This blog will discuss many issues pertaining to current events and encourages others to discuss and do the same. The goal is to raise the level of discourse and hopefully have a good time sharing thoughts and ideas.
When Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) flipped his position and agreed to vote in favor of the current health care legislation earlier this week, many progressive activists from around the country felt as if they had been kicked in the gut.
Kucinich has long been a Democratic hold-out, voicing his staunch opposition to any health care legislation that did not include a public option. The fact that this legislation does not include a public option has caused a rift between those on the Left who feel that passing the current legislation is an important means to an end and those who feel that legislation without a public option is simply a giveaway to the insurance companies.
This disparity between progressive positions was on display during a very interesting and constructive conversation on today's Democracy Now!. The guests were none other than Rep. Kucinich and Ralph Nadar. While lengthy, the whole segment is worth watching and I have included it at the bottom, but here are a few highlights from the transcript that illustrate perfectly the difference in position.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you ever received as much pressure as you’re getting right now, as you have gotten right now, right down to your flight on Air Force One with President Obama?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: The pressure doesn’t really come so much from the outside. I mean, I had people who are for this and against it with equal intensity. What the pressure comes from, being told that you might be singularly responsible for the passage or failure of an initiative and having to live with the implications of that.
Amy, I did not want to be in the House on Sunday night with my voting card, you know, and a finger in the wind about what to do. And looking at the bigger picture here, I’m hopeful that in making this decision to switch in favor of voting for the bill, that we can use this opportunity to, down the road, push for the kind of health reform that I am for, that I stand for, that I’ve worked my life for. But it’s not going to happen in this bill. And there’s a point at which you just have to maturely look at the situation as it is and say, no matter what I do, it’s not going to change this bill. And I’ve tried harder than anyone, but, you know, it’s just not going to happen.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ralph Nader, what about this issue of the seventy-seven other members of Congress who pledged not to support this bill? We’ve had quite a few of them on this show—Raul Grijalva, Anthony Weiner. What about the others who also have gradually agreed to support this bill?
RALPH NADER: They’ve all caved. They’ve all been put into line by the majority rulers in the House. So that’s not going to change, Juan.
What—I think Dennis Kucinich has been known as the great dissenter in the Democratic Party—against the criminal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, for impeaching Bush and Cheney, for single payer, on and on. His subcommittee hearings, which are almost never covered by the press, provide a standard for what House subcommittees should be investigating all over the country. But I think he owes an explanation to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of progressive Americans, many of whom who watch this show, who have clinged to Dennis Kucinich as the great dissenter, as the principled person, as the person who will hold the banner high. “The Star-Spangled Banner” has this phrase, “And the flag was still there.” But for the progressives in this country, they want to keep saying, “And Dennis Kucinich was still there.” So I would like him to go all over the country, after this malicious vote by the Democrats in the House, and address audiences all over, starting a complete new wave for full Medicare for all before this bill kicks in in 2014, so all the members running for reelection in 2010 are going to have to face it.
And I hope people will visit the videos that are on singlepayeraciton.org to show how many of his colleagues react when they’re confronted with a reporter asking the question, “The majority of the American people, doctors and nurses want this system. They want free choice of doctor and hospital. They want the insurance companies displaced with full single payer. Why aren’t you for it?” You look at their faces as they try to squirm out of that. That’s the moral position. They know it. But they’re caving into the enormous lobbying power of the drug and insurance companies, which are deploying over 2,000 full-time lobbyists on Capitol Hill as we speak.
AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Kucinich, your response? And also to Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, who asked if you were going to be giving back the money to people who gave to you all over the country because you said you would not support healthcare reform without a public option?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: First of all, with respect to Jane Hamsher, I talked to her yesterday, and I also indicated through my campaign early yesterday that anybody who contributed, you know, with the hopes that I was going to vote against the legislation unless it had a public option, that of course they’re going to get their money back, because I changed my position.
Now, with respect to what Ralph Nader just said about the need to keep a strong public—a strong single-payer campaign going, absolutely. I mean, you know, I haven’t changed my position one bit on single payer. I’m not suddenly saying, “Oh, gee, this for-profit model is something we ought to consider.” I don’t like it. I just want to make sure that everyone understands that the minute this bill is done, reforms within the context of a for-profit system, we have to accelerate that, and at the same time, a parallel track of continuing to pursue single payer. I agree with Ralph Nader on that.
On Tuesday evening, the Eastern Hills Tea Party gathered at the Madeira City Hall to hold one of their periodic meetings and to discuss the national debt. Just prior to 7pm, between thirty and forty people gathered outside the main meeting room looking through tea-party literature and eating some cake to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the founding of the Cincinnati Tea Party. As seven-o-clock came around, citizens were ushered into the main chamber in order to hear from the night's featured speaker, former Republican member of Cincinnati City Council and former Hamilton County Commissioner, Phil Heimlich.
Heimlich is the son on the famed Dr. Henry Heimlich (who is credited with inventing the "maneuver" which bears his name), sat on Cincinnati City Council, and was a Hamilton County Commissioner. Heimlich was also a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District of Ohio, but lost his bid in the 2008 primary to current Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH). Currently Heimlich runs one-minute television segments on WXIX-TV which he calls "The Hard Truths with Phil Heimlich".
