Pretty interesting. Goldman Sachs evaluates the impact of the Finance Committee health care bill, the House bill and no bill on the value of insurance stocks over the next 10 years. They focused on the impact of Wall Street’s biggest insurance stocks: Aetna, UnitedHealth, WellPoint, CIGNA and Humana.
The best scenario for the insurance companies is doing nothing:
The study’s authors advise that if no reform is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated ten percent from 2010 through 2019, and the value of the stock would rise an estimated 59 percent during that time period.
The second best scenario, which they use as a “baseline” and which they give the best chance of passage, is the Senate Finance bill:
The Senate Finance Committee bill, which Goldman’s analysts conclude is the version most likely to survive the legislative process, is described as the “base” scenario. Under that legislation (which did not include a public plan) the earnings per share for the top five insurers would grow an estimated five percent from 2010 through 2019. And yet, the “variance with current valuation” — essentially, what the value of the stock is on the market — is projected to drop four percent.
Their “bull scenario” is the Senate bill “watered down”:
The next best thing for the insurance industry would be if the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee is watered down significantly. Described as a “bull case” scenario — in which there is “moderation of provisions in the current SFC plan” or “changes prior to the major implementation in 2013″ — earnings per share for the five biggest insurers would grow an estimated ten percent and the variance with current valuation would rise an estimated 47 percent.
According to Jon Walker, “weakening” probably entails having the individual mandate strengthened, community rating range expanded to 1-5 again, transparency elements eliminated, and regulation weakened in addition to removing excise tax on insurance and the Medicare Advantage provisions.
And the worst case scenario? The House version of the public option:
This is, the firm deems, the “bear case” scenario — in which earnings per share for the top five insurers would decline an estimated one percent from 2010 through 2019 and the variance with current valuation is projected to be negative 36 percent.
Goldman estimates the chance of passing some form of health care reform at 75%, which I would guess is probably about right.
If Goldman is right, this means the CBO projections were way off, and Jon Walker’s evaluation of the impact of the public plan in the House bill is probably much more accurate.
Goldman claims that the report “was analytic not advocacy-based.” Which might be somewhat believable were their “fantasy future bill” not included. It’s hard to look at this as anything but advocacy on their part to apply political pressure to weaken and pass the Senate Finance Committee bill, because it’s highly unlikely that no health care bill will be passed.
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We should all thank them for providing the strongest argument for a strong, robust public option that is open to everyone.
Oh the horror!
a small price to pay, considering the alternatives….
mebbe GoldSacks should cut back on the in-house bonuses and contribute to filling in some of the deplorable gaps that might move a smidgeon or 2 toward levelling the
playing fieldplayground….The future stock value of the private health insurance industry should have zero bearing on how we reform health care. The current configuration of this industry is parasitic to the U.S. economy, offering no real benefits, producing nothing but some paper-shuffling jobs, and sucking sustenance from the economy. In the best case scenario, the health care insurance industry would be generally dismantled, and reduced to offering specialty insurance to those who wish to pay for “gold-plated” care. An example would be antique car insurance. Not necessary for average drivers, but available to the few who wish special insurance.
So their argument is that helping citizens will harm their companies. Fire up the teabag protests!
Proof both of the effectiveness of what the House is doing and the horror that is Wall Street-run health care.
Goldman Sachs:A full-service global investment banking and securities firm with an emphasis on murder by spread sheet (and if you come work with us we can guarantee a Swine Flu innoculation).
So, for Aetna, WellPoint etc., the ideal HRC bill would be one that in effect does nothing, Baucus did his best for that outcome.
Goldman did the analysis? What else do we need to know?
Good ol’ boys takin’ care of good ol’ boys…
Let’s hope this thing gets the media attention it deserves.
I seem to have this vague recollection that at one time insurance stocks were considered almost as safe and conservative an investment option as the regulated utilities.
Methinks those days should be returned to existence (and yes by Congressional fiat if necessary).
Edit: (and that includes re-regulating those utilities – it’s called “for the public good” not for the good of the few who already have way too much money)
“murder by spread sheet..”
