stand up to Obama.
First, I live in Washington State and I have had an individual policy with Regence Blue Cross since 1996. My rate jumped 37% as of Sept. 1st. My benefits have diminished over the years, my deductable has dramatically increased and I am now paying considerably more for myself than I paid for my spouse and myself together just a few years ago. The insurance business is legal extortion and nothing less. If Obama does not deliver a public plan, he can bid goodbye to people across the country that took him at his word during the campaign. We won’t be spun. This is too important for the political two step. It’s time for some LBJ arm twisting. He said he knew how to play rough and tumble Chicago style politics. It’s time to prove it.
I cannot imagine how the health insurance companies could have screwed things up worse than they already have managed to accomplish.
If a bill is passed with a mandate but no public option (which is the worst possible outcome and worse than the current situation because it will require most of the uninsured to purchase unaffordable insurance without controlling escalating costs) it won’t go into effect until 2013. Yet, they want additional time to loot the country at will before their performance is evaluated pursuant to some as yet undefined set of factors that will be plugged into some as yet undefined mathematical formula producing a score that might trigger an as yet undefined public option depending on what will be defined as a passing score.
This has to be the most absurd and ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard. We’re watching an immense fire burning out of control and Obama apparently has decided to feed the fire with gas (i.e., the mandates) and watch what happens for 4+ years at which point the metrics will be crunched through a formula to decide whether to appoint another bipartisan panel to work out another stunning bipartisan solution to a public option.
This “solution” is a license to steal more than the insurance companies are stealing now, subject to the future application of a set of undefined metrics that cannot measure human pain and suffering to determine if Congress should return to where it is now and decide what the public option will be.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Unfortunately, the unions are far less powerful than they once were. Union power has fragmented with the industrial base of the country. At least during Clinton reform, the unions could bring large employers to the table. Today is not even close. Further, some unions are in charge of major health trusts, which means many behave more like insurance companies (albeit in the nominal interests of covered members) than an independent political working class voice.
Not to say they can’t and won’t have an impact. But the moral imperative is under severe strain in America’s unions. Plus, Trumka needs the votes. I’m holding my breath for now.
Jane, you are very lovable, but you don’t know very much about labor unions.
Yes, Rich Trumka is running for president of AFL-CIO and wants the support of as many of the member unions as possible, including AFSCME.
But he is running unopposed and already has the announced support of most of the larger unions, so he doesn’t need AFSCME President McEntee’s vote to get elected. McEntee is a notorious egomaniac and likes to think of himself as a kingmaker, but the truth is that Trumka neither needs his vote, nor has any reason to tailor AFL-CIO policy to suit him.
Jane, I think you’re asking good tough questions, and I’m struck by the parallels between this discussion and the one that occurred back on 8/20 after Marcy posted about an interview Andy Stern gave to ABC in which he reportedly said that triggers would be a more acceptable compromise than co-ops. Many people shouted her down, saying now is not the time to engage in public self-criticism within the coalition. I didn’t agree with that position because I think Stern acted unilaterally and without debate to undercut the coalition – at a time when Obama’s apparent cave-in on the public option was by no means a foregone conclusion. I’m not sure Trumka’s word-parsing is on a par with that. A week after Stern’s interview with ABC, Trumka was still calling for a strong public option without triggers. If anybody in the house of labor should be called out here, it’s certainly not Trumka.
Since you appear to know so much about unions, can you tell us one thing?
Where the hell is the UAW on the public option?
Hmmm??
Rather big dog not barking, don’t you think?
I apologize for trying to sound like a know-it-all. I am not. But I worked in the labor movement for about ten years and I find it very disconcerting that even in progressive, pro-union places like FDL that there is so little understanding of unions and how they work.
UAW is silent on ALL the major public policy issues of the day, including health insurance reform, for the obvious reason that it is fighting for its own life right now. It is not it a position to bring anything to the table except a begging bowl. Obama’s auto bail out demanded huge sacrifices from the UAW, despite what you may have heard, and they are currently concentrating on the painful issue of a new round of concessions in the Ford Motor Co. contract.
In my view, the current leaders of the UAW are wise to keep a low profile. We saw the vicious attacks on them when the bail out program was announced, and those attack could be renewed at any time. It is to their own advantage, and to Obama’s, to keep out of the health care spotlight right now.
And no, I don’t think the UAW silence is a “big dog not barking.” On the health care issue anyway, UAW is not a big dog in any sense.