Doing the Rahm talking points dance and looking stoopid.

Exactly.

Washington business as usual.
He with the most dollars wins
Screw the little guy we just need you to pay your taxes

Even the rich don’t pay their taxes, its just over.

F-Grassroots, Grassroots has no money. We are interconnected to the economy in such a way to disconnect from it would have a serious impact.

Can you afford to fly or bus down to Washington to protest?

When you find 2 million people willing to drop whatever they are doing to come down to Washington to protest, let me know. Until then Micheal Moore is 100% correct; They say we will want to do something but actually do nothing and let it happen and groan about it later.

Are we losing?

This seems like a White House retreat to the comfort of the “not essential” language Sebelius backtracked on about a month ago. Why are we hearing it again?

The bloomberg.com link doesn’t work.

Co-ops and triggers? Big money paying little money to make bigger money aka “legal bribery”.

Single-payer and public options? Socialism on the first order… could never be done in these here United States of Bribery.

Paul Kirk to replace Kennedy

Fixed it

I’ve never thought much of orszag although the msm likes to draw glowing portraits of him as a serious centrist. anyone that comes from the robber rubin tree is garbage IMO and shouldn’t even be considered for public service.

Z

As usual, ignore the facts (Climate, CBO, drug reactions etc) and go with the prevailing opinion by the non-experts.

Gotta go along to get along.

That’s democracy, right?

The goal here is just to introduce more competition where competition is inadequate,

That is, only in certain insurance markets. It sure seems competition is inadequate in every state. Of course, it all depends on how you define “inadquate”.

Well, at least Orszag’s consistent. He played rent boy for the corporatists as surrogate parent and director for Bob Rubin’s Hamilton Project, and he’s playing rent boy for Barry and the Finance / Insurance kleptocrats now.

He’s as consistent as his boss, Barry – who moved from sucking up Univ Of Chicago propaganda as Con Law instructor to wolfing down corporatist afterbirth when his FI paymasters gave birth to the Hamilton Project.

Licking up after the corporatists and banksters: “change” Barry and Peter can believe in.

Didn’t he get Lindsay Graham’s memo? Triggers don’t work.

Now that’s what I call bipartisan!

Professor Obama seems to take his queues from historical figures who have held the office; Lincoln, Kennedy, in this case FDR. He seems to be playing the, “I agree with you now make me do it,” card. Meanwhile, back on the ranch, he’s got the Emanuelesque crew dancing to, “We killed reform in ‘94, if you try again we’ll kill it some more.” So, every time the rather lackadaisical progressive movement stops MAKING him do the public option, he reverts back to his administration’s default condition.

It’s a silly little dance, really, since the best options were removed entirely from the card in the form of single payer health care. Whatever is left will be something carefully crafted to give the appearance of accomplishment so the administration can move onto energy policy and/or dealing with the military and multiple wars.

In actuality, I wish they’d just stop with the danse macabre–let the jokers in congress pass whatever husk of a reform option is left–because the results would be the same now or in five weeks when all this posturing is done. There will be no real public option. The insurance companies will have gained mandatory coverage and any actual reform in the name of “pre-existing condition” or “denied coverage” will still be a net monetary gain for the coffers of the insurance corps. Let’s just save the five weeks and stop pretending that, “The time for change is now, this is our time.”

This isn’t “our” time if we’re expecting serious health reform but if we thought so, as a result of campaign speeches, then it is our time to be fooled again. But if we thought someone who gives a good speech was going to go to the mat and do our work for us, then we deserve to be fooled, and fooled mightily.

Those who call themselves progressive will not deserve real change until they stay committed to the concept long enough to make it happen. FDL is one of the few action blog sites getting any coverage in the MSM. Until progressives show up and march in the streets, there won’t be any real reform in our time.

This is a huge head fake by Orszag. There is no area of the country in which there is “adequate competition.” The insurance industry does not fit the competitive market model, as Krugman, Stiglitz, Ken Arrow and others have repeatedly explained.

You can create more alternatives, give people different choices (e.g., a public option), but the fact that insurers “compete” does not create a “competitive market” in which prices are efficient as understood by economists.

This is fundamental. It means the trigger concept based on “inadequate competition” is meaningless. There is no such thing as “adequate competition” in the insurance market.

