Strangely, the headline to this article doesn’t characterize this development as a devastating blow to Republicans and opponents of health care reform the way every other report from the CBO has been characterized as a devastating blow to Democrats, even though it punctures one of the industry’s central arguments against the public plan:
A new government health insurance plan sought by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could coexist with private insurers without driving them out of business, an analysis by nonpartisan budget experts suggests.
The estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — seen as good news by Democrats — comes as leaders pushed Monday to make progress on health care overhaul before lawmakers go home for their August recess.
I personally don’t like insurance companies and I’d be happy if we had a system where they weren’t necessary. But if they could be made to do their business in a fair and equitable manner, sell their products honestly and fulfill their obligations, then we could probably live with them. Rapacious greedheads making obscene profits on the backs of sick Americans, however, is an immoral and expensive arrangement that can’t be tolerated any longer.
If strict regulation and competition from a public option would force insurance companies to participate in universal health care as decent corporate citizens then I won’t complain. I also won’t care if a public plan does end up driving out those which insist that spending billions in compensation to their CEOs is necessary but fulfilling the terms of their policies isn’t. It’s really up to them.
That’s all a very big “if,” of course. If the public plan turns out to be some half-baked co-op wet dream then it’s unlikely to do much of anything; if it’s designed to be (or become) like the Hacker plan, with a strong dose of Wyden, then it could. It’s all about waiting for Baucus at this point.
Those of you who saw the ex-insurance industry PR executive Wendell Potter’s interview a couple of weeks back on Bill Moyers (you can read a story about him here) you know that his consciousness was raised when he went to a “health fair” in Virginia and saw a scene that you would normally expect to see in a refugee camp.
The same health fair was held again this past week-end:
It’s not yet 5 a.m., but people are emerging from their cars, a few scurrying to pack up tents and camp stoves, bustling to be ready, hoping to have the opportunity to receive health care.
As wisps of pink sunlight began coloring the clouds, the masses huddle at the gate under a misty dawn, waiting for their numbers to be called.
The grassy parking lot is full. Beyond the fence, the cars are stacked up for miles. A snake of headlights is visible in the semi-dark along the curvy length of Hurricane Road, waiting to access the Wise County Fairgrounds.
These are the modern-day breadlines: people desperate not for food, but for health care.
“We are working taxpaying jobs, paying taxes, and we can’t get insurance because we make $6.55 an hour,” said Laura Head, 32, of Rogersville, Tenn., the first person in line Friday for the first day of the Remote Area Medical clinic, an annual three-day event offering free medical care. “This is really a great beneficial thing, but it doesn’t have to be this way; we could all have insurance.”
A single mother of three who mows yards and moves trailers for a living, Head said she arrived at the fairgrounds Tuesday, to camp out at the fairgrounds until the health fair began Friday morning. Her motivation was simple: severe, constant pain.
Close to two years ago, her boyfriend smashed her teeth, she said – but, without the $6,000 needed to have the teeth pulled she has endured infection after infection, making literally 100 visits to the emergency room for antibiotics and pain medication.
[…]
The lack of access to health and dental care is not an Appalachian problem, he said – it’s a problem all across the nation.
“Emergency rooms act as the safety net in this system,” he said, “and that’s at the breaking point.”
Even as a national health care reform bill is prepared for debate in Congress, more than 1,400 volunteers descended on Wise on Friday, with hundreds more signed up for the weekend – but even they were not enough to help everyone seeking care.
“We’ve never had the traffic problem that we had this morning,” said Teresa Gardner, executive director of the Health Wagon, the local organization that coordinates the event. “It’s a record-setting day for sure.”
The work will continue today and Sunday.
Stan Brock, the founder of RAM, said 1,600 numbers were given out Friday to people seeking care – compared with 1,200 last year on the first day. He said the event here has grown every year.
“It’s been like this for years and years and years,” Brock said. “This is not a recent phenomenon, and it’s not peculiar to Southwest Virginia. … Two weeks from now we’ll be in Los Angeles, Calif. – same problem.”