Great term!
I would bet that the vast majority don’t give a flying act of fornication if those who own stock in health care insurers lose money. It’s high time to start ignoring warnings of ‘disaster’ that, if it comes true, means that a few people are going to have to cut back on their caviar quotas. Let ‘em eat shad roe. For that matter let ‘em eat toad spawn for all I care.
is tea the new kewlade?
Indeed. There was a time when the insurance stocks performed at a very boring steady rate. They were practically like T bills. What they really do is so simple there should be no real swings. The real strong movement is all about aggressive gauging of customers.
You have a great point there. Can we allow the health insurance industry continue at record rises in premium rates causing losses to the middle class and to corporations that supplement those rising premiums for employees? Missing from this GS evaluation is the overall devalue of US corporation stocks as the premiums rise and US corporations have to match the rise with their employee cost responsibilities. People will cut back on there investments in retirement account to set off the health care imbalance. Have they figured the market losses for that too?
Sure, the insurance industry stocks may take a devalue hit, but where is the rest of the picture GS? Shame on you for playing half the fear card GS.
Numbers are neutral Sachs and you are the sham players way too often in our country.
So the answer becomes a robust public option. Period.
And that all changed after health reform failed in ‘93 and insurance became a commodity.
but they have to have the caviar to get their healthy doses of vitamin D, since they can’t safely go out in the sun, if u catch my driftfence *dons garlic necklace*
Considering that the health insurance corporations are, largely, parasitic in character, anything that drops their stock prices should be good. These corporations should be a small boutique industry selling life insurance and value-added options surrounding a strong public, government plan (see: “the rest of the western world”) in a highly-regulated environment.
The real sign of weakness in the “reform” plan as far as these corporations go is that their stock won’t just plummet to the ground over a period of years as a result of the “reform”. Obviously, the market analysts are telling us that the government is just not doing enough reform.
I must admit to finding it somewhere recently. Can’t remember where to give credit.
Good!
Stocks are going up, but employment is still going down. Maybe if stocks go down, employment will go up.
sick. just sick. sic
Public health stock will go up accordingly, no doubt. The cost in disease and death will plummet as well. Good scenario on Main streets.
36% huh? I was kinda hoping for about 2/3rds of equity value wiped out. I believe that the impact on the insurers’ equity value may be the best proxy for evaluating the success of the reform package – the more EV destroyed, the stronger and better the reform. With moderate-to-strong market efficiency at work, I believe the market will accurately discount the impact of reform (note I said the market itself, and not the Goldman, Sachs take on how the market will react). Let the value destruction begin.
For all intents and purposes the folks from Goldman Sachs are now government employees. You know, like their pals and enablers, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Of course this gets tricky because Geithner and Summers are…for all intents and purposes…still employees of Goldman Sachs.
Why don’t they just move the White House and the Congress to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and get it over with.
Thirty-six percent?
Funny, that’s almost exactly the amount by which my family’s health insurance premiums just increased.
I was paying about $240 bi-monthly, and that just went up to $365.
My share of the cost for a family plan covering four just went from $6400/year to $9490/year.
I swear that the health Insurance people are working off the same play book as the Credit Card Companies, pre-emptive price gouging because they foresee their game becoming more constrained by our efforts at reform.
Now, would that devalue of the private industry give the government better “buying power” for government health care? Sounds like it would.
True but it ain’t gonna happen because the entire U.S. legislative branch is a corporate subsidiary.
Count on them watering the bill down as much as possible, mostly at the last second so that the public doesn’t get an opportunity to protest prior to the vote.
Wonder what Sachs would say about how much their manipulation of the financial markets and of the TARP etc tanked AIG’s stock? Did I miss that study?
I appreciate how you think Scarecrow quite a bit!
did private schools become worth more or less when we developed the public school system?
isn’t that a great analogy?
once only those who could afford shchool would get educated, now everyone has the right, those who want private school can still get it
I hate to say it, but that would be my guess…
Criminals helpin’ Criminals. It’s a very effective government program…
You win the clear thinking award today. Beautiful.
