The chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Henry Waxman, said on Friday he would let the full House by pass his committee on healthcare reform if the panel could not reach agreement on its version of the legislation.
Fiscally conservative Democrats on that committee have refused to go along with the proposal over its high cost of $1 trillion over 10 years and that has stalled the process of getting a bill to a vote in the full House before it begins a monthlong recess on July 31.
Waxman told reporters that he was going to meet the conservative Democrats on the panel shortly to discuss another proposal to try to meet their concerns. But if they do not agree, “we going to have to look at perhaps bypassing the committee,” he told reporters. This would allow a health care reform bill go to the House floor without a vote of his panel.
Not that’s what a powerful Chairman should act like. Damn.
Following up on dday’s post below, can I just ask if those of you who are older than 35 or so are getting that strange familiar feeling? You know the one, where the media are suddenly hostile to the president, the Democrats are running for the hills and the country is confused and doesn’t know what to think? The one where cable news gets obsessed with manufactured wingnut shitstorms designed to distract and diminish the president’s stature and sap his political capital just when he needs it the most? We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?
It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that we are seeing a rather sudden attention being paid to race. First, our black president nominated a Hispanic woman to the Supreme court. That got the right wing noise machine all hyped up about “reverse discrimination” a concept which began seeping into the mainstream almost immediately. Then we suddenly have a lot of attention being paid to the Birthers, out of the blue. It’s not like they haven’t been around for a while, but on the heels of the Sotomayor discussion, we are hearing a whole lot about them — and their claims are being aired over and over and over again on mainstream TV (even as they are being refuted.) Hmmmmm. Now we have the president having the temerity to suggest that the arrest of a black man for disorderly conduct in his own home was handled “stupidly,” which has sent the media into a frenzy the likes of which we haven’t seen since Jeremiah Wright.
Indeed, I heard a TV commentator suggest this morning that this one comment may be the reason for the death of health care reform because it sucked the air out of the conversation. The fact that it’s the media which is doing the sucking doesn’t seem to occur to anyone.
This is quintessential village behavior. They are being drawn into a right wing noise machine meme — and they are more than eager to go there. The health care debate is costing Obama some serious political capital and the mushy Dems are predictably getting restless. The villagers smell blood. When that happens, the wingnuts are always at the ready with some juicy, emotion laden trivia for the kewl kids to latch on to to make the narrative of impending failure really sing. And that brings us to the sexy stuff about “wise latinas” and police behaving “stupidly” and the weird idea that our black president isn’t really an American at all.
Race was always going to be the underlying issue in this presidency. This country didn’t magically shed its racial baggage in 2008 no matter how much everyone wanted to pretend it did. (The Jeremiah Wright episode should have given us a clue as to what would happen if Obama ever strayed too far into the black identity.) The villagers were all thrilled that we had the first black president. But it was quite clear to me that what they really loved was their own “enlightened” self-image. Cokie and Sally Quinn and their friends down at the beauty parlor were very pleased with themselves for being so post-racial that they didn’t even “see” race anymore. As long as Obama didn’t start to be too “black” that is.
We saw the first inklings of a change among the Villagers with Matthews and his laughable class identification with the litigious firefighter in New Haven. Since villagers all see themselves as working class white ethnics already (even as they plan their summer vacations in their multi-million dollar vacation homes in Nantucket) this handy narrative really got the ball rolling. Sotomayor and the Birthers and now Gates are all gelling into a narrative about Obama’s “race problem” and we are seeing the veil of racial tolerance among the Villagers slipping.
Obama’s “problem,” as it is for all Democratic presidents, is that he is allegedly “out of step” with the people — like Matthews and his firefighter brothers, and that cop in Cambridge and Rush and other Real Americans who are upset about how “liberal” he’s being with his tax ‘n spend health reform and the horrible deficits and his defense of loudmouthed black professors who are no better than they ought to be. You can feel the Big Money, the right wing noise machine and the Village all starting to find their collective voice and take control.
You can blame Obama for walking into the lion’s maw, as I’m hearing many of his allies do today — liberals always blamed Clinton for failing to be perfect too. But believe me, there’s no way to avoid this stuff when the frenzy begins. Once they smell blood they always find something.
