It doesn’t matter what the ‘people’ want. We don’t have the votes in the Senate, and we’re not gonna pick up Democratic seats in November if we head into the election with no significant accomplishments. The Senate Bill, for all its flaws, is the best progressive option right now. The alternative is a scaled back bill designed to appease Republicans and get that elusive 60th vote in the Senate. You think that’s gonna be more progressive. Give me a break.

The public option is stone dead this time around. Tell the house to pass the Senate Bill now, then try to make changes to it as part of the budget process at the end of the year. That is the best overall strategy.

Any way to get these polls to MSM which is dutifully reporting that voters just want to have Republican ideas in the bills? Looks like they don’t want to report their own polling. . .and have not taken any recent polls b/c they will get the same results they prefer not to report.

Thank you for keeping after this, Jane. We need the public option. It is what the people want.

I would respectfully add a note of caution… the electorate is increasingly concerned re: economy, deficits, bailouts…

No matter the CBO spin, opponents will, and I suspect successfully, be able to tie any new public program– public option — to higher deficits, more unfunded liabilities —

a public option that is fully funded by premiums where the general treasury is not raided will have to:
1. be coupled with amazingly arcane regulatory components to not just have the sickest patients
2. provide lower level of benefits
3. have payments that will make access more challenging, rather than less
4. the only way PO makes vapor deficit decrease is if the medicare payment cuts to doctors ACTUALLY happens

the medicare doc payment fix (the lack thereof is what made the CBO numbers on the PO work) is going to come to a head very soon and will severely complicate matters even more.

I’m not at all surprised by the results of these polls. What seems most new – and great – is that Van Hollen has spoken up publicly.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any path toward changing the Senate bill such that it would include a public option or Medicare buy-in. At least, leadership isn’t going that way and very likely won’t.

This much is obvious:

Chris Van Hollen has said that the House will not pass the Senate bill without changes, as the Senate and the White House are demanding.

But if changes to the Senate bill will not include a public option or a Medicare buy-in, what’s left but to kill the Senate bill and move toward breaking it up and passing measures piecemeal?

Rep Pascrell is leading this effort, and I think it’s the best alternative.

As I understand it, leadership is telling congressional progressives behind closed doors to get behind a tweaked Senate bill or get ready to accept doing nothing.

There is another option!

Do what the people want! Should be soooo easy, no?

Apparently, No.

Conclusion #2 People would rather have wealthy people foot the bill than have their existing insurance coverage weakened

this is the wrong way to frame this point, the wealthy aren’t “going to foot the bill”

IF we get the costs distributed toward the wealthiest among us then that will be US footing the bill with OUR money which bush/raagan gave to the wealthy

the best way to frame that point is

“Conclusion #2 People would rather have wealthy people give middle class assets back to the middle class to foot this bill than have their existing insurance coverage weakened
”

there is no proposal on any table that gets the wealthy footing any bill, at the very best all that might happen is that the middle class might get some of it’s own money back

Does the phrase. “Don’t know jack” ring any bells? The Dems will loose the House and come close to losing the Senate in 2010 and loose it all in 2012 unless they change course big time.

Sadly, it looks like they’ve decided to drink the kool-aid, but that is exactly what they are doing CN and all!

Let’s turn the page. Keep the government out of Health Care reform. Insurance companies should retoole policies to allow for pre existing, cover children, and get hospitals to create small clinics and emergency facilities for those in need. Keep ambulance chasing attorneys out of court with “loser pays” tort reform. Tax cuts and medical savings accounts, the wealthy create jobs, why penalize them.

I left this for you in the last thread. You seem to have changed your opinion on the health care bill dramatically in the past month:

You really have changed your opinion of the Senate bill dramatically in the past month:

jackstraw December 24th, 2009 at 6:27 am

Read the bill. The so-called consumer protections are illusory.
Read the bill. Millions of people will not gain access to healthcare. They will just be required to buy junk insurance with deductibles so high they can’t afford to use the coverage.
READ THE BILL: The only way to control costs in this bill is to use the review committees to deny needed treatment to seriously ill people. Obama already tried to do this. See Hays v. Sebelius, in which a federal court blocked Obama’s efforts to deny critical treatment for a serious lung disease for a woman on Medicare. This bill enables the administration to do just that. (I always thought the right wing was nuts when they talked about ‘death panels’. Now I’m not so sure.)

My wife has cancer. I crave meaningful healthcare reform. This bill doesn’t provide it. This bill will kill my wife. Count me among the bitter majority.

I hope your wife is okay.

BTW: Anyone surprised Beau Biden isn’t running for the Senate now? He knows a bunch of lemmings when he sees them apparently.

It comes down to the ongoing POWER struggle between the hard-core Corporatist that have the WH , the SCOTUS and most of Congress and a few dozen actual Progressive Congressfolk. The rest of us “dirty hippies” mean nothing to these forces and after the SCOTUS ruling a few days ago the “Velvet glove” has been removed and the Iron Fist of Fascist rule is now being shaken in our faces. The Obama road show is making all the usual noises about being with us but if you watch the feet he’s actually moving to his Corporatist masters dance steps as always. Unfortunately, this whole situation is a lose lose for us and a win win for the Corporatist A team ( the Gopers). Obama will have to console himself to having the A team back in power and I think he’s ok about it.

I’ll follow up with polling we did in swing districts on the issue. Yes I think using the words “public option” are probably toxic for the reasons you say, but ironically all the paeans on the sanctity of Medicare launched by the Republicans make it poll MORE popular.

So working with the Medicare system appears to be the better road.

Give me a break… do you really think we can give the insurance industry 80 billion in profits, from the mandate, and they are not going to use that money to buy more representives, presidents, senators.

Oh Jason, your so ready to stand up against corporatism, aren’t you? Opps, unless there is a D next to it.

Yes, that is a much better frame, I agree. But since that’s not what they polled, probably unfair to conclude from these particular numbers.