The former Council member was slated to speak at this tea-party event on the issue of national debt, but Heimlich's presence at a tea-party gathering was puzzling given his stance on health care reform. Take this recent blog entry where he discussed how it is moral and Biblical for the government to provide health care for its citizens (emphasis mine):
I’ve heard many “believers” say it’s the job of the church, not the government, to take care of the sick. But Proverbs 29:14 says, “If a king judges poor people fairly, his government will continue forever.”
These and other scriptures command those in power to help the less fortunate.
Forty-six million Americans are without health insurance. Millions more have coverage that is wholly inadequate — so inadequate that over 60 percent of bankruptcies are due to medical bills. This need is unlikely to be met by the church or individual donors.
The Bible directs our leaders to meet this need — and do it efficiently — so as not to violate the Biblical principle of stewardship. But to do nothing is like the servant who, when given money to invest, buried it in the ground. Jesus said, “Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 25:30)
Heimlich is saying that the Bible tells government leaders to meet the needs of those who do not have health care. In other words, the government should provide its citizens with health care. This is quite a different narrative than has been heard since the summer months when tea-party activists shouted down Congressmen and held rallys denouncing a "government takeover" of health care.
What is more, Heimlich's wife Rebecca is the Ohio State Director of Americans for Prosperity, an organization that has been very involved in organizing opposition to the health care reform legislation that is being circulated in Washington. A few months ago, Rachel Maddow discussed how this organization is corporately funded and how it has disseminated falsehoods in their fight to energize tea-party movements and defeat the health care legislation:
This is what these groups do. They're experts at fake grass roots campaigns that promote corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity is the group that ginned up anti-stimulus rallies earlier this year. They also organized what they called the "Hot Air Tour" to campaign against the whole idea of global warming. They were the ones who sent Joe the Plumber around the country to rail against the Employee Free Choice Act, which is pro-labor legislation.
This oil industry and Republican operative billionaires club is according to the Republican party spokesman today, just average middle class Americans. Just regular American folks sitting around the kitchen table thinking about whether they can get away with saying that the government, continuing its long standing policy of encouraging living wills, is really a secret plot to kill old people.
One other thing about Americans for Prosperity, their most visible spokesman, is a man named Tim Phillips. He is the President of the organization and we've asked him to come on the show to talk with us about the group. Tim Phillips got his start in fake grass roots with a firm called Century Strategies, run by Ralph Reed. Century Strategies is famous for having duped Christian groups into lobbying for energy deregulation. You know, like the Bible said.
[...]
These guys are the pros. This is an industry. Americans are showing up at these events to shout down the discussion, to chase their Congressmen, and they are enraged. And they're enraged at least in part because they're being riled up by over the top, fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they're being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well.
[...]
To talk about these town hall events as some organic outpouring of average American folks who have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind to what is really going on, which is professional P.R. operatives generating exploitative, manufactured, strategically deployed outrage in order to line their own pocket.
These P.R. spin misters get paid a lot of money for doing it. The corporations they work for get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. And the real people who they launch into these town hall settings after they're told that health care reform is a secret commie plot to kill old people and to mandate sex changes, those real people get more, and more, and more and more angry, and more, and more, and more alienated, and ultimately they get left, like the rest of us, with a health care system that is broken and doesn't work in the interest of the American people, but does work in the interest of the corporations that profit from the way the system is now.
This is professional, corporate funded Republican staffed P.R., and it should be reported as such.
This is the context in which Phil Heimlich was to give his remarks at the Eastern Hills Party meeting on Tuesday night. It seemed as if schizophrenic conservatism had hit overdrive: Heimlich posts a blog entry advocating government-provided insurance but has long been a staunch Republican whose wife now is a State Director of an Organization that has been instrumental in drumming up the anger of citizens to oppose health care reforms. I attended this tea-party meeting to see if I couldn't figure out what was going on here.
Heimlich was introduced by the facilitator of the meeting and took the stage making a joke about his wife. "I had to rush my, you know my wife is very demanding," Heimlich started, "She made me take her to the hospital Saturday morning just because she had appendicitis."
He went on to discuss how his wife recovered enough to have him drive her to Columbus on Monday so that she could participate in a huge health care protest that was organized by Americans for Prosperity. He also mentioned that she was also involved in organizing the "Hands off our Health Care Rally" that was held on the other side of Cincinnati that same evening. "She's really doing some exciting stuff," Heimlich said of his wife's organizing efforts.
After praising his wife's courage and "exciting" efforts in organizing citizens against health care reform, Heimlich apologized for not wearing a tie to this event and said his tie-less appearance reminded him of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "I don't mind that the guy brutalizes his own people, rigged the election and the guy denies the Holocaust, but the guy is such a shabby dresser," joked Heimlich, "He outta stop by Brooks Brothers or something and get a pair of pants before he goes to the UN or something like that."
Heimlich then began his talk on the financial troubles that face the United States with why the tea-party crowd should listen to him on this issue. He admitted that the only economics course he took was Economics 101 during his time at Stanford, but said that he finds it interesting that the economists who are viewed as experts on the issue are all getting it wrong. Heimlich especially went after Nobel Prize recipient and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman:
"Here is a guy who won the Nobel Prize for Economics, he's Professor of Economics at Princeton, a columist for the New York Times; his solution to the economic problems facing our country, do you know what it is? Bigger stimulus. He thinks the problem is that we are not spending enough. That's his solution."
[...]
"So my point is just that, I don't know if having a big economics degree necessarily qualifies you to speak about some of the crisis, the financial crisis that our country is facing."
