Stop The Presses
by digby
Headline of the day:
Uninsured Americans hope reform brings health coverage
I guess at this point, this has to be said.
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Who Needs Republicans?
by digby
Either Barack Obama is not very good at leading his own party or he really doesn’t want a health reform bill that’s worth a damn:
President Obama promised last week, in his address to Congress, that he wouldn’t sign any health care reform bill that added “one dime to the deficit, now or in the future.”[emphasis added]
That pledge could get him in trouble as the Senate Finance Committee considers asking the Congressional Budget Office to change the way it calculates an impact on the deficit.
Instead of measuring the impact of health care reform over ten years, the CBO will use a 20-year window, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told reporters Tuesday. “You have to do that if you’re going to know whether you’re bending the cost curve,” he said.
If you had any remaining thoughts that Kent Conrad had any good intentions whatsoever, I think you can put them safely out of your mind.
It’s impossible to know for sure what’s going on, but if this is what it appears to be it looks like Obama either doesn’t want a decent bill or he foolishly walked into a trap. The endless kowtowing on the deficit (in the middle of a recession!) is bad enough, but throwing in the promise that he wouldn’t ever add to the deficit in the future opened him to this nonsense.
Kent Conrad does not want a health care bill that does anything but shrink government spending. It’s all he cares about. If he could end the medicare program too, he would — he’s been fighting “entitlements” for years. So he is an enemy of any process which provides universal coverage for all Americans — because in lean times the government will run deficits to keep it going.
Ever since the Republicans showed their “Waterloo” hand in the stimulus debate we’ve known that the real obstacle to reform is the overlapping corporate lackey/deficit hawk wings of the Democratic Party, of which Obama is at least a nominal member himself, if not a full fledged devotee. Coming so late to the public negotiations and then making absurd promises not to raise the deficit (on top of the sweetheart deals with the industry) leads one to naturally conclude that he is part of that camp. If he isn’t, his people are going to have to be hell on wheels behind the scenes from here on in, because the lackeys and the hawks are closing ranks and he’s not going to have any room to maneuver.
I have to say that with all the chatter about how they studied the Clinton years, it seems unlikely that they didn’t read the chapter on the egomaniacal, pampered Democratic princes of the Senate deciding that they owned the agenda and crossed the president at every turn. It was one of the more instructive parts of the legislative history. One has to wonder if they did read it and decided that this time they threw in with them rather than fought them.
I have heard that the 20 year fortune telling …. er projections, could actually come out looking favorable to reform. I wouldn’t count on it. But I guess that’s something to cling to. Otherwise, this is yet another nick in the death by a thousand cuts — many of them by the CBO, by the way. Conrad knows what he’s doing.
Not that anyone else does:
Democratic aides were alarmed Tuesday to learn of the CBO’s plans, which were first reported by CQ. One Senate Finance Committee aide, however, said that the 20-year estimate would not be an official “score” but rather a broad estimate.
Other longtime aides noted that any estimate after five years is just a guess because of the variables at work and they were hard-pressed to think of any prior occasion in which a 20-year window of time had been used. Monkeying around with the window, however, is one of the older tricks in the budgetary bag.
Some aides speculated that Conrad wouldn’t want to do anything to harm the finance committee bill, which he is invested in. But others noted that while it would harm that bill, it would likely be more damaging to the more generous health committee and House bills. The more parsimonious finance committee package would be relatively less impacted, elevating its stature.
What a win, win for Conrad if that’s so. Now that Obama’s promised not to ever raise the deficit, Conrad can make even Baucus’ hideous bill look bad, much less the others. If he holds the President to his promise, maybe he can succeed in getting rid of medicare and social security too — and then everything will be perfect. After all, only Nixon could go to China …
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Government Insurance Salesmen
by digby
In an otherwise dullish article on health care reform being thrown into chaos by Obama creating new obstacles in his speech ( I guess we are supposed to believe that the White House hasn’t been talking to anyone up to now) I spied this little bit of phrasing that I think is interesting:
Baucus’ proposal is certain to shun the liberals’ call for the government to sell insurance, and rely instead on co-ops to offer coverage in competition with private industry.
Yeah, right co-ops shmo-ops. But what about this:
the liberals’ call for the government to sell insurance
Isn’t that an interesting way to describe the public plan? Has anyone heard that before? Is it good or bad?
