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Barack Obama
"Lincoln Sells Out Slaves"
by: Rob Kailey - Sep 13
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I Told You He Was No Good!
by: Rob Kailey - Jun 22
If You Haven't Seen This
by: Rob Kailey - Apr 28
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Impeach the President?
by: Rob Kailey - Mar 16
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It's the system, stupid!
by: Jay Stevens - Oct 25
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Rob Kailey is a working schmuck with no ties or affiliations to any governmental or political organizations, save those of sympathy.

To kill the bill, or not to kill the bill...

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 08:27:24 AM MST


From a recent Ezra Klein chat transcript:

Washington D.C.: As a progressive who strongly wants a public healthcare option (I've given up on advocating for single-payer, which would be my ideal world situation), should I be content with a plan that has no public option but has co-ops instead? How important is it for progressives to fight for a public options? Should we be willing to sacrifice it if necessary for passage of a bill?

Ezra Klein: Content? No. You should try to get the best bill you can and be content with nothing less. Should you kill a bill that will cover 40 million Americans and stop insurers from ever again rescinding coverage or discriminating based on preexisting conditions? Definitely not.

There are two things happening here. One is that reformers are trying to make people's lives better. The other is that reformers are trying to get the best bill they can. If the former condition is met and the latter condition is not, that's still progress.

Discuss.
Jay Stevens :: To kill the bill, or not to kill the bill...
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To kill the bill, or not to kill the bill... | 62 comments
Klein's argument is illogical. If the best bill would be a single payer bill as he states, (0.00 / 0)
then why would he not fight for the best knowing that he might have to settle for less?

I don't understand how he can make that argument for the public option yet pretend it doesn't exist for single payer.

My guess is that he''s about ready to give up on the public option, and maybe he will soon give up on rescission and pre-existing conditions as well.

He should be honest instead of deceptive though. What he's saying is that Romney Care (what Mitt passed in MA) is progress.

I'm trying to figure out why Ezra didn't vote for Romney if he thought he was progressive?

I mean are we doing all this to pass Romney care? Which by the way, isn't controlling costs so people benefits are being cut. Why didn't they just say so in the first place and save us all a lot of time money and energy?

Heck, if Romney were president this would have passed two months ago and we could be focusing on charter schools linking teacher pay to student test scores.

Wells stated Steve (0.00 / 0)

 I would NOT want Ezra in my Foxhole... he'd waving the 'white-flag' soon as the battle begins. LitW - Give UP on Ezra he's a Flake.
 When did he ever support Non-Profit Health Care Coverage? And he gets paid no matter what happens - i think Ezra is one of those closet HCANers or SEIU terds traveling all over MT pushing the ruse of Public Option
[ Parent ]
Steve, (0.00 / 0)
Klein's missive was absolutely logical.

If A than B
If C than D
A therefore B
~C therefore ~D

Remember B is making people's lives better.  You seem to have a problem with that if you don't get D, which is getting what you want.  You seem to think that if ~B than ~D.

All your 'guessing' aside, the one who makes no logical sense here is you.

[ Parent ]
Sorry, tansposed letters (0.00 / 1)
Steve thinks that ~D than ~B.  I couldn't be happier that Steve thinks himself so wise as to know what he can't argue, that making people's lives better depends on Steve getting what he wants.
[ Parent ]
Oh Steve (0.00 / 1)
You think basic logic is trolling now?

You are a terrified little man, aren't you?

[ Parent ]
Ezra Klein (0.00 / 0)
is often being fed misinformation...in my opinion...by his White House sources..

That said...is this the White House's latest line of BS?  Support a half ass bill because we aren't going to fight for anything better?

Kill it (0.00 / 0)
If the bill is a title and no substance that simply enshrines the profits of big Pharma, Health Ins. Co's and HMO's without any real improvement for the public Kill it.

If the bill is non functional generating a bueracratic nightmare> Kill it

If the bill is nothing more then a Title and a Photo op. Kill it

A bad billsertsus backfurther then no bill.

With a bad bill the oppenents can point at it and say see we tried and it doesn't work.

With no bill all they can say is that see we stopped it again.

okay... (0.00 / 0)
...but what makes this bill "enshrine[s] the profits of Big Pharma, Health Ins. Co's and HMO's without any real improvement for the public"?

What about insuring 40 million w/out insurance and ensuring the corps don't discriminate and honor their obligations benefits private industry? Certainly it does opposed to single-payer in that it preserves them...

I'm serious here. Is it that you think Congress will stop there, never to pick up health care reform again? (JC had a comment a while back explaining why imposing a community standard would actually benefit insurance corps...I wish I could remember its points...)

And why is everybody so angry about this? I mean...neither the president or Baucus ever promised anything else?

[ Parent ]
How would what Klein describes be any different from Romney care, Jay? (0.00 / 1)
The insurance industry didn't fight Romney care because it insured that tax dollars would flow to them forever.

http://politics.theatlantic.co...

The url is to an Aug 3rd interview with Karen Ignagni, the president of the America' Health Insurance Plans, (AHIP) the industry's lobby. She says the same thing. The insurers love Romney care because it means more money for them.

More money for them, though, has to mean less money for health care ultimately.

More money for private insurance companies means more power for private insurance companies. It means real reform will become even more difficult.

It means the Dems agree that Mitt Romney has the answer to this countries problems.

So why would anyone want to vote Dem when they could vote for people who have the answers?

[ Parent ]
...is Romney care worse than the status quo? (0.00 / 0)
Honestly, I don't know enough about the results of the MA insurance plan. The Boston Globe recently had an editorial about it that was quite positive. And that paper is hardly regressive or pro-corporate...
[ Parent ]
which is another way of saying... (0.00 / 0)
...make your point with information. If the MA insurance plan is bad, let's see some data, numbers, or a cogent article.
[ Parent ]
My point is that pharma and insurance are eager (0.00 / 1)
for what's going down.
The more money sucked out, the less left over for health care. And the plan is devised to suck out a lot more money.

Here an article from Forbes that says Romney care is unsustainable because it doesn't control costs. It says MA pays 1/3 more per person average than the national per capita.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/...