Update: The press is very excited that the president came before the press corps because he “had to” address the race issue. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that he apologized quite the way they want him to apologize.
I could be wrong, but I think I heard one of the reporters ask Gibbs, “was he aroused?” I may have misheard.
Update II: By contrast, CNNs Kira Phillips had an on air orgasm over the president’s remarks today. I suspect this may be because she has been relentlessly promoting the idea that the pres should get together with Sgt. Crowley to have a “teachable moment” and I think she may believe that the president sees her as an advisor in this matter. I think she might want to be invited to share that beer with Gates, Crowley and Obama.
At a time where all the policy focus is on reforming health care for the first time in a generation, white reporters everywhere are obsessed with the story of a black man arrested in his own home for daring to be angry about it, and how terrible it was for the President to speak on behalf of those in such a circumstance. Similarly, while health care and urgent domestic issues demand attention, the wingnuts want to talk about Obama’s birth certificate and some grand conspiracy to plant certificates of live birth in Hawaii and articles in the local paper 47 years ago in the hopes that later on a biracial kid growing up on the islands in the 1960s would fulfill the obvious goal of becoming President. G. Gordon Liddy was absurd and doddering last night on Hardball. He lied about a deposition from Obama’s grandmother that the President was born in Kenya, a result of mistranslation. But you know what he did? He ate up five and a half minutes on prime time cable TV. I know that Chris Matthews was basically beating up on Liddy and the Birther movement in general. But that old saying about how there’s no such thing as bad publicity? It’s especially true when time is finite.
Bill Scher sees a linkage between those willing to believe the Birther nonsense and those willing to believe in the myth of socialized medicine in the Obama health care plan.
The Birther movement has received renewed attention in recent days, after video of a Birther-dominated congressional town hall surfaced, and CNN’s Lou Dobbs attempted to legitimize the conspiracy theory.
Less noticed is the propensity of Birthers to also believe the other conservative conspiracy theory: President Obama’s health care plan is a socialist takeover of our medical system.
The long-standing high-traffic conservative website World Net Daily regularly leads its front page with the latest Birther news, but that is directly followed by the latest “socialized medicine” news. (Well actually, sandwiched between the two sets of conspiracies are the all important “Special Offers!” — such as “Turn $200 investment into $1 million. Sound impossible?”)
Beneath its Birther fever swamp, World Net Daily offers the “Breaking News” that Congress plans mandatory “counseling” for seniors that will “attempt to convince seniors to die,” (the latest smear job from the discredited Betsy McCaughey) and the “Exclusive” that congressional members have exempted themselves from the public plan option (it’s so “exclusive” to WND because the opposite is true.)
And at that infamous town hall for (non-Birther) Rep. Michael Castle, the loud Birther crowd also gave cheers and applause to an audience member who ranted: “if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down.”
I just think it’s about distraction. The Birther movement exists to rally a certain group of people and get the media chasing after them. It’s a sideshow, and it makes for good TV. In the 1990s it was the murder of Vince Foster and a whole other lot of insane conspiracy theories. It made the more plausible but just as wrong conspiracy theories easier for the media to swallow. It’s Overton Window stuff to the extreme. But in the short term, it just kicks the debate away from the focus sought by the White House and the majority of the country. The same with the Gates comments.
The media fail to see their role in all of this. They are not bystanders. They make editorial decisions to follow one story over another. They can devote resources wherever they choose. They could convene panels of health care policy experts and go over the issue that affects everyone’s life in a visceral way. Or they could focus on the sideshow. They choose the latter, and that choice is not “driven by events,” or whatever they would say to cover themselves.
As the final phase from a bill passed back in 2007, today the federal minimum wage rises to $7.25 an hour from $6.55 for workers across the country. This brings the federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, back to where it was in the 1990s. It’s hard to determine how many minimum-wage employees there are out there, but the best guess is that five million people get a raise today. Here’s one of them.
While those workers include thousands of financially secure students still living with Mom and Dad, they also include thousands of the most impoverished and vulnerable members of the workforce – those who sink further into debt each month as ordinary expenses outweigh their meager paychecks.