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Calling Them On It
by digby
I wrote this in the comment section, but I think it’s worth discussing a little bit more seriously. Responding to dday’s, post below I said: “I just want to add that the whole point of a hissy fit is to render a powerful criticism or critic off limits by evoking a sacred cultural totem. The key to this particular hissy fit was the accusation that Wilson and the teabaggers are racists. I watched the Fox Allstars today and they couldn’t stop talking about Maureen Dowd’s column and were practically rending their garments that anyone could possibly think Wilson said what he said because of race. It’s clear that this is the soft white underbelly and the Dems needed to be far more explicit if they wanted to really hammer their point home.”
And if you doubted they are racists, read this little anecdote at Sadly No! by Dave Riehle :
Let’s roll the tape:
A 9/12 Experience: Dangerous Times Michelle has a disturbing video posted. It’s of several black students beating a white student on a school bus in St. Louis. Here’s the deal. I haven’t mentioned it before. Riding out of DC on the Metro, 9/12, there were some folks from South Dakota and also another Mid-West state I can’t recall in the same Metro car. We were talking, nothing special, really – politics, of course. In the back were maybe ten or so black kids taking up that section of the car. There was no confrontation, just one or two of them talking loudly enough to make sure they’d be heard. Without resorting to the poor diction it was along the lines of, these are the people who think Obama is the anti-Christ. That McCain he wasn’t chit. Obama’s going to be president as long as he wants, so these people better get used to it, etc. It went on but not really to a level that was so loud, or so confrontational that it needed to be addressed. We just ignored them without much trouble at all. Yeah, they were technically thugs. But the reality was they were still wannabes really, pretty young, not that big, or many. And if the several adults there for 9/12 actually needed to do something about it, the kids wouldn’t have lasted very long.
Keep in mind that these are the same people who were just carrying signs calling Obama Hitler and saying that Acorn groups and his arrogant wife should be sent back to “their own” country and be stripped of their rights. I’d say those so-called thugs were the polite ones.
More seriously, these people are a perfect example of the modern racists. They don’t go around calling black people “boy” (to their faces) and they certainly don’t think of themselves as bigots. But in their minds, racial minorities are dangerous barbarians who are threatening to destroy their way of life. Hence, when they find themselves in a group of loud teenagers, they see it as a test of their own manhood to “put them down.” (Of course, that’s why they need all those guns.)
A black president is threatening to them, even if they don’t really understand it, because while he is unquestionably a very accomplished individual in anyone’s estimation, the loyalty he inspires among African Americans frightens them — and his sometime feints to popular culture and black solidarity make them very, very uncomfortable. That’s why this obsession with ACORN has such resonance. The black army is forming.
I have always been somewhat impatient with those who insisted that racism was over in American life and that anyone who brings it up is holding on to outdated modes of thought. The fact is that racism is one of the fundamental, defining features of American culture, changing and evolving, getting less and less potent over time, but so intrinsic to who we are that it remains in certain social pockets quite strongly. It isn’t the noxious open racism that characterized the south during Jim Crow — it’s morphed into a more general sense of paranoia and fear. And there is little doubt in my mind that a good bit of the outsized hysteria we see against Obama exists within those pockets.
We are living in a new world where racism is a minority position. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t find political expression is some powerful ways. It behooves liberals to be vigilent about this and keep these impulses in check with frequent reminders that it is not acceptable in modern America to be a racist.
It’s also obvious that nativism and immigration are the great racial undercurrent of the moment and they have long been the animating feature of toxic right wing populism. We ignore this stuff at our peril.
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They Can’t Even Muster A Decent Hissy Fit
by dday
The House is taking up a “resolution of disapproval” for Joe Wilson today, carefully writing it so nobody thinks they actually disapprove – just a technical rules violation is all – and the Republicans are cleaning their clocks with it on the House floor.
In a clear sign that Republicans intend to turn the disapproval vote against Joe Wilson into a rallying cry for their own base, far more Republicans than Democrats have been speaking during the floor debate on the resolution.
The subject of their talk: That the American people are done with this and don’t want to talk about it anymore. The message here is that the Dems are wasting time with the proceeding, and abusing their power to persecute Wilson.
“There is definitely a sense that House Republicans aren’t dealing with the same hot potato they were dealing with on Thursday morning after the president’s speech,” a GOP leadership aide just told me. “The president’s acceptance of Joe Wilson’s apology has left the Democrats looking petty and possibly on the verge of overreach. The fact that White House has now adopted some of Wilson’s policy proposals is evidence that this is no longer the political loser Democrats once thought it would be just a few days ago.”