Insurance as we know it in America is like cancer. Reduce tumors/profit 36 percent and you still have cancer.
Unacceptable.. considering so many other countries know and have the cure.
Let’s not buy in to language that describes this as “loss of shareholder equity” or “destruction of shareholder value”. There is no value here and certainly nothing remotely connected with “equity”. The public option just deflates the artificial price balloon that Goldman and the insurance monopolies have pumped up for themselves by cornering and manipulating markets.
When healthcare returns to the natural, market value that it would have absent speculation and manipulation, that’s not a loss or a destruction of anything. It’s a gain for every other stakeholder in the economy.
I guess that this analysis was done represents Goldman doing gawds work.
Somebody has to pay for all of those lobbyists.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Thank you for the most excellent post…as I have asked previously this mornin’: “…is FDL the best source of news for a free citizenry or what??!!”.
My questions for ya Sister Hamsher are:
1. Why did the administration or the progessives in the House not emphasize the cost-cutting, economic stimulus, deficit reduction impact of Medicare Plus and why didn’t they try ta get it scored?
2. It seems to me that the outcome of this entire fight is now determined except whether or not it’s gunna hafta go through reconcilliation, is that your take if you had to bet at this moment?
3.And has anyone like Paul Krugman looked at what a 35% drop in health insurance stocks would do short AND long term to the stock market? It seems to me that this is what ObamaRhama is most worried about but if in fact a mild public option would do what Goldman says it will do, doesn’t that lead to single payer down the road?
Thanx again Sister, are ya still havin fun??!!
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE FIGHT IS COMIN’ HOME WHERE IT BELONGS!!
Ah, the politics of Big Business: Fear. What else is new?
Agreed.
Great headline if Goldman Scratch’s purpose is to churn sales in insurance stocks.
Goldman trades heavily for its own account. It can manipulate prices of stocks it holds or that it wants to buy or sell through its pronouncements. If its CEO claims to be doing “god’s work”, then his organization is not above a little bending of the rules – no one enforces them anyway – in order to profit by it.
In any case, that’s a ten year window. It’s also encouraging news, because we ought actively to reinvest available capital outside American insurance companies. They are frauds who misuse limited health care dollars, denying health and ending lives in order to profit, just like an armaments or other war profiteer. Over a reasonable period of time, capital should flow elsewhere, because the investment would be more worthwhile.
Goldman is telling us that credible reform would have a desired effect, though that’s probably not its intended purpose, which is more likely to be to kill reform. Is it concerned that failed reform would harm millions of Americans? Notsomuch.
Goldman Sachs types have a Pavlovian response to curb their monetary loses. Too bad they have no moral sense.
American politicians seem to cower when someone tells them to oppose war. They refuse to oppose misguided wars in the Middle East, or those on drugs or “terror”. Let’s call this the Healthcare Wars and have at it.
Very succinct. I can’t wait until the same thing is articulated on CNBC.
Well…maybe not.
David Dayen has a fresh cross-post available: “Matthew Hoh On Eikenberry: “I’m Not Surprised””
Did Blood Funnel Sachs release their analysis publicly or was it leaked? Is this supposed to help the health insurance corporations get what they want?
- Tom
one point though;
this isn’t quote right, the “delta” would be 36%, the price wouldn’t drop that much based on prices today just comparative differances with and without public plans
I was thinking the same, this is intended to get everyone who owns stock with insurance to lobby against public option
Since the passage of HR 3962:
WLP: UP 15%
AET: UP 15%
UNH: UP 15%
Should I go on or would you like to keep spinning the Pyrrhic Option?
Medicare For All / HR 676: Putting Freedom back into the US healthcare market
Return on Investment: Where Prophets Lead, Profits Follow
Thanks again Jesus, for doing Goldman’s work.
It’s good to put an *impartial number on Lieberwhore’s filibuster threat, and the resulting billions that will pass from consumers to insurance companies.
These figures should be correlated with the CBO’s financial scenario analysis to show just how much health care reform as currently debated in the senate, completes the trinity of financial bailouts to FIRE lobbies.
