CEO Uncle Pennybags of Monopoly Managed Care celebrates the passage of health care “reform.”
Quite predictably, health care stocks rose on Monday after the House of Representatives passed health care “reform” on Sunday night. While there are some aspects of the bill that are not HMO-friendly—such as prohibiting discrimination based on preexisting conditions—the insurance mandate is huge for them. Forcing over 30 million uninsured people buy private insurance is a great way to transfer yet more wealth to corporations. This is especially true when you take into consideration the government subsidies for American families pulling in less than $88,000 a year. And Big Pharma is ecstatic because this bill means that by 2014, tens of millions of new people will be able to get prescription drugs more easily. With no provisions for the reimportation of cheaper (but the same) drugs from other countries, and nothing allowing the government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, this legislation is a can’t miss for the pharmaceutical industry.
The sorry lesson of this health care bill is that if you want to get a major, “historic” piece of legislation passed in the United States, it must contain giveaways to the powerful parties affected. That’s a given. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are very much interested in pissing off the private power centers that throw money at political candidates like confetti at a parade. We’ll see the same thing as banking reform makes its way through the Congress. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee voted 13-10 along party lines to send Christopher Dodd’s (D – Connecticut) imperfect financial reform bill to the floor. The funniest thing about it was that Dodd agreed not to allow any amendments from Democrats in order to garner bipartisan support. I’m glad that worked out.
There are plenty of reasons to believe banking reform will go the way of the health care bill: passed and signed into law, but very watered down, coming up far short of what the situation calls for. I’m sure that enough Democrats—particularly in the Senate—will have reservations about banking reform so the White House and congressional Democratic leadership will have the perfect excuse to pass a bad bill. I can see Nancy Pelosi now with her frozen face and goofy smile in a few months time consoling the disappointed: “We’d love to, but we just don’t have the votes for that kind of reform.” Granted, it will be very difficult for the Republicans to mobilize popular support against banking reform à la the health care debate. But then again, never underestimate the ability of the American population to unwittingly go to bat for the very people who, at this moment, are thinking up new and exciting ways to siphon more money from them.
I was glad to read that Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch of South Bostonwill vote “no” on the health care reform bill. This bill does absolutely nothing to control the runaway cost of health insurance. And worst of all, the bill mandates that everyone purchase health insurance or face a fine. Honestly, I might approve of this bill were it not for the fact that it forces people to enter into private contracts with bloodsucking HMOs, just like we have here in Massachusetts.
No poll I’ve seen shows that majority of Americans favor this current (Senate) bill under consideration by the House of Representatives. Compare this with another poll indicating that 60% of Americans want a public option to compete with private insurance, including 86% of Democrats and 57% of independents. These and other polls indicate that Americans think that the efforts of the Democrats don’t go nearly far enough. And that’s not surprising considering that Democrats are one of the two political factions of what we might call the American Business Party.
So thank you, Stephen Lynch, for letting the Nancy Pelosi, BarackObama, and the other phony liberals know that you think this bill is a pile of dogshit.
Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there would be no public option in the health care “reform” legislation that she will send to the House floor for a vote next week.
In the words of Sarah Palin, “How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for ya?”
Yes, it’s a sad day when the actions of the Democratic Party prompt me to quote the wordsmith of Wasilla, but this is what it’s come to in light of Pelosi declaring, “I’m quite sad that a public option isn’t in there. But it isn’t a case of it’s not in there because the Senate is whipping against it. It’s not in there because they don’t have the votes to have it in there.”
Pelosi made this statement on Friday, one day after Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said if the House version included a public option, he’d whip for it. The White House meanwhile, is publicly keeping its distance from the proceedings, and clearly doesn’t mind the lack of a public option.
So this is it, huh? It seems that just about everyone in the Democratic Party is for the public option, but everyone’s against it. Pelosi is blaming the Senate. The Senate’s leadership is saying they’d try to make it happen if the House passes the public option. And Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care what passes at this point, as long as he can call it “reform.” Call me cynical, but I think this has been one big carefully orchestrated charade in which all of the major players have plausible deniability on the question of who really killed the public option.
The more I watch the Democrats exercise their majorities in Congress with Obama in the White House, the more I’m coming to believe that the Democrats are pathetic on purpose. No powerful organization is this inept and unsure of itself. It’s no secret the Democratic Party is a corporatist party, but nonetheless they are more likely than the GOP to enact laws that are beneficial to the average American. But with the GOP out of power, we can clearly see just how bought-and-paid-for the Democrats really are. A huge majority of registered Democrats want a public option, as does a majority of Americans when Independents and even Republicans are included. And yet the Democratic Party is telling me that they don’t have the votes? Why the fuck not? Especially now with things looking as if the senate is going to pass health care using reconciliation, which will require a simple 51-vote majority in the senate. That means that nine Democrats could defect and vote against the bill, and it could still pass, with Vice President Joe Biden voting for passage to break this hypothetical 50-50 tie.