So the first reason that the tea-party members should trust Heimlich's views on economics are because even though he has only taken one economics class, he doesn't think that a Nobel Prize winning Professor of Economics like Paul Krugman, is qualified to speak about the economic crisis? An interesting (and somewhat confusing) stance.
After appealing to the crowd that he is just a normal guy who "has something to say" like "you might have something to say", Heimlich launched into his views on the national debt. He told the crowd that if they take away anything from his talk, they should understand that "The United States is broke". He slammed the United States government for out of control spending that has led to a "$14.5 trillion dollar debt" that is complicated by billions in borrowed interest.
Sounding at times like an apprentice of Ron Paul, Heimlich told the crowd that while they are concerned with cutting spending on social programs, the problem also lies in spending on wars and the military. He criticized Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) for taking funds so that GE could produce a "duplicate engine" to the F-35 aircraft; a project that Heimlich views as "wasteful spending". Heimlich also outlined the how the spending on the Iraq War is out of control:
"Most of us on our side, we thought that was the greatest thing in the world. Maybe it will turn out that way, but you know, what I don't get about that is that there used to be a situation in that region where you had...two countries that basically hated each other. You had Iran and Iraq and you know what they did? They went around killing each other. They fought a war for eight years and even though it was pretty terrible for their people, for our national security that was a pretty good deal."
[...]
"Now why the heck we spent, what will be, $1 trillion dollars, 4,000 lives, 100,000 lives of Iraqi civilians, why we did that to get rid of one of the bullies so that now the other bully is dominating the region, I don't know. But it seems to me that if we are going to be truly fiscally responsible, if that's really what we are after, then we have to be fiscally responsible across the board."
Heimlich made the case that since the U.S. is mounting a debt that will never be repaid, it will affect everyone's personal finances. He claims that this calls for radical action (emphasis mine on a point I will come back to):
"I think we all ought to start thinking about being a little less patriotic. I'm all for electing the right people...I'm all for everything that you guys are doing, I think this is an incredible, incredible turnout you have here, my wife works with tea-parties all over Ohio and I think it's great, but I gotta tell you something. I think it's time to start thinking about protecting ourselves. I do. Protecting our families."
[...]
"I think the bottom line is, let's not run our lives like the government runs theirs. That make sense?"
As Heimlich concluded he chose to take a few questions. As I sat through his presentation, I couldn't help but continue to think about the apparent contradiction that his presence at a tea-party meeting posed. After all, in that last quote, Heimlich stated that he was "all for everything that you guys are doing" and that his wife's work with other Ohio tea-parties was "great"; yet his own blog post where he advocated for government-run health care seemed to contradict his support for the tea-parties and the work that his wife was doing.
As the Q&A continued, I asked about this contradiction. Below is the video of my question, Heimlich's response and the aftermath:
Clearly, Heimlich was only interested in, as he stated, criticizing Republican hypocrisy on this issue instead of taking a firm stand either single-payer or the public option, like he hinted at in his blog post. You could see that members of the tea-party were not pleased to hear his stance on health care reform and even gave some pushback.
After this segment, Heimlich exited the main chamber to allow the tea-party meeting to continue. I followed Heimlich into the lobby with my digital audio recorder in hand and asked him what health care reforms he would like to see implemented. (Note, another man who had attended the meeting was standing with us and he is the third voice you hear in the audio)
It is interesting that Heimlich has such strong criticisms for members of his own party, even calling them out on their inaction during the years of President Bush. What is also interesting is Heimlich's condemnation of the partisanship that surrounds the health care debate when he openly says that he is "all for" what the tea-parties are doing and that his wife's efforts with the tea-parties are "great" and "exciting". The level of partisanship has been been well-documented at these tea-party rallies and for Heimlich to suggest that he supports the efforts, but is outraged by the partisanship in the debate, is disingenuous.
Heimlich also states that he is "not necessarily a member of the tea-party" when I asked him if he is worried about Republican influence, but his presence at these events and in telling members that he is "all for" what they are doing sends mixed messages at best and makes his self-described hate of hypocrisy ironic at worst.
As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs makes the rounds saying that health care reform will be the "law of the land" within the week, it is continually important to examine the demise of the public option.
In August of last year, when the Obama Administration started to waiver on supporting the public option, I wrote the following which still holds relevance to the situation that we find ourselves in today:
In this instance it is important to remember that while President Obama may offer his support for the public option, it doesn't necessarily mean that he would veto legislation that did not contain such a provision. The Administration is looking for a win on this issue and I think it is pretty clear that if a political win can be obtained through passing a bill that doesn't have the public option attached, then Obama will probably sign such a bill. We have seen this type of behavior from Obama throughout his political career and it is what led many to emphasize (pre-2008 election) that Obama is a centrist Democrat who is more willing to adapt to existing institutions than fundamentally fight to change them.
[...]
If Obama chooses to spend his political capital by signing a bill that does not fundamentally change the health care system and is a watered-down version that contains mild reforms, then it is almost certainly going to be a failure. It will be a failure for the millions of Americans who are in need of health care, it will be a failure for progressives who voted for Obama last November, and it will be a failure for true reform.
Not only has President Obama and the Democratic leadership shown that they are not married to the public option, they have shown a gross failure in leadership in working to pass this provision that they all say they support. If they say they support the public option then why wouldn't they fight for it? Because the Senate Democrats and the White House really don't support this provision quite as much as they may say. This clip from The Rachel Maddow Show last week illustrates this perfectly:
and yet somehow Dennis Kucinich is the bad guy because he has stated that he will vote against the current legislation if it does not contain the public option?