* And by impartial, I mean an analysis of the largest institutional investors and financial management service corporations from the insurance industry that directly benefit all aspects of Goldman Sachs’ Wall Street arbitrage, M & A, custodial, and direct investment income streams.
Insurance drop 36% if public option. I am so sorry.
I like to keep things simple and the first set of questions that my brain asked is:
1. Why did GS produce this report now?
2. Why was it released to the public?
3. For whom did GS produce this report?
4. How much money was paid to GS to produce this report?
5. Since the people who run GS are so delusional that they believe we will believe them when they tell us they’re doing God’s work, and they’re also so twisted and crooked that morticians will have to screw them into the ground when they finally eschew this mortal coil, why shouldn’t we wrap this report in bright yellow crime-scene tape, spread KY jelly all over it, sprinkle it liberally with an innocent powdery substance that frightens them into thinking they have been exposed to anthrax, and return it to sender together with a note purportedly from the expert Ms. Manners that says, “Eat Shit and Die.”
Goldman has failed to take into account the reaction of businesses and individuals to ever-increasing health insurance costs: dropping coverage. If that is taken into account, the Senate bill will prove to be more profitable to Big Insurance than the current system because they will gain, rather than lose, customers.
Yes, and Goldman Sachs is the most credible source of information regarding “money” anyone could hope for. Before we assume anything they say we should look into what they have to gain from that strategy. We can pretty much bet they don’t gain by empowering millions of people to direct their attention away from the healthcare they do not have. Nothing empowers people like feeling better.
Now we know what must be done: devise a bill that will cause insurance stocks to drop by no less than 110%. Should be easy, now that we know what it takes to get 36%. C’mon, Congress, do the math!
These companies are monopolies that kill and bankrupt people. The tobacco companies were finally exposed for the killing machines they were. Not a lot of tears shed there. Time for these predators to return to non-profit status like in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, if the American people like the Bismarck model.
(From T.R. Reid’s fantastic must read “Healing for America”.) Or go the way of the newly wealthy Taiwan that started a system from scratch by studying all of the models. Then they picked the Canadian system of payment aka a national insurance plan with private doctors, clinics, and hospitals. But unlike Canada, it is not paid for through taxation. Instead employer and employee must pay a certain amount per month; a premium. Yes it’s mandatory and yes it’s withheld from pay and given to the government. But Harvard Prof William Hsiao who devised their system said
They also chose the French medical card; the “carte vitale to save money on paperwork and avoid misdiagnosis because it has the patient’s history and drugs they are taking.
Plus “
Hsaio’s commission presented their plan in 1993 and the National Health Insurance Law was passed in mid 1994. As opposed to our President, President Lee wanted universal coverage in place before the election of 1996. So they began offering Universal coverage by March 1995.
In other words, a real free market not this casino crony capitalism aka banksterism aka neo feudalism.
By the way, I think NYCeve coined the term “murder by spreadsheet” or at least poularized the term.
Of tangential interest: By way of Felix Salmon, here’s a link to Goldman Sachs Foundation 2008 tax return. Doing the Lord’s work …
Excellent comment! This part at the end, though, should remind us that the Goldman Sachs analysis of health care legislation wasn’t intended to tell us anything. It has a different audience, an audience of extremely wealthy people who want to achieve the “bull scenario.”
I think the author of the piece that Jane’s citing got it wrong a little, at least in the emphasis placed later in the article. At least that’s how it appears to me at the moment, having read Jane’s setup of it first.
The “bull scenario” – in which the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee is watered down significantly – isn’t the “next best thing for the insurance industry.” It’s the very best thing, seeing how, frankly, no one at Goldman Sachs is seriously stupid enough to think that doing nothing is the best thing and seeing how the “bull scenario” actually shows a rise in stocks over time.
The “baseline” scenario comes in second, with a drop of 4% over 10 years.
By the way, using the market as an indicator of the efficacy of the current House version in significantly improving health care in this country probably gives too much weight to the relevance of the stock market and totally ignores the fact that the current House version has been saddled with totally unacceptable bullshit that has to be removed before it can be accepted.