People would rather have wealthy people foot the bill than have their existing insurance coverage weakened

Poll the general population and ask them if they would like the welthiest 1% to buy their Super Bowl tickets and you’d probably get big numbers in support of that too.

Message to the Villagers sent loud and clear: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Picture-41.png.

The public option, eh? How many generations have to pay for your bank busting ideas. Start from scratch, so we all share in our future.

That isn’t fair. Jason is a committed progressive who has done really good anti-corporatist work. If there’s a specific issue you disagree on let’s talk about that, but this is an awfully broad brush.

The public option saves $25 billion per the CBO — even the very weakest one.

really to bad. if we had representatives, representing us, and they lost on this bill, we could have mustered up some more progressives and passed a better bill in 2011, but the reality is they are representing the corporations and not turning toward us, the people. If they lose this, and don’t stand up for us, they are just losers.

Jane, I would imagine if you polled these same people and asked them what a “public option”, a “mandated insurance clause”, and single payer are, they probably would look at you like deer in headlights. These phrases are tossed around in the same way as “left, liberal, progressive, and conservative” are. Closer to the actual truth, most people polled probably have no damn clue what any of this stuff means, but just love the word reform because it sounds like something is going to change for them and for the better. Just my 2 cents. I could be wrong, but anyone I ask anything political to, give me a blank stare because they really don’t keep up with any of it. Too busy trying to live.

Is the goal to change the Senate bill by reconciliation sidecar to get the Medicare buy-in for Americans ages 55-64?

It seems like we’re telling progressives in Congress to oppose the Senate bill unless there are significant changes on the one hand, while, on the other hand, leadership is telling them behind closed doors that there won’t be significant changes (like adding a Medicare buy-in) and that opposing the Senate bill with a few fixes will mean getting nothing.

That’s not good. Progressives will end up voting for the tweaked Senate bill unless they see a clear alternative that can actually happen.

The Senate Bill as far as I can understand it, confusing for me partly, is a piece of crap…much like Village opinions. Down with Senate Bill, up with the people.

Always fascinating to have the insurance company spokesperson as first to comment. The Country, Inc. is broken. There is no one buying our funny money except those that must to maintain the facade of having invested in the ponzi scheme and now have to go back to their government and apologize and step before the nice men with the carbines.
Since the gubment knows that without benefits coming to the people real soon, they are gone. Not demo, not repub, but all gone. I think we should find out if they have travel plans to leave the country. For they know they can’t vote to kill us without the people stomping their faces with zeal, a real party to get the boot in, you know,
forced remodeling? Monitor your armies, private and public. The public one is gone away to endless war. The private ones must be paid enough to kill their own fellow citizens.

The fixes to the Senate bill are going to have to be paid for. They can raise taxes or they can include a public option/medicare buying. Or so we have been saying.

But there is another possibility, and we didn’t think they’d try anything quite that stupid, which is CUTTING Medicare benefits. Which they appear to be thinking of.

I personally cannot wait for the ads that will be run on that. Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire.

Healthcare did not need to come down to shit or shit special. If Obama had been serious about healthcare reform, it could have been done last summer. Instead he dicked around with this conciliatory bipartisan bullshit until the bill had been beat to death. So one must draw the conclusion he was never serious about it in the first place.

If he would have just said fuck you, I lied, I wouldn’t be nearly as furious as I am about his duplicitous behavior. Same goes for EFCA, re-negotiating NAFTA, mountain top mining, energy independence, education, ending the Iraq war, and on and on and on.

Has anyone seen newspaperbrat?

here’s a question I’ve never seen answered;

woudl the senate bill be fine if there were no mandate?

seems to me it would be

PEOPLES are disposable,like paper plates..45,000 per year

I hope those comments were meant to be tongue in cheek sarcasm. If not, you need to take out your handy-dandy little insurance card, that lots of us don’t have, and run not walk to your nearest psychiatric facility. Obviously at some point in your life you were rendered soul-less and devoid of any feeling for humnanity.

Jane, I have not gone to powwow’s links to read the hundreds of amendments that were offered. Are there any ideas from the Repugs that should have been put in? I guess I will go to the link and wade through it.

even ..big pharma cheerleaders AARP are agin this

I just called my Progressive Caucus rep, Sheila Jackson-Lee. I got vagueness when asking about her stand on the Senate bill. Not a good sign.

I made my case as best I could, pressing the point that the Senate bill would be a disaster. They are good listeners in the DC office, I’ll give them that. I am glad she is my Rep, I told them. I also told them a vote for the Senate bill would insure a lost vote from me in the next election.

want a list? (healthcare only)

“Congressional leaders must be out of their minds” is Jon’s latest take in his new post this morning, which points out the error of Democrats thinking wishfully about how the public will focus on the few good things and ignore the mountain of bad.

From Jon’s post:

Congressional leaders must be out of their minds. Jon’s latest take in his new post this morning also points out the error of Democrats thinking wishfully about how the public will focus on the few good things and ignore the mountain of bad.

I guess I’m still trying to figure out what is best to tell congressional progressives to support, as it seems that they’re being told behind closed doors to start liking the leadership’s really bad idea or get ready to kill all health care legislation.

If they start to demand that the bill must include a Medicare buy-in rather than a totally insane cut in Medicare benefits and the leadership tells them that that’s not going to happen, then what will happen?

This message brought to you by the friends of Phrma and the top Health Insurance Corporations of America.

when the long health care reform debate began the following were the pillars of reform the president said he would insist upon; he needs to tell all dem legislators, “this is my bottom line i insist upon!”

More Security and Stability
If You Have Health Insurance, the Obama Plan:

* Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
* Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age.
* Prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage when people are sick and need it most.
* Caps out-of-pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick.
* Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests to improve health and save money.
* Protects Medicare for seniors.
* Eliminates the “donut-hole” gap in coverage for prescription drugs.