I find it hard to believe that even you can rationalize that sucking even more money out of the system for privateers is in the public good?

This is fascistic health care Jay, it's the government institutionalizing, subsidizing and using the force of government for the enrichment of private business interests.

If I have to draw you a picture, I'm happy to but I think the point is pretty obvious.

item: The program has weighed down the state budget. In the last two years alone, spending on free and subsidized insurance plans for low-income citizens of the Bay State has doubled from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion this year. "In tough times," as State Treasurer Timothy Cahill recently said, "[the program] just doesn't seem doable. We're all still waiting for the savings."

[ Parent ]
Globe's editorial (0.00 / 0)
Says this:

The facts - according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation - are quite different. Its report this spring put the cost to the state taxpayer at about $88 million a year, less than four-tenths of 1 percent of the state budget of $27 billion. Yes, the state recently had to cut benefits for legal immigrants, and safety-net hospital Boston Medical Center has sued for higher state aid. But that is because the recession has cut state revenues, not because universal healthcare is a boondoggle. The main reason costs to the state have been well within expectations? More than half of all the previously uninsured got coverage by buying into their employers' plans, not by opting for one of the state-subsidized plans.

Eighty-eight million vs 106 billion? But then the Forbes editorial you posted was written by a free-market conservative who's against any kind of subsidization of health care. In short, poor choice to assess the MA model.

And when did the MA plan ever attempt to address costs, anyway? And when did we ever ascribe costs purely to insurance? Didn't the http://www.newyorker.com/repor... Atul Gawande New Yorker piece] essentially lay the blame of rising costs on pay-per-fee service of private institutions? Which, by the way, because of the state's investment in health-care insurance, it's trying to change?

Oh yeah, and the MA plan is favored by nearly 70 percent of the state's citizens.

If we adopt a national version of the MA plan with cost controls and an accessible health insurance exchange...I think an argument could be made that we'd be a lot better off than with the status quo...

[ Parent ]
Argue my secondary point if you wish, So be it. Check out the board of directors of (0.00 / 1)
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation
http://www.masstaxpayers.org/a...

Well represented by health care industrial complex people and lots of banks. The new face of the Democratic Party apparently.

I read the Atul Gawande piece and pointed out some criticism of it at the time it came out and was posted at this blog.

Canada is fee for service and has been very successful containing costs and covering everyone with no co-pays or deductibles for years now. They have spent far far less per capita with far better outcomes than we have, for years now.

The MA plan has an insurance exchange. I thought you said that cuts costs, not benefits, like the MA plan has been cutting.

There is always a reason why benefits are cut. they are always cut in all of the private/public plans ever tried in the US when costs go up. But Canada isn't cutting benefits. In fact they have been expanding them for years now.

If you believe siphoning more money out of the system to private insurers  for a Republican plan is the answer, you of course are entitled to your opinion. i don't share your optimism.

Privatization of public functions is the trade mark of the New Democrats. I'm opposed.

[ Parent ]
Here's a study that says the MA plan isn't so hot (0.00 / 1)
http://pnhp.org/mass_report/ma...
Massachusetts' Plan: A Failed Model for
Health Care Reform

Maybe you will like it better tan an Opinion piece  from Forbes.

[ Parent ]
between a rock and a hard place... (0.00 / 0)
...so the two opinions we dredged up are that of a right-wing free market fanatic and a corporate think tank? Any sane evaluation of the MA plan exist?

How would you ascribe higher medical costs to insurance companies? I mean, financially, they have a stake in keeping the policies high, but the actual costs low.

And explain to me all over again why Gawande was wrong, why pay-for-service works. Or at least link to the last comment...

[ Parent ]
Look up, I posted a study. I think it's a sane evaluation. (0.00 / 0)
Health Insurance companies suck money out of the system for overhead and profit. Those are charges that people pay through one form or another, whether it be taxes or it's in the form of premiums, co-pays or other out of pocket expenses.

Insurance Companies often invest their premiums. Do you imagine they might invest in hospitals, or equipment manufacturing, or in pharma?  As far as I know there is no anti-trust law concerning insurance, delivery, drugs and equipment.

Gawande says he doubts financing has anything to do with cost, even though Canada has done far better than the US in containing costs.

He also gets all of his data for his article from Medicare, because that is public information. If all health care were privately financed he wouldn't have had access to data to even write his piece, let alone come to any conclusions.

His conclusions weren't particular revolutionary if one looks at the VA or the British system, it's clear that fee for service can often cost more since more services can also means more income. However, there are numerous ideas out there about ways to contain costs in a fee for service system, as well as ideas about containing costs through turning all care providers into salaried or hourly employees. And there are arguments pro and con for each approach. So I'm not advocating that everything Gawande write has zero merit nor am I arguing that it is all perfect and above criticism.

As for the last line I would direct you to the Clinton Administration where privatization took off in a number of areas like prisons and welfare, and NAFTA/IMF/World Bank policies supported by the US, and to some of the ideas coming out of the Obama administration about welfare and education.


[ Parent ]
...will non-profit health care ever return? (0.00 / 0)
"...ensuring the corps don't discriminate and honor their obligations benefits private industry?"  There is no where in the Constitution that gives such powers to the Predatory Capitalist Pigs but they have it!!! And it's smart not to promise anything in this arena when the pernicious powers are against You and Me and the POTUS
 These Predatory Capitalist Pigs have stifled and muted and sunk and debased health care reform for 80 years! And they have plans to continue shutting down reform.

 The last try was a dismal failure as it was predicated on the DLC Neo-Liberal / Billary model but never the less getting Reform (not Reforming/ death by incremental ism) is hard to come by and call it success.

[ Parent ]
How is it an improvement? (0.00 / 0)
How will the bill give health care to the uninsured? Or will it just offer the illusion of health care?
From what I have read it is becoming just smoke and mirrors.
Single payer is unworthy of discussion. The Public option is on its way out. Co-ops, whatever they are, are becoming the illusion of availability of health care.

If there is no limit on premiums and the Ins. Co.'s make health care "available" only with exorbitant premiums is that an improvement?

If Pharma is promised that the "health Co-ops" are legally barred from negotiating prices is that an improvement?