These are interesting times.
Here is Kucinich stating his piece during a radio interview with Ian Masters from last week:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has been adamant in his support for the inclusion of a strong public option in the health care legislation. From October, 2009:
He's also a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor – and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.
"I will not relent on that. That's the only way to go," Rockefeller told me in an interview. "There's got to be a safe harbor."
Now that the Public Option has made a comeback and actually has a chance to pass the Senate via reconciliation, Rockefeller has made a surprising reversal:
"I'm probably not going to vote for that," Rockefeller said. "I don't think the timing of it is very good."
Earlier in the evening, in a brief interview with TPMDC, Rockefeller expressed concern that playing hardball with the public option at this time could imperil reform, but he didn't say he'd oppose it.
"I don't know, I think the timing of the public option piece of legislation, which is not in what the President's going to suggest at the summit I think, doing that could create a lot of turbulence when we don't need it," Rockefeller told me.
To recap, when it looked like the Public Option was on life-support and had a slim chance of passage, Rockefeller supported it to the fullest. Now that the Public Option has a legitimate chance of passing, Rockefeller doesn't think he will vote for it and may even vote against it. Per usual, Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely:
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end to the Iraq War and Bush surveillance and interrogation abuses because they knew they would not actually do so; and indeed, once they were given the majority, the Democratic-controlled Congress continued to fund the war without conditions, to legalize Bush's eavesdropping program, and to do nothing to stop Bush's habeas and interrogation abuses ("Gosh, what can we do? We just don't have 60 votes).
[...]
Basically, this is how things have progressed:
Progressives: We want a public option!
Democrats/WH: We agree with you totally! Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don't have 60, so we can't have it. Gosh darn that filibuster rule.
Progressives: But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.
Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists: Hey progressives, don't be stupid! Be pragmatic. It's not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. None of this their fault. It's the fault of the filibuster. The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they're powerless, and they just can't get 60 votes to do it.
[Month later]
Progressives: Hey, great! Now that you're going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you've said all year you have that!
Democrats/WH: No. We don't have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller). Besides, it's not the right time for the public option. The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill -- which polls at 35% -- unpopular. Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we're going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.
This absurd dance does little for the millions of people without affordable health care coverage and will end up doing very little to fundamentally reform the system. Partly to blame for this mess is the filibuster which has proved to not only be a shield for the Democrats to hide behind, but also as a weapon for the Republicans to enact "minority rule". The Democrats talk tough and adopt populist views when they know they can not pass legislation due to the Republican threat of a filibuster. Then, when it becomes clear that the legislation can be passed through other means, those same Democrats amend their populist positions to appeal to the corporatist interests and avoid backlash.
All of this leads to partisan bickering and nothing productive getting accomplished. The best part is that no one wants to be accountable for standing behind policies that may not mesh well with the status quo.
While the Democrats continue to decide that they really don't want the public option (now that it has a chance of passing), Republicans continue to show even more evidence that their vision for America is to oppose anything that comes out of the Obama Administration.
The most recent example of this strategy is displayed through more hypocrisy by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). Let's flash back to October, 2009 when Boehner criticized the Health Care legislation for being too long:
Fast forward to yesterday when President Obama released his own legislation which was presented in this eleven-page format. Boehner's response through his spokesman:
"The White House's 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they're complaining that they can't find our plan on their own website? C'mon."
First the bill is too long and now, too short. Seems like the Obama Administration just can't win doesn't it? Well, that is precisely the point. Remember back in September of 2008 when former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced his three-page TARP plan? Boehner didn't seem to have much to say about the length of that plan and even rejected items that Democrats wanted to include saying:
“We need to keep it clean, simple, move it through the House and Senate, get it on the president’s desk so [Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson] can in fact intervene as quickly as possible.”
With Democrats being disingenuous and Republicans determined to oppose everything, it does not look hopeful for robust health care reform to come out of such a troubled process.
President Obama has drafted and released his own 11-page plan for health care reform ahead of the planned bi-partisan summit. The President's plan is said to bridge the differences that are found in the Senate and House legislation and will almost certainly be the starting point from which a renewed debate will take place.
Igor Volsky describes some of what is in the President's plan:
The Obama plan maintains key elements of the Senate proposal but also incorporates stronger anti-fraud provisions and allows the federal government to review insurance rate hikes. On a call with reporters Pfeiffer insisted that the administration has not determined “on which path to move forward with”, but the bill’s substance suggests that Obama is hoping to bypass a prolonged-Senate debate and use the reconciliation process to fix the Senate bill and convince reluctant House progressives to pass the Senate legislation.
Volsky also has a great table that breaks down the differences in the three bills that you can check out by following the link above.
Jason Rosenbaum also does a good job at breaking down some of what is in the bill.
Here is how he describes Obama's employer-based plan:
The President’s plan, though not a full "pay or play" system, moves towards reconciling the House and Senate bills. If a business does not offer coverage, it must pay $2,000 per worker to help cover the cost of insuring its employees. The White House estimates that this amount is one-third less than the average amount businesses would pay under the House proposal.
and on taxing middle class plans:
The President’s plan does not do away with the excise tax entirely, but it makes some significant changes. The threshold at which the tax kicks in was moved from $23,000 as the cost of a health care plan in the Senate bill to $27,500 for families and from $8,500 to $10,200 for individuals, and the tax would not kick in until 2018.