People like Mitch McConnell insist that Americans have the best health care in the world. And he certainly does, as, frankly, do most working middle and upper class Americans. But God help you if you lose your job or happen to get sick. And even then, bankruptcy is a definite possibility if you find out your insurance is just a sham policy that really only covers a portion of your costs as many people are finding out today.
It’s lucky these good Samaritans are coming to LA, but I’m afraid they are barely going to skim the surface of the problem here (a problem which is going to get worse very quickly as the Mad Max Schwarzenneger cuts take effect.)
Approximately 2.7 million people in Los Angeles County (or about 28% of the population) have no health insurance. It is the third highest uninsured rate of 85 metropolitan areas in the nation. About 31% of all Los Angeles County residents age 64 or less are uninsured. Two million of Los Angeles County uninsured persons are adults, ages 18 to 64 (about 34% of the county adult population).
Can we call in Doctors Without Borders? I think we’re going to need them.
The more we wade into this health care debate, the more we uncover things that simply astound. In an article about curbing prescription drug ads on television, there’s this nugget:
Meanwhile, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill called the Say No to Drug Ads Act. It would amend the federal tax code to prevent pharmaceutical companies from deducting the cost of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements as a business expense.
“You should not be going to a doctor saying, ‘I have restless leg syndrome’ — whatever the hell that is — or going to a doctor saying, ‘I have the mumps,’ ” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “You should not be diagnosed by some pitchman on TV who doesn’t know you whatsoever.” […]
Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said last month that legislators would consider ending the tax break for drug ads as a way to raise money to pay for the health care overhaul. But, after lobbying from broadcasters and newspapers, Mr. Tauzin said, legislators quickly abandoned the idea, concluding that such a measure would not raise significant money.
With lawmakers still fighting over how to finance health care reform, Mr. Nadler said he hoped his bill might find an audience.
“On First Amendment grounds, I am not going to say we will ban” drug advertising, said Mr. Nadler, who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. “But they should not be able to get taxpayers to subsidize it.”
Meanwhile, Representative Daniel Lipinski, Democrat of Illinois, is pushing his own bill that would end the tax deduction for drug company spending on advertisements.
Drug companies get a TAX DEDUCTION for running ads for their drugs. Is this true of Frosted Flakes? Audi? Xerox? Does any other company in America get subsidized for airing commercials to get America to buy their products? It’s not “significant money,” though, so ending this direct payout from taxpayers to drug companies got shelved.
Set aside for a second the hypochondria that a nightly barrage of ads telling you that you have restless leg syndrome or iron-poor blood or any of a thousand ailments induces. Set aside the self-medication and the boiling down of complex medical issues into 30-second spots showing couples running through a field. Set aside how drug ads increase demand for medications and thus the costs. Set aside that some of these ads run before the Food and Drug Administration even completes their studies of the side effects. You mean to tell me that I’m helping PAY for these things, too?
Fun fact in the article: only the United States and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer drug advertisements.
…and here’s the part where I revise and extend my remarks, as the deduction under discussion is about business expenses and not a straight tax deduction. Maybe I should put a big blinking banner at the top of this one saying IGNORE. They ain’t all gems, folks. I will take solace in the fact that, contra Mitch Albom, I know what marginal tax rates are. But just a little solace.
I think the point of having advertisements for prescription drugs at all can still be debated, however, for reasons described above.
Big deal. That’s nowhere enough. In fact, neither is this:
A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.
“As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation.
The foundation, based in Boston, is soliciting signatures from librarians, publishers and major authors and public intellectuals. This week it plans to present a petition to Amazon asking it to give up control over the books people load on their Kindles
Sorry, but as long as it is technically feasible to alter and/or erase information, these devices are fundamentally, profoundly dangerous to a free society. Merely promising to give up control is not enough. It must be impossible to alter the content of a book, magazine, newspaper, etc once a user has purchased it, for any reason whatsoever. And alterations a reader does make must be clearly marked as such the way it is impossible now to alter a copy of a book without knowing it has been altered.
Since that is a daunting, if not hopeless, task for a digital gadget devoted to the sale of books and other print products – and since I want to own my books, not license them – I, for one, have little interest at this point in getting one.