If people are required to pay whatever the Ins. companies charge with no mandate of adequate care ( including catastrophic, dental, health etc) is that an improvement?

This bill is becoming an empty shell born of sound and fury and delivering nothing.

[ Parent ]
How will it (0.00 / 0)
insure 40 million without insurance? Details!!!!  From what I have seen there is little or no incentives to lower costs and the insurance companies will get more business...and there is nothing there to provide competition in states like Montana....it really doesn't solve many "problems"....
"The likely victors are insurance giants " (4.00 / 1)
I think folks need to read this article in BusinessWeek to get off to a good start on this topic. It seems the pre-postmortems are already starting to crop up,and they don't look good.

The Health Insurers Have Already Won
How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit

As the health reform fight shifts this month from a vacationing Washington to congressional districts and local airwaves around the country, much more of the battle than most people realize is already over. The likely victors are insurance giants such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Aetna (AET), and WellPoint (WLP). The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill... insurance CEOs [will] be smiling...

It boils down to ensuring that whatever overhaul Congress passes this year will help rather than hurt huge insurance companies....

The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business...

What people in Washington tend not to discuss, at least on the record, is the open secret that insurers are minimizing their forecasts of the eventual windfall they will enjoy from expanded coverage for Americans...

A fundamental question about the health overhaul is what minimum standards will apply to the coverage all Americans will be required to have. UnitedHealth has been exchanging a high volume of information on the topic with members of the Senate Finance Committee and their staff... Senators stung by the projected $1 trillion price tag are winnowing down the required coverage levels to cut costs.

This is good news for UnitedHealth, which benefits when patients pick up more of the tab.

I'll tell you, this article makes me want to just junk the whole process. Basically, the private insurance industry, led by UnitedHealth is going to get its claws permanently enmeshed in our health care system as it gets more and more privatized--even if we get a modest and weak public option.

I'd like to hear Klein's response to this article. It ought to be interesting.

Jay, I think this article (4.00 / 1)
answers your question about my comments about community rating and insurance companies.

Once again our country goes down the road of privatizing profit and publicizing risk. The health insurers get to keep the healthiest and wealthiest, get the government to subsidize the poor and unhealthy and the elderly. And to top it off, they get the contracts from the government to manage the unprofitable sector. The best of all worlds.

One can argue, like Klein does, that for a tradeoff of maybe adding 40 million to the insured ranks, and some modest reform for current policy holders, that letting insurers get further entrenched is a good thing.

But for many it is a poisoned pill. Our health insurer industry will become more like our financial industry--too big to fail. Reform becomes more and more unlikely as crony capitalism sinks its claws further and further into our basic human needs.

I see a vision of the future that isn't all that appealing. Sure, maybe I'll get a health insurance policy of some kind that will hold me till I get onto Medicare. Maybe not.

Baucus' "uniquely American" vision just leaves me feeling like the future is fraught with peril and uncertainty. Health care reform was meant to address the notion of "health security." And with corporate giants like UnitedHealth in charge of our healthcare system and politicians, I feel nothing but health insecurity. I kinda feel about them like I feel about Goldman Sachs, AIG and all the rest. Which is to say, I fell pretty sh*tty about the whole thing.

Crony capitalism has to go. Or it will be the death of this country as we know it.

[ Parent ]
I disagree (0.00 / 0)
I don't think at all that Klein is arguing that letting insurance get more entrenched is a "good thing".  You assume he argues that because you see it as a bad thing and he says that moving forward is better than moving nowhere.  It (insurance get more entrenched) is a bad thing, and Ezra would agree with you.  But the addendum that the uncovered would be covered is a good thing.  It is a step in the right direction.
[ Parent ]
Well, putting aside (0.00 / 0)
Klein's arguments, lets look at my basic point. Is it worth it for 40 million more to get insurance, if that results in the insurance industry getting a larger stranglehold on healthcare? That is a fair point to debate, and a necessary one.

A corollary I would point to would be the mortgage meltdown. Was it worth it that millions of people got mortgages they couldn't service, with the result being that it eventually led to foreclosures and a financial disaster that almost thrust this country into another Depression? Hindsight is 20/20 in this case.

Of course I think that 40 million getting insurance is a good thing. There was a time when I thought that all those millions getting mortgages and owning homes was a good thing. Getting insurance from the private sector? Not so sure. I still maintain my mantra of mandate for people to purchase private equals a fascist solution. And that seems to be what the BW article is pointing to.

What i'm worrying about, and what the BusinessWeek article is pointing to, is the unintended, unforeseen consequences of current congressional action. Once corporations like UnitedHealth get even bigger, richer and more powerful, what's going to stop the trend of increasing premiums and diminishing benefits and purchased legislators? I don't see any of that kind of controls in the legislation. No caps on out-of-pocket. No controls on premium increases. Nothing to address medical bankruptcy.

Without a true public option, there is no competition in the system that will provide an effective counterbalance to corporate greed. And unless a co-op is given powers equal to a strong public option, that won't help, and I don't see that happening.

And who knows what horrible ideas are going to sneak in for the final compromise? Here, look at Klein's reporting on the "free-rider tax." What else is lurking in the minds of corporate America to push into and out of this bill at the last minute?

I see two silver linings: 1) that the Kucinich amendment allowing a few states to opt out of the proposed new system and trial a single payer system might survive, and provide a competing model to the Massachusetts one to build on when our "uniquely American" system continues to fail us; and 2) the coop system can be a trojan horse, given that it is structured in a way that will provide some real clout, and that those seeking policies who are costed out of the private system or desire a customer-owned solution can afford a plan there.

Wulfgar, I know you don't like the concept of single payer because you like choice. But those on Medicare or Medicaid already don't have a choice--you going to berate your having to go on Medicare when you turn 65? You haven't a choice with Social Security--you want to demand that you be allowed to invest your SS money in the stock market? And single payer only means that the government collects the money, and pays the bill. But the money could go to a full-fledged national co-op to let them pay the bills and run the system. Or there could be levels of service above a basic benefits packages, provided by private insurers--like Canada has. Plenty of choice for augmenting a basic government-provided, single payer system in Canada. Unfortunately, the notion of American exceptionalism and mistaken idea that single-payer eliminates all choice keeps people from really looking at options that may provide a far better system than we currently have.