April Greer, 36, is one of them.
Her troubles began in December, when her husband was sent to prison for a parole violation, leaving her the sole provider for her three teenage children who live with her.
In January, she was fired from her job at a cellular provider. She said she was late for work because her sister-in-law commandeered her car.
She spent early spring trawling East Dallas for a new job, but, like millions of Americans, she found none.
In early May, Greer’s electricity provider finally turned out the lights. A few days later, her landlord changed the locks. She and her children crowded into the South Dallas bungalow of her husband’s parents.
She finally caught a break two months ago, when a nonprofit agency helped her land a part-time, minimum-wage job at T.J. Maxx, taking home about $800 a month.
Two weeks ago, after she started having dizzy spells at work, she collapsed and spent two days in the hospital.
Doctors aren’t sure what’s wrong with her. Maybe diabetes. Maybe her heart. Maybe just stress.
Greer knows she can’t afford $434 a month for the medication her doctor says she needs. She can barely afford the $100 a week she’s been paying her in-laws to cover their ballooning utility bills.
She wants to find a second job, but doesn’t know if her body can take it.
“Since I’m the only one right now for my kids, I have to take care of my health,” she said.
Those with the lowest incomes are often those who have the most health issues. That comes from stress, overwork, the lack of a nutritious diet, living in low-income environments where more pollution exists, and a variety of other factors. In this most cruel of American landscapes, the poor and the sick often are the same person.
But what we’ll hear today is how adding 70 cents an hour will bankrupt businesses. In actuality it will act as a mini-stimulus, giving the poor about $28 more a week for necessities that will almost certainly get spent and cycled into the economy.
What we certainly won’t hear about is how the struggle of these minimum-wage workers fits into the health care debate. Many are probably already on Medicaid, but a provision in the bill would limit out-of-pocket costs for everyone, and expanding access would help make sure nobody who needs health coverage slips through the cracks. The air-blown press corps may have thought Obama’s press conference was bor-ring, but the issues discussed directly affect the lives of people like April Greer. It would be nice if they could take up the debate with some inkling of concern for her, rather than acting like theater critics critiquing how folsky or animated the President was during his press conference.
Republicans and fiscal scolds say we just cannot afford to help someone like April. She ought to just get a job with the government. But Krugman says something important today – contrary to conservative belief, access and cost control are complementary.
Why does meaningful action on medical costs go along with compassion? One answer is that compassion means not closing your eyes to the human consequences of rising costs. When health insurance premiums doubled during the Bush years, our health care system “controlled costs” by dropping coverage for many workers — but as far as the Bush administration was concerned, that wasn’t a problem. If you believe in universal coverage, on the other hand, it is a problem, and demands a solution.
Beyond that, I’d suggest that would-be health reformers won’t have the moral authority to confront our system’s inefficiency unless they’re also prepared to end its cruelty. If President Bush had tried to rein in Medicare spending, he would have been accused, with considerable justice, of cutting benefits so that he could give the wealthy even more tax cuts. President Obama, by contrast, can link Medicare reform with the goal of protecting less fortunate Americans and making the middle class more secure.
As a practical, political matter, then, controlling health care costs and expanding health care access aren’t opposing alternatives — you have to do both, or neither.
April Greer probably just wants the peace of mind that she can get treatment when she needs it, without going deeply and overwhelmingly into debt in the process. Long-term budgetary constraints and bending cost curves matter less to her. But Krugman is right that the two are not in conflict, and must be packaged together.
I’m happy April is getting a small raise for her troubles today. I want her to get a health care system that honors her struggle and provides her security. But Senators need a three-week recess, so she’ll have to wait.
The talking heads on cable TV panned President Obama’s Wednesday press conference. You see, he didn’t offer a lot of folksy anecdotes.
Shame on them. The health care system is in crisis. The fate of America’s middle class hangs in the balance. And there on our TVs was a president with an impressive command of the issues, who truly understands the stakes…
I don’t know how many people understand the significance of Mr. Obama’s proposal to give MedPAC, the expert advisory board to Medicare, real power. But it’s a major step toward reducing the useless spending — the proliferation of procedures with no medical benefits — that bloats American health care costs.
