As I’m reading today’s posts and updates, I must confess that it sounds like just more cynical politics to me. No new policy.

Too bad that Rahm wasn’t “let go” before this juncture. Perhaps the so-called “compromise” might have contained that public option.

i’m with you.

This is Obama all over: status quo with a little decorative stitching around the edges. His life’s work.

Cynical politics or not; It can lead to a new policy away from fragmentation and free to plunder courtesy of the states.

Jon I favor the public option as a stalking horse for national health insurance. Not to introduce competition. As I said below competition has no useful place in health care delivery.

That said as to the rate authority, what is your objection to the substance of it?

Thanks Jon, appreciate the prompt analysis.

The increased scrutiny on the health insurance cartel, however overdue, I see as a small positive.

You nailed it. If the Dems were serious about reconciliation why are they even talking to Republicans? They should be pushing for a real health care deal using basic Democratic principles as outlined in the party platform.

Instead, we have Obama submitting his health care deal which contains no public option, the crappy Senate bill is still the starting point, and Feinstein of all people is the one to step up to hold the insurance companies accountable. Does this look like a path forward to anyone? And if so … why?

This is just more of the same kabuki and we shouldn’t even be taking this proposal seriously. We should be demanding the public option and there should be an outcry that Obama would submit a plan without one after campaigning so heavily for one.

They have beaten us down so much that we can’t even muster the outrage anymore. With the Senate bill as the starting point, we can’t get anything decent out of this reconciliation. We need to kill the Senate bill before we move forward. I thought Martha Coakley had done that for us but I miscalculated the stupidity of the Democrats. Go figure.

The Audacity of Stupid.

Obama says send me a primary challenger.

Does this look like a path forward to anyone? And if so … why?

My crossposting from David’s article.

Personally I do see national regulation as a positive step forward.

We have been so brainwashed by the Republicans toward states rights that we knee jerk just as they do. In fact in my opinion much of the chaos of governing and maldistribution of rights, wealth and more in this country is enhanced by so called states’ rights. Delegating the enactment of legislation that could not pass nationally has been used to neuter everything from labor laws and abortion rights to taxation.

Many have been complaining at the lack of regulation in the health care bills as they stand. If we are going to have medical care at the will of private health insurance there must be regulation and if it is to be fair it must have national standards.

Exchanges and even public option to assure competition is a crock. Competition has no place in providing equally adequate care to all. If we have to accept private then a move toward the public utility model is better than raw competition (another Republican fetish we have accepted).It’s great for basketball teams and cell phones. Not for good enough health care.

“cynical politics” – absolutely no oxymoron there.

effing Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results. As for the public option, the 8 ball seems to be stuck on: “Yes we can, but no we won’t”

Insurance costs are about 10% of US health care.

If we regulated the insurnce industry down to 0% profit (and what business would be willing to accept that model) we could save 10% tops.

The regulators need to regulate doctor and hospital fees.

The regulators need to regulate doctor and hospital fees.

Now that’s an idea. “Tax” those who are profiting the least from this mess so that the masters of the universe can make more profit. Sounds Republican to me.

We have tons of regulations on the books that are never enforced. To assume that a new regulatory agency will solve the problem is like expecting the FDA to protect us from dangerous medicines.

I don’t see how anyone who has lived through the last decade can see more regulatory agencies as anything but window dressing.

And I disagree with your point about the public option not being useful as competition. Can you provide more detail about how you came to that conclusion?

I’ll be shocked if the regulation part makes it to Thursday. Its not real just something to give away to the Republicans.

So for Obama the unpopularity of the Senate Bill is merely a public relations problem.

This is what you can expect from the other politicians as well, btw.

And now it’s still not a health care bill, it’s a 2.5% tax increase.

Yep, it’s DOA.

I don’t think I have an objection in the abstract, but what worries me is how independant this regulator is. If regulators just come in go with the excecutive branch, then you will have rate hikes out the wazoo if there is a Republican in office (might be so with Dems too though). It would also just be another football to play politics with and not actually get things done.

There are some very well informed people that see the HCR effort in a much more positive light than many here. Their view is worth considering. Here is a more positive take on HCR from Professor Paul Starr of Princeton.

http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/articles/articles10/Starr_UnderratingReform_3-2010.pdf

Paul Starr’s credentials are here.

http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/starrbio.html

Wow yeah when you think about it that way it almost is just a tax increase with no results.

Hey, let’s stop blaming Rahm he’s not the BOSS Obama is. Obama is the one that could tell Rahm to STFU and do what I tell u and he probably is. I’m tired of all of you blaming everything on this guy with no proof and I don’t even like him. OBAMA hired Rahm and the rest of them and they’re doing his bidding.