But this isn’t going to happen because the Democratic leadership is basically saying, “We would really love a public option; it’s just that too many people in the party would oppose it. Only 86% of registered Democrats favor a public option, and the support in Congress just isn’t there.”
The “good news” is that the Democrats are going to implement near-universal care by mandating that people buy private insurance or face fines. With a public option, such a mandate is dubious. Without a public option, such a mandate is downright cruel. If the government wants to provide people with a cheaper alternative to private insurance in order to help working class Americans, I’m all for it. But where the fuck does this administration and this Congress get off telling me I haveto purchase insurance? I can’t possibly see how that’s constitutional. While the health insurance mandate has been compared to auto insurance mandates, this is an inappropriate comparison. Drivers must buy auto insurance by virtue of having bought cars. Under the health care bill mandate, people would have to buy health insurance by virtue of simply being alive. Not even the broadest interpretation of the Necessary-and-Proper Clause arrives at a justification for mandating business transactions between private parties under such a circumstance. Of course, we’d like to think that if such a law passes, there would be a benefit in having a constructionist majority on the Supreme Court if the mandate were ever challenged and got that far. But the Roberts Court has shown itself to be so rabidly pro-business, I would not put it past the robed reactionaries to rule in favor of the mandate simply because it helps corporations.
In a recent letter to the Democratic Party, I suggested that I might stay home in 2010 if it didn’t clean up its act. Well, the Democrats aren’t going to clean up their act, so you can count me out of the November midterms. And unless Obama starts to push an actual progressive agenda, you can count me out of the 2012 presidential race too. I won’t legitimize this bullshit we call a political system anymore.
Well, well. Looks like some Democrat finally had the balls to show Traitor Joe that he doesn’t appreciate his recent duplicitous conduct on health care reform.
Towards the end of The Big Lebowski,there’s a scene where The Dude, Walter, and Donny leave the bowling alley and find that the nihilists have set fire to The Dude’s car in the parking lot, and The Dude, in a calmly accepting tone says, “Well, they finally did it. They killed my fucking car.” That pretty much sums up my feelings about the inevitable death of the public option and any meaningful health care reform.
To review, here’s how the Senate Democrats—the so-called party of working class people—have handled health reform:
Took the prospect of a single-payer system off the table before the debate even began
Advanced the idea of a government-funded public insurance option as an alternative to the more expensive private plans
Withdrew said public insurance option
Briefly advanced the idea of lowering the Medicare age from sixty-five to fifty-five
Withdrew said idea of lowering the Medicare age from sixty-five to fifty-five
Now want to force Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, even though there is no cheaper public option. There is an expansion of Medicaid, but even with this you’ll still have to be piss-poor to qualify.
Rejected the Dorgan amendment, which would have allowed reimportation of less-expensive pharmaceuticals from Canada, despite the fact that the United States has the highest drug prices in the world
Have proposed no measures that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare
Jesus Christ, Democrats. Do you think your health insurance industry masters will be satisfied and let you vote for this water-downed horseshit legislation now? I mean, there’s no public option to compete with private HMOs, you’re forcing all Americans to buy health insurance, you’re disallowing the possibility of importing drugs from Canada, and will not allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices on pharmaceuticals. This whole health care “reform” process has been like a seven month-long abortion.
I’m with Howard Dean. This bill sucks and should not be passed. Of course, it will get passed because it’s a big fucking giveaway to the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. And they generally get what they want. Congratulations, Senate Democrats. You have gotten me to side with the Teabaggers!
Joe Lieberman is a dingleberry (seen here metaphorically clinging to the anal hair of the Democratic Party).
There’s a new anti-Joe Lieberman Facebook page. By becoming a fan, you essentially give your word that you’ll donate money to the campaign of Lieberman’s yet-to-be determined opponent in 2012 if he filibusters the health care bill. I’m generally skeptical of the ability of websites and internet petitions to effect change, but it certainly can’t hurt.