[ Parent ]
just one quibble with your comment... (0.00 / 0)
...and that mortgages and insurance are so insanely different, it's hardly productive comparing them...

I mean...mortgages are feasible only if the borrower can pay back the loan...and the whole financial structure that collapsed was built on a house of cards made of bets that risky loans wouldn't fail...and bets that those that made the bets wouldn't fail...and so on.

I can't see how expanding the pool of insured -- presumably many of them the healthy, or excellent risks, the exact opposite of those drawn into the mortgage fiasco -- has any comparable risk. Expanding insurance, in theory, makes the whole system more stable...

[ Parent ]
The two industries (0.00 / 0)
may be entirely different, but they both affect a similar part of the GDP. In other words, a major slice of the economy. And how much did raising costs of healthcare, insurance and medical bankruptcy affect the foreclosure crisis? A whole lot. And conversely, how much did the mortgage and financial meltdown affect people's healthcare? A whole lot.

We've got a system now ran by a bunch of bad guys--the insurance industry. What we are saying in effect is that we will allow them to get bigger and richer in order to regulate them a little bit more.

I just happen to think that the amount of regulation that is being imposed far underweighs the benefits the insurance industry is going to get out of it.

And with Obama starting to refer to reform as "health insurance reform" more and more, I am convinced that we are not really going to get major health care reform but instead  a minor  insurance reform that advances insurers grips on the system.

Look, everybody says we're going to get 40 million people into the system. I find that suspect, even. I'd like to be proven wrong 5 years from now, but I just feel that the insurers and the government are going to find a whole bunch of new exemptions, and the numbers may be closer to 5 or 10 million. Where's the guarantees? I don't see them yet.  

[ Parent ]
Why I argue as I do (0.00 / 1)
JC, I realize that my arguments may not often make a great deal of sense to advocates of this plan or that.  Kindly accept this.

I believe that this country, unlike any other, was founded on the rule of law.  Let me write that again:  The Rule Of Law.  There are good laws, there are bad laws.  Bad laws are easy to spot; they generally are self contradictory (sin taxes) and/or do not apply to solve the problem they attempt to alleviate.  Good laws serve the greatest number in the best possible fashion.  Many advocates of health care reform have referred to Insurance Companies as criminal enterprises. They aren't, because we have the rule of law.  They are immoral and despicable and worthy of being vomited on, but they are legal.  To want to change that is noble, and I agree with it.

But, the only way that the rule of law has sway is if people have a choice.  That is Democracy to its roots.  To mandate that people accept government health provision is no better than the draft.  It is establishing exactly what the right wing claims it does, a Nanny state.  It is stating, in no uncertain terms, that the law considers the polity incapable of making appropriate choice.  That is, simply put, un-democratic and un-American.  It is the wrong thing to do, when there is a vastly more democratic solution available.  Offer choice through a strong public option.

I've explained to MarkT and idiots like Steve W that I think that a single payer system is inevitable, as a movement of history if the country is to survive in its current form.  The only way to get there is to establish a clear choice between insurance profit and getting what you pay for.  To mandate that people must accept government beneficence is little or nothing more than fascism.  It will fail for that very reason.

Somehow or another (I blame Reagan) we have decided that we have a country of laws we like which we follow and laws we don't, which we are welcome to ignore.  This is not democracy.  It is mob rule.  See, jackasses like Beck think that mob rule has a movement and cohesion.  No, it doesn't.  Mob rule is assholes doing what they want expecting the results they want, kinda like Steve W does.  That isn't rule of law. That's rule of the loudest.  The biggest tantrum gets what they want.  Sadly, single payer idjits don't understand that they haven't a hope in hell of being louder than lobbyists.  Lobbyists have money.  Weak advocates have only abuse against disagreement.  Losers, the lot of them.  People who understand the difference between laws liked/disliked and laws good/bad will always see the former as losers.  That's reality, and the others only deal in emotion.

With me, it is not a matter of 'liking choice'.  It is simply that choice is necessary to defend the rule of law.  Take away choice, and the law is simply obligation to authority.  We might as well be North Korea.  We're not.  We've been finding better ways for 220 years.  Why is it so difficult and or desperate that we ignore that strength  now?  It isn't.  Create the opportunity to involve yourself in the largest pool of insurance holders, with a non-profit like the US government, and you have a winner.  Tell people that they will be forced to do anything and you have riots and gun-women trying to blow up FEMA camps (National Guard stations.)

If I make it that far, I look forward to turning 65.  But I won't sell what I love about my country for a weak assurance that an illogical git like Steve will control how I get there.

[ Parent ]
I agree JC, In fact this so called reform will both break the bank and result in (0.00 / 1)
discrediting reform in the long run because it is clearly not sustainable. It is yet again another short term quick fix for the benefit of the so-called "stakeholders" (the health care industrial complex, the members of congress, and some union leaders)and completely throws the public under the bus in the medium to long run. It's bad policy and the fix is in as far as crony capitalism goes, you are absolutely correct in my opinion.
[ Parent ]
that's what worries me.. (0.00 / 0)
This: "...result in discrediting reform in the long run..."

Honestly, I still think that if all this results in a pared-down bill that insures 40 million and sets more controls over insurers, folks will scratch their heads and wonder what Democrats were doing in Congress.

[ Parent ]
Ezra Klein... (0.00 / 0)
...always said that the Health Insurance Exchange may be the most important thing about this health-care reform push. If it's widely available to Americans, it could at least force insurance companies to compete with one another. And, according to the latest House bill, that's where the public option would be available.

So I don't think it's fair to say that Klein's satisfied with this kind of reform. I thought he was saying if that's all the reform does, it would be foolish to kill it.

[ Parent ]
I can always count on you, JC... (0.00 / 0)
...for a lovely explanation -- accompanied by a cogent article -- of why you believe what you do.

Thanks. I'll definitely read...

[ Parent ]
Any reform that doesn't address cost isn't a solution. It's a temporary fix. And (0.00 / 1)
cost will never be addressed as long as we have the fiduciary responsibility of private insurance companies to put profit before peoples well being.