The highlighted portion above took any teeth completely out of the hissy fit, and partisan Republicans used it as a rallying cry. The resolution passed 240-179, BTW, with a whopping seven Republicans crossing the aisle to vote yes (12 Democrats voted no and 5 “present”).
The point is not whether or not Wilson’s outburst represented some violation. The point is that Democrats gradually made a decision to try and beat up Republicans over a universally despised high-profile action, and they managed to blow it. And get the policy wrong by tailoring it to the universally despised person. Who’s also a serial liar (Just throwing that in because I think it’s funny. You can literally say anything as a Republican and never get called on it).
If you can’t even pull off the hissy fit, about the easiest two-step in politics, particularly in this day and age when the cable news channels might as well rename themselves “Umbrage 1,” “Umbrage 2” and “Republican Umbrage 3”, then really, it’s time to get a new batch of consultants.
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I Never Would Have Guessed
by digby
… that George W Bush was a trash talking, puerile frat boy:
Last month, we noted that former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer’s new book, Speech Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, was making Republicans nervous.
The book is out next week and, from brief excerpts obtained by the New York Daily News, it appears President Bush “dissed pretty much everyone in Washington.”
On Barack Obama: “This is a dangerous world and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.”
On Joe Biden: “If bull was currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire.”
On Sarah Palin: “I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. What is she, the governor of Guam?”
On Hillary Clinton: “Wait till her fat keister is sitting at this desk.”
But he brought honor and dignity back to the White House, which is what matters.
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First They Came For Van Jones
by digby
… now they are going after Campaign For America’s Future:
Recently, Fox News’ Glenn Beck interviewed one of his favorite right-wing pundits, David Horowitz, who revealed the “horror” that Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) worked with Van Jones to bring together businesses and unions to create clean, green American jobs. Well, here’s the truth. CAF was the co-founder of the Apollo Alliance, and we are proud of it. And this is what makes Glenn Beck so mad. Help us fight Glenn Beck’s smear machine! Please contribute $10, $25 or $50 so Campaign for America’s Future can get the truth out. Horowitz told Beck: “The Apollo Alliance is a broad coalition to advance very radical agendas. And it includes very respectable businessmen … but its muscle is unions and radicals. And it was created out of Bob Borosage’s Center [sic] for the American Future … [Jones and Borosage] are still seeking to overthrow the system and to create a socialist future.” In their warped world, generating jobs by investing in the clean energy vital to our future is an effort to “overthrow the system.” For that, the right tags me as one of the most dangerous men in America. Fact stands, we are proud of the Apollo Alliance, and all of the heavy lifting we’ve done to build the coalition to create our new energy future. We are proud of working with Van Jones, a gifted leader, who has labored tirelessly to make certain that those left out of the old economy are included in the new one. Join us in building America’s future – and in spurning the hate politics of Beck and his ilk. Please contribute $10, $25 or $50 to Campaign for America’s Future. We are proud the Campaign has been targeted by Beck. It is testament to our effectiveness. We led the effort that beat Bush when he tried to privatize Social Security. We co-founded the Apollo Alliance to make the case for jobs and new energy. We helped build the alliance that is demanding affordable health care for all, and we have only just begun to push for change! It’s no surprise that we gained the attention of the rabid right. We have just begun, and we are not changing our course. We are proud to challenge those standing in the way of the change we need. Help us keep raising Glenn Beck’s blood pressure. Please contribute $10, $25 or $50 to Campaign for America’s Future. CAF has not only been a steadfast voice for change, but we carried the fight against the entrenched lobbies and know-nothing right that stands in the way – and with your help, we are going to continue to earn Glenn Beck’s ire. What does it mean to us that we are being targeted by Glenn Beck? It means we are doing our job. Thanks, as always, for your commitment to America’s future. Sincerely,
CAF is doing righteous work, not only working on those causes that Bob Borosage outlines above, but it is instrumental in creating alliances across a wide range of liberal issues and interests. For instance, they were a major sponsor and participant in this year’s Netroots Nation, sponsoring everything from tours to steel plants to hosting batting practice at the baseball field, working hard to facilitate understanding and common purpose across the progressive coalition.
I’m just surprised the conservatives took so long to go after them.
link fixed
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Comment Of The Day
by digby
From Pseudonymous in NC:
Let’s talk about real costs. A 7% payroll tax and $120/month — that’s what gets your average French person his/her healthcare — copays, prescriptions, the works. No unexpected bills, no sticker-shock, no wrangling with insurers.
I’d pay that. I could afford that. I’m not going to pay for dogshit insurance from a corporate parasite, though.