Quality, Affordable Choices
If You Don’t Have Insurance, the Obama Plan:

* Creates a new insurance marketplace — the Exchange — that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices.
* Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance.
* Provides small businesses tax credits and affordable options for covering employees.
* Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.
* Immediately offers new, low-cost coverage through a national “high risk” pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created.

Reins in the Cost of Health Care
For All Americans, the Obama Plan:

* Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.
* Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized.
* Implements a number of delivery system reforms that begin to rein in health care costs and align incentives for hospitals, physicians, and others to improve quality.
* Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system.
* Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine.
* Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform.

Jane, in what I believe is 5 years of coming to this site, I don’t recall having been more surprised at the personal attacks, poor manners and consistent douchiness of a poster, much less a front pager, than Jason Rosenbaum exhibited on this thread:
Why I will not be voting for Martha Coakley Tuesday

and his own separate follow-up.

The Seminal » To the pissed off progressives: Don’t be Naderites

He may be what you say…and maybe this was out of the ordinary, as I hadn’t particularly made note of his posts before, but that was some serious bullshit. He may have been angry about what was, at that point, clearly going to be whooping for Coakley and consequently, some sort of wake-up call for the national Democratic party and its strategy to date, but he’s damaged goods in my book and his posts get the troll-scroll.

this is a PAID TROLL…poorly paid…but there it is

The public option saves $25 billion per the CBO — even the very weakest one.

over ten years.

that’s in range of noise when the ten year NHE price tag is on the order of almost $30 trillion. (and don’t think it’s a viable po anyway, but that’s another story).

I’ve seen it answered as, yes, it would be something that could be built on, something that doesn’t do more harm than good.

how many BANKSTERS get to split up the 140,000,000,000.00$ bank bonuses THIS YEAR ALONE?

If they don’t stand up for the American people, they will be enabling corporatism to screw the American people over. Progressives must oppose the Senate bill.

Reins in the Cost of Health Care
For All Americans, the Obama Plan:

* Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.

this is just one example of the nonsense we are getting from obama. health care costs are NOT the fed defict. fed budget impact on NHE is only one component — things like costs to households, employers, state and local gov and more important components of cost.

the way the talking points (and cbo analysis) are used to conflate healthcare costs with fed budget impact is just one example the way we are being misinformed.

Didya hear some Dems are considering dropping opposition to the pre-existing conditions practice by the insurance companies?

This is not “health care reform”; this is “health insurance reform”. And that’s what Plouffe said explicitly just over the weekend.

since your entire post is rediculous propaganda by the wealthy who manage to get idiots advocating against their own children, I do have one thing to point out for you;

Tax cuts and medical savings accounts, the wealthy create jobs, why penalize them

obvious to anyone of even average inteligence, the wealthy don’t create jobs, it’s jobs and productivity that creates wealth

you have to have a product before you can have profit, a brutally simple fact that only morons can’t see

now, if you are yourself wealthy, you’ve come to the wrong place, you can’t get anyone with normal intelligence buying that rubbish

on the other hand, if you yourself are not wealthy, then get thee some education, you’re arguing against yourself and your kids

and not doing it well at that

now, I do see you have what you call a political blog so I guess they are buying your presence here, you’re not going to get a return on your time, try a tea bag site, neo con site, something like that, you’ll do fine there

as far as i can tell, the HOUSE bill is in almost all ways WORSE than MA’s romneycare.

sad.

Getting a broken link, mzchief.

Really? Can you prove to me how many jobs have been created since the largest give away to the wealthy in the Bush tax cuts? No, there have not been any jobs created by giving the wealthy more wealth? I see another Con devoid of critical thinking skills.

No, just facing reality. Yes, this bill sucks. But it isn’t going to get any better without that 60th Senate vote. You cannot seriously think you’re gonna get a Republican on board for a better plan.

Again, let me make sure I’m being clear in my opinion here: The best strategy is to pass the Senate Bill now, as crappy as it may be, and then work for corrections and improvements later in the year during the budget process, when having a majority can prove more persuasive vis-a-vie the minority. (you support my bill or you don’t get funding for your pet project). Otherwise admit that you’re scrapping the entire reform initiative and will try again after 2012, when hopefully a progressive majority can be had. I just don’t think that’s likely if healthcare fails this time around. I think you’re looking at 2016 at the very earliest for that kind of majority again.

There is only one other alternative that I can think of and that’s to trade a robust progressive health care reform bill for something that the Republicans really want. Tax cuts are out. What do those people covet? How about a school voucher system, or a flag burning amendment, or a nice big fat war in Iran? Ready to trade that for healthcare reform?

No-one is more bitter about what has happened than I. No-one. But the reality is that its better to move the ball down field a little and then run on improvements in 2010 that to not do anything. Unless you have a strategy for getting that 60th vote?

My wife is doing as well as can be expected. The chemo is making her sick and that’s a problem. Congress is making me sick, but that’s another story. In any event, tell me if you have a strategy for getting healthcare reform in my lifetime that doesn’t involve the Senate Bill. I can be persuaded.

fwiw, my bottom line on any reform measure is that it must not be a road block to real solutions. therefore, it can’t make it more difficult for states (or groups of states) to implement their own single payer systems (which is a real solution).

do no harm.

don’t know (actually don’t know the reference to the number you use)

Hospital lays off 100 workers, increases bennie premiums…and execs get 20-30% increase in pay

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestne…

Top executives at Parkland Memorial Hospital collected about $1.7 million in bonuses at the end of last year, according to records released recently to The Dallas Morning News.

The bonuses ranged from $36,054 for the vice president who heads the hospital’s community clinics to $143,325 for Parkland’s chief financial officer.
(snip)
“

Clicking through the links, I found this at NY Times: A New Search for Consensus on Health Care Bill (Jan 21, 2010)

There’s a good list of what scaled-back legislation would include, including this point about pre-existing conditions:

¶Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

As for adults…

Then there’s the Senate bill still on the table. On Saturday, the NY Times had a story about how Reid and Pelosi are thinking toward going forward with the Senate bill plus a few changes: Dems Mull Options for Moving Health Care Bill (Jan 23, 2010).