Government on the other hand is under no such restriction concerning people's well being.

costs... (0.00 / 0)
Not all costs belong to the insurers. I think we can all agree that profit and inefficient administration add plenty to the cost of insurance and health care, and should be curbed.

But there's also the cost of the pay-for-service fees of private hospitals, which gives health care providers incentive to avoid spending time with patients and instead giving them expensive, unneeded tests and treatment.

[ Parent ]
That is... (0.00 / 0)
...insurers, too, have a financial incentive to lower these costs. (They wouldn't lower the price of their policies...)
[ Parent ]
Oh, it's just Jay being Jay ... (0.00 / 1)
Didn't we all know that no matter what came down the pipe he'd buy in? No fight in that guy, no salt. I do not respect that. I do not admire you, Jay. I think you're afraid of confrontation, of fighting for your beleifs.

No, we could not have single payer. But fighting for it was worthwhile, because even if we didn't get it, we might wrest a strong public option out of it. But no, you said, don't try to attain the unattainable, seek compromise first. And that is what we got. Except now a strong public option is off the table too, and we are left with what the insurance industry wanted at the start, weak local coops that will be easily crushed by the insurance people. We're screwed. Costs will go up, insurance profits will go up. We had a golden opportunity, and you blew it.

It's not personal, Jay. It's Democrats. Weak, malleable, susceptible to threats, easily mollified. I say that about all of them in general, and leave you to your own concierge.  

I think the fix was in from the start, at the top. They weren't weak, they were greedy. (0.00 / 0)
But since people don't want to see just how greedy many of our top elected officials are, they instead assume that it's weakness. I admire their ability to sell a phantom diversion to so many people and not have those people figure out how hoodwinked they have been. These people still blame the insurance companies and big pharma for blocking reform, when it's clear to anybody that looks that the insurance companies and big pharma have been working hand in glove with this administration since day one for this very outcome.

[ Parent ]
Here's some pretty good evidence of where things were going from the start (0.00 / 0)
I wonder if Jim Messina told anybody at the Mayor's fund raiser that the administration had already negotiated away the right to bargain for better rates on life saving drugs and the sovereign right to import  life saving drugs from other countries at rates Americans can afford?

Anybody hear anything about that back then?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08...

August 6, 2009
White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

snip:
In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

"We were assured: 'We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,' " Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. "Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don't keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead."

snip:
A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin's account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.

"The president encouraged this approach," Mr. Messina wrote. "He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform."

The new attention to the agreement could prove embarrassing to the White House, which has sought to keep lobbyists at a distance, including by refusing to hire them to work in the administration.

[ Parent ]
Why? (0.00 / 0)
After combing through a slough of insults, I have yet to find a single reason why. You state your position as if it's a given, that a compromise will necessarily be bad. Show me. Prove it. Until you do, you're just rude.

I remember a trip to DC as a high-schooler on one of those learn-your-government trips, during which a lobbyist spoke to us. He told us there are two kinds of advocates: lunatics and lobbyists. Lobbyists have alternatives to current policies, and arguments supporting them. Lunatics don't.

Mark T: in this debate you are clearly a lunatic.

[ Parent ]
besides... (0.00 / 0)
...you never answered the question of the post.

Would you kill it the bill described by Klein?

And where did you assume I would accept the plan as he describes it? I just want to know what it really is, what it would actually do. Which apparently doesn't interest you. You'd rather trot out your cliches.

[ Parent ]
We were pretty much screwed from the beginning .. (0.00 / 0)
When we talked only about health "insurance", and not health care. We are, in fact, really good at providing health care to one another. Doctors and nurses and hospitals are really good at their jobs. It is the insurance people who screw it up for us. They do that because they have to - they must avoid sick people and deny claims and rescind policies to stay in business.

So health "insurance" was the problem, and we attempted to fix it by ... allowing health insurers to bribe our public officials? And what did we expect out of this? Reform you say?

We are in the process of getting a really good screwing. Not a total screwing, but a really good one. In Democratic parlance, that is called "victory".  

I ask you... (0.00 / 0)
...what ever gave you notion we were in for real reform? What politician promised single-payer reform? I mean, besides Kucinich and Nader? Both of whom were slaughtered at the polls.

So, tell me, just how would you impose your brand on health-care reform on the country? I mean, seriously? You call me a coward, but here you are, hiding like a scrub, wallowing in your impotence and mistaking it for virtue.

Folks like Steve W and JC try to make a case for their point of view. And they're very convincing. You? You turn people away from your point of view. You're worse than nothing on this issue: you're single-payer smallpox.

[ Parent ]
I can understand your reaction to name calling, (4.00 / 1)
Jay. And it's understandable that you are most offended when you are the brunt of it. However I would point out there there is another poster on this board who calls lots of other posters names all the time who never seems to receive any "official" public admonishment for it. Maybe that poster has privileges to behave abusively, I don't know what the deal with that is. But i would think that if the policy of this blog is that posters should treat other posters with civility, then it would help that cause to be even-handed in your admonishments. After I realized that the abuse would continue unabated, I decided to not feed the troll, so to speak, and quit responding to that person.

Anyway, here is an excellent article by an excellent writer (Kip Sullivan)and health care systems expert  that i believe goes right to the point of the division between the active supporters of single payer and those who are our allies in universal coverage but who always end up supporting market driven solutions that keep failing to contain costs and provide universal coverage.

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/

I hope both you and Mark read it, and I hope Mark abandons the tactics of personal derision for the better tactic of exposing weak arguments for what they are. And I hope you call on everyone to quit name calling.


[ Parent ]
wulfgar has dispensation from the pope..... (0.00 / 0)
steve.....think of wulfgar as the drill sargeant we all need to go out and face the real enemy. he sharpens the swords. god knows there are enough soft-talking good liberals around here. we need toughness to face neo-cons, who have no mercy at all....

trust me. wulfgar will drill you into the ground....but he just might keep you alive out there too....

[ Parent ]
Whatever. I stayed alive on the doors for three years raising my (0.00 / 0)
110.00 dollars a night+ in any and all neighborhoods, from OR to ID to WA to MT to MN to MD to CA. talking to everyone at every door about lefty issues in person.