Merce Cunningham died Sunday. He was a truly great artist, a giant, a genius of the highest order. Like Bach, he took formal ideas of a daunting complexity and made them seem like child’s play. But that was hardly all. Like Bach, and like few other artists, Merce had the rare, uncanny ability to infuse his explorations of form and structure with the deepest emotional meaning; I found myself crying more than once at a Merce concert, and always left exhilarated, renewed, filled with the possibilities of art.
To watch Merce dance was a great thing. He was the most graceful man I’ve ever seen. His company, right up to the end of his life, was exceptionally well-trained and rehearsed. A recent performance was so spectacular it put the far better funded ballet companies to shame.
Merce, thank you for so many memorable dances and such implacable devotion to the highest artistic achievement. I already miss you terribly.
Update: Here’s a little advice for you bleeding heart hippies, brought to you by a guest post at The Corner from an LA Police Officer:
[S]ince the president is keen on offering instruction, here is what I would advise he teach his Ivy League pals, and anyone else who may find himself unexpectedly confronted by a police officer: You may be as pure as the driven snow itself, but you have no idea what horrible crime that police officer might suspect you of committing. You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
When the officer has satisfied himself that it was not you and your Hupmobile that were involved in the Piggly Wiggly heist, he owes you an explanation for the stop and an apology for the inconvenience, but if you’re running your mouth about your rights and your history of oppression and what have you, you’re likely to get neither.
— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. “Jack Dunphy” is the author’s nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.
Again, you have to wonder what the good people of the NRA — especially all those poor truckers John Thune was going on about, who need to carry concealed weapons across state lines — think about this police officer’s attitude about their “constitutional rights” and running the risk of having holes placed in their bodies. I would guess that odds of said officer putting holes in someone who is carrying a piece are substantially higher than the average person, whatever the race or social status. Especially the very thin-skinned, clearly pyschologically unfit ones such as this fellow.
Do you sense that things are getting a little bit confused out there?
In their health care reform coverage, media have repeatedly given considerably more attention to perceived setbacks to progressive reform efforts than to events that signal progress for those efforts. A Media Matters for America analysis of transcripts available in the Nexis database has found that broadcast and cable news featured almost twice as many segments mentioning the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) reported opposition to a public insurance plan as segments mentioning the AMA’s recent announcement that it supported the House Democrats’ health care reform bill, which includes a public plan.
That finding is consistent with an earlier Media Matters study showing that the number of cable news segments in Nexis mentioning an initial Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of an incomplete version of a Senate health committee draft bill was far greater than the number of segments mentioning a later CBO analysis. That later analysis showed that an updated version of the bill would cover more people for less than the earlier scoring had suggested. Media Matters has also documented a pattern in which media suggest that President Obama’s reform effort is in serious jeopardy, despite events — including the AMA endorsement and revised CBO score — that indicate reform efforts have made substantial progress.
Following the June 10 publication of a New York Times article reporting that the AMA “will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan,” broadcast and cable news networks ran a total of 23 segments from June 11 through June 14 that mentioned or discussed the AMA’s reported stance, according to a search of transcripts available in the Nexis database. By contrast, following the July 16 announcement by the AMA that it supported passage of the House Democrats’ health care reform bill, the networks ran a total of 12 segments from July 16 through July 20 mentioning or discussing the AMA’s endorsement
Americans always get nervous when their leaders are perceived to be losers. In fact, they hate it. And when the media skews toward failure unfairly, it has an effect on public opinion.
It’s been clear to me for some time that much of the media (with some notable exceptions) was looking for failure on this one. They like conflict and they don’t actually care about whether or not health care gets done. Mark Halperin said right out that we should bet against health reform because:
“Most journalists still have health insurance.”
Now one can make the argument that this bias exists against whomever is in charge of the agenda. But you wouldn’t have much evidence to support it:
Network newscasts, dominated by current and former U.S. officials, largely exclude Americans who are skeptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq, a new study by FAIR has found. of all
Among the major findings in a two-week study (1/30/03–2/12/03) of on-camera network news sources quoted on Iraq:
* Seventy-six percent of all sources were current or former officials, leaving little room for independent and grassroots views. Similarly, 75 percent of U.S. sources (199/267) were current or former officials.
