Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Another Side Of The Crisis

by digby

I’ve written a few posts about this aspect of the health care crisis and it’s a serious problem for a lot of people in the individual insurance market. This story in the NY Times lays out the problem in all its ugliness: people are basically buying worthless insurance and paying high premiums for it:

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.

Too many other people already have coverage so meager that a medical crisis means financial calamity.

[…]

“Underinsurance is the great hidden risk of the American health care system,” said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who has analyzed medical bankruptcies. “People do not realize they are one diagnosis away from financial collapse.”

Last week, a former Cigna executive warned at a Senate hearing on health insurance that lawmakers should be careful about the role they gave private insurers in any new system, saying the companies were too prone to “confuse their customers and dump the sick.”

“The number of uninsured people has increased as more have fallen victim to deceptive marketing practices and bought what essentially is fake insurance,” Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive, testified.

Mr. Yurdin learned the hard way.

At St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where he went for two separate heart procedures last year, the hospital’s admitting office looked at Mr. Yurdin’s coverage and talked to Aetna. St. David’s estimated that his share of the payments would be only a few thousand dollars per procedure.

He and the hospital say they were surprised to eventually learn that the $150,000 hospital coverage in the Aetna policy was mainly for room and board. Coverage was capped at $10,000 for “other hospital services,” which turned out to include nearly all routine hospital care — the expenses incurred in the operating room, for example, and the cost of any medication he received.

In other words, Aetna would have paid for Mr. Yurdin to stay in the hospital for more than five months — as long as he did not need an operation or any lab tests or drugs while he was there.

They market these policies as catastrophic care policies: at least you’ll be taken care of if you have a heart attack or get run over by a bus. You give up things like Doctor’s office visits visits and prescription drug coverage and you pay huge deductibles just so you’ll be covered if the very worst happens. And this is what they end up with.

There is no reason why the congress can’t fix this one. They should mandate a decent level of coverage for catastrophic care — you know, the very thing this fellow thought he was buying. Just making a disclaimer on the pretty brochure isn’t enough. The insurance companies can’t be allowed to sell policies that don’t cover necessary medical expenses. That’s just theft.

And this fellow should have been able to buy into a better plan than the crap he was offered. A plan like Medicare maybe. He’s 64. Is there really any reason why someone like him shouldn’t be able to buy directly into Medicare for a fee? I recall that the idea of allowing those over 55 to buy in was on the table at one point and it sounded like a good idea to me. Americans all tell the pollsters they want a lot of health care options. What’s wrong with that one?

.

Looking In The Rearview Mirror

by digby

… and seeing carnage in your wake.

Today the ACLU and many bloggers who are concerned with the fact that the United States tortured prisoners and apparently has no intention of holding anyone responsible for it are blogging about a little known fact about the issue: the US Government didn’t just torture a bunch a prisoners, as bad as that was, and as horrible as it remains for those who survived it. The United States tortured many prisoners to death. This does not seem to be common knowledge, but the evidence is quite clear that this happened. Torture and death by torture was not isolated.

I know that in the fog of war and all that that killing becomes normal and people become uncivilized. But torturing prisoners to death is not considered legal warfare. It’s a crime, even in war and even on the battlefield, and we have prosecuted people for it as a capital crime.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald:

So often, the premise of media discussions of torture is that “torture” is something that was confined to a single tactic (waterboarding) and used only on three “high-value” detainees accused of being high-level Al Qaeda operatives. The reality is completely different.

The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of “rogue” interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be “torture” when used by others — because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions — that we Look to the Future, not the Past — are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder.

Once the White House capitulated on the remaining Iraq abuse photos, I pretty much knew that they would never release any kind of damning information and more or less assumed that the vaunted CIA Inspector Generals Report from 2004, which supposedly blows the lid off the torture regime, would never see the light of day in any detail. The same goes for the DOJ IG report. They’ll release something, I assume, but it will not be the straight story. I expect I will be dead before the whole story is officially revealed and confirmed.

Tomorrow they are expected to release the CIA report, heavily redacted and almost certainly useless. (Marcy Wheeler will, of course, be poring over it with a fine tooth comb and you never know what she might find. But I don’t think they’re going to be quite a sloppy as they were the last time.) They surely hope that is the end of it. But it isn’t. There are too many people involved and too much evidence to keep it covered up. By refusing to lance this boil they are allowing the poison to continue to infect everything until the whole body politic is putrid with it. It’s a big mistake.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong about that and they let the people see what has been done in their names. We deserve to know and the tortured dead deserve some justice. And if we want to just deal in pragmatic concerns, if anyone thinks that refusing to hold people accountable for what happened and showing the world that we can be trusted to civilized at least after the fact doesn’t make us less safe, they are out of their minds. This is how countries become pariah states.