Actually, I’m a software developer. Got a law degree that I don’t really use, so I guess you could insult me with one of those jokes about lawyers, sharks, whatever. Don’t really care. Don’t work for any insurance company. Work for a small consultancy that’s struggling to pay for healthcare. I don’t like this bill any more than anyone else, but with Scott Brown’s election I don’t see any other way forward on reform in my lifetime.

Again, the best strategy is to take the Senate Bill now, then try to reform it (Reform the reform!?) later on in the budget process, when Democrats will have some negotiating power (ie: you support our changes or you don’t get funding for your pet project). The worst thing right now is for Democrats to do nothing and go into the 2010 election without having made some progress. To get anything new through the Senate now requires negotiating with the Republicans for that 60th vote. How do you think that’s gonna turn out?

Teddy Partridge has a fresh cross-post up: Preview of Prop 8 Trial Day Ten

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

First off, great work over the last six months but particularly the last 6 weeks…this is what citizen activism means and if we have even a remote chance of beating the corporate monster that has eaten Chicago and threatens the rest of our politics it starts here.

Secondly, I have asked this question before but it’s much more important now that it appears the healthcare mutation is almost dead in the water and the House of Representatives is the center political of resistance within the Democratic party: What is the relationship of Nancy Pelosi to Rahm Emmanuel and the mangy curs like Stenny Hoyer who surround her in leadership? It seems to me that even if Pelosi’s politics are closer to the corporatism of Clinton and Rahm, she knows that if the country doesn’t get a decent healthcare legislation her Speakership is over after November and maybe also her leadership in the House?

Have you and a few of the other blog-based insurgents made any ovetures to her Speakership? Is there any possibility of usin’ Pelosi’s self-interest to build a safe and strong progressive caucus in the House that can defy the corporations and the military?

Finally, I believe that in order to accomplish real political change the progressive resistance is gunna hafta coalesce around opposition to the corporate wars in the ME as a way of consolidating the politics of peaceful political revolution in this country. As long as ObamaRahma can split the economic, social and political problems we have into nice neat differentiated boxes, we will not make any headway on anything but we can turn Obama’s Presidency into LBJ in 1968 if we start puttin people in the streets against the war…it seems to me that this is the only way we are gunna get the kids back in the game politically (look at the results in Massachusetts).

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, DOES ANYONE ELSE REMEMBER IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FUCKIN WAR??!!!

Jon Walker has a fresh cross-post up: Some Elements Of The Bill Are Popular” – The Foolish Mantra That Won’t Save House Democrats

parkland is (or was) the county hospital where those without insurance or the means to pay for care could go (if they were willing to wait all day.). that is just insane, especially for a hospital that is supposed to be a public hospital.

(thanks for the links, i’ll check them out later)

We ordered a filet mignon and they brought a hamburger to the table.

I’ve been trying to come up with a grand theory that will explain how it is that the party of the people is in such disarray, losing its base, and relatively powerless when they have all the power. How to explain a Ben Nelson, or a Blanche Lincoln.

I have deduced this: Since Reagan, the Democratic party has been in defensive mode. The same party regulars, advisors, strategists, etc., with their mind set of politics, are forever triangulating, moving to the center, and otherwise emasculating the party in favor of keeping what little electoral piece of the pie they have in hand. They are afraid to do anything bold; to take any risks; to extend and lose a few seats to principle.

They put up bland candidates. They coddle the money folks. They try not to rock the boat. In every way they are pathetic losers.

And then we have a Senator from Illinois, young and athletic, virile, intellectual, who hasn’t been in Washington long enough to be contaminated or controlled by the apathy of the establishment, who comes along and energizes us like never before and gives us hope.

We elect him and then are surprised when he only has the establishment and their loser strategies to support him? Then we threaten to withdraw our support at the first disappointment. It is no wonder that the Ben Nelsons and the Blanche Lincolns are the way they are. They have managed in red states to win and hold office with the feckless leadership of the national party. They have seen how the grass roots wilts at the first sign of heat, and how they are in danger unless they do what they always have done to stay in office. So it is a spiral of disappointment, feeding upon itself. It is the malaise that Jimmy Carter was telling us about.

This explains why the Senate bill goes against what the majority of the people want. The Senate is still in the old mind set.

Look at Alan Grayson, and what he has accomplished by being bold. We need more fighters like him.

We need to clean house of the Bob Schrums and the Donna Brazils and the James Carvilles, and get some tougher people in there.

And we the grass roots, have to stand up and not give up. We have to stand up to our own party apparatus and change it.

In this case-Reid needs to let the Republicans filibuster the amended health care bill that has been fixed in reconciliation. He needs to let the country see who doesn’t want people insured, and who doesn’t care about the citizens of this country. I’ll bet it won’t be too long until we see the bi-partisanship we have been looking for show up as the Republicans are shown for what they are. The reason the Republicans can get away with their crap is that we never put the heat on them. It is time to bring the heat.

Ugh, Ron Anderson is President and CEO of Parkland and was (is?) a member of PNHP.

“We ordered a filet mignon and they brought a hamburger to the table.”

I’m gonna save this for future use

worse. he was a member of the “Physicians’ Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance” — you can read their proposal, published in 2003 in JAMA, at the link.

Well, he was slamming me and others quite a bit when we were arguing that a Coakly loss was what the Dems needed to wake up and smell the coffee. He argued we needed to elect a corporatist rather than let a D take a hit and did it with very insulting language.

Progressives are always attack by the elites.

The Democratic party is full of transformers, some democrats campaign as progressives and once they get to the congress they transform into republicans. ie the Bait and Switch or the Hope A Dope

The entire Health Care debate has been a scam.