* At a time when 61 percent of U.S. respondents were telling pollsters that more time was needed for diplomacy and inspections (2/6/03), only 6 percent of U.S. sources on the four networks were skeptics regarding the need for war.
* Sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. On the four networks combined, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism–less than 1 percent. Just one of 267 U.S. sources was affiliated with anti-war activism–less than half a percent.
I suspect that there is a bit of mass psychology at work here, in which the media collectively understands that it’s blamed for failing its responsibility under Bush and so feels that it needs to demonstrate its independence this time out. (It also knows that it was pretty gushy toward Obama during the campaign and now that he has come down to earth as a politician, they feel embarrassed.)
This happened with Clinton and Carter too. For a variety of reasons, the press holds Democrats to tougher standards, mostly because of their own failures during Republican presidencies. And because they overreact in Democratic administrations, they inevitably go easier on Republicans. How much of this is political bias is unknown, but it doesn’t matter. The effect is the same.
The media remain a huge part of the problem and it’s important that we not forget that in all of our holding of Democratic feet to the fire. Chuck Todd and the rest of the kewl kidz see it all as a big political game and they are both the umpires and the color men. And that actually makes them very powerful players.
Dday’s doing some writing for Crooks and Liars these days and (damn him!) gave Amato this gem of a post about Goldman Sachs. Read the whole thing, and be sure to watch the video of Bill Maher and Matt Taibbi sparring on the subject.
Dday points to this fascinating little tid-bit from the NY Times which flew under the radar of the generalist political blogs as we argued over arcane pieces of health care policy and racial profiling the past few days. But it’s certainly something we should find more bandwidth to talk about. After all, it’s a scandal of epic proportions and yet another piece of evidence that Goldman Sachs (along with others) in the last 25 years has become an extra-legal if not a fully criminal enterprise. (Much of what they do is not illegal, but it is immoral and it certainly is cheating.) Here’s the NY Times article from Friday:
It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors’ orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices.
It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets […]
Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.
And when a former Goldman Sachs programmer was accused this month of stealing secret computer codes — software that a federal prosecutor said could “manipulate markets in unfair ways” — it only added to the mystery. Goldman acknowledges that it profits from high-frequency trading, but disputes that it has an unfair advantage.
Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission says it is examining certain aspects of the strategy.
“This is where all the money is getting made,” said William H. Donaldson, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and today an adviser to a big hedge fund. “If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”
dday writes:
They literally place their super-fast computers physically close to the machines that govern NYSE trades, to get the jump on competitors and make enough pennies off of the brief ups and downs of stocks to rake in mounds of cash. And in some cases, investors can buy access to buy and sell order information on certain exchanges that can be used to make these quick orders. When Chuck Schumer is calling for an investigation of Wall Street, you know something has gone horribly wrong.
No, Goldman Sachs is not the only organization profiting from this scheme, or any of the numerous others. But their name keeps surfacing among those that are, in pretty much every case. I don’t know how much evidence it takes to understand their role in all of this. Taibbi may not have gotten every single solitary thing right in his very long piece, but he got enough right to make some very powerful people nervous. And rightly so.
Something has gone terribly wrong on Wall Street, and at Goldman Sachs in particular. And I suspect that nobody wants to look too closely because they are afraid that a lack of “faith” in the markets will end up making the economy worse.(More faith based crapola ….) The powers that be in both government and business are scared witless right now that the whole house of cards is going to fall in at once, no matter how much they inanely babble about green shoots and recovery. After all, moving money around and skimming a tidy profit off the top is about the only area where America leads the world anymore. Besides arms and entertainment, it’s our main contribution to the global economy. These firms pretty much own the government and they all agree that unless they have their way, the repercussions could be catastrophic. They are holding a metaphorical gun to the heads of every American and saying, let us make obscene profits no matter what or we’ll take this fucker down. Of course, it’s probably going to come down of its own accord at some point, but they are too big to fail, so no harm, no foul. For them.