Classic Rovian Scorched Earth Brinksmanship
Goldman Sachs knows how to threaten the unfaithful, ungrateful serfs who’s risks are underwritten and retirements are managed by these same insurance companies.
Imagine Blankfein as the Madonna hanging in the Louvre.
Always having fun!
Since the markets opened on Monday morning, following the passage of H.R. 3962
WLP up 3.39%
UNH up 2.06%
AET up 1.40%
Now if you would like to present evidence that this is a) statistically significant and b) directly tied to the passage of H.R. 3962, feel free.
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:WLP
what nonsense. no one can predict stock valuations in 2019 – Goldman should know – they have helped turn the markets into a speculative casino!
the chart reveals a perfect inverse correlation between index moves and dollar valuation.
as Mason asks at #51
Propaganda. treat it as such.
and watch out, what if the reverse happens, and the stocks of the parasitic insurance cartel go up up up?
you’ve just validated the failure of your vaunted ‘reform’ by using the cartel’s market cap as an indicator!
On Wall Street, that’s what they call a poison pill defense to hostile takeovers. If Stupak doesn’t sink the conference report, Lieberman will play Hartford’s white knight riding to the rescue with his magical sword, Exfilibuster.
Jane, you have enough clear cut comments posted here to write another post on this news. Hammer away at it all day. Have you talked to Krugman about this? It would be interesting to learn his response.
…
What are friends for, if not to help each other?
So, does Miss Connecticut now run around with her top off while wielding a sword named Exfilibuster, or are we just mixing metaphors? =D
Seriously, I’m less worried about Stupak making it into the final version after the reporting on MSNBC last night. Stupak doesn’t have enough support to block passage of the final version if his bullshit were to be taken out of it.
What the solution to Lieberman is, Reid will have to figure out. From what I’ve seen here at Firedoglake yesterday, there’s some promise that Reid might actually fix the problem in the Senate.
We may indeed still see a real – though imperfect – win!
If GS is so thoroughly convinced of this scenario, why don’t they just take a short position in these stocks? I mean, they’re in the business of making money right?
Markets are forward looking, this is (ostensibly) why GS produces ex ante reports
AET, UNH, WLP: the 3 companies GS highlights in the report’s sidebar …
Oct 29: House unveils HR 3962; AET, UNH, WLP –all gap up and close 2-5% higher
Nov 4: House schedules vote on HR 3962; AET, UNH, WLP –all gap up and spike 7-9%
Nov 9: First trading day after the House vote; AET, UNH, WLP –all continue to rise an additional 2%
Now you show me where any legislative progress in ObamaCare corresponds with a drop in the prices of AET, UNH, WLP
Medicare For All / HR 676: Putting Freedom back into the US healthcare market
Knoxville –
The stock figures, like Wall Street’s opposition to a public option, are a smokescreen. Wall Street already knows that it has the public option it wants — a harmless one, designed by the insurers, which won’t stand in the way. They are meant to tie up the “progressives” in support of the public option, when said “progressives” really ought to be busy primarying as many Blue Dogs as they possibly can.
What amazes me about Jane Hamsher, at this point, is why she thinks there’s so much to fight for in this public option at this point. When you’ve lost the battle, and this battle has clearly been lost, you go after those who made you lose. You don’t spend a lot more time trying to “win” with the same team of losers.
The battle was clearly lost when none of the progressive amendments, neither Kucinich nor Wyden nor Weiner, was given a chance, and when the progressives failed to block the Pelosi bill. What happened in the House suggests how the same forces will play out in the Senate.
I hope you’re right.
It looks like a Pyrrhic victory to me with the People on one side and FIRE corporate interests and a captive federal system on the other.
To change the game, something has to happen to disrupt this perverse system of incentives. It’s going to take more than a frontal assault with well reasoned policy solutions because these players have no conscience.
G-S would if they didn’t have it on good authority that the Insurance lobby fix was in at the Ministry of Truth.