And both the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have also been emphasizing the importance of “comparative effectiveness research” — seeing which medical procedures actually work.
So the Obama administration’s commitment to health care for all goes along with an unprecedented willingness to get serious about spending health care dollars wisely. And that’s part of a broader pattern.
Many health care experts believe that one main reason we spend far more on health than any other advanced nation, without better health outcomes, is the fee-for-service system in which hospitals and doctors are paid for procedures, not results. As the president said Wednesday, this creates an incentive for health providers to do more tests, more operations, and so on, whether or not these procedures actually help patients.
So where in America is there serious consideration of moving away from fee-for-service to a more comprehensive, integrated approach to health care? The answer is: Massachusetts — which introduced a health-care plan three years ago that was, in some respects, a dress rehearsal for national health reform, and is now looking for ways to help control costs…
When health insurance premiums doubled during the Bush years, our health care system “controlled costs” by dropping coverage for many workers — but as far as the Bush administration was concerned, that wasn’t a problem. If you believe in universal coverage, on the other hand, it is a problem, and demands a solution.
Beyond that, I’d suggest that would-be health reformers won’t have the moral authority to confront our system’s inefficiency unless they’re also prepared to end its cruelty. If President Bush had tried to rein in Medicare spending, he would have been accused, with considerable justice, of cutting benefits so that he could give the wealthy even more tax cuts. President Obama, by contrast, can link Medicare reform with the goal of protecting less fortunate Americans and making the middle class more secure.
As a practical, political matter, then, controlling health care costs and expanding health care access aren’t opposing alternatives — you have to do both, or neither.
This has been another edition of What Krugman Said.
Time decided to do some reporting about the final days in the Bush bunker, particularly about Dick Cheney’s efforts to extract a pardon for his pal Scooter Libby. It’s clearly from Bush’s perspective, but nevertheless it’s a pretty fascinating article just for seeing how the Bush loyalists spin the tale.
Petitions for pardons are usually sent in writing to the White House counsel’s office or a specially designated attorney at the Department of Justice. In Libby’s case, Cheney simply carried the message directly to Bush, as he had with so many other issues in the past, pressing the President in one-on-one meetings or in larger settings. A White House veteran was struck by his “extraordinary level of attention” to the case. Cheney’s persistence became nearly as big an issue as the pardon itself. “Cheney really got in the President’s face,” says a longtime Bush-family source. “He just wouldn’t give it up.”
And there was a darker possibility. As a former Bush senior aide explains, “I’m sure the President and [chief of staff] Josh [Bolten] and Fred had a concern that somewhere, deep in there, there was a cover-up.” It had been an article of faith among Cheney’s critics that the Vice President wanted a pardon for Libby because Libby had taken the fall for him in the Fitzgerald probe. In his grand-jury testimony reviewed by TIME, Libby denied three times that Cheney had directed him to leak Plame’s CIA identity in mid-2003. Though his recollection of other events in the same time frame was lucid and detailed, on at least 20 occasions, Libby could not recall details of his talks with Cheney about Plame’s place of employment or questions the Vice President raised privately about Wilson’s credibility. Some Bush officials wondered whether Libby was covering up for Cheney’s involvement in the leak of Plame’s identity.
That makes it seem like Bush just wanted to separate himself from the Libby case altogether, despite the fact that Libby was a special adviser to the President, not the Vice President, and he was protecting both Bush and Cheney. It makes sense for Bush to compartmentalize the Libby leak, as if he were an innocent bystander, and refusing to pardon obviously helps him in that case. But it’s not true at all. Marcy Wheeler has a lot more on this.
But this just blew me away. After Cheney lays out the case for a pardon, repeatedly, incessantly, for weeks:
A few days later, about a week before they would become private citizens, Bush pulled Cheney aside after a morning meeting and told him there would be no pardon. Cheney looked stricken. Most officials respond to a presidential rebuff with a polite thanks for considering the request in the first place. But Cheney, an observer says, “expressed his disappointment and disagreement with the decision … He didn’t take it well.”