“I’m not a Constitutional expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
For a group that’s always wrapping itself in the American flag while shamelessly invoking the ghosts of the country’s founders for a variety of batshit purposes, Republicans today demonstrated a comical ignorance of the sort generally seen on “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”
Congressional Republicans held a rally in Washington DC today at which they derided the Democratic health care reform proposal—even displaying thousands of pages of legislation for theatrical effect. I guess their point was, if a bill is long—like a book—it must be bad (unless it’s the Bible). Rather than discuss the substance of their arguments yet again on this site, I’m just going to point out two transcendently ironic and funny things that happened at this rally:
1. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declaring, “I’m going to stand with you and all freedom-loving Americans against this bill. [Holds up a pocket-sized edition of the U.S. Constitution] This is my copy, this is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m going to stand here with our Founding Fathers [Dramatic pause] who wrote in the preamble, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ So join us and say ‘no’ to a government takeover of healthcare.”
First of all, Boehner was quoting from the Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution, which to reiterate, he was holding in his hand. Second of all, what the fuck does the Declaration of Independence have to do with health care reform? Unless King George III had a hand in writing this legislation, the answer is nothing.
2. Missouri Representative Todd Akin, after a two-minute, one-man bull session about how awesome the Pledge of Allegiance is, in which he declared that its recitation “drives liberals crazy,” leading the crowd in the Pledge. Problem is, he left out the word, “indivisible,” as in, “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
What does this profound ignorance tell us about the GOP leadership? It tells us that for all their rhetorical Founding Father-Fucking, their knowledge of this stuff is extremely shallow. And by extension, that patriotism they’re always throwing in our faces to show us how what great Americans they are, is total bullshit. What this indicates to me is that Mr. Akin hasn’t said the Pledge of Allegiance in quite some time. Not that I care, but if you’re going to trash others for allegedly hating the pledge, you’d better make sure you at least know the fucking thing. Otherwise you look like an asshole. And Todd Akin sure did.
As for Boehner’s boner, well, that’s unconscionable. Here’s the leader of the GOP in Congress—a man who, if the Republicans were suddenly to become the majority in Congress, would be Speaker of the House. And yet, he doesn’t know that the most famous line in American history, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” is actually from the Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution, written eleven years later.
Today, the right’s faux patriotism was on overt display for all to see; but despite this, the fact is that probably over three-fourths of the wingnuts in attendance didn’t even know Boehner had fucked up. And even if they did, it wouldn’t matter to them. He’s singing their tune. These people really don’t give a shit about what Thomas Jefferson said or what James Madison wrote. These long-dead intellectual icons merely serve as justification for whatever it is the rally-goers are pushing. In fact, if Jefferson and Madison were around today advocating policies at odds with the GOP (and they certainly would on several fronts), they’d be dismissed as eggheads by the very people who right now claim to be upholding their principles. Furthermore, I doubt that very many in attendance today have ever actually read any of these and other Founders’ writings. After all, the Founders were accustomed to writing lengthy essays which often contained big words, kind of like a health care bill.
You knew this was coming. Some senator in the Democratic caucus would announce that he will not vote for cloture in order to stop a Republican filibuster to give the health care bill an up or down vote. The only question was, who? Max Baucus? Kent Conrand? Blanche Lincoln? While these three might also vote against a cloture resolution, the first one to declare this outright is none other than frequent turncoat motherfucker Joe Lieberman.
A couple of weeks ago I said that the final senate version of the health care reform bill would not include a public option (PO). To me, it was a forgone conclusion. The PO looked nearly down and out after Baucus submitted that hunk of garbage he calls a health care bill, leaving us to wonder whether he’d support a Republican filibuster against real reform. Then, inexplicably, majority leader Harry Reid found his testicles and announced that the senate version would indeed have a PO. For a moment it looked as if the PO side had retaken the lead.
With my cynical prediction in danger, Joe Lieberman stepped up to the plate and belted a double into the gap (he only has warning track power) in what the health insurance giants hope will be the start of a late inning rally for their team—the one with the highest payroll in this contest.
As I noted two weeks ago, the Democratic leadership unfortunately does not have the mettle to properly deal with recalcitrant party members. Here’s what I said:
[The Democrats] 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.
At the time, I was more concerned about Baucus derailing the PO. After all, his own committee’s bill didn’t have one, which probably had something to do with the fact that he gets oodles of money from the health insurance industry. But now here comes Lieberman—who also gets oodles of dough from said industry—in a sickening display that should finally get the message through to Dems that they cannot count on this backstabbing pipsqueak when the game is on the line. Although, the Republicans sure can.
It’s quite possible that Lieberman’s bluffing, hoping to get a seat at the conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions if and when they get passed. Or, he could be 100% serious, given that his home state of Connecticut is a hub for health insurance providers. Whatever his reasons (and really, who cares?), if Lieberman is not stripped of his chairmanship on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Dems might as well just disband. There’s no point in the Democrats being a national party if they’re going to allow themselves to be held hostage by the likes of Joe Lieberman. This is a man who for some reason ran for president in 2004 on a platform that was basically this: George W. Bush is doing a good job as president, and the Iraq war was a great idea and is going splendidly. To this day, I have no fucking idea why Lieberman ran for president in 2004. None whatsoever.
