Own Worst Enemy: The Story Of the Democrats And Health Care Reform.

The sine qua non of the Max Baucus health care reform bill

At the risk of sounding juvenile and inarticulate, the best way I can sum up the Democratic Party’s efforts to reform health insurance thus far is: retarded.

That’s right. Retarded. This country is coming off eight years of horrid and disastrous domestic and foreign policies. The formerly incumbent Republicans were so bad at representing the interests of the people that the party lost its majorities in the House and Senate in 2006, and coughed up even more seats in 2008, plus the White House. The current seventy-nine seat Democratic majority in the House is a substantial spread, and enough to endure the inevitable defections by Democrats who will occasionally vote with Republicans on various pieces of legislation. A sixty seat majority in the Senate means the Democrats can break any filibuster attempt by the Republicans, so long as they stand together. A Democrat in the nation’s highest office gives the party added leverage and in theory, carte blanche to push its agenda. After all, this is what the elections of 2006 and 2008 were about—a thorough rejection of Republican policies.

But judging by the way Democrats have handled health care reform, it’s almost as if no one told them that they won lots of congressional seats and the White House in 2006 and 2008. The word we keep hearing from Democrats is “bipartisanship,” which, when they were out of power, is what they kept insisting that the Republicans strive for. Between 2002 and 2006, the GOP generally told the Dems to go fuck themselves, and rammed through all kinds of crazy, counterproductive, big business-friendly, average Joe-screwing legislation while the sackless liberals in the Senate just rolled over and took it, hardly ever considering a filibuster, or in some cases, even voted with Republicans.

One would think that the audacity of the GOP in those days would be grounds for a bit of payback in these more sunshiny times for the Democratic Party, but no. Presently, the Dems have been bending over backwards to get Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine to vote for whatever bill the Democrats finally come up with. Why? I honestly have no fucking idea. None whatsoever. To me, receiving the support of one, two, or three GOP Senators does not constitute a bipartisan effort. No matter what bill gets passed, the Republican Party as a whole is going to vote against it anyway. The GOP has already made it clear that their objective in this whole ordeal is purely political. Their opposition to reform is about handing Obama a defeat, so that in the 2010 midterms they can go back to their districts and tell their yokel constituents that they killed (or tried to kill) a “socialist” health care bill that would’ve improved their lives by offering a cheaper-than-private-coverage, government-funded health insurance option. And then the yokels will cheer and vote incumbent, because as we saw with those dumbfounding tea parties, regular folks can be easily bamboozled into believing that what’s good for health insurance conglomerates is also good for them. Apparently, it does not strike these people as odd that they are on the same side of a piece of legislation as a bunch of billionaire insurance salesmen who have raised their health insurance premiums by about 100% in the last ten years. This might have been an excusable state of affairs in the days of feudalism, but in the age of moveable type, these people really have no excuse for being that ignorant and stupid.

Despite the best efforts of the teabaggers and their teary-eyed cult leader Glenn Beck, 61% of the American people still support a public health insurance option. Indeed, it may be that the likes of Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al. and all their offensive excesses and batshit hyperbole have repulsed a goodly number of fence-sitters on the issue who’ve figured that whatever side those nuts are on, must be the wrong side.

And yet, real reform has stalled because the Democratic Party can’t get its shit together. That is what’s behind this ongoing clusterfuck in Congress, specifically the Senate. Forget the Republican Party. Right now, the Dems’ biggest problem is a few of its own senators from states in which no one actually lives: Max Baucus (Montana), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), and Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas). These three oppose a public option, and they all serve on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, with Baucus as chairman. That means if Baucus doesn’t like a bill that requires approval by his committee, he can kill it all by himself. And with the amount of money Baucus has received from the health insurance industry, you can bet your ass that as long as he’s chairman, there won’t be any meaningful health reform bills coming out of that committee because the man is a whore.

It is because Baucus is a whore that he produced an abhorrent, foul-smelling, retch-inducing bill that yesterday was approved by the Finance Committee 14-10, with Olympia Snowe breaking ranks with her party to vote for this piece of shit. Naturally, Washington Dems and liberals who don’t know any better are cheering this development, as if it means something. But in truth, the Snowe “aye” vote is a sideshow and means nothing. She even stated that her vote could change depending on what changes the bill undergoes before it hits the Senate floor. (Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, has already written another bill, one that includes a public option, but you can be sure as shit that that provision will not be in the final Senate version. Call it a hunch on my part.)