Health Care Reform is a reverse insurance plan, where the so called insureds actually pay both personally and with their future federal debt service dollars to insure the insurance corporations’ profitability.
That’s what I mean when I call it a perverse system of incentives. The reference above to T.R. Reid’s book and his Frontline program from April 2008 lays out the case against for profit insurance programs in the direct delivery of universal health care.
What happened to Rep. Weiner bothered me the most, though I don’t know what getting something to the floor for a vote when it wouldn’t have passed amounts to. Same is true for Rep. Kucinich. The votes weren’t to be found, especially if whipping here might have meant losing there.
I’m trying to write a response to something letsgetitdone wrote in which I’ve tried to put it this way:
I’m not sure if I just pointed out the obvious, or if what I wrote just amounts to another way of saying what Jane’s been saying all along without clarifying anything for anyone, or what.
But I hope it helps.
You said:
None of which was true. Take responsibility for what you say and people will respond to you.
Yep, that is what I’ve been saying. I think now I’m saying something slightly different — whether or not people think this public option moves us in the right direction, the only other realistic possibility on the table is the “Goldman Sachs” preferred bill. If you stop working for the public option, you guarantee passage of the other in the Senate, and any course of action has to take that into account. There are zero votes for “nothing,” so getting to 60 is going to be a bit of a hump. It just isn’t possible at this point.
If the Senate bill and the House bill turn out out to be at odds such that progressives in the House are willing to kill it, based on promises they have made in the past, that’s a different story. But they’re not there yet, as evidenced by the fact that they just voted for the House bill.
Advocacy for alternative courses of action need to factor in these realities somehow.
Knoxville –
As per your chess analogy: nobody tries to “go for checkmate in three moves.” A three-move checkmate is either there, or it’s not. There’s no “try” about it. Chess is like that. Politics, on the other hand, is a bit more iffy.
With Kucinich, Weiner, and Wyden, there were enormous possibilities to bring publicity to the debate about healthcare, as all three represented serious alternatives to the likely possibility (at this point) that we will be buying junk mandated insurance with no public option for us, from here to the grave.
Didn’t matter if the votes were not there — the votes can be made to be there with enough publicity, and with enough public pressure, and if they’re not, the voters can be tossed out whenever their next election happens to be.
None of the three abovementioned Congressmembers apparently tried to kill the bill, so none of them will ever know if Congress could have been blackmailed into accepting their amendments. Stupak, on the other hand, worked that blackmail like a charm.
The House votes showed that only the Blue Dogs are willing to risk anything (i.e no bill) to gain power over these bills. Since that is the case, we need a fresher initiative and a newer, better, Congress. Time to hit the “reset” button on this whole effort.
It is true and you’re dodging as usual.
Would you’ve preferred I’d said from the release of HR 3962 to its passage in the House AET, UNH, WLP are up 15%? Does that alter the point that the market is bullish on ObamaCare?
Show me where any legislative progress in ObamaCare corresponds to a drop in the prices of AET, UNH, WLP.
Medicare For All / HR 676: empowering the heart of the US healthcare market –the American people
There are plenty of things to push for. You could, for instance, push to keep the mandate penalties low. Keeping the mandate penalties low gives a lot of people an alternative to buying expensive junk insurance. You could also, for instance, push to increase the penalties for insurer misbehavior.
Are you saying that ONLY working for the public option will avert “guaranteed” passage of Goldman Sachs’ wish list?
CORRECTION
I wrote:
I meant to write:
Sorry. I’m usually not too bad at transferring my thoughts into written words, but I obviously failed big time and mangled my thought when I originally wrote this sentence.
The metaphor is fine. You just forgot to add that the game is rigged –our Queen was never on the board.
Medicare For All / HR 676: The only healthcare reform game in town
I just want to be sure that I understand correctly:
You think that the end result will either be something like Goldman Sachs’s “bull case” scenario (a “watered down” Baucus-type bill) or something like the House version of the public option.
And, given those choices, you say it’s better to work for the House version.
It’s too bad that the House bill couldn’t have been more and I still think that the stupak’s gotta go (I think, too, that it will be taken out, but that it has to be said repeatedly anyway!). But if I understood you correctly, I totally agree.