In addition, dental and vision benefits won’t be part of the cost calculation, in effect raising the threshold higher.
Perhaps one of the most interesting elements that Obama's bill does NOT contain, is a public option. Though the public option remains quite popular with the populace, Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs has indicated that it will be up to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to get the Senate to pass this piece of the health care puzzle.
We have seen this before during the health care debate. The House says it’s up to the Senate to determine what can pass. The Senate says it’s up to the White House to expend the political capital to get it across the line. And the White House punts it right back to Congress. Nobody wants to actually be responsible for the demise of the popular measure, but everyone wants to be on its side. Therefore you get the preposterous claim from Dan Pfeiffer today that the President didn’t include a public option in his proposal, but he supports it.
So once again we are back to wondering if the public option is going to survive another round of debate and negotiation. If Obama supports the public option, he sure has a funny way of showing it. If he really thought it was a plan that he could get behind, he would put it in the legislation that has his name on it. Since he did not do this, one can only surmise that he does not feel strongly enough to put his full weight behind a true public option.
As for the Republicans, here is a situation that fully illustrates their tactics on this matter.
Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to the White House on February 8 asking them to post online any health care legislation that they wanted to discuss at the health care summit. Boehner stated:
If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand?
Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package.
Boehner then attacked the White House for doing what he had asked them to do in the first place:
"A productive bipartisan discussion should begin with a clean sheet of paper," Boehner said in a statement.
It will be interesting to see what happens at this summit.
Remember yesterday, when I talked about how Democrats need to pay attention to populist views in order to not suffer the same defeats like we just saw in Massachusetts?
Well, it looks like on the issue of health care reform, the Democrats are tucking their tail between their legs and putting the issue on the back-burner:
"I don't see the votes for it at this time," Pelosi said. "The members have been very clear in our caucus about the fact that they didn't like it before it had the Nebraska provision and some of the other provisions that are unpalatable to them."
"In every meeting that we have had, there would be nothing to give me any thought that that bill could pass right now the way that it is," she said. "There isn't a market right now for proceeding with the full bill unless some big changes are made."
Fairly ambiguous especially considering that she goes on to say that "we have to get a bill passed". While her statement makes mention of "big changes" that need to be made, we have come so far in the wrong direction that it is hard to view her comments as anything other than applying the brakes to the process.
Politically, I don't see how this can be a smart move. Not only for the reasoning that I mentioned yesterday, but because this is surely going to give the tea-party crowd as well as the GOP a leg-up.
From a practical standpoint, the current legislation is not good and needs a lot of work to repair the damage that was done to it when it was in the Senate. If the Democrats are serious about doubling their efforts to make this legislation better, then great, but it would simply be naive to expect that conclusion from all that we have seen take place thus far. If they are really going to put this issue on indefinite hold, then the last several months can only be viewed as a giant waste of time.
There is plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking going on after Scott Brown (R-MA) won the Massachusetts Senate-seat of the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA). I am seeing post after post of what this means for Democrats, what this means for Republicans, and what this means for the health care legislation that is currently pending in Congress.
I wanted to share a couple of viewpoints that I thought were insightful and productive in moving this discussion forward. The first is from Jon Walker over at Firedoglake. He argues that Democrats simply cannot run on Republican obstructionism and expect to win. They have to do something productive:
Democrats control everything in Washington right now. They control the White House. They have a huge margins in the House and in the Senate. Democrats have larger margins in both chambers than any party has had for decades. They have zero excuses for failing to deliver. Americans will not find some nonsense about having only 59 Senate seats as an acceptable excuse for failing to accomplish anything. If Democrats think they can win in 2010 by running against Republican obstructionism, they will lose badly.
[...]
The party in power must run on their accomplishments and point to those accomplishments as a down payment on other promises they will fullfill if they are allowed to stay in power. You must deliver something to the voters and hope they like it. If Democrats can’t run on their record of passing legislation that makes positive change in people’s lives, they will suffer terribly in 2010.
Though this point seems obvious, I am seeing post after post that fails to acknowledge this point. Candidates in the Democratic Party ran on change and they ran on running Washington in a different way. When health care reform gets sold out to lobbyists and big Pharma, it is obvious that nothing "new and different" is being accomplished. Is it any shock that this is a contributing factor to the loss of this Senate-seat?
Unless the Democrats move aggressively to right the perception that they are the party of backroom deals and massive corporate bailouts, 2010 will be more of the same. But there will certainly be no shortage of those ready to extract the wrong lessons from the Coakley loss.
Joe Lieberman, Mr. 31%, says it’s a sign that people “don’t like all the partisanship and deal-making here in Washington” and that “they’re really skeptical about this health care bill.” He doesn’t mention that it’s his health care bill they don’t like, or the fact that the bill was made unpopular as the price of his vote.
A new FDL/SurveyUSA poll of NY-01 shows how Lieberman’s bill is affecting the race in that district, one of many that the Democrats are at risk of losing in the next election. Incumbent Tim Bishop would have a narrow lead over GOP challenger Randy Altschuler if the race were held today in a contest that was rated “lean Democratic” by Cook’s Political Report.