In the first minute of this clip, Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) sums up the frustration held by many Americans who are having a hard time fathoming why the Democrats have been dragging their feet on this issue:

This Snowe business aside, what this really comes down to is the Democrats not being able to rein in their own recalcitrant party members. Can you imagine something like the Baucus treason happening during the Bush years when Republicans controlled Congress? What would’ve happened to a committee chairman who refused to get on board with the White House and the majority of his party? I’ll tell you what would’ve happened: the GOP leadership would’ve taken him aside and “kindly” explained to him why he should reconsider his position. And if that failed, they would’ve taken his chairmanship away and given it to someone who’d toe the party line. But not the Democrats. They are willing to tolerate an intolerable amount of rogue behavior. Take the whiny, sniveling Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut). When this little shit lost in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut, he refused to bow out, and ran as an independent against the Democratic Party in the general election and won. How was Lieberman punished by the majority Democrats? As the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he was allowed to ascend to its chairmanship after the Democrats retook the Senate, even though (in addition to running against the party) Lieberman supported George W. Bush every misguided step of the way on the Iraq war. Now it’s Baucus, who cannot possibly feel any pressure to conform to the stated wishes of the other members of his party, including President Obama. And it’s because he does not feel any heat whatsoever, that Max Baucus is able to do what Max Baucus does: shill for the health care industry and ask, “What would an insurance lobbyist do?” before casting a vote.

Then again, this whole crapfest might be one big charade, an act, a glamorously and purposely frustrating production. Perhaps the Democrats have no intention of enacting reform. Perhaps Baucus’ single-handed efforts to derail the public option are all part of a grand plan by Obama and his party so that they can say they tried real hard to achieve reform, but in the end the votes for a government-funded program just weren’t there. That way, many of them can go on collecting campaign contributions from Cigna, Aetna, and others, while still paradoxically assuming the guise of some noble crusader for the little guy.

The Baucus piece of shit will eventually pass the full Senate with various modifications—none of which will be meaningful or helpful to the vast majority of Americans. The House version will be a different story. Unlike the Millionaires Club (Senate), the House is a bit more rambunctious and its members more sensitive to the opinions of their constituents. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is raising all kinds of holy hell about the public option, saying yesterday, “I am for the public option. That will be the House position, and that will be the position we will go to the conference to fight for.”

Them’s fightin’ words!

That should be some battle when each house passes its own version and they go to the conference committee to be reconciled. Hopefully by then, the Democratic Party will have located its testicles and will start to play rough with the Max Baucuses and Kent Conrads of the Senate, who might either join Republicans in a potential filibuster, or decline to vote for cloture in such a case. If the Obama administration wants real reform, it needs to send a strong message to its own renegade party members now, early in its term so that they and other Dems will know not to mess with its goals. But there is no sign of this at all, which makes me wonder just how much reform Obama and the Democrats actually want.

- Max

Max Baucus Submits Health Bill That Pleases No One Except Max Baucus

Yet again, Senator Max Baucus wonders, “What would Aetna do?”

The much anticipated (though not by me) Max Baucus (D-Montana) health care reform bill was released by the Senate Finance Committee today, and as expected, it is terrible. And not only is it terrible, but no Republican seems willing to support it. This all begs the question, what was the point of writing this dogshit bill in the first place?

If the point was to garner Republican support, well, that’s just ridiculous. Even a hayseed such as Baucus had to know that the GOP would attempt to kill any Democratic-led effort to reform health care. As far as congressional Republicans are concerned, this debate is not about health care; it’s about handing President Obama an early defeat for his administration. At this juncture, the GOP has much to gain by killing reform so that in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections, they can say that they stopped Obamacare and staved off a nonexistent socialist threat. In fact, the Republicans are at a point of no return. For many Republicans in Congress, to suddenly support the opposition’s plan could be tantamount to committing political suicide because their constituents are out for Democratic blood. As we saw with Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project this weekend, the GOP base has been worked into a frenzy thanks to the massive amounts of red meat tossed to them by the Republican leadership and right-wing media types. This is a very impressive operation. It’s not easy to take the aimless and irrational prejudices of millions of people in middle and lower classes, and harness them so that the result is a mass rebuke of proposals that would actually benefit them.