If abusive manners and imo weak writing is what we need, then he certainly fits the bill.

Did you happen to read that piece by Kip Sullivan on the history of the left's failure to reform health care by retreating to market driven fad solutions?

 

[ Parent ]
Yeah well (0.00 / 0)
Maybe when you grow up and get a real job, you'll understand some of the rest of us better.
[ Parent ]
i can assure you, single parenting is a real job. Not that you would or should know that, of course. (0.00 / 0)
You sound very proud of your job, Wulfgar.

Do you see it an important job that gives you a sense of real self satisfaction and a real sense of identity?

My dad is a WWII vet and a life long Democrat who was active  in party politics when he was younger.  Many years ago he told me that in his opinion, one of the main differences between whether people viewed themselves as Democrats or as Republicans was that Republicans were elitists. They tended to view themselves as somehow entitled to certain privileges, as better than, or as intrinsically superior to other people.

Do you feel your job makes you better than other people who might have a different job? It sort of sounds like that. As if you think your job is somehow "more real" than other people's jobs.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

When you say, "..some of the rest of us.." who are you speaking for? Are you the spokes person or representative for some group? Or are you in the habit of using the royal "we" a lot? Who is the "us" you are referring to?

Thanks, I'm just attempting to understand why you come off as such a self-satisfied, self-centered, narcissistic elitist, most of the time. Is that who you are, or is that just how you come across in type?

[ Parent ]
Goodness gracious me ... (0.00 / 0)
I knew you had comprehension difficulties, but this is a hoot.  "Some of the rest of us" now implies a "group" to be labeled or spoken for?  I guess it does; the group who isn't you.  Considering how self-absorbed you remain, it shouldn't surprise me that you would find that there are people not you somehow ...odd.  Indeed, it doesn't surprise me.  It amuses me.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

Oh, you certainly do.  Ya see, I think you've been advocating for so long that you, very much like our Congress, have completely lost sight of the way that rest of us live.  These are the very people you are now segregating into worthy and not based on your own weak idea of how important you are.  You have your ideals, and your good works; bully for you.  Here's a hint you might want to grab onto (most of the rational live with truth every day):

No matter how important or noble or moral you think you are, 99.99999993% of the rest of the world doesn't give a shit.

And yet look at you!  So proud, so important to be knocking on doors annoying people.  So intensely arrogant to be doing what many women have done for years and decades and centuries.  And here you are, at a website telling us all about how you don't understand that any here would disagree with you.  On that, you and I agree completely.  You really don't understand.  That's why you project so very well:

I'm just attempting to understand why you come off as such a self-satisfied, self-centered, narcissistic elitist, most of the time.

You don't understand that in me because you can't even imagine someone being as good at those disorders as yourself.  But please, you keep looking for them.  You will find those qualities in a person someday ... when you bother to look in a mirror.

[ Parent ]
Thanks for the thought (0.00 / 0)
I mean that sincerely, problembear.  However, though I've been through Catechumen, I never became Catholic.  No dispensations for this heathen.

But, as I've been trying to point out, the rabid all-or-nothing crowd is no better on the left than it is on the right.  When Bush solidified 'with us or against us' into the national zeitgeist, I don't think he meant for liberals to take it up as a standard. Then again, maybe he did, but then he's an idiot.

No, I don't find WUOAU thinking any better from those who claim to know what's best for us on either side of the cultural divide.  If anything, I find it worse from the left because I expect them to be smarter than that.  So much for my expectations.

[ Parent ]
Oops ... (0.00 / 0)
Should read ... "You can't just turn a problem like this over to corporate Democrats and expect a good outcome.... I would have liked to see small improvements like free clinics and mandated community rating pools. " My ITouch inserts words for me.

I did not call you any names. Read again please. You are a Democrat, and it is in the nature of the beast to be conciliatory rather than assertive. At the national level, I suspect it is mere posturing by conservatives who are DINO's, but at the individual level, Democrats do tend to sit back and let the leaders do the work, doing very little organizing beyond getting Democrats elected and hoping for the best. That's what happened under Clinton, and what is happening now. You elect them and hope for the best.

You continually put me in the single-payer only box, now calling me "smallpox", you damned name caller you. It's got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with your standing in the path of a steamroller, and not realizing what is coming down. You're poking around looking for good things that might come out of the pancaking process.

Anyway, back off Jack. I'll go toe-to-toe with you any day, and I have the advantage of understanding the insurance business, and why both doesn't work and cannot work.  

[ Parent ]
you miss the point entirely... (0.00 / 0)
So. Tell me, Mr. Insurance Expert, how would you go about even minor reforms without Democrats or (I presume) Republicans to carry a bill in Congress?

BTW, never claimed private insurance worked. If you're amenable to minor reforms, why not, you know, consider the minor reforms that are being suggested? You brush them off without explanation. If you're ready to go "toe-to-toe," bring it on. Say something. Contribute.

I'm sure there are plenty of readers like me who wonder if these small steps are worthwhile. You say, no, but don't explain. Maybe there are folks out there with pre-existing conditions who are maybe too young for Medicare who would, you know, actually get insurance and coverage and some relief on their medical bills as a result of this legislation.

Tell 'em why they'd be better off with the status quo.

[ Parent ]
Health care reform has been at the top of many agendas for decades ... (0.00 / 0)
Why now? Did reform groups coalesce and flex their muscles? Not hardly. There was as much pressure on Kerry in 2004 as Obama in 2008, but Kerry did nothing.
So. Tell me, Mr. Insurance Expert, how would you go about even minor reforms without Democrats or (I presume) Republicans to carry a bill in Congress?

Insult aside, here's where you go wrong. You assume that Democrats or Republicans "carry bills". True enough, but who writes the bills? (Hint - not D's or R's, not reformers.)

Your mistake is to mistake this process for reform. American doesn't work like that. We are led by false freinds and faux reformers, and when an opportunity like this presents itself, these are the people who "lead", and invariably they take us down the path of subsidy and reinforcement of corporate privilege.