People were pretty evenly split when asked if they supported a bill with a mandate to buy private insurance, with 50% saying it’s a good idea and 44% saying it’s a bad idea. Support fell dramatically when they were told that they would be fined up to 2% of their income for failure to comply, with 40% saying it’s a good idea and 57% saying it’s a bad idea. But when the option to buy into a government-run Medicare program was added, 63% of likely voters (66% of independents) supported it and 33% opposed even with the fine. Even support among Republicans shot up 23%.
People are skeptical of this health care bill, but it should not be interpreted that people are skeptical of health care reform. The numbers that Hamsher points to are clear. People want real and meaningful reforms to the system. What people do not want is the status quo complete with more kickbacks to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. This is what the Blue Dogs have pushed for and this is what the Obama Administration has compromised on.
The results of this election should indeed act as a wake-up call to the party, but it should not be a call to abandon all hope of meaningful legislative policy because they are scared to lose their seat. It should be a wake-up call to muster the political courage to adopt populist policies instead of staying aligned with the corporate interests who push for the status quo. If we continue to have more of the same, the political landscape is going to shift very rapidly and Massachusetts will be viewed as a precursor.
Early this morning the Senate voted to end the period of filibuster on the health care legislation by a vote of 60-40. Not surprisingly, the vote broke down along party lines with all the Senators who caucus with Democrats voting to end the filibuster. This is a big step in moving this legislation forward as Democrats and the White House are pressing for a final vote before Christmas.
It is no secret that this legislation has devolved into a complete mess. Republicans are still against any kind of reform, Moderate Democrats have worked to strip the bill of the public option and Medicare buy-in, and Progressive activists are now split on whether to support or kill the Senate version of the bill.
While there is still some good discussion on the pros and cons of the legislation there are some revealing moments that show just how ugly this debate has become. Take this item from last night when the ailing Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) was wheeled into the Chamber to vote at 1am. Byrd's presence was not necessarily required for his vote to count, but the Republicans insisted that he travel to the Chamber to cast his vote in person.
Before Byrd arrived for the vote, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) took to the Senate floor and indicated that Americans "pray that someone can't make the vote tonight". Watch:
The Senate hasn't just lost a bit of its collegiality. It's become heartlessly ferocious -- a place where the death of an honored friend presents an opportunity to kill his legislation, and in which the infirmity of an ailing colleague is seen as a potential path to procedural victory.
While Republicans continue to oppose any type of health care reform, Progressives are also divided after Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) successful attempt to strip out the Medicare buy-in and the public option from the Senate legislation. Howard Dean has been very vocal in his calls to "kill the bill" and other progressives are also also advocating that health care talks turn to reconciliation in order to save robust reforms to the system.
Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has been working very hard on the issue of reform for many months now and has compiled a "Top 10" list of reasons why progressives should oppose the Senate Bill. Here they are:
Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not. 2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS. 3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums. 4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court. 5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays. 6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins. 7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others. 8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market. 9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years. 10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.
Not surprisingly, Glenn Greenwald has a good take on the latest rift that is dividing progressives over the Senate health care reform legislation:
There are many reasons for the progressive division on the health care bill. There are differences over the narrow question of health care policy, with some believing the bill does more harm than good just on that ground alone. Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that they are willing to accept whatever miniscule benefits are tossed at them (on the ground that it's better than nothing) and unfailingly support Democratic initiatives (on the ground that the GOP is worse), then they will (and should) always be ignored when it comes time to negotiate; nobody takes seriously the demands of those who announce they'll go along with whatever the final outcome is. But the most significant underlying division identified by Kilgore is the divergent views over the rapidly growing corporatism that defines our political system.
[...]
The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry -- regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry -- tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations -- and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model. It's undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can't get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well). If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor. But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign.
[...]
Even if one grants the arguments made by proponents of the health care bill about increased coverage, what the bill does is reinforces and bolsters a radically corrupt and flawed insurance model and and an even more corrupt and destructive model of "governing." It is a major step forward for the corporatist model, even a new innovation in propping it up. How one weighs those benefits and costs -- both in the health care debate and with regard to many of Obama's other policies -- depends largely upon how devoted one is to undermining and weakening this corporatist framework (as opposed to exploiting it for political gain and some policy aims).
It is important to remember that the public option was the compromise down from a single-payer system. Despite this, there are many good-hearted progressives who continue to accept compromise after compromise on this legislation. Even after Sen. Lieberman's episode this week successfully removed the public option and the Medicare buy-in, there are some who continue to defend the Obama Administration and call for passage of this bill. White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs even called Howard Dean "irrational" the other day for opposing the Senate's bill.
These continued "compromises" have led to the weakening of health care legislation. Who will these co-called "compromises" benefit? Just like always, the answer is the corporate interests. Greenwald is right to comment on how corporatist the government has shown itself to be, but one must wonder where the line be drawn with some of these progressives?
Under the threats from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and at the insistence of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the Senate has dropped the Medicare buy-in provision from the health care legislation.
Lieberman's reversal on his support for such a buy-in has been all over the blogosphere and has cast a shadow on whether he has been acting in good faith or if he is simply trying to stick it to liberals.
It so happens that the New York Times put up an interesting piece that included this (emphasis mine):
Mr. Lieberman had supported the Medicare buy-in proposal in the past — both as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2000 and in more recent discussions about the health care system. In an interview this year, he reiterated his support for the concept.
But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.
And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.
“Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it’s the beginning of a road to single-payer,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Jacob Hacker, who’s a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, ‘This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.’”