I would guess that’s something a lot of people would agree with — if anyone would make the argument.
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The Good War Goes Bad
by digby
Apparently, the war is going so well that despite doubling the troop levels this year, we need even more. Huzzah:
The United States will probably need to deploy more troops to Afghanistan despite almost doubling the size of its force there this year, the top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday.
The assessment by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the clearest signal yet that commanders will tell President Barack Obama in the coming weeks that they need extra forces to defeat Taliban insurgents.
“A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably means more forces. And, without question, more time and more commitment to the protection of the Afghan people and to the development of good governance,” Mullen said.
Mullen did not say how many more forces would be required but he said he expected a request in the next couple of weeks from U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Mullen stressed the United States faced a race against the clock to reverse its fortunes in Afghanistan, where insurgent violence has reached its highest level since the Taliban was ousted from power in late 2001.
“I have a sense of urgency about this. I worry a great deal that the clock is moving very rapidly,” he said.
The United States currently has 62,000 troops in Afghanistan and that figure is expected to rise to 68,000 by the end of the year. There were around 32,000 U.S. troops in the country at the start of the year.
There are also some 38,000 troops from other nations — mainly NATO allies — in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be a difficult sell:
The poll suggests that 23 percent of Democrats support the war. That number rises to 39 percent for independents and 62 percent for Republicans.
“Most of the recent erosion in support has come from within the GOP,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director. “Unlike Democrats and independents, Republicans still favor the war, but their support has slipped eight points in just two weeks.”
Luckily for the Obama administration, the Republicans’ favorite son rallies to the cause:
Senator John McCain, the committee’s senior Republican, urged the Obama administration to learn from the Iraq war — where extra U.S. forces helped quell violence — and quickly deploy more troops to Afghanistan.
“Every day we delay in implementing this strategy and increasing the number of troops there — which we all know is vitally needed — puts more and more young Americans who are already there … in danger,” McCain said.
I know there are those who think that the Republicans will all vote with Obama on the war, but if the past is any guide, that’s not true. In fact, we have recent history to support the contention that Republicans will split on military action if it means supporting a Democratic president:
“You can support the troops but not the president.”
-Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to
happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15,
maybe 20 years.”
-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)“Explain to the mothers and fathers of American
servicemen that may come home in body bags why their
son or daughter have to give up their life?”
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99” President . . . is once again releasing
American military might on a foreign country with an
ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has
yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will
cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed
forces about how long they will be away from home.
These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”
-Sen Rick Santorum (R-PA)“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery.
Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the
world with a feel-good foreign policy.”
-Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be
certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal
and an exit strategy.”
-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the
beginning . . . I didn’t think we had done enough in
the diplomatic area.”
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History
teaches us that it is often easier to make war than
peace. This administration is just learning that
lesson right now. The President began this mission
with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered
questions. A month later, these questions are still
unanswered. There are no clarified rules of
engagement. There is no timetable. There is no
legitimate definition of victory. There is no
contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear
funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our
over-extended military. There is no explanation
defining what vital national interests are at stake.
There was no strategic plan for war when the President
started this thing, and there still is no plan today”
-Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
Here’s just one example of what they actually did on the Balkans (which McCain — before he became an embarrassment to the Republoicans — also backed.)
In a sharp challenge to President Clinton, the House voted Wednesday to bar the President from sending ground troops to Yugoslavia without Congressional approval and then on a tie vote refused to support NATO air strikes against Serbia.
The votes came during a day of heated and sometimes anguished speeches that showcased deep divisions in Congress over the escalating conflict in the Balkans. The all-day session marked the first formal Congressional debate since NATO began its bombing campaign on March 24 to drive the forces of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, out of Kosovo. The Senate had voted on March 23 to approve the air strikes.
The House voted 249 to 180 to require the President to seek Congressional approval for ground forces. Forty-five Democrats and an independent joined 203 Republicans to support the measure. Sixteen Republicans and 164 Democrats opposed the bill.
But the surprise came when the House finished its deliberations this evening by failing to pass a Democratic resolution intended to give symbolic support to the President’s air campaign. The measure failed in a tie vote of 213 to 213 even though Speaker J. Dennis Hastert threw his support behind it. In all, 31 Republicans broke with their party to back the air campaign and 26 Democrats voted against it.
If you think the Republican Party is less partisan today, you are dreaming. If you think they are less hypocritical, think again. They have no principles, on the military or anything else. They are purely partisan animals whose thuggish insistence that every military adventure must be supported in lock-step was only in effect during a Republican presidency.