Nothing in the HCR bill really helps anyone, but insurance companies.

remember
medicade covers poor people
the VA takes care of veterans
medicare takes care of old people

at the end of the day insurance companies get to rip off the middle class.

We progressive must orgnize and develop real progressive candidates that will fight for the middle class.

We need a sheet that shows how Dems votes in congress. The masses need to know how their leaders sell them out once they get congress.

The SUPREME COURT made it clear last week, the attacks on progressives and the middle class are about to increase.

SUN TZU
says in times of peace prepare for war
in times of war for prepare for peace.

I’ve seen here that some of you believe the Senate Bill is a giveaway to the insurance industry. It might look like that from a distance, but please remember that the health insurance industry is STILL fighting the Senate bill with every penny they can spare.

Let me explain why they are fighting.

They cannot cover all Americans, at any price. They know it. They DO NOT want you to know that. They want you to fight this bill as hard as Republicans are fighting it. That’s why they attacked the PO. They knew if they could get the Senate to kill it, they’d defeat the bill altogether by dividing the “big tent”.

As a Financial Advisor, I deal with these insurers daily. I know and understand their actuarial tables, and the resultant premium structures they use.

Mark my words, if the Senate bill passes, within two years of the mandate being enforced, the first large insurers will come to Washington for a bailout. That is because when “risk” approaches “certainty”, no amount of money in a risk- based premium structure is enough to cover the costs of services while remaining affordable. In other words, the more people that insurers are forced to cover, the more it is certain they will financially fail. Like I said, THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS.

If you were an insurer, why not just support this bill, and keep going to Washington for bailouts? Because insurers know that the American people will not soon allow their elected officials to bail out a major industry again. This bill, as crappy as you think it is, is the kiss of death for the insurance industry. If this bill passes, they will fail,and SOMEONE HAS TO PAY OUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS FOR ALL THE SERVICES RENDERED THAT FAILED INSURERS COULDN’T. The government will be left with one option, to pay those bills, and set up a fee-for-services Single-payer structure, which is the only structure that can affordably cover all Americans.

If Single-payer is your ultimate goal, then you must force insurers to do the very thing they cannot do at any price; cover every American, including pre-existing conditions. And believe me, if insurers could have covered every American, they would have figured out a way to do it by now. No one leaves that kind of money on the table, especially not greedy insurance companies, who have spent nearly $1 Million per day trying to guarantee that the status quo will remain.

Killing this bill will give them EXACTLY what they want.

Well…this is WAR, now what??????????????

How did Bush & Reagan “give your money to the wealthy”?

Tax cuts mean a lower percentage of each dollar the wealthy earn is taxed. It might mean there is less to redistribute, but it definitely is not an actual redistribution of earned income form the less well off to the more well off.

I know I am definitely coming from the right, but I think even hard core progressives can accept that before the government gets peoples taxes, the people actually earn the money first, and then if the government decides it is a good thing to redistribute that money, the benificiaries of that money are sort of the scondary recipients. Can’t they?

Polling shows that the House bill is more popular but the Senate bill is closer to Gruber’s ideas and we can assume it is closer to Obama’s goals. (Might be true.) If straight out money spent were the central issue then we wouldn’t spend more on the military than everyone else in the world combined and we would not be maintaining TBTF. Nearly any kind of Public Option would save money but if Obama wanted that it would have surfaced in the Senate’s overly long square-dance and would have been a part of the Gruber full-court press.

Since the Senate bill is pretty close to what Obama’s people want they will do their best to get it. The House bill is better to almost everyone but passage would be deemed a blemish for the White House by the echo chamber beltway crowd. At this point we are down to hubris. Team Obama will go forward with their recently stated intent to run mid-term elections for Democratic candidates in an attempt to eliminate dissent and some of whom will almost certainly be roadkill because they will be running as proxies for Obama instead of independent candidates trying to support their constituencies.

Optimism aside, the Senate bill’s problems will not be cleaned up later because the Senate, the House and the White House would have no reasons to want to revisit this anytime soon. What they will have is a whole lot of motivation to stay as far away from this snake pit as possible. There’s still an teetering economy, finance reform kabuki, an escalation military spending and don’t forget that the debt ceiling has to be raised again next month after being raised last December.

Right now the DC crowd hates the hippies for wanting more than they deserve and they’ll know who to blame when the blood-letting starts. The people that warned them not to drive so close to the center-line.

Citizen realworld:

Sometimes around here, you need to just strap it up and call a spade a shovel especially if you are goin’ down ta the mat with a “favored son” of the management. You can usually count on a few of the FDL regulars to getcher back when one of the favored insiders goes after you but if for some reason they don’t, you hafta take ‘em on yourself ‘cuz that’s what this place is all about…Sister Hamsher’s created a monster of free speech here but if ya don’t stand up for yourself ya ken get buried…ya gotta have tough skin ta mix it up here…but it’s worth it!

Has FDL sent these numbers to the health care legislative aides of freshmen and sophomore house members?

Citizen from the right:

Do yourself a favor Citizen, read the information you get here and drop the rightwing spin that passes for political and economic analysis in so-called “conservative” circles today. The assumption that rich folks “earn” their money and that the rich didn’t get a free ride on the lower taxes and treasury subsidies from workin’ people under Reagan exposes an ignorance that will only bring you righteous humiliation around here. Listen and learn, citizen.

Not me, I ordered the wild salmon, baked organic carrots and potatoes, with an organic tossed salad of locally grown veggies.

And they STILL brought me a shit sandwich (aka an E. Coli-infected, hormone-injected, Mad Cow-suspected slab of gristly grey “meat” between buns of styro and veggies from who knows where. And no, I don’t want to know what’s in the “special sauce,” thanks anyway).

Isn’t it odd, that the ingredients in a hamburger often have traveled much further the one who ends up eating it?

Darcy Burner is reporting that the House will not pass the Senate bill. They won’t even vote for the Senate bill first, followed by reconciliation. Chris Bowers at Open Left has reported the same thing. They don’t trust the Senate. The Senate has to move first or the whole thing is dead. That’s the political reality.