So by Lieberman's own admission, he opposed (at least in part) this piece of the health care legislation because liberals were enthusiastic about it. Did Lieberman not think that liberals would be enthusiastic about such a proposal when he supported it just three months ago? It is ludicrous to think that Lieberman is objecting to this on principled grounds. It is much more likely that his love affair with the insurance industry combined with his vehement disgust toward liberals, has led him to take pause.
The White House, which is more concerned with passing any version of health care legislation regardless of the strength of the public option, naturally urged the Senate Dems to capitulate in order to move the process forward. All of these developments have made the prospect of robust health care reform a bad joke and progressives are expressing their rage not only at Lieberman, but at Emanuel as well. Check out this new ad by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:
With these recent developments, progressives are split on their support for this bill. Howard Dean has come out and voiced his support for killing the Senate version of the bill and going back to the House for reconciliation. Others, like Chris Bowers at OpenLeft, are questioning if progressive support for "killing the bill" will actually backfire and end up helping the Senate legislation pass.
What Lieberman has done with placing himself in a pivotal opposing position on this piece of legislation, is force the hand of the White House to give in to his demands in order to move this process forward. It matters not to the White House how robust the reforms are in this legislation, as long as some kind of reforms get to the President's desk.
There is much talk among progressives over who is going to suffer politically for watering down this legislation in the midterm and 2012 elections. While political consequences have their place in these discussions it should not obscure the fact that the real suffering is going to take place with the ordinary citizen who will continue to get denied health care coverage by their insurance company, who will continue to see premiums rise, and who will continue to incur debt in the absence of affordable coverage. There is something wrong when thousands of people regularly show up for free health care clinics in the so-called "greatest country on Earth" because it is their only affordable option.
Shame on this incessant capitulation to the status quo.
In case you were looking for something to make your stomach turn at the start of your week, I want to point to the recent comments made by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT).
Over the weekend, Lieberman told Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he would vote against any health care legislation that would include the Medicare buy-in compromise and that would contain a public option.
He said during the interview that the fastest growing group of uninsured are those 55 to 65. For that reason, the ticket proposes an expansion of Medicare to allow those and older to buy into the public program. There would still be a buy-in price but it would be less than buying private insurance, he said.
Lieberman added that he supports mandating that no one can be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and that everyone be required to have health insurance.
As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage, Lieberman said only 12 million don't have insurance because they cannot afford it.
By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said.
Incoherence is no crime, of course. But it is telling. Lieberman could have simply opposed the public option because it implied too much government involvement in the marketplace. Instead, he opposed it based on things that wouldn't happen, or weren't happening, and never softened his position as those statements were successively exposed as fraudulent. That, again, suggests something more fundamental than a policy argument.
Or take Lieberman's procedural decisions. The Medicare buy-in compromise was developed by the so-called "Team of Ten": the five liberals and five moderates that Harry Reid asked to meet and develop a path forward. Lieberman was asked to join the original group. He skipped the meetings, eventually being replaced by Tom Carper. That puts his opposition in a different category than Nelson and Snowe, both of whom dug deep into the process, working on issues and in groups and signaling clearly what they could and could not support.
[...]
If you had attempted to forecast Lieberman's behavior based on his past positions, you would have failed. His support for Medicare buy-in, and for various other health-care bills, would quickly have misled you. If you had attempted to forecast his behavior based on the attitudes of his constituents, you would also have failed. They support the public option and oppose health-care reform, while Lieberman professes to believe the opposite. But if you had attempted to forecast Lieberman's positions based on his ongoing grudge match with the liberals who defeated him in the 2006 primary, you'd have nailed it perfectly. He has, at every point, taken aim at the policies that liberals support, even when they are policies that Lieberman himself has supported.
Lieberman's obstructionism certainly points more toward his seemingly insatiable appetite for sticking it to liberals rather than a principled objection to the current legislation. How does the White House respond? By telling Sen. Reid to compromise with Lieberman:
The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which would mean eliminating the proposed Medicare expansion in the health reform bill, according to an official close to the negotiations.
But Reid is described as so frustrated with Lieberman that he is not ready to sacrifice a key element of the health care bill, and first wants to see the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis of the Medicare buy-in. The analysis is expected early this week.
It’s quite convenient that what Joe Lieberman is demanding — no public option, no Medicare buy-in — happens to look just like the Senate Finance Committee bill that the White House wrote with Baucus...Joe gets his way by giving Obama what he wanted anyway. Sweet.
Wells Fargo Securities analyst Matthew Perry said Lieberman’s comments are good news for managed-care stocks as anything that delays health-care reform is a positive for the group.
“Every time the reform seems less likely that it will happen, the entire group trades higher,” said Perry, who has advised his clients to buy shares of Wellcare Health Plans Inc. (WCG), recently up 1.3% to $36.74, and Humana Inc. (HUM), up 1% to $42.26.
Among the other recent gainers in the sector, Aetna rose 2.7% to $32.65, Cigna Corp. (CI) added 2.3% to $36.41 and Well Point Inc. (WLP) gained 2.7% to $58.07. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) added 1.6% to $30.99.
UPDATE: Video of Lieberman supporting a Medicare buy-in just three months ago:
A two-day free health care clinic this week in Kansas City attracted an estimated 2,300 and once again underscored the fact that the health care system in the United States, is broken.