I think the problem is fundamental, it’s a lack of good faith. When you have huge majorities in both chambers, a president and a mandate and you still cannot get things done to benefit the public, then you have major problems. We still have to do this song and dance with republicans, that hate all things liberal, to create “bipartisan” legislation. The Dems reflexively move to the right, without getting anything in return, why? Sure there are moderates in the party, but these issues are winners with the base AND with moderates/indys. The excuses are threadbare at this point.

Yep, so very true.

Shame on Obama. “Hope”? “Change”? Obama is a disgrace to EVERYTHING he campaigned on. Too bad Congressional Democrats are just as bad as Obama or they would put a Bill on his desk he’d have to swallow. Anyone care to refresh me, how many Democrats want a “public option”, how many support a Dorgan Amendmendment?
Obama loves to decry our failing educational system but his arguments only play to the stupid! Bipartisonship? Didn’t the Republicans pass the HealthCare Bill they wanted just 4 years ago?
Obama would do well to spend more time thinking how he’ll explain his presidency to his kids in 15 years than conjuring up trite explanations of how far we’ve come because of his programs.
Shame on me, I voted for him.

Your link was interesting but unhelpful. It was just more from the lowered expectations crowd who are willing to call it a win no matter what comes out of HCR. It did make me laugh when he mentioned how the Democrats were putting their careers on the line for all of us and we ungrateful progressives should appreciate that more.

When I see a Democrat put their career on the line for HCR I will indeed be grateful. Until then … not so much.

I’m tired of all of you blaming everything on this guy with no proof and I don’t even like him.

We bash Rahm because it feels so good. Hopefully, we can help ruin any future political career he may try.

Your right. the Ins. companies are just part of the equation. If they didn’t exist does anyone believe that Drs. and Hosps. and the rest of these providers could ask the amounts they do in a free market? They’d be handling used cars and chickens on e-bay to get their $$. My old now retired family Dr. told me that before Medicare and before Ins. Drs. used triage for payment. The rich paid high fees the middle class less and they all paid for the poor. That’s how most Drs. handled payment. They made these calls based on what they knew about their patients.

David Dayen has a fresh cross-post up: White House Health Proposal – The Basics

Obama is really embracing the idea of being a one term president.

His Health Care proposal has one term president written all over it.

Obama is owned by the Health Care Insurance Industry, he just needs to dress up like a NasCar driver, and wear the various sponsor patches, Blue Cross Blue Sheild, Well Point, Aetna, etc.

This would be funny, if it was not so sad. Obama misled the progressive movement, we have elected a president dumber than Bush!

The house Dems will run from this HCR scam Bill in droves during an election year. (I say this because unlike Obama most want to get re-elected)

Obama can kiss control of the Democratic party good bye. I doubt if any smart Dems will follow him over the cliff to oblivion.

Insurance companies have got to be laughing! They are telling every american in an indirect way, we own the White House.

What shrewd politician would roll out a health care proposal that is going to ignite intense anger from the left and right during an election year?
only Obama

Howard Dean in 2012

Competition in health care is like all of us going to the car dealer. The dealer sets the price. We can haggle and try to get a better price, but the dealer gets his profit.

Without competition, for example if an insurance had a 80% share in a particular area, they can negotiate prices, like getting “fleet” pricing on a bunch of vehicles. The dealers take a smaller profit per unit.

Canada is a good example of this with drug prices. They tell the drug companies what they’re willing to pay, so the price is set. If each Canadian was competing with each other Canadian, the drug companies would set the price where ever they wanted.

The galling part is that they do nothing and then blame all of us ( the base). We’re supposedly the ones that have to force them to do what is right? No, the truth is they are caught between their promises to their Corp. backers and the promises they’ve made to the voters. Of course they choose to make their Corp. backers happy and then hope they can lie and game their way out of the hypocrisy and betrayals to the voters. In the end they hope the most cynical of all excuses will save the day for them, that they are better then the Gopers even though they suck and are liars. They offer themselves ( the Devil) or the Gopers (the deep blue sea.) Some choice, no wonder so many stay away from voting.

I’d like to believe that’s the only reason, but I smell a lot of scapegoating and the rotten odor of ethnic hatred as well in some of the attacks. Rahm is a bully and he hates the Progressive base but in the end I repeat who hired him and who uses him?

Now there’s a novel and promising idea. In an effort to reform the financing of health care let’s leave the very same private insurance cartel in place but to assure it plays fairly let’s have the federal government cast a mean look at it now and then.