This is a man who also endorsed the elderly John McCain and Sarah Palin. He even spoke at the Republican National Convention, and alleged that Barack Obama was not ready to be president in front of a zealous right-wing crowd that briefly pretended to like a northeastern Jew who happened to be singing their twisted tune.
It’s possible the Dems are treating Lieberman with kid gloves because they don’t want to alienate him and push him into the Republican camp. However, I do not see this as a real concern. If Turncoat Joe starts voting with the Republicans more frequently, then he’ll have his Connecticut constituents to answer to in 2012. Although it’s a full three years from now, according to a recent QuinnipiacUniversity poll Lieberman would not win reelection, and currently has a negative approval rating.
Mark it: November 6, 2012. Lieberman, your ass is grass. Or at least, I goddamn hope so.
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” healthcare 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.
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:
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.
Not content with employing the tried and true strategy of reductio ad Hitlerum in the health care debate, Republicans have rolled out a new tactic that’s absolutely jaw-dropping. Generally, in a rational debate, two or more sides discuss a problem by examining facts and engaging in empirical analysis that draws upon those facts, with each side explaining why its position is the correct or most logical one. That, in one sentence, is what a debate is.
What the Republicans have been doing in the discussion on health care reform, however, is nothing short of remarkable. In this “debate,” opponents of the health care legislation have been alleging that the government will: establish a eugenics program (Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh et al.); set up “death panels” (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich et. al); and euthanize old people (Senator Chuck Grassley, seemingly every anti-reform idiot who attends those town halls, et. al). These are not reality-defying claims made by marginal figures. They are reality-defying claims made by central figures in the GOP. And they have managed to bog down the discussion by requiring Obama to actually have to say that he’s against government-mandated euthanasia. What a country.
This strategy’s success has been as shocking as its premise. Republicans haven’t just misrepresented or mischaracterized the health care reform legislation, they have accused it of containing provisions for the grossest and most egregious violations of human rights and dignity, including but not limited to eugenics and geriatricide. It’s a straw man on steroids. And it’s working.
It’s working because the Republicans understand—much better than the Democrats—H.L. Mencken’s timeless axiom that no one ever went broke underestimating the American public. Indeed, apparently any counterintuitive, crazy-stupid, bogus horseshit can be fed to the manure-hungry American populace. In holding his town hall meetings in New Hampshire and Montana, Obama did what any rational person would do in the face of such insane accusations: explain his position using facts and logic. Unfortunately, this approach is wholly ineffective in communicating with the American public. George W. Bush understood this, which is why his administration never felt constrained by the inconveniences of reality and got away with all kinds of awful stuff. Bush could always insist that up was actually down, right was actually left, and Saddam was actually Osama.For Christ’s sake, in 2004 the Swiftboaters were able to make John Kerry’s military record a constant topic of discussion—John Kerry, who actually went to Vietnam, unlike a certain nincompoop from Texas who was on “guard” here in the states in case the Viet Cong tried to invade the American south.
Clearly, rational discussion in the health care debate is not an option because the Republicans refuse to engage in it. They have been making a unified effort to avoid discussion of actual issues, and have instead decided to debate reality itself. Their attitude is, if the health care legislation doesn’t contain mandates for eugenics and euthanasia, say it does anyway and repeat it ad nauseum. I mean, how the fuck do you debate that? Your opponent accuses you of advocating Position A, and you try to set him straight and say, “No, I don’t advocate Position A,” but the person says, “Oh, but you do.” Discussion is simply not possible. Case in point: Senator Claire McCaskill’s town hall meeting, where she was so dismayed at the obnoxiousness of the unruly Madisonian faction screaming at her, she asked the crowd, “You don’t trust me?” to which the mob yelled, “No.” And there it is. No matter what McCaskill or anyone else tells these ill-mannered ignoramuses, they’re going to believe what they want. They’re going to believe that the Democrats—who routinely count on the elderly vote—want to kill the same old people they need to get reelected, even though the Dems assure them that’s not true. They’re going to believe that Obama is not a citizen, even though his Hawaiian birth certificate has been provided and authenticated, complete with contemporaneous newspaper announcements about it. They’re like the handful of leftwing morons who think Bush either knew about or orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. No matter what you say, no matter what evidence you provide, they’re going to believe whatever the hell they want.