Orszag knows this. He doesn’t care about competition in insurance markets. Orszag is the director of the OMB; he only cares about the effects on the federal budget, and that goal is being accomplished in the reduction to Medicare and the taxes on high-end insurance to help offset the subsidies for expanded Medicaid and exchange insurance plans.

This is becoming more and more surreal… it is seriously hard for me to fathom how much Obama is selling us out.

Here I was so excited for real healthcare reform… what a snow job.

Wanted to suggest that all lakers read this very enlightening post by Robert Reich (I know, I know… but) on HuffPo earlier this week.

IT TOTALLY LAYS OUT THE WH STRATEGY FOR GETTING SNOWE ON BOARD IN ORDER TO ULTIMATELY WEAKEN CHANCES FOR THE PO… THAT’S WHY THEY WANT HER SO BADLY…. and it is not good for us… surPRISE, surPRISE, surPRISE.

His basic premise is that the reason the WH is pushing for approval of the Baucus bill (vs reconciliation) is that getting the Baucus bill approved will get it on the floor and will weaken the House bill with a PO (assuming a PO makes it in the House bill.)…. read this and weep… (itlaics are my comments)

“This Senate vote (if the HELP bill wins), moreover, gives more momentum and legitimacy to the House version of health care — which also includes the public option, employer mandate, broader Medicaid coverage, and more generous subsidies to the lower middle class. That Senate vote thereby reduces the power of House Blue Dogs and conservative Dems to influence the bill that goes to the House floor. It also enables Pelosi to say to them: It’s either this or nothing. If you vote against this bill you’re voting against health care reform. The more progressive Senate bill, plus the stark choice Pelosi poses, garners enough votes from the conservative and Blue Dog Dems to pass a strong bill.
The White House doesn’t like this scenario because the use of a reconciliation bill in the Senate poisons relations with Republicans and risks their support for financial reform and cap-and-trade. It may even make it more difficult for Obama to rely on Republican support for more troops in Afghanistan. But as we move into the gravitational pull of the 2010 midterms, congressional Republicans won’t support Obama anyway, on anything. And remember, George W. Bush used reconciliation early in his first term to enact his huge tax cuts, mostly for the very wealthy. It’s a tried-and-true strategy.
I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping the Senator from Maine votes no next week. If she does, America has a fighting chance of getting real healthcare reform.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..90287.html

LOL, does anyone actually think he’s doing that without obama’s approval?

Senator Durbin’s weasel words are still ringing in my ears:

“something like looks like public option”

not me.

That is, only in certain insurance markets. It sure seems competition is inadequate in every state. Of course, it all depends on how you define “inadquate”.

I think that may be the point. Orszag is a smart cookie, doesn’t owe anything to Obama or anybody else in the administration, and knows this stuff inside out. Here’s my take. The administration think they can mousetrap the opposition into not seriously opposing (they will never support anything) the health reform package. So they set up the system in a way that guarantees triggers will occur almost immediately, and we get the public option. It’s an open secret that there is no competition in health care provision. And there won’t be any more after the law is passed. The technical problem is subsidizing access of of poor people while pretending to maintain the existing system. I don’t know how that circle is going to be squared. But suppose it is in some way. Within a year the triggers go off, and we go to the public option.

I don’t agree with this strategy, but I think it is the way they are approaching the issue. Any improvement at all in the short run gives the Dems something to run on. It is certain that getting the PO up and running will take a couple of years, giving the Thugs an opportunity to attack. So doing it this way in part eliminates the attack until after the Congressional Elections next fall.

It’s a thought.

Could you imagine if your company had to register with and be regulated by every state and territory to sell shoes or tomatoes or books or anything the way banking & insurance are?

Why are those so regulated by states instead of the federal gov’t?

Well, I know banks can be state or federal, but for a very long time even the federal banks were only doing business within a state where they met the regs.

Now we have banks which operate nationally, but apparently we still have the parochial states regulation system for insurance.

Either you’re going to have free markets and competition and a national economy or you’re not. Can’t really have it both ways.

OTOH, changing the way insurance is regulated is a bit outside the current reform plans.

You may be mistaken that Orzag “ignores” CBO report.

It appears more as he ” Avoids ” it……..