If there was ever a bold plan for attaining universal coverage and lower costs this will surely be it. Let’s have the mighty federal government that can’t pass a health bill after one year of trying because of graft and self imposed road blocks be the one that reins in the powerless and prostrate insurance companies. Why did nobody think of this before?

But by all means let’s not introduce an alternative and more rational option for people to find health insurance because that’s well, that’s umm that’s just not right.

The object of overhauling a putrid health insurance system is not to leave it in place but to overhaul it.

Win-Win or Lose-Lose?

No Single Payer. No PO however ill defined or nebulous that idea is. As it was a year ago and still remains pretty much so this is about AHIP/PhRMA getting protection racket money from the Feds while entrenching themselves deeper for next attempt at so called American HCR. Something like paying Al Capone to stop his extortion rackets. Like that is really going to work.

It is past simpleton stupid to still be using the R Party as the blame target when it is plain to see this is all about what the D Party wants to do or more on point not do.

This is what Obama WH wanted a year ago. The D Party leadership in Congress has gone along with Obama WH and yet these political charlatans and cowards think they will get away with blaming it on the R Party.

Barack Obama could have been a genuine champion of National Single Payer Plan and with Medicare For All. It was possible and doable. All things considered needed to happen. Yet the charlatan Obama went with the sure money and political greased handouts.

He went with the Tammany Hall method. He stands for nothing but whatever his Tammany Hall styled WH can rake off the top,sides or bottom. Rahn Emanuel being the willing bagman plain to see. Bunch of grifters.

Plenty of pundits,opinion throwers and silly team politics players are happy to go with the nonsense based story about how the Ds want to do what the Rs will not them.

That is pure simpleton BS. Barack Obama is for a Tammany Hall WH. He stands for paying off AHIP/PhRMA and letting the current wreck called American health care for profit load up more plunder. Nothing is being radically addressed or solved here. Nothing other than smooth talk and words on the wind geared towards playing Americans for suckers.

National Single Payer ultimately must be done. What a waste of time this last year was and evidently this year will be on doing legitimate HCR.

Barack Obama being the war criminal he is as it stands cannot even do decent Banana Republic populism politics. What a fraud.

Good thing WashingtonDC is doing “government in a box” in Afghanistan. When they get done in Afghanistan (in maybe 25 years?) they can bring some government in a box to United States.

In 25 years Americans will be also rans on the global stage.

>California style broke.

>With crap AHIP run healthcare.

>With dumb as wood Texan styled schooling.

>Fascists running the CIA and Pentagon — see post WW2 CIA/Pentagon history.

>Money politics and bribery based government doing fail everyday as the norm.

We will need government in a box. Just hope WashingtonDC or Israel or both don’t attack Iran meanwhile. Shitstorm idea if ever there was one.

Israel thinks it is a great idea. Expect the shitstorm.

I could’t agree more the current garbage bills need to be dumped. Not likely to happen. So no real reform is going to happen. .

It is a given. If any bill passed in the near future assures the cartel will remain in place.

Do you want it as it is with no regulation? Or do you want the implements for nationalization of at least rates to be developed?

I don’t disagree with any of that, but unfortunately, most of what’s in this bill, Rahm had a hand in. The buck does stop with Obama. Except when he lets it stop with Rahm.

Basically the profit in a competitive model is based on advertising and how to take advantage of ignorance of some consumers coupled with the relative lack of power.

We buy into the propaganda (“we know how best to spend our money, what know best we want etc.”) because we don’t want to admit that as a single individual we may not know as much or be as powerful. as an insurance cartel

Love that raw individualism!

I take exception to the ethnic hatred charge. I don’t think you’ll find anything resembling that in any of my comments.

My dislike of him is because he is, indeed, a bully, and nothing resembling a progressive, nor even a moderate. He’s just a political animal.

At this point in the health care debate people should have a clear notion of what the options are and basically it is between a for profit scheme of health insurance and a not for profit scheme.

In both schemes you contribute to a large pot of money from which your health care bills are paid. But in the for profit scheme the insurer (or payer) keeps as large a portion of the pot as he can for itself as profit. Whereas in the not for profit scheme the insurer uses the pot exclusively to pay your health bill.

So where is the complexity in this?

My $0.02 is that even if this new “regulatory agency” gets through, it’s just a straw man with no intention of really doing anything beyond PR. If you want to really reign in abuses, you need to change the rules of the game, not just add a bought-off referee.

“but unfortunately, most of what’s in this bill, Rahm had a hand in.” Prove it! So far all I’ve heard in here is guess work , theories ,tea leaf reading in this regard. Prove it with his words or someone’s words from inside. Other wise lets keep this aimed at the guy who hired these people and has made a public statement today and put out a plan with his name on it. A plan that almost all of us agree SUCKS!