I goofed and, not having caught the mistake, I actually added to it by thinking I was putting Jon’s words in quotation marks.

Here’s the quote from Jon that I meant to put up in the comment @ 37:

Democrats should not take too much comfort in the fact that they wrote a 2,000 page bill and some how managed not to make every single page terribly unpopular. The problem is that legislation is normally not judged by a handful of its most popular sections, but is often judged by its most egregious.

Sorry for the error.

Well said, NF! I bow in your virtual direction.

Thanks, selise. Will reacquaint myself. Read it back in the day.

I think its been granted that there is some good stuff in the Senate Bill, including a bar on pre-existing conditions and the tax credits (there is NO TRUE MANDATE in this bill because the federal government cannot Constitutionally do a true mandate, really just a tax increase coupled with a tax credit for people who have insurance.) What people are up in arms about is the crappy stuff like the anti-rescission policy that relies on the state insurance commissioners for enforcement (kind of like relying on Al Qaeda to perform airport underwear screenings).

Having said that, I agree that given where we are now, passing the Senate Bill is probably the best realistic step forward. I really didn’t expect the Democrats to lose Kennedy’s seat. I thought a close election would be enough to scare Congress into action without killing reform outright. I was wrong. But here we are. You cannot get a public option via reconciliation, to the best of my knowledge. You are not going to get Medicare for All at this point in time. Getting the bar to denial for pre-existing conditions in exchange for what is really just a $750 tax credit, or a $750 option to buy insurance if you’re not insured, is better than nothing. Pass the crap now, then run on fixes in the 2010 election and try to get fixes in via the budget process later in the year.

I know that there are no guarantees about fixes. But again, doing nothing going into 2010 is a worse scenario.

I don’t like the continuing focus on employer based insurance, it is one of the major problems,a n what adds to the anxiety surrounding healthcare.

Backing off the pre-existing seems absurd,a s that is something that must poll very high with all sides of the political spectrum. However, I can only see that being a limited time amnesty, like everyone has 3 years to get insurance with no pre-existing rules, and from that moment on, everyone who has a pre-existing has to prove continual insurance coverage. Otherwise people would just wait till they have a pre-existing to get comprehensive insurance.

I also am not sure why the progressives are so against eliminating the restrictions of selling across state lines (I understand the race to the bottom, but not all consumers are clueless – progressives who see this as a serious threat, could do their community organizing, and blogging more about education of wise consumer choices, rather than political machinations). Give peopel choice,a nd then spend the legislative energy on some regualtion…but not lobbyist driven regualtion making sure chiropractic and accupuncture is covered, but setting up true consumer protection or disculosure requirements.

Let’s remember that almost everything that outpaced general inflation was government run, protected from competition or monopolized…like healthcare, higher education, energy….all things consumer driven have either appreciated in line with inflation or gone down in cost.

Free the health care insurance and delivery systems up to more competition….make doctors and hospitals post their fees at the entrance, and give binding estimates. That might not be very useful for the guy who gets hit by a car and is in the ambulance unconscious, btu there are a lot fo medical decisions that are not made unconscious in the back of an ambulance.

I fully disclose that I have a view coming from the right, and I also must say that I have been treated very well by the well meaning and passionate people of this site.

The only good thing we need in any reform bill is to force insurers to do what they have never wanted, and why they have continuously rescinded policies and denied coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. Just forcing insurers to cover those two things would destroy them. You have to understand; they cannot offer such coverage affordably and still remain profitable. They can’t even come close. Which is why they are spending so much money trying to keep everything static.

Actually I have lived and worked under various tax regimes,a dn lived and worked in various tax brackets. No matter what country or what scheme it was, it was always about 40% of the population paying about 90% of the taxes, and a good 60% not paying anything.

I also spend a lot of time in countries where less than 5% of the population drive 99% of the government revenue (developing world)…so I also now a broad spectrum of Geni-coefficient countries.

While the idea that the “hard work” of the laboring class pours riches into the hands of the few elite has some merit, the real world produces asymetric results.

The woman in bangladesh who uses her own capital plus borrowed money ot open a $10 million in building and machinery textile factory employing 2000 workers @ $1000/year is expecting and likely to see a profit of $1 million a year on top of depreciation and capital costs. The workers seem to wallow in squalor in comparison….but compared tot he agricultural subsistence that is their other option, the $1000 seems the better option.

Woudl the factory owner be as rich if the local wage were not so unbelieveably low (and the $1000 a year is sort fo top of the scale for that country)? No. But without that incentive the 150 million people in the country would have no option than agricultural subsistence. (unless some other industry developed).

It is not right wing spin. It is common sense, and the laws of supply and demand. If labor was in a position to demand more, then they would receive more, but they can’t and many jobs can be eliminated, downsized or outsourced….it is not a laborers market, and not sure when it will be again….except in the last real estate boom for actual tradespeople.

me too. btw, i live in MA now, but before that lived in TX (so i got to enjoy W as gov and as pres *g*)

Citizen fromtheright:

Sigh, I gave a a friendly piece of advice upstream Citizen, but you didn’t take the warnin so the following is the response you deserve if you are gunna try and engage in any discussion of political economy around this place:

1. you can’t argue “free market” competition in healthcare or any other public service because capitalism can’t provide things like quality education or healthcare for all…it’s just not possible and the massive profits of the insurance and pharmacutical industry and the bankruptcy of our federal treasury are proof. Employer mandates, excise taxes and requirements to purchase insurance without a madicare-based public option are nothin’ more than direct transfers of what wealth and equity the working class still has in this economy. It’s like Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and his raid on the Social Security trust.
2. Selling insurance accross state lines is simply another way of protecting the existing healcare system and protecting the transfer of money from people who can’t afford it to insurance cartels and it precludes individual states from enacting state-based healthcare systems to protect their own citizens.
3. The old shiboleth about government run programs bein inefficient and inflationary have long been put to the lie by Social Security and Medicare and in fact the reason we have a healthcare crisis is that health insurance companies have been exempted from anti-trust laws and protected from competition. And of course private higher education and private schools have been subsidized for years by taxpayers dollars while the public education structure has been forced to carry the cost of that subsidy.