You are absolutely blind to this - you presume that if discussion is going on, if bills are being carried and reforms proposed, that we have a process, and that something good will come out of it. Once again, I won't use the 't' word, but I'll be damned if you aren't 't'd at every corner, and if you don't view every trap as progress. Were you of age during the Clinton years? You're a perfect Clintonite.

True health care reform will come in a stumbling manner, with local reforms, as San Francisco's public option, setting a good example (probably to be outlawed by your reform people.) It will spread if left alone. Eventually we will work our way around these insurance monsters, but not by your efforts, not by Democrats "carrying bills"! Insurance companies do not finance Democrats to work against them.

You are an obstacle to reform. You are supporting a process that will stifle reform. You are a Democrat. Democrats are the problem, ergo, you are part of the problem. (Get the syllogism there Wulfgar?)

You've insulted me at every turn from the day this debate started. I have pointed out, with vigor, that you are a pawn in a larger process of further corruption of our health care system. You've taken it all very personally, not because you are sensitive, as you are immune and indifferent to brute insult (witness your blasé attittude about Wulfgar's viscous comments, which are not directed at you).

You take special umbrage at me because my comments hit home. I have not insulted you. I have only said things that are true. That is the worst cut of all.  

[ Parent ]
again... (0.00 / 0)
...you refuse to answer my questions.

Again, you seem to be saying you don't mind "stumbling" to reform. I can't think of a better "stumble" than this effort. Yet now, and still, you refuse to even consider what's on the table, yet have the audacity to call me out for examining what's going on.

Instead, you hide behind (wordy) generalizations and stubborn prejudice. "Your mistake is to mistake this process for reform," you write, "American doesn't work like that. We are led by false freinds and faux reformers..." Do you know what the word reform actually means? Because in this comment, it doesn't seem like you do. Reform isn't sweeping change. It's not revolution. It's "betterment."

Again, as the reform stands, some people would benefit greatly. What do you say to those that will have access to insurance, and, consequently, to care because of this reform?

Instead you accuse me of being "blind" to the "path of subsidy" and "reinforcement of corporate privileges." I am? Demonstrate. Have I ever denied these points? You invent thoughts and beliefs for me, and attack them, yet you remain unfailing blithe to your own offensiveness. You call me a "pawn" and a "coward," yet write "I have not insulted you." And then you claim your words "hurt" because "they speak the truth"? Er, maybe they hurt because you're being hurtful.

And yet! Still! Not a word to defend your accusations! Not a word to explain why this proposed reform is worse than the status quo. Not a word. Yes! I'm challenging you to toss your broken record and actually engage the issue!

Tho' I doubt you're rise the challenge.

[ Parent ]
Me being obtuse ... me being obtuse ... (0.00 / 0)
From the very beginning I said that this process was fraught with danger, that we would merely add subsidy and mandates to the private insurance system and that it would be more expensive in the end. We cannot afford it. It's already too expensive.

Wulfgar jumped all over me and said that I did not understand incrementalism, and now you are singing the same tune. I said it was better to do nothing. What is so fricking hard to unnastan about that? Why do I now have to critique the peanuts you're taking back in exchange for big bucks?

And insults - I've been through a divorce, I've been called everything you can imagine. The only guy who really knows how to insult me is Budge, because he says things that are true. Everything else bounces off. Which was my point to you. I could call you a jerk, a loser, an SOB - none of it would matter, as none of it is true and you wouldn't even think about it.

All this talk about incrementalism is nonsense. Incrementalism is Gavin Newsome in San Francisco, simply doing a public option on his own. It's working, Kaiser has folded into it. If it is the right thing to do, it will spread. That's incrementalism. Canada did it that way, province by province, but they did not do it by paying huge chunks of money to insurance companies. They simply kicked them out. One province at a time. Incrementally.

I don't think you understand incrementalism. You're confusing it with strategic retreat, actually, with just selling out.

Selling out - massively selling out - and then taking a few Astro Glide gestures back as compensation - that will block real reform. That will become our health care system.

Let me ask you: Are seniors better off now with Medicare D, paying premiums (even if they don't take drugs) and very high drug prices, than they were before going to Canada? But we got incremental reform. We're worse off, we can't change it. We're screwed.

That kind of reform I can live without. There is nothing to be said about a massive sellout other than it is a massive sellout. Stop kidding yourself.

As Dragline kept saying to Luke, "Stay down.You're beat."  

[ Parent ]
No Mark, I didn't. (0.00 / 0)
Wulfgar jumped all over me and said that I did not understand incrementalism,

I said and I meant that you don't understand negotiation and game theory.  I know that you have some kind of understanding of incrementalism.  Our disagreement was your silly assertion that I don't.  

[ Parent ]
I deal with it all ... (0.00 / 0)
Here ... http://pieceofmind.wordpress.c...

I am not Steve W or JC. I do not believe, as they seem to, that we can work this process to our favor. We need to abort.  

[ Parent ]
Mark, don't read beliefs (0.00 / 0)
into my motives. "We" cannot work this process to "our" favor. This process is 100% out of control of anything I can do or say. Or any of us here, for that matter.

I am merely an observer with an opinion. My beliefs are not necessarily belied by my words.

[ Parent ]
Are you talking about the insurance company giveaway bill, HR3200? (0.00 / 0)
I think giving private insurance companies 1 trillion dollars in return for them no longer excluding people with pre-existing conditions is very bad public policy.

I am opposed to this bill.
I will fight it.

Why doesn't the congress simply outlaw excluding people with a pre-existing condition and require health insurance companies to do community rating?

Zero cost. Good public policy.

Those are good ideas, but not if the only way the Dems will do the right thing is if we are extorted for a trillion dollars a decade. That's crazy. It's immoral. It's wrong.

If the Dems insist on going along with Baucus and sucking off the insurance company caucus, they will be doing it without me, and without a lot of people apparently.

No public money for private health insurance!

The enemy of bad policy is good policy. Extorting public money for private interests is bad policy.

Extortion is not reform.

Corporate welfare is not reform.

No public money for private health insurance.


You speak for 99% of the world and you think raising children isn't a real job? OK, believe what you want.. (0.00 / 0)
You can be however you want.

But I'll never be like you.