The centerpiece of the conservative argument against health care reform.
This morning I tried to attend a health care town hall forum in Chelmsford, Massachusetts hosted by Congresswoman Niki Tsongas. Although she’s not my representative, I happened to be in the area and I figured I’d check it out. Unfortunately I couldn’t get in because the turnout was far higher than I had expected. It wasn’t long after I got in line—futilely awaiting entry into Chelmsford’s town hall—when I realized that the same sorts of kooks who had been poisoning health care forums in Florida, Ohio, and other swing states with their bombastic and intimidating vitriol, were out in full force here in this liberal district.
I do not call these people kooks because they disagree with me on this issue, but rather because of their methods. Instead of advancing a coherent argument against Obamacare, these protestors resort to yelling—literally yelling, that the government is going to euthanize old people and that Obama is a modern day Hitler. It’s total off-the-wall fearmongering. No need to introduce facts into the discussion when you can just scare the shit out of the ignorant masses by telling them that Obama wants to turn America into Logan’s Run for sexagenarians.
So as I was standing in line, reading all of these signs, listening to this propaganda, and reading a pamphlet from the Lyndon Larouche crowd with a Photoshopped picture of Obama and the Fuhrer yukking it up with some Hitler Youth on the cover, my urge to call someone on this bullshit was coming to a head. I noticed a man of about sixty walking toward me with a sign saying that under the proposed reform bill, once Americans turn sixty-five, the government would decide whether to euthanize them or not, or some such idiocy. He had an impressive beer gut and was wearing a hat indicating that he had been in the navy. I didn’t care that he was old or a veteran, I wanted to say something, and I did. I laid it on thick: “You’re a propagandist. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a disgrace to the conservative cause.” To which he replied that he wasn’t a propagandist, ashamed, etc., before pulling the, I-was-in-the-military-for-thirty-seven-years card, as if somehow that bolstered his ridiculous claims. To my extreme disappointment, as soon as he said this, several people around me said, “Thank you” to him for his military service, despite his contemptible lie that the government is going to kill people’s grannies. Reasonable people can oppose health care reform, but reasonable people do not use lies, hate, and Nazi comparisons to do it. They do what one well-mannered anti-reform attendee did: hand out serious literature from reputable sources about the large costs of the proposed reforms, and engage others in spirited, but civil debate on this important problem.
But the navy guy—who by the way, received government health care for those thirty-seven years he was in the service—wasn’t even the worst. There was actually a group of younger people holding a large picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache (see above), and it was from this group I picked up a pamphlet of “Act Now To Stop Obama’s Nazi Health Plan,” with a picture of Obama and Hitler on the cover, with the Fuhrer smiling at the president, because after all, being buddy-buddy with a black liberal is exactly what Hitler—the ultimate white supremacist—would’ve done.
Remember how, during the previous administration, a few fringe liberals would make Bush-Nazi analogies, and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News would go apeshit? Apparently, it isn’t ok to call the president a Nazi or Hitler if he launches an unprovoked war and shows contempt for civil liberties and the U.S. Constitution, but it is ok when he’s attempting to reform healthcare by making it cheaper and more accessible. But honestly, I’m not nearly as disturbed by showmen like Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, as I am by these everyday people who despise the democratic process so much, that they endeavor to shout down their elected representatives and their fellow citizens who hold opposing views. These people like to scream, “This is America,” as if they favor freedom of speech and open debate. Newsflash: they don’t. They don’t want a real debate, which is why they act like complete assholes in forums where they’re actually welcome to ask questions of their representatives.
While in line, a totally ignorant sixty-something year old woman starting talking to me for no reason, telling me how there was a provision for eugenics in the health care reform bill. I asked her where this provision was. She assured me that it was in there, saying, “When people get older, the government won’t allow them to have certain operations.” Of course, this isn’t eugenics, which I would recommend for this woman if she were of child-bearing age, but perhaps she meant euthanasia, although even this isn’t accurate. What she was really going for was the phrase “rationed care,” which we actually already have in this country with private insurers. My own sense is that any government-run health care system in this country will be measurably more accommodating than many private insurance companies.
No sufficiently well-educated society would allow such rank hypocrisy, lies, and exaggerations to pass as legitimate objections. But here in America, where thinking is optional, the grossest transgressions against truth and even mere consistency in argument and standards may be committed with no one blinking an eye, or worse, with people nodding in agreement at the lies and distortions emanating from a mob so short on serious ideas and alternatives for what is being proposed, that screaming and intimidation is their “strategy.” If in fact, “This is America” as these degenerates insist, then never have I been more ashamed to call myself one of its citizens.