All of the arguments you use in your attempt to discredit public investment and control of services in the economy are, in fact, the very reasons our economy is in the shithouse right now. [Edited by moderator with the reminder please do not insult other commenters] read the posts and comments for awhile before you venture into the debate with rational people here.

The idea, as I understand it, to pass the current Senate bill in reconciliation with the House and then to modify it favorably in a subsequent recinciliation side car, is absolute lunacy.

When will it dawn on people that the Senate has already spoken clearly about what it is prepared to do re HCR. It will not include a PO or Medicare buy in even if it required only a majority vote to achieve that. It is simply not prepared to reduce the market and profits of private insurers. The idea of let’s pass the Senate bill now along with the Senate’s promise to make improvements later is just gullibility compounded by stupidity.

Why would ahyone trust the Senate? On what precedent does that trust rely?

I think it is incumbent on people who believe that once the Senate bill is passed with the blessing and approval of the House that they will then proceed to change the very work they have completed, to show on what grounds they place such faith. Isn’t it more likely that once the Senate bill is passed they will proceed to crown that as an enormous historic display of the Congress and Obama working dilligently to do the people’s business?

Any faith on promises by the Senate or the House or Obama are misplaced. That is the reality and the measures to make health care affordable lie in the various states adopting their own publicly financed insurance plans excluding or competing with private insurers.

you severely misread me. I am not a shill for insurance companies, and I abhor any type of anti-trust exemption. If there are obscene profits being earned, then that is an area others should get into. That tends to drive the profits down. WalMart has driven down costs and profit margins in consumer goods retailing. The mom&Pops it has put out of business, and the less efficient retailers it left in its wake can be mourned, but the end consumer is getting more goods at a lower cost because of it.

My experience with for profit schools has been less than stellar, but so was it with public education,a nd whether for me, my family or amongst friends, most have chosen denomenational schools working in accordance with the public curriculumn have proved best. And I knwo a lot of non-religious people who have chosen the same route.

But the cost of education, wehther it be in public schools, private univerisities, or private univesrities and colleges has gone up well above inflation as well, so none of them seem to be serving the less well off customer very well.

Medicaire and Medicaid use strong arm pricing against the medical professionals. They are like WalMart agaisnt unions, or with suppliers….they have both the political might, as well as the bargaining power to potentially force prices that do not cover costs on to doctors and hospitals. They also piggy back on the normal customer….expanding this would severely diminish the base on which can be piggy backed.

Social Security is failing in America, as it is in every developed country that has implemented it. All of these systems were based on a very different life expectancy and demographic development than what has taken place. the retiremtn age fo 65 was set by Bismarck in Germany at a time when people lived to be 67….so you worked for your whole life, and the last 2 years you took off. Social Security woudl work if it kicked in at 75, but it kicks in at 65 or earlier, meaning as demographies age,a dn life expectancy increases, the costs per working adult increase. The numbers in Japan, Germany, Italy and such are astounding.

I am not sure how many other health care systems or tax regimes you have lived and worked under, but I am at 5 now, and I know first hand the pro’s and cons of many. The long term and unintended consequences, combined with political reality and expediency, make government entitlement programs in general something that should not be entered into lightly.

We could find areas of definite agreemnt, on what decent refom would mean. It would take away anti-trust. I think we could agree that putting the insurance decisions in the hands of the employer rather than the employee,a dn allowing that to be portable for as lon as they choose to have that insurance woudl be a good idea. It could see insurance being offered by grouping that make sense, perhaps neighbourhood co-ops, faith based denominations, perhaps groups like GLAAD or Greenpeace or the NRA offering special group rates or maybe Walmart getting into the game.

Having lived in Europe, I have no real problem with increased consumer protections, and greater transparency at the time of signing.

I think a lot of people could get into an amnesty against pre-existing, as well as a mandated re-insuring risk pool for all offering insurance, to defray the cost of taking on pre-existings, and have companies compete to actually take those people in.

But I don’t see the government jsut soaking the rich. How exactly soakign the rich can be considered morally correct, I am not sure. If Warren Buffet thinks he is taxed too little, I am sure he can overpay his taxes,a nd tell his tax accountants to be very non aggressive about his write offs.

The pharmaceutical companies are also very lobbyish, and I would never support lobbyish behaviour, or the extension of their patents, and all thsoe tactics. They claim it is all R&D, when the cost of Marketing exceeds R&D by a factor of 5 times…..

Sorry, this edit wrecked the paragraphs. I am leaving for the day, so won’t respond until a couple fo hours from now…not runnign away from the discussion.

This post would be laughable if it weren’t so mis-informed.

“It doesn’t matter what the ‘people’ want” says Jack Straw…

YOu’ve got to be fucking kidding me? Have you heard of the concept of voting people out who don’t stand up for your rights?

We just had the biggest blowout in MA in recent history, and you have the ignorance to state that “it doesn’t matter what the people want”??

Jesus.

ps… my previous comments was in response to the first comment in this thread… from Jack straw.