But these people are greedheads even beyond the fever dreams of the most ardent disaster capitalist. The smart move is to be prudent and chagrined and keep their heads down and their profile low for a while. But instead they seem to think they need to return to bubbleland as quickly as possible and demonstrate to everyone that they don’t take their recent near death experience seriously in the least.
But then, why should they. They crashed the world economy with their last little gambit but they have been determined to be too big to fail, nobody has gone to jail, the only punishment they suffered was getting their bonuses slashed for a year. You can see why they would assume all systems are go. And since they are Masters of the Universe, social disapprobation is something reserved for the rubes. They just don’t give a damn. They don’t have to.
And frankly, I don’t see what will stop them. Americans care far more about Michael Jackson’s final days than they do about these financial miscreants destroying the economy for their own personal profit. And the politicians are all their buddies from grad school or recipients of their social and financial largesse. I’m finding it hard to see a mechanism besides total social breakdown that would stop them.
Update: Matt Stoller, policy adviser to Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL-8) sent out an email on a related topic.
Next week, the Financial Services Committee is going to be marking up a bill on executive compensation, the so-called ‘Say on Pay’ bill. Among other things, this bill mandates a nonbinding shareholder vote on executive compensation. Now, the vote is nonbinding, so the board could theoretically just ignore a shareholder ‘no’ vote.
Let’s say that the legislation were changed so that the shareholder vote were binding. What would happen if shareholders vote ‘no’? Would the executives then be paid nothing? That seems unreasonable and unworkable.
How could this be structured so that the shareholder vote is binding, but there’s some process to determine executive pay if management is voted down?
Leave your ideas in the comments or send me an email and I’ll see that they get to Matt.
I’m partial to the idea of barricades and pitchforks myself, but maybe something along this lines could be tried first …
Obama Betrayus by digbyI would guess that Obama successfully headed this off with his impromptu press conference on Friday, but if he hadn’t the hissy fit was coming to the floor of congress:
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) will introduce a House resolution on Monday demanding Obama retract and apologize for remarks he has made about Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley this past week. Obama had said at his prime time press conference Wednesday that Crowley had “acted stupidly” in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a racially-infused case which has sparked a national debate on race and policing. The president refused to back down on his involvement in the case, but appeared in the White House briefing on Friday to say he had called Crowley to explain that never meant to insult the officer. (Obama also called Gates on Friday.) McCotter’s resolution would demand Obama “retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley for having unfairly impugned and prejudged his professional conduct in this local police response incident.”[…]
DRAFT House Resolution Whereas on July 16, 2009, Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley responded to a 911 call from a neighbor of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. about a suspected break-in in progress at his residence, which had been broken into on a prior occasion; Whereas on July 22, 2009, in responding to a question during a White House press conference President Barack Obama stated: “Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all of the facts involved in this local police response incident”; Whereas President Obama proceeded to state Sergeant Crowley “acted stupidly” for arresting Professor Gates on charges of disorderly conduct; Whereas, as a former Constitutional Law Professor, President Obama well understands that all Americans are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and their actions should not be prejudged prior to being fully and fairly judged by an appropriate and objective authority after due process; Whereas, President Obama’s nationally televised remarks may likely detrimentally influence the full and fair judgment by an appropriate and objective authority after due process regarding this local police response incident and, thereby, impair Sergeant Crowley’s legal and professional standing in relation to said incident; and Whereas, President Obama appeared at a daily White House Press briefing on July 24, 2009 to address his denouncement of Sergeant Crowley and stated: “I could have calibrated those words differently” but “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station.” Whereas, President Obama’s refusal to retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Sergeant Crowley and, instead, reiterate his accusation impugning Sergeant Crowley’s professional conduct in the performance of his duties; Now therefore be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives– Calls upon President Obama to retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley for having unfairly impugned and prejudged his professional conduct in this local police response incident.
When it comes to hissy fits, the Republicans are all about “what works” and this is the kind of thing that has always worked for them in the past. It’s clear they haven’t lost their love for absurdist political theatre. Unfortunately, they are falling back on a tired formula and may have opened the show just a little bit too late. But they’re troopers, no doubt about it.