I didn’t mean you had used any words that were along those lines. I apologize if you thought that was leveled at you personally. However, others over time in this site have very directly used such phrases and terms against Rahm and his ethnic background.

My point is that to accede to leaving the financing of health care to the same current for profit system while accepting some vague promise of rate regulation is not just to lose the battle but to lose the war entirely.

Accepting this promise, and it is nothing more than that, is a poor bargaining ploy. The brunt of the effort is to introduce alternative options into the current system such as the PO or better still the Medicare buy-in that directly chalenge the current system.

Accepting a rate regulating promise I don’t believe is a meaningful half step measure to where we want to end up. We should not deviate our focus from what we want.

Just more cynical politics. This guy is the most political president I have seen in a long time. Everything he does is calculated and always, always, leans toward the safest choice. If there were such things as genie’s, I would order them to implant a spine into Obama and give him a liberal ideology. His statement at the Republican retreat that he was not ideological should’ve signaled to us then, that when this bill was released we were going to be thoroughly pissed with it. And guess what, I am. This bill tells progressives and liberals to shove it. How he expects to sell this crap in November to the voters is beyond me. Here’s to a new congress in November led by the party of the “night of the living dead”, thanks to a president determined to reanimate these zombies. For all of the “hope” we had for a “real” new direction for America, it all ends in November. If you think nothing got done the last couple of years, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Or worse yet, Obama will be forced, or may actually agree with, conservative policies from a Republican party so far off the rail in right field, it can’t even find the tracks anymore.

Everything he does is calculated and always, always, leans toward the safest choice.

But endorsing the Senate bill (albeit with some emendations) is not a safe choice!

I respect your views.

I fear we are so jaded by betrayal after betrayal that it is becoming impossible to think positively or creatively. Maybe just a comfortable passive aggressive resistance and wait for the next chance is best reaction at this point.

I just hate to see Emanuel win by beating us down this way.

I too understand and respect your approach. But I have to say that I for one do not feel particularly beaten down by the repeated betrayals from Obama and Congress. I had him pegged for what he is from the time of the Bank bailouts and this impression has only been confirmed since.

Even though the left has an uphill fight with much opposition I feel that to fight on our terms is important. We need to accept that offerings from Obama are tainted. We have too much past proof of that to rely on anything other than the objectives we on the left along with the vast majority of the country wants.

Yes, well put. There is no ‘good’ Obama waiting to come out of the closet or being thwarted by his advisors. He was put in power by Wall Street and big money interests and he’s taking direction from them. They figured out that Bush was not a user-friendly enough fascist, so they gave us Obama. Make no mistake this is a third term of Bushite policies with a few little changes around the edges to make us think we can get ‘change we can believe in’ as soon as the ‘real’ Obama emerges from nefarious Republican thwarting,the magic 60 vote constraint, etc. The Obama regime is a cynical farce. The only democracy we have left is to vote out incumbents and replace them with people who are not professional politicians, who are not lawyers, who are not already bought and paid for by some special interests.

This “new” healthcare bill proposal isn’t a path forward to anything. It’s just an ugly mess.

Yes, they need to add authority to enforce the limitations on insurance industry, without that authority, it isn’t even a law, it’s a joke- but frankly without a public option, the whole thing is a waste. It should be taken apart, the pages rolled up and put in the toilet paper dispensers on The Hill. It also won’t pass. Since they refuse to use reconciliation, it will get, at best, 58 maybe 59 votes. FAIL.
Nobody should be blaming Rahm for this. He is only going to do what he’s told. His boss owns the responsibility. The Republicans are rubbing their hands, they smell blood in the water. And the dems are pointing the fingers at eachother. They’re starting to self destruct- with an 18 vote senate majority and 40+ (?) house majority ANd a presidency, they are starting to self destruct. Amazing.

There is way to much focus on the insurance companies. Look up any of the major insurance carriers and you will see 5-10% profit margins. These are not crazy margins. Premiums are going up 30-40% across the country right now because more and more people are dropping their coverage and since most of the people who choose to drop coverage are healthy the insurance companies are left with a higher percentage of people with medical issues. Sure we can regulate insurance company profit margins but that will get you at most a 10% cost reduction. To get bigger cost reductions you need to target doctors, hospitals, drug companies and medical equipment providers. In these sectors profit margins of 20-40% are not uncommon and real cost savings are possible. The problem is that both sides of aisle have too much at stake in terms of lobby dollars and the five second sound bite attacking the ruthless insurance company just sounds better than attacking the doctor down the street.
Health care costs more for less?