Thank God. (0.00 / 0)
But I'll never be like you.

Nope, you never will.  And thankfully, I'll never be like you, either.  I have no respect for you.  To be that, would be icky.

Steve, we began our engagements at this website with you putting words in my mouth, while trying to silence me with your impressive resume of fighting for a cause I never believed in in the first place.  For you, old habits never die.  Here, you do so again:

you think raising children isn't a real job?

You assumed that I knew facts about you that I had no way of knowing and give not one salient shit about in the argument at hand.  Let me be plain:  I don't give a fuck if you're a single parent.  That is no defense against having to defend the tripe you spew about health care.  Since you appear incapable of sustaining any argument without bullshit appeals to your authority as an obviously bad parent, let me help you out (beside any point as it truly is.)

No, raising children isn't a job, and I find you absolutely loathsome that you think it is.  It is work, often hard work, regardless whether it is undertaken by one parent, two, a commune or a community.  It's really hard work.

But it's not a job.  A job is a labor engaged in with the expectation of return.  If that is how you see raising your child or children than I pity them more than you can imagine.  You obligate them out of your self interest.  Hardly surprising for you, obviously, but extremely unfair to them.  It is my sincere hope that they pay you back with heartache and abandonment in your dotage.  They likely won't; after all talent tends to skip a generation, and one can hope that your talent for self absorption will do so as well.

They didn't choose to be born.  They certainly didn't choose to be born to you.  They had no choice at all.  For you to reduce their care to a task you must perform for these objects your lust brought into the world so that you might get something out of it?  I find that disgusting.  Your attitude is an affront to morality, to biology and our view of ourselves as a species.  So kindly go do your "job", Steve.  But don't be surprised when the result isn't what you expect.

So, Steve, we find ourselves in agreement.  We don't want to be like the other, and I thank God for it.  You are disgusting to me.  You haven't a care for anyone beyond your own influence or expectation of compensation.  Maybe, just maybe, that's why I find you to be a real bad advocate for anything.

[ Parent ]
I've never had an engagement with you. You had a hard on for me from day one as well as a few other people. (0.00 / 0)
That's your problem. Not mine.

I come here to express my opinion about issues.

You come here to express your hard on toward the people who get your motor running.

Go back and read what you write sometime. You have a hard on for Mark, you have a hard on for Ochenski, and you have a hard on for me.

It's annoying because I don't feel the same way about you that you feel about me.

I'm sorry but that's how I feel.

Go talk it over with your God. You'll be OK.

Nice try Steve. (0.00 / 0)
You begin discussion morally bankrupt and go downhill from there.  

Let's see.  You began by attempting to dismiss my concerns by putting words in my mouth, and demeaning me by ascribing to me beliefs I've never had.  I informed you that that was a Republican tactic of argument.  So, you, insulted, attempt to impress me with your being on a fucking magazine cover. Gosh, can't you tell how impressed I am?  Obvious manipulation is an insult to my, or anyone's, intelligence.  When I pointed that out to you, and observed that you were being a self promoting jerk, you got all bent out of shape that I was insulting you.  That's acting like an idiot, which I again have observed.

So you, behaving more and more like a poncing insulting git, start accusing anyone who disagrees with you of attempting to "silence dissent" at this website.  At that point you were taking your cues from Mark, no doubt.  And as you did this, you began your own attempts to silence disagreement.  You attempted to rally the troops against the big bad guy who dared to challenge your basic assumptions.  Too bad that didn't work for you.  Then, you express that I just don't make sense to you, and I'm a poor writer.  No, you got no agreement, so the only real possibilities are that your using another demaning bullshit tactic to silence me, or that you really are as stupid as I've observed you being.  

Your next move, sinking ever lower, was to appeal to some unestablished level of community civility.  But like seemingly every other thing in your tenure here, you cocked that up too.  You demanded politeness from others you yourself have never shown.  You even attempted the weakest of troll argument:  you accused the admins of 'favoritism'.  More failure for you.

I didn't think it was possible for you to sink lower than that, but you trumped yourself by hiding behind your childrens.  OOOhhh you've been insulted as a daddy.  Sorry Steve, the only insult I've leveled against your parenting is the fact that I couldn't give one salient shit about it.  Using your children as a shield means little to me, nor should it in the argument at hand.  Morally, in the other hand, it means that you're just laughably disgusting.  Hiding behind kids?  Is that really the best you've got?

And finally, all you're left with is irrational sexual innuendo and weak whining about all how all you really wanted to do was express your opinion ... and promote yourself ... and demand agreement with single payer ... and demean the website owners because they won't give you control ... and be respected for your opinion because you're a single parent.  Boo fucking Hoo.

You've used every low ass form of tactic possible to shut me up.  But what you remain clueless about is that I've seen it all already.  I argue with smart conservatives.  They can be far more clever, and mean, than a weak person such as yourself could ever hope to be.  If you don't believe me, then you'd best have a conversation with Mr. Craig Moore.  See, unlike you, I actually have the bravery to leave this website, and engage the real enemy on their turf.  Mark T and I, regardless of our often rough disagreements, at least share some respect for each other because we both have a willingness to stand against untruth.  That's not a quality we share with you; you don't have it.

So you just keep on hiding right here, behind your kids of course, fantasizing about the boner I have for your awesome narcissistic self.  And I'll keep telling yourself and others what a tiny little wanker you've shown yourself to be.

Or ... we can reboot.  Show some fucking respect and I will in return.  Not everyone is going to agree with you.  You don't run this website, so stop acting like you do.  Questions are not demands that you denigrate the questioner.  They are opportunities to show your metal, so do so.  If you ask a question, do so with honesty and respect the fucking answer, whether you agree with it or not.  Disagree with argument.  If you include denigration, fine when it's deserved, but dismissal is right out.  I realize that you can't do these things, but they are the signs and symbols of respect for the other humans around you.  Accept that there are times that you will be wrong.  I have.  Mark has.  The only one here claiming infallible Buddha status is you.  Get over it; you're really not that cool. Do any of these things and you will have provided reason to take you seriously.  If you don't care about that, well, have at you then.  

[ Parent ]
To kill the bill, or not to kill the bill... | 62 comments
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