Tax cuts mean a lower percentage of each dollar the wealthy earn is taxed. It might mean there is less to redistribute, but it definitely is not an actual redistribution of earned income form the less well off to the more well off.

you’re not serious are you?

there were NO tax cuts for the middle class, reagan RAISED taxes more then any ohter peace time president in our history, bush rescinded FAR more services to fund his tax credits to the wealthy and gave the middle class a TINY percentage of those cuts, FAR outweighed by the added costs of said services

IN ADDITION

privitization ALWAYS costs more for the service then the government equivilant AND the government equivilant provides LIVING wage jobs to boot

there was DEFINATELY a redistribution of middle class assets to the wealthy under the depraved tax give aways and “de-regulation” brought to you by the rediculous “free market” marketing propaganda that seems

to work on people who buy the rubbish

I know I am definitely coming from the right, but I think even hard core progressives can accept that before the government gets peoples taxes, the people actually earn the money first, and then if the government decides it is a good thing to redistribute that money, the benificiaries of that money are sort of the scondary recipients. Can’t they?

you’re not comming from “the right” with that notion, you are comming from the neo-con, the tow are completey differant, the neo cons have co-opted the term “from the right”

just about all the programs that we have were voted for, (in case you didn’t know it)

this is because pribvate industry will NEVER provide “commons” as efficiently as government

in case you didn’t know it, government has a purpose other then giving middle class assets to the wealthy

If our representatives cared about being re-elected health care would have passed by now. They are only interested in taking bribes and setting themselves up for a lobbying job…

What an atrocity his *three* terms of office has been. May we live to see the back of him and his shadow.

“…you have to have a product before you can have profit”

you mean like if you’re a legislator and your product is legislation favoring your largest campaign donors, right? ;-)

That’s one of those places in a capitalist system in which you can buy immense profits.

Dear Jane:
If the house doesn’t stop this senate bill the results to the middle class will be staggering, they just think that they have it bad now. They say that 30 million people are unemployed or under employed, if they are forced to buy insurance without anything to stop the insurance companies from charging anything they want the middle class will no longer be the middle class they will be the poor. Most of the people in this country are blissfully ignorant of what is about to happen, if they don’t wake up Soon considering what the Supreme Court did last week they are going to wake up to world of hurt.

I wish I were “fucking kidding you,’ as you so elegantly put it, but the fact is that you just don’t have the votes in the Senate for anything better, and most importantly, if the Democrats go into the 2010 elections with no movement on healthcare reform, they are gonna lose even more seats. Discouraged people don’t vote. They don’t make those online campaign contributions that poured in in 2008. They don’t man the phones. They don’t put signs on their front lawns. They just don’t give a damn.

There is a difference between what shows up in a poll and what wins on election day. If there weren’t, single payer would be a shoe in. Right now, no-one here has shown me a clear path to reform other than to take the Senate bill and pass it for now, then try to change it in the fall during the budget process. Doing anything that requires going back to the Senate for approval will result in something even worse than what we have in the current Senate bill.

Well, alright, there is one other clear path. Let this thing fail, let the Republicans gain seats, and wait for a Republican healthcare reform plan. [Sarcasm alert.] Yeah, gosh, that’s ought to fix things just fine.

Remember, people like Claire McCaskell are now saying ‘we need to slow things down.” That’s how they’re interpreting Massachusetts. (Which wasn’t really a blow out. It was what happens when Democrats stay home.)
Democrats in the Senate are running for cover, and they’re running to the Republican treeline. Insane, but true. Anything that puts the issue back in the hands of the Senate is gonna be weaker than the crap that already came out of the Senate. A Progressive didn’t win Kennedy’s seat. A conservative did. Hell, you can’t even get 51 Senators to sign a commitment to the so-called sidecar strategy.

There is an argument that says that much of what stinks in the Senate bill is hard to defend over the long haul. Things like Nelson’s cornhusker deal would likely get removed by subsequent legislation. Also, as I said, it is a little easier to make corrections if they’re buried in some appropriations bill in the fall, with all the attendant wheeling and dealing, than as part of the reform bill now. Granted, there are no assurances that any fixes can get through. But still, as I said, doing nothing is a bad idea.

Brown’s election changed things. Before Brown, it was worth it for the left to try to push the bill toward progressive goals. But Brown’s election has shifted everything rightward in terms of Senate votes. It was a bad defeat. It has emboldened right wingers, left Democrats discouraged, and left the independents confused and skeptical. The best antidote to this is a strategy that results in some progress without the need to rely on the Senate.

But I’m persuadable. If you have a better realistic plan that results in reform in my lifetime, well, I’m all ears.

Progressives are always attack by the elites.

This would have more impact and be more truthful if you said:

“Scientists are always attacked by the elites.”

Tax cuts mean a lower percentage of each dollar the wealthy earn is taxed. It might mean there is less to redistribute, but it definitely is not an actual redistribution of earned income form the less well off to the more well off.

Really? They “earned” their income? People like Dicky Fuld?

Care to show me how Tricky Dicky “earned” his income?

Brown’s election changed things. Before Brown, it was worth it for the left to try to push the bill toward progressive goals. But Brown’s election has shifted everything rightward in terms of Senate votes.

So now the bluest of Blue States, Massachusetts has suddenly become more conservative after Kennedy’s death so everything has to move to the right on an execrable piece of legislation that does nothing for folks who need but put more money into the insurance company coffers?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Or not.

Egregious, just stop it, okay?

[RBG Note: this has nothing to do with "Egregious" and everything to do with whether you can find a way to positively contribute to this conversation,]

Wow– that was a simply stupid posting on my part. My apologies to the forum for not finishing the 360 degree evaluation of all the ways that could have been interpreted before hitting the “SEND” key.

pretty simple. Richard Fuld convinced a compensation committee to pay him some half a billion dollars between 1993 and 2007. He convinced them of this, and apparently for those 14 years didn’t do anything so abhorrent that the shareholders, or the board saw fit to cut his compensation or thrown him out.

Since anyones ability to earn is based on what you can either convince someone to pay for your services, or pay for your wares, he was able ot convince someone of it.

Does it seem fair in comparison to someone working in manual labor for 60 hours a week who can barely make ends meet? No. But life isn’t fair, it never was, and never will be.

If you want to get any kind of reform done, or even started, it doesn’t matter what Massachusetts looks like. It matters what the Senate looks like. And now the Senate is 59 Dems and 41 Repubs. Wishing it weren’t so won’t make it not.