Wanting more is always an option, but aiming for what you can get just makes sense!
Your assertion – Medicare For All – kind of makes my point. In the comment @ 72, I started with:
And, yes, the game is rigged. That’s what I meant by:
Another analogy can be to warfare. Sun Tzu wrote:
The enemy is not an evil person, like a character who gets killed just before the end of the movie, often falling to his death, followed by the good guy getting a big kiss from his wife (see: Die Hard).
Please, won’t somebody think of the insurance company CEOs? Who will keep the yacht industry afloat (*rimshot*) if not they?
Good. F*ck ‘em.
Yeah the teabaggers do a great job helping Insurance companies protect their profits. Privatize medicare what do old people need money for anyway.
Teabaggers say “if god wanted everyone to have health care he would have made everybody rich”
Thanks for the examples.
Medicare For All / HR 676: When you get serious about healthcare reform in America
The right comparison that allows one to isolate the factor(s) that account for the greatest variance in the value of insurance stock would be something like a regression analysis of co-variance ultimately between the “bull” bill and the bill that accounts for the lowest increase in stock value, ie HR 3692.
That comparison is likely to include the PO as one factor that is associated with a projected lowering of insurance stock value. This is a good thing because lower insurance stock value means lower insurance profit. And that profit comes from less coverage.
Why GS would put out a study that concludes that the PO is a possible factor in lowering insurance stock value is puzzling from their point of view. But if accurate GS is making a perfect case for including the PO as part of the HCR effort. The effect of other provisions in the considerd bills in lowering insurance stock value is not clear but they too ought to be included as well.
Apparently there is not much interest in talking up S703 and joining forces with sp advocates at this point, in this window of time before Sanders presents? I am doing a reality check.
It is once more, post house vote, a window of opportunity for a humanist paradigm shift for cooperation and partnership with single payer Medicare for All people, with the entire progressive block.
Not to be taken as an official stance at FDL?
Progressive block still not a real block. We need each other. We are 20% of the most knowledgeable of citizenry and Obama and Repubs think that means little since we don’t constitute a majority … and Obama’s 80 million, many, are playing ostrich right now, but we 20 percenters have wakefulness and savvy on our side. And we need to rally as one, and start pushing harder for our human and civil right of universal health care to a Cadillac-planned self-aggrandizing Congress, and talking the universal right aspect as well as the cost advantages of SINGLE PAYER … $400 bn a year nothing to sneeze at … up to citizenry who could embrace talking points of sp, far more stable talking points than po was, if the drumbeat were united and loud enough.
Tell citizenry $400 billion saved a year on administration costs without medical industrial complex involved. Tell citizenry 45,000 premature deaths a year will stop or massively slow.
Why must we let the corporations and Republicans keep their lollis cuz they scream so hard about losing them and so called progressives Dems leaders (HAH!! I use that term loosely) cringe before their high chairs.
We owe future generations better than this.
How about helping Sanders S703 out in the next few weeks, using the FDL machine? If it is a symbolic vote, let them vote for history and get their names down there. Let them feel some pressure. Many admit they want single payer eventually, but not pragmatic, but also inconvenient among fat cat Repubs and obtuse fake populists, so they get to talk the talk in their faux “negotiations” with pragmatic progressives, but don’t even have to symbolically walk the walk.
Since the insurance and pharma companies are not squawking, they have been well taken care of. More than we all know right now.
What is to preclude anyone that is opposed to buying expensive junk helath insurance from a private insurer to buy a plan from the PO, if they are ligible.
In fact the more that eligible people buy into the PO the beter, since their rates will go down over time. Hostility against private insurers works to the benefit of the PO and to those insured by it. Mandates work to the benefit of private insurers only to the extent that people choose to buy their insurance rather than that offered through the PO.
Further, no one who advocates for the PO sees it as the end game, but rather a small step in that direction.