Uninsured people poured into Bartle Hall seeking the care that they are unable to afford due to varying circumstances. Some were surprised at how "normal" the people were who showed up for the clinic. Take the reaction of Casey Lyons at "The Pitch":
I expected to find the proverbial huddled masses at the free health care clinic that's been going on for the last two days at Bartle Hall. I was sure there'd be down-on-their luck homeless people. The wretchedly sick, decomposing-on-their-feet folks with wild hair and wild eyes who materialized out of the gutters to get their boils or teeth checked.
I was very wrong...by and large, the people who waited for free health care look just like everyone else.
As Congress continues to debate health care reform legislation and weaken the impact that this legislation will have in fixing some of the root problems, let's hope that images and stories from events like these will be taken into consideration.
Blogger Eve Gittleson at Firedoglake went down to this event and shot some riveting video of people who were in line to receive care at this event. Some had not been to the doctor in years and some are unable to afford necessary medication:
As the Republicans continue to voice opposition to any type of proposed reforms and as Democrats continue to weaken the legislation to the benefit of the health care industry and insurance companies, one has to wonder who is looking out for these people?
Reports are surfacing that Senate Democrats have reached a compromise on the Health Care legislation. From Talking Points Memo:
An aide briefed on the negotiations among the gang of 10 offers up the rundown of the most important aspects of the public option compromise being sent to CBO.
If this trade-off carries the day, the opt out public option is gone.
In its place will be many of the alternatives we've been hearing about, including a Medicare expansion and a triggered, federally-based public option.
[...]
As with the process Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid undertook in merging the Senate Finance Committee and Senate HELP Committee bills, CBO will evaluate a menu of options, some of them interchangeable, so there's no certainty that this list won't change in the coming days. However, a senior leadership aide says that all of the options sent to CBO include the (triggered) public plan. Reid and other senators declined to offer specifics earlier tonight, as part of an agreement with CBO not to publicly discuss the policy options on the table while actuaries analyze competing ideas.
Now it's a question of what the CBO says, and then: will Joe Lieberman object to the trigger. This trigger seems awfully hard to pull. But he's said he'd object to any kind of government insurance option--even triggered--in the past.
Real details are still emerging on what this compromise exactly entails, but I don't have a good feeling about what this is going to mean for meaningful reforms to our health care system.
This past Tuesday, on a cool and rainy evening, about 30 citizens gathered at the First Unitarian Church to hear Dr. Milton Fisk, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University. Fisk was in town to talk about the issue health care and to discuss various topics including what is happening currently with the public option, the potential benefits of a single payer system and how citizens can put pressure on the current administration to enact positive and meaningful change.
This forum was sponsored by Cincinnati Progressive Action, the Single Payer Action Network, the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, and The Cincinnati Beacon. (and though this may seem obvious: in full disclosure, I am a regular contributor to the Cincinnati Beacon).
Milton Fisk was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Following the example of both of his parents, he became an academic. He received a BS in chemistry from Notre Dame and a PhD in philosophy from Yale. Prior to coming to Indiana University in Bloomington, he held faculty positions at Notre Dame and at Yale. He is the author of a number of books, including Nature and Necessity (1973), Ethics and Society (1980), The State and Justice (1989), and Toward a Healthy Society (2000).
Early in his career, he concentrated on a realist interpretation of physical science, which led him to develop a theory of causality based on a notion of natural necessity. An engagement with movements for social change led to his writing on issues in social philosophy and in political morality. In this work, one of his constant themes is that social divisions place a burden of proof on moralists who advocate universalism in ethics that they have not met. His recent study of health care reform led him to appreciate the important role public goods should play in political morality.
He served as a board member of the American Philosophical Association-Central Division, and is serving on the steering committee of the Radical Philosophy Association. He was a member of the Indiana Health Care Campaign and was active with Jobs with Justice, serving as a director of its Workers Rights Board for south-central Indiana. He is currently working on a living wage campaign in Bloomington. At present, he is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University. His favorite activity is mountain walking, and his most difficult task is remembering the birthdays of his eight grandchildren.
Below are the full comments of Dr. Fisk as well as a Question and Answer session with members of the audience. I encourage you to watch this forum in full:
As the debate over health care reform continues to rage on, the news program Democracy Now! hosted a round-table discussion today on this very topic. As both Houses of Congress work to negotiate versions of health care reform, it is important to continue a healthy and vibrant dialogue on the public option, single payer and why there are those who are so adamantly opposed to reforming this system. This discussion is worthy of watching as it discusses many of these issues.
Locally here in Cincinnati, there was a talk that was held by Dr. Milton Fisk on health care reform. I covered the event and will be making the video footage available of the entire talk in the very near future so be sure to check back for that.
Until then, here is the roundtable discussion from Democracy Now! featuring:
Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of Health Initiatives at Community Service Society of New York, Dr. Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program and professor of clinical public health at Cornell University and Lois Uttley, co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need.
Harvard Medical Center has released a study that finds that almost 45,000 people die each year (in large part) because they lack health insurance. From Reuters:
"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.
Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.
[...]
Roughly 46.3 million people in the United States lacked coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, up from 45.7 million in 2007.
Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get good care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back across the country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he said.
Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that without proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from complications associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
I think almost everyone would agree that this is not an acceptable statistic for a country like the United States. Studies like these underscore why there is such an urgent need for meaningful health care reform. As the system currently exists, massive health care interests and drug companies are making record profits while millions of Americans lack the means to get basic health care coverage that would allow for earlier detection of diseases and other ailments.
I say "meaningful reform" because there are some current