Let’s make one thing clear: there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the Democrats to adopt the Baucus bill as the bill to go with to reform health care. This bill is god awful, and does nothing to address runaway premium costs. Apparently the other proposed reform bills and their government-run public options are too radical for Milquetoast Max. From the New York Times, the following is a list of ways in which the Baucus bill differs from these others:

¶Instead of creating a new government health plan, Mr. Baucus would set up nonprofit insurance cooperatives in every state. The Congressional Budget Office said the co-ops “seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country.” This finding provides ammunition to liberals who say the co-ops could not compete effectively with big insurance companies.

¶The Baucus plan, like the other bills, offers subsidies to help low- and middle-income people buy insurance. But eligibility is more limited, and the subsidies appear to be less generous than in the other proposals, causing some Democrats to suggest that many people could still find insurance unaffordable.

¶Unlike the other bills, the Baucus plan would impose a new excise tax on insurance companies that sell high-end policies costing more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. Mr. Baucus hopes the tax would put downward pressure on health costs. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees denounced the tax, saying it would hit “health plans that provide benefits for many middle-class families.”

¶The bill would not require employers to offer coverage. But employers with more than 50 workers would have to reimburse the government for some or all of the cost of subsidies provided to employees who buy insurance on their own.

On top of these, the Baucus bill would force people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. And if it seems like there’s nothing here that benefits you, you’re probably right. If you already have health insurance and make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, or don’t have access to an insurance cooperative (CO-OP), under this abomination you’re just going to have to deal with annual premium hikes that far outpace your wage increases.

What qualifies a person for Medicaid under the Baucus plan? Well, it’s a simple calculation, but I’ve yet to find the answer anywhere in the press, probably because they’re too embarrassed to actually come out and say it. This bill would expand Medicaid to those making 133% of the federal poverty level, which for 2009 is $10,830. So for example, if this bill were in effect today, that means in order to qualify for Medicaid as a single person, you could not make more than $14,404. I’ve heard of panhandlers making more than this in a year.

As for the CO-OPs, this from NPR:

Robert Laszewski, who heads a Washington, D.C.-area consulting firm, says, “I think they’re the single dumbest idea I've heard in 20 years of being in Washington and working on health care policy.”

Laszewski says there’s no need to promote co-ops. They can already form on their own. As for the nonprofit advantage, he says there are plenty of nonprofit health insurers around, including many of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans. The only difference is that they’re run by board members who are appointed, rather than elected. Laszewski says any kind of new insurer will need a lot of cash on hand to line up doctors and hospitals willing to treat patients, and to set up health IT and billing systems.

Indeed. The bill even states that CO-OPs “must not be sponsored by a state, county, or local government, or any government instrumentality.” (Section 501c of the 223-page bill.) Then why is this even in the bill, if they can form on their own and must not be sponsored by any government entity in order to qualify for federal funds? (I hope to expand on this notion of CO-OPs in a later post if the Baucus plan gains prominence.)

A more important question is, should I even care? Is the awful Baucus plan the one the Democrats are going to go with? I sure hope not, but I cannot underestimate that party’s penchant for self-sabotage. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is at this moment being held hostage by Max Baucus of Mon-fucking-tana. Why? Let’s take a look at who contributes to the Baucus war chest:

Think Progress

What a tool. The health insurance industry lives and votes vicariously through Baucus (and so many others). Why bother with politicians when we can spare ourselves the charade of elections. For the sake of transparency, this country should just get it over with and replace the U.S. Senate with the CEOs of the 100 most powerful corporations in America.

I leave you with this clip of Wendell Potter, former Communications Vice President for the health insurance giant, Cigna, testifying before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Tuesday. In anticipation of the release of the Baucus bill the following day (as many of its key provisions were already known), Potter gives his assessment as a former industry insider who has since reconnected with his conscience.

- Max