Hi Knox, You need to go back to the drawing board with this one. Politics is not like Chess, it’s much more like Poker. And it spawns Black Swans all the time. To see this all you have to do is note the recent Stupakification of the House Bill, all the successful campaign of Barack Obama himself.
In any case, this is about messaging and what content may be best communicated to and successful in persuading the public. Medicare for All is that content.
And we have not been trying to sell for it for forty years or even 60 years. The Democrats haven’t had the guts to try it since Harry got beat by the companies and the AMA in 1948-49. The record we have is failure to sell half-measures, compromise positions, and complex BS that no one can understand. No one really knows what would happen if we go for it for full bore again with something that would really solve the insurance problem. But we do know all sorts of things among which are:
1) We need it now more than ever and anyone can see it when the need is pointed out
2) The savings from it would dwarf the savings from anything else including even Jacob Hacker’s PO
3) It’s been formulated in a 30 Page bill that is relatively easy for a regular American to understand
4) Experience with similar programs is well-recorded by other nations and that experience can easily be promoted
5) There’s a nascent movement to back it with demonstrations, civil disobedience, heros, songs, enthusiasm, ideology, and commitment that would make the tea baggers look like amateur hour.
All that has to happen is for Obama to act like ML King for a change and call forth the movement. Meet with Paul Hochfeld, Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese, Marcia Angell, Steffi Woolhandler, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and get it going with the blessings of the White House.
Jane, I think if the Goldman Sachs preferred bill became a real possibility again, then the votes for killing the Bill in the Senate would very quickly rise from zero to enough to either restructure the bill entirely, or to kill it, because the Democrats know that the Goldman Sachs preferred bill is the one that will kill them in both 2010, and if it’s not changed after that in 2012 as well.
In any event, I developed a counter-argument to your interpretation of reality here. I think Knox has seen it, but you may already have left the thread when I posted it.
cassiodorus, my view exactly. If you want to win you have to be willing to lose, both in politics and in poker. Since Clinton’s time the Democrats haven’t wanted to risk losing, so they also never really win anything they care about except, occasionally, office when people are pissed at the Rethugs. The Republicans, on the other hand, are willing to lose, and lose office a good part of the time, but they also get what they want a lot of the time and we are all worse off for it.
We all really have to ask ourselves how would the great Democratic Presidents of the last century (and their political parties) have acted? Do you think they would have been caught dead with a bill that was primarily a giveaway to the insurance companies, and that was likely to end only 1/3 of the fatalities due to lack of insurance we have currently during the first 3.5 years? Don’t make laugh. They wouldn’t have given a proposal like HR 3962 a second thought.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is the end of the game. Next year people will experience this POS during its band-aid period and there’s going to be an outcry that will put hcr right back on the table. But those pushing this highly constrained PO now as some sort of a solution, won’t have an ounce of credibility left with the public at all.
Ni Knox, the insurance companies are evil institutions. They are committing “murder by spreadsheet” and are defrauding people every day. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is. Do you?
Thank for asking, lib.
The problem is that if “the small step” is perceived as resulting in three steps backward, we may never get to take another. You can’t view hcr as involving one-dimensional linear progress toward a goal, so that if you can secure one small step you’ve accomplished something. Everything you do will have consequences, often unintended ones.
There’s considerable likelihood that the present bill with its terribly weak PO and its “band-aid period” between now and 2013, will have the unintended consequence of destroying the legitimacy of further efforts at hcr for some time to come, whereas a more limited bill ending the worst insurance company abuses, might have no serious unintended consequences. Something to think about while we’re supporting a bill with a PO and an exchange that may run to two thousand pages of legal language, much of which has been written by the insurance companies.
… much of which has been written by the insurance companies.
you mean you can point to a part of the bill that hasn’t been written by insurance companies?
/snark
How about helping Sanders S703 out in the next few weeks, using the FDL machine? If it is a symbolic vote, let them vote for history and get their names down there.
i second that.
if you want the public — actual voters — to learn/hear/care more about single payer, it’s actually going to have to make it out of committee and onto the floor for a real vote. and it can’t be voice vote, it’s got to be recorded, so that people can see who is [ostensibly] on their side and who is not.