The United States went crazy after 9/11 and tortured many, many people, at least a hundred of them to death. It happened. How do we live with that?

.

Ricci

by digby

Christy has the run down on what people are saying on the decision and I can hardly believe that this has become a meme:

Stuart Taylor attempts to advance the canard that the Court was unanimous in its decision — no idea how 5-4 with a concurrence from Alito is “unanimous,” but then, I’m not Stuart Taylor trying to do whatever it is that he does when he gets a burr in his shorts (or helping Wendy Long advance her whinery, whatever comes first). It’s clearly the “new new” in right wing talking points, because Sen. Cornyn’s been mouthing it, too.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of unanimous is…

.

The Other Woman

by digby

Word to the wise when having a train wreck of a mid-life crisis, fellas. If you want to preserve your career, marriage, relationship with your kids or any combination thereof, don’t go to the press and talk about the great connection you have with your “soul mate” lover and make it very obvious that you are in the thrall of a grand passion. Indeed, try to resist the temptation to use the media to send messages to your lover that you really do want to keep the relationship going. It’s undignified. And it’s likely extremely hurtful and humiliating to your family, especially your wife, in an already hurtful and humiliating situation.

These details are embarrassing and unnecessary. He needs to STFU and tell the press that he has no more comment on any of the details. This is becoming sickening to watch.

.

The Al Franken Decade

by dday

It’s taken almost a decade for this recount to resolve itself, but the Minnesota Supreme Court rendered their verdict in the Franken-Coleman Senate case, and it’s a sweep for Franken, as expected.

In the Matter of the Contest of the General Election held on November 4, 2008, for the purpose of electing a United States Senator from the State of Minnesota, Cullen Sheehan and Norm Coleman, contestants, Appellants vs. Al Franken, contestee, Respondent.

1. Appellants did not establish that, by requiring proof that statutory absentee voting standards were satisfied before counting a rejected absentee ballot, the trial court’s decision constituted a post-election change in standards that violates substantive due process.

2. Appellants did not prove that either the trial court or local election officials violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

3. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded additional evidence.

4. Inspection of ballots under Minn. Stat. § 209.06 (2008) is available only on a showing that the requesting party cannot properly be prepared for trial without an inspection. Because appellants made no such showing here, the trial court did not err in denying inspection.

5. The trial court did not err when it included in the final election tally the election day returns of a precinct in which some ballots were lost before the manual recount.

And here’s the money quote:

For all of the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.

Tim Pawlenty has said all along that he would certify the winner of the election if the Minnesota Supreme Court told him to do so. They have now told him. But all along he gave himself an out, that he would certify it as long as another court didn’t tell him to stop pending another appeal. Coleman could proceed to the federal courts at this point, and national Republicans have been happy to bankroll him on that fruitless quest and keep Al Franken out of the Senate as long as possible. It’s a good investment for them. Also, Senate Republicans could actually filibuster Franken’s entry into the Senate, even with a signed certificate.

I’m skeptical that this will conclude so smoothly from here.

More from Eric Kleefeld.

…Here’s the head of a pin on which Pawlenty could dance:

The bottom line is that the Court says that Franken is entitled to an election certificate, but there is no direct order to the state’s governor to sign one. We’ll see what the governor does, if Coleman does not concede, as he well may at this point. If not, the opinion is not final until the period for rehearing ends (see the final footnote of the opinion). That’s a ten day period, enough time to file an emergency stay application in the U.S. Supreme Court. It would go to Justice Alito, now circuit justice for the Eighth Circuit.

UPDATE: Wow, I didn’t see that coming. Norm Coleman just said he would abide by the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling and congratulated Al Franken as the newest Senator from Minnesota. I guess seven months of obstruction was long enough. What a stand-up guy!

.

Plastics

by digby

During the run up to the Iraq war, people used to ask me why Tony Blair would lend his more liberal cred to the misbegotten adventure and join himself at the hip with Bush on such an obvious blunder. I would simply say” “BP.”

A BP-led group won a deal to develop Iraq’s biggest oilfield but had to slash its fee as Baghdad’s tough terms put off other investors in the country’s first major energy auction since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Other companies, including firms from resource-hungry China and India that are eager to get a share of the world’s third largest oil reserves, balked at the fees and Iraq failed to strike deals on most of the eight oil and gas fields on offer.