Don’t think they can’t make a perfectly hypocritical argument to their minions and gain their support. They already have almost 40% of Republicans against the war right now. There is every reason to believe another 20% could be easily persuaded that Obama is wrong on the war. With John McCain arguing for more troops, it’s almost a shoo-in that a good portion of them will be against it.
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If Nobody Can Afford It, Does It Make A Difference?
by dday
I mentioned below that there are other major concerns with the Baucus draft, which is really the blueprint for what the President laid out last week in a variety of ways. Jon Cohn found a document from the Senate Finance Committee showing the impact of the bill on the middle class:
Total medical expenses, including premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, would be no more than 20 percent of annual income for most of the people profiled in the document. For the poor, it’d be dramatically less. That’s the (relatively) good news.
And the bad news? These figures are all for people in average health. But people end up paying a lot more in out-of-pocket expenses when they have a serious medical issue–whether it’s because of an accident, an acute illness, or a chronic disease. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, a family of four making $42,000 a year could owe $9,000 a year in medical expenses if it hit the maximum in out-of-pocket expenses–which is pegged, in the Finance legislation, to deductible levels in Health Savings Accounts. That’s easy to do when one family member gets in an accident, has an acute medical problem, or is dealing with a chronic disease.
A family of four making $78,000 a year could owe $23,000–nearly a third of its income–if it had a member with high medical bills.
The committee analysis (and mine) includes a ton of assumptions–chief among them, that the families are buying the “silver” option, the benchmark plan on which federal subsidies are based. In other words, these figures are not precise, particularly since we don’t even have an actual bill yet. And, in case you were wondering, families staring at such huge medical expenses would probably fall under the “hardship” waiver, exempting them from the requirement to purchase insurance. (In other words, neither Baucus nor any other sane member of Congress is going to force people to shell out money for insurance that leaves them so exposed to costs.)
On that last point, if families are exempted from buying insurance under the hardship waiver, then 1) the program will be far less universal than needed, 2) the smaller risk pool will lead to higher premium prices from insurers, 3) most people WANT to be covered by insurance, and under this plan their only option would be to purchase unaffordable insurance that would still not shield them from potential bankruptcy in the event of an illness.
All of this is to say that the real problem here is the final cost of the bill. Already we’ve seen it drop from $1.3 trillion over ten years to $880 billion, with some Senators agitating for less. And not for any reason, mind you, other than to make the bill more “moderate,” just like on the stimulus. But that lowered cost means a cap on subsidies which will be insufficient for most. “Moderate” in this case being another word for “ineffective.”
At least some Democrats are aware of the deficiencies, and the fact that Baucus tailored his bill to attend to all of the concerns of a GOP who won’t vote for it, instead of a Democratic Party who may. Even at this point, the Axis of Grassley and Enzi aren’t satisfied, and are offering wildly contradictory proposals, like asking the Feds to bear the full cost of Medicaid expansion instead of part going to the states (I don’t disagree) and also wanting to eliminate the tax on insurance companies that would pay for, among other things, Medicaid expansion. By contrast, a few Democrats are extremely concerned about the subsidies, which would lead to a package that people would either hate or not be able to use. And The Hill reports that Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee will push this with amendments.
Near the top of the list for the panel’s Democrats is worry that health insurance subsidies will not be sufficiently generous nor available to enough people despite the fact that the bill would legally require most people to obtain coverage. Beyond premiums, some Democrats are concerned that Baucus’s proposal would not do enough to protect middle-class families from high healthcare expenses.
“It’s very clear, at this point in the debate, the flashpoint is all about affordability,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “I personally think there’s a lot of heavy lifting left to do on the affordability issue.”
The healthcare bills already approved by three House committees and another Senate committee offer more generous subsidies – but at a higher cost to taxpayers.
“We’re doing our very best to make an insurance requirement as affordable as we possibly can, recognizing that we’re trying to get this bill under $900 billion total,” said Baucus, who has been courting Republican support for his measure in an attempt to guarantee that a healthcare bill can achieve the 60 votes or more needed to avoid a Senate filibuster.
“I’m going to work even harder to address any legitimate affordability concerns. I knew they were there,” Baucus said.
I just don’t believe that the guy who created a bill which represents a gift to the insurance industry is all that concerned about “legitimate” affordability concerns. But in the end, the bill can’t work unless people can afford coverage. That would obliterate everything it’s trying to do.
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