Two days after that, Libby, who hadn’t previously lobbied on his own behalf, telephoned Bolten’s office. He wanted an audience with Bush to argue his case in person. To Libby, a presidential pardon was a practical as well as symbolic prize: among other things, it would allow him to practice law again. Bolten once more kicked the matter to the lawyers, agreeing to arrange a meeting with Fielding. On Saturday, Jan. 17, with less than 72 hours left in the Bush presidency, Libby and Fielding and a deputy met for lunch at a seafood restaurant three blocks from the White House. Again Libby insisted on his innocence. No one’s memory is perfect, he argued; to convict me for not remembering something precisely was unfair. Fielding kept listening for signs of remorse. But none came. Fielding reported the conversation to Bush.
OK, is it normal for the subject of a possible Presidential pardon to personally lobby for it on his own behalf? Has that ever happened before? If it has, I don’t recall it.
The article is decent enough, but don’t start to drink a glass of water when you read this part, or you’re in for a surefire spit-take:
While packing boxes in the upstairs residence, according to his associates, Bush noted that he was again under pressure from Cheney to pardon Libby. He characterized Cheney as a friend and a good Vice President but said his pardon request had little internal support. If the presidential staff were polled, the result would be 100 to 1 against a pardon, Bush joked. Then he turned to Sharp. “What’s the bottom line here? Did this guy lie or not?”
The lawyer, who had followed the case very closely, replied affirmatively.
Bush indicated that he had already come to that conclusion too.
“O.K., that’s it,” Bush said.
Yes, that moral paragon, truth-teller extraordinaire, George W. Bush, Honest George I think they called him, comes down firmly on the side of truth in virtually every circumstance. History will judge him as the most forthright human who ever bestrode the earth. A colossus among men.
Incidentally, the man, Jim Sharp, that Bush is talking with here? It’s his own defense attorney.
Following up on dday’s post below, I see that Jon Cohn is also reading the tea leaves and seeing that Obama is blessing not only the MEDPac idea, (which actually comes from the white house) but also the repeal of the employer tax exclusion, which the CBO Chief hinted broadly would get his blessing if included in the plan (and which I said they should do if only for that reason.) He’s specifically saying that he is intrigued by what we are calling the “Kerry plan,” as previously reported, which, as I wrote yesterday, seems like a rather elegant solution to the political aspects of that problem.
This is good. No news yet on the rumor that they have decided to report out a plan without the public option. But if they do, I hope they realize that they are going to see a progressive shit storm of Katrina proportions.
The Public Plan is already a compromise position that the grassroots nonetheless rallied around as a concession to pragmatism (driven by a presidential campaign that left them little choice.) For better or worse, it’s the sugar that made this hybrid medicine go down on the progressive side. Throwing that away, even if somebody thinks they can restore it in conference, is a deliberately provocative act and they should be wary of the consequences.
Recall it isn’t just the little bloggers who are agitating for a public plan. It has been endorsed by dozens of health industry interests at some political risk to themselves as well as Obama’s own grassroots organization. It is not just another data point.
I don’t doubt they would love to do it. It would be a huge victory for the insurance companies who own the financial services committee and would appease the Big Money Boyz across the board to see that there is absolutely no issue over which which Democrats will fulfill their promises to their constituents if it means threatening the power and influence of those who hold the purse strings. But it will cause these same Democrats a gargantuan amount of grief from their left. Maybe they don’t care. But if they don’t report out the public plan at this point, we’ll certainly find out.
I’m looking at a “Situation Room” chyron right now that says:
“Strangers Could Decide Your Coverage — Controversial idea for health council.”
Is there anyone out there who personally knows the people who decide your coverage? Does the current system, whereby your employer picks the policy and the procedures are approved by faceless insurance company clerks give people a lot of personal say in that regard? I don’t think so.
As it turns out, this misleading chyron is actually referring to proposed changes in Medicare, which would remove the decisions about reimbursement rates from congress and give it to an independent health board. Wonks I trust seem to think this could be helpful in containing costs. I don’t have an opinion. But I do know that the idea that it’s the elderly people themselves who are deciding the medicare reimbursements and suddenly it’s going to be a bunch of strangers is patently absurd.
Right now decisions about reimbursements are being made by strangers known as “lobbyists” who are buying off your very good friend the congressman. I don’t think most people see that as medicine with a personal touch.