The controversial auction of Iraq’s prized assets took place on the same day that the U.S. troops who toppled Saddam Hussein quit Iraq’s cities and left security chiefly to the country’s own forces. The sale aims to raise funds for reconstruction as Iraq also takes greater charge of its economy.

“Today we have seen that the Iraqi Oil Ministry and international oil companies are living on different planets,” oil analyst Ruba Husari said.

The results of the auction were not a disappointment, said Oil Ministry spokesman Asim Jihad.

“The participation of these well-known, major companies is a good sign and it reflects the desire of these firms to invest in the Iraqi oil sector,” Jihad said.

A BP-led consortium including the Chinese National Petroleum Corp NPC, was the only foreign firm to strike a deal — for the 17-billion barrel Rumaila oilfield, Iraq’s biggest, in the Shi’ite south.

Does any of this strike you as remotely plausible? I didn’t think so.

This was why the war was fought and the people who run the world didn’t leave any of this to chance or to some functionaries in the Iraqi government. What is happening is what was always planned to happen.

.

Holiday In Iraq

by dday

Iraq has disappeared from the headlines lately, but yesterday, the United States fulfilled its first obligation in the status of forces agreement by pulling its troops out of major cities, and one day ahead of schedule, to boot.

U.S. troops pulled out of Baghdad on Monday, triggering jubilation among Iraqis hopeful that foreign military occupation is ending six years after the invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi soldiers paraded through the streets in their American-made vehicles draped with Iraqi flags and flowers, chanting, dancing and calling the pullout a “victory”.

One drove a motorcycle with party streamers on it; another, a Humvee with a garland of plastic roses on the grill […]

“The American forces’ withdrawal is something awaited by every Iraqi: male, female, young and old. I consider June 30 to be like a wedding,” said Ahmed Hameed, 38, near an ice cream bar in Baghdad’s upmarket Karrada district.

“This is proof Iraqis are capable of controlling security inside Iraq,” added the recent returnee from exile in Egypt.

The government has declared June 30 a national holiday, “National Sovereignty Day”.

Iraq still faces extreme challenges, exemplified by the spate of bombings and attacks last week leading up to this pullout, which killed at least 200. And the opening of oil fields to international corporations could signal a decline for the Iraqi people and an increase in, basically, kleptocracy. But the presence or absence of US forces means little to these challenges. The Iraqis clearly yearn to return to self-determination, and an American pullback from the military can force the disparate factions to come to a political accommodation. Marc Lynch has a smart take:

It’s true that there has been an increase in the number of high-profile, high-casualty attacks over the last few weeks. The thing about spoilers is that they try to spoil. The key questions are whether the attacks trigger sectarian mobilization and security dilemma dynamics, seriously undermine confidence in the state and its ability to provide security, or drive momentum towards wider conflict. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence of mounting popular anxiety, but very little evidence of those kinds of conflict dynamics kicking in. For what it’s worth, both Iraqi and American officials seem confident — and remember when the judgment of the commanders on the ground was supposed to be considered sacred writ?

I’m not particularly an optimist on these matters, any more than I was in the past — but I also see a rapidly declining ability or need for the U.S. to manage these issues. I think that there are still very serious issues surrounding the integration of Sunnis into the emerging Iraqi state and political system — not just the endlessly dragging integration of the Sons of Iraq into the security forces and civil administration, but the selective targeting of key Awakenings leaders and other ongoing complaints. I also think that some amount of the recent uptick in violence is driven by the disenchantment of some of these Awakenings men, either actively or passively. But it seems clear that Maliki has decided that he can get away with selective repression and co-optation of the various Sunni forces, and will only change his approach if he determines that the price is too high. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe he’s right — but that’s for Iraqis to determine, not Americans.

Iraqi politics are going to continue to face all kinds of problems, as every analyst under the moon has pointed out. The Arab-Kurd issue, the continuing problems with government capacity, budget problems, and a host of unresolved issues remain. I think that the refugee/IDP issue remains the largest unresolved and virtually untouched issue facing Iraq — those millions of people uprooted from their homes by force or fear who have few prospects of returning to their original homes, are largely disenfranchised in the emerging Iraqi political system, and who are almost completely unserved by Iraqi state institutions. But slowing down the American drawdown would not materially improve any of these issues. The best thing the U.S. can do is to continue to demonstrate its clear, credible commitment to withdraw on the agreed-upon timeline, and do what it can to help Iraqis adjust to the new realities.

Clearly, just this symbolic gesture of pulling out from the cities has produced near-universal glee among Iraqis, and hopefully that can foster a national sense of identity which can lead to all sides working together on the future of their nation. It would certainly not happen while they remained under the thumb of occupation. Just by adhering to the agreement, Obama and the US military probably garnered some goodwill in the region. But they have to keep going. If there’s one thing America cannot seem to do, it’s getting out of war zones (See: Germany). Leaving Iraq must mean leaving Iraq, on schedule and without exception.

…Clever move by Fourthbranch Cheney, complaining about Obama following through on the pullout of Iraqi cities that was negotiated and signed by Bush-Cheney. This is simple blame-shifting, so Cheney can point his finger at someone else if anything goes wrong. Pathetic.

.

In Your Name

by digby

Bob Herbert wrote about a boy the US has imprisoned for years and is now insisting must be held indefinitely because he confessed. Under torture naturally:

On Dec. 25, 2003, Jawad tried to kill himself by repeatedly banging his head against a wall of his cell.

There is no credible evidence against Jawad, and his torture-induced confession has rightly been ruled inadmissible by a military judge. But the Obama administration does not feel that he has suffered enough. Not only have administration lawyers opposed defense efforts to secure Jawad’s freedom, but they are using, as the primary basis for their opposition, the fruits of the confession that was obtained through torture and has already been deemed inadmissible — without merit, of no value.

Even the hardbitten prosecutor assigned to his case couldn’t take it and he’s now working to free this kid.

It’s not like there is consensus on these cases. There are many, many people besides the ACLU and the horrible hippie bloggers who are appalled at what’s going on — many of them are in the military and have been directly exposed to this torture regime. The administration choosing to perpetuate these horrors under these circumstances is all the more profoundly disturbing.

And by the way, the trial balloon over the week-end about Obama issuing an executive order on preventive detention looks more and more to me like some kind of crude head fake. I guess we silly civil libertarians are supposed to be all impressed and relieved when the administration actually does this:

[T]he Brookings Institution released a paper by Ben Wittes and Colleen A. Peppard giving the possible outlines of a preventive detention statute. Although I didn’t post about it, I initially assumed that the administration’s move would be along the lines of what Wittes is proposing.

That isn’t the case. I interviewed Wittes at length this weekend for a feature I’m doing for the print edition, and I had a chance to look over the whole proposal. Wittes told me personally that he thought Obama re-asserting–as Bush did–the inherent authority to detain terrorists suspects indefinitely would be “a disaster.”

The Wittes proposal is not likely to make any civil libertarians happy. But unlike the administration’s move–if the Post story is accurate–it does propose some meaningful constraints on the indefinite detention power, which up till now we’ve seen being used arbitrarily except where the courts intervene. The Wittes proposal would set up a FISA-like system, where terrorist suspects could be detained for 14 days without court oversight, but their cases would be subject to judicial review every six months afterward to determine if the suspect should remain detained, according to a “three pronged test.” The individual would have to be: “(1) an agent of a foreign power, if (2) that power is one against which Congress has authorized the use of force, and if (3) the actions of the covered individual in his capacity as an agent of the foreign power pose a danger both to any person and to the interests of the United States.” The president would also have to submit a list of groups to Congress every few months that it wants covered by the AUMF, and whose members can be subject to preventive detention. The evidence threshold for detaining someone would be lower than that used in criminal trials. There’s more to the proposal, but I won’t try to explain it all in one blog post.

I think we are all supposed to think this is a pragmatic compromise, especially after the “close call” where Obama was just going to reassert the Bush policy. See, it’s not that bad. Relax.

And the sad thing is that in a few years people like us will be fighting like hell to preserve this latest national security state impingement on the constitution when another president says it isn’t enough to keep the babies safe, just as we did with that legislative abortion called FISA.

We’re still just a bunch of frogs in slowly heating water.

.

Beyond The Public Option

by digby

Health wonk Jonathan Cohn warns that the focus on the public plan, while useful, is not the only issue:

I happen to be a strong public plan supporter myself, for reasons this magazine laid out in a staff editorial several weeks ago: It will guarantee the possibility of affordable, reliable coverage to everybody; it will promote cost control, by leading the way on reforms of how we pay for medical care; and it will promote a healthy competition with private insurers, keeping them in line and–hopefully–prodding them to perform better. (For a more detailed explanation, please read the actual editorial.) I also think the public plan’s centrality has produced some obvious political benefits. The antipathy towards–and distrust of–the insurance industry has led many activists to shun past reform efforts that relied heavily on private coverage. And that’s been a major reason why those past efforts failed, since those same activists tend to be reform’s most passionate supporters–the ones who will make phone calls, go door-to-door, and show up at rallies like the one that made headlines last week. The public plan option has given these people reason not only to support this year’s reform push, but to support it enthusiastically. And yet I confess to a certain ambivalence when I hear, as I frequently do, statements like the one Dean made at the rally. Yes, the public plan is a key element of reform. But it is not the only one. Just consider what was going on inside Capitol Hill meeting rooms as Dean was speaking. Over the past week, leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have been busy hacking away at their proposed legislation, in order to bring the total price tag in at under $1 trillion over ten years. To accomplish this, the committee leaders have proposed cutting the subsidies that reform will make available to people who have trouble paying for insurance on their own.
If those cuts end up in the final legislation, fewer people would get assistance and, quite possibly, those that still got assistance wouldn’t get as much. The result would be more uninsured and more underinsured. And that’s not the only major issue in play.

Read on for others. They are significant.Here’s the thing. When it comes to legislative sausage making, there’s little we as grassroots activists can do about the actual ingredients. We can call out congresspeople and we can sign petitions and we can run some ads and write letters to the editor. All of that is useful. But when it comes to the minutia of the bill, it’s highly unlikely that we can have a direct effect.

What we can do is rally around a specific concept like the public plan (or in a political world with better organization and foresight, single payer) and push with all of our might to get that one thing done. The beauty of doing that around the public plan is the rhetorical simplicity of it. And it actually uses the word public as if that’s something good.

Clinton’s health care plan was derailed largely because it was perceived as being cumbersome and complicated. They had to explain things like “managed competition” and “global budgets” and “premium caps.” Those things don’t exactly read well on a bumper sticker and the right was able to persuade people that the whole thing was a big mess that wasn’t going to work.

Times have changed. People have learned a lot about health insurance in the past 16 years — more than they ever wanted to know — and they have come to realize that the system is already complicated and that it’s not working for them a good part of the time. But using the public plan as a rallying cry keeps the pressure on the congress to at least see this through.

I recognize that there are people of good faith out there who believe that the public plan is a sham and that progressives are selling out their beliefs by backing it instead of insisting on single payer or nothing. I would just say that if there were any other path to getting reform in the next eight years, I’d agree. But I don’t see that there is. The politicians are already making the sausage. We don’t know yet what they are going to put together and for the sake of all those millions of people who have no insurance or are about to lose theirs, it seems to me that we at least try to get something passed. I wish it could be more perfect, but I have absolutely no idea how to make it better at this point. Standing in the way without a serious strategic alternative that could actually result in real reform seems short sighted to me.

The sausage may end up tasting like shit or it might not be too bad, but people need some relief and I’m not willing to say on the basis of what I know now that what they are going to get will make them sicker than they already are. And you never know, it might just make them a little bit better.

And remember, it was only a few years ago that George W. Bush was going around saying “they [liberals] think social security’s some kind of government program!” So, if nothing else, getting the idea of “public” back into the political lexicon as a positive concept is worth something.

.

Coup Coup

by digby

I know I’m sounding very anti-intellectual today, but maybe that’s because I keep hearing things that from smart people that make no sense. Evidently, there is actually some question among certain people as to whether or not the ousting of the president of Honduras by the Honduran military can be considered a coup. You see, they did it on behalf of the legislature, supposedly, so that makes it completely different.

I don’t know about you but if it walks like a junta and talks like a junta…

Anyway, in their quest to turn this into a blow for freedom and democracy, some people on the right have found some interesting new ways to describe it.

Whose description is the most tortured, Orwellian, or otherwise insane?

• Candidate 1: Interim dictator Roberto Micheletti describes how he found himself in this new role: “I did not reach this position because of a coup. I am here because of an absolutely legal transition process.”

• Candidate 2: The WSJ’s Mary Anastacia O’Grady describes the military overthrow as all part of a country’s democratic system of “checks and balances.”

• Candidate 3: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air invents an awesome new concept. This was “less of a coup and more of a military impeachment.”

• Candidate 4: At the Corner, Ray Walser praised the way “Congress, the courts, and the military joined forces” in a “deliberate, bipartisan manner.”

• Candidate 5: Rick Moran at the American Thinker doesn’t care if it’s a coup, only who it serves: “Does the fact that the coup is in the interests of the United States even matter to our president?”

Your turn starts…now!

Go here to vote for your favorite Orwellian Euphemism.My favorite, by far, is Cap’n Ed’s “Military Impeachment.” It’s so deliciously, wingnutty that I can seriously imagine it catching on in certain circles. It wouldn’t be the first time.
.