In a first-of-its-kind study, the non-profit Rand Corp linked the rapid growth in U.S. health care costs to job losses and lower output. The study, published online by the journal Health Services Research, gives weight to President Barack Obama’s dire warnings about the impact of rising costs if Congress does not enact health care reform.
The Rand researchers examined the economic performance of 38 industries from 1987 through 2005, in an attempt to assess the economic impact of “excess” growth in health care costs on U.S. industries. Excess growth is defined as the increase in health care costs that exceeds the overall growth of the nation’s GDP—a yearly occurrence in the U.S. The team compared changes in employment, economic output and the value added to the GDP product for industries that provide health benefits to most workers to those where few workers have job-based health insurance.
After adjusting for other factors, industries that provide insurance had significantly less employment growth than industries where health benefits were not common. Industries with a larger percentage of workers receiving employer-sponsored health insurance also showed lower growth in their contribution to the GDP…
This study provides some of the first evidence that the rapid rise in health care costs has negative consequences for several U.S. industries,” said Neeraj Sood, the study’s lead author and a senior economist at RAND. “Industries where more workers receive employer-sponsored health insurance are hit the hardest by rising health care costs.
To rule out the possibility that the economic effects were caused by some other industry-wide factor, the researchers compared U.S. industries with their counterparts in Canada, which has publicly financed universal health care. They found no similar percent change in employment in the corresponding Canadian industries over the 19-year study period.
Sadly, I’m afraid that many people will feel that the only logical response to this is for fewer employers to offer health insurance.
Amanda Marcotte has written a very interesting post about the nasty campaign against Dr Regina Benjamin for allegedly being too fat to serve as Surgeon General. Aside from the very dubious claims that a bigger woman can’t possibly be a good role model for good health (which Marcotte dispatches quite convincingly, I think) there is another issue brewing around all this that we should all be concerned about.
Nobody disputes that morbid obesity is dangerous to people’s health and that something very strange is happening in our culture with so many children and adults rather suddenly becoming much larger than in the past. Some of the early science suggests it has something to do with the processed nature of the fast food nation as well as the overabundance of available food and sedentary lifestyle, but nobody knows exactly what’s going on. Whatever it is, it’s startlingly quick in evolutionary terms and there are a lot of questions to be answered before we have any idea of the full cause of the phenomenon.
But naturally, society’s moral scolds are using this health crisis as yet another reason to use others’ “failure” as a sign of their own righteousness. They are, in other words, using this bizarre, sudden change in human physiology as an excuse to label others as morally inferior.
Everyone who is overweight should exercise more, eat smaller portions and healthy foods. Nobody disputes that. But the scope and speed of this change in weight, especially among young people is far less likely to be attributable to moral weakness or a wholesale change in human nature in just 20 years than the fact that the food supply and daily habits of Americans have changed radically. At the very least I think it’s logical to assume that it’s more complicated than vast numbers of people, including half the children, have turned lazy, gluttonous and morally deficient overnight.
Yet, as Marcotte points out, there is an increasing tendency to see all of this as yet another opportunity to marginalize and shame certain segments of society based upon appearance:
By saying this, I’m not making any health claims about weight. That discussion, while interesting, is beside the point of this post. It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society. Of course, we double down on fat people, and triple down on fat women, because of plain old prejudice, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Smokers, people who don’t eat right, and other people with poor health habits are also considered morally inadequate, if harder to judge because they’re harder to spot. The fetish for health management is, I suspect, a large reason that the anti-vaccination movement has taken hold. People who want an edge in the moral olympics of prevention are inventing counterintuitive (and anti-intellectual) shit to do in order to win as the bestest, most deserving of good health.
This is a tiring game in American life, going back to the Puritans, and it’s one which particularly chaps my western, MYOB sensibilities. In fact, everyone should be wary of this one. When it comes to bad health, let’s just say that equating it with bad morals is a very dangerous thing to do — unless you think it’s impossible that you might get cancer or have a heart attack, that is. Illness has a funny way of equalizing a whole lot of things in life and it pays to keep in mind that even the most moral among us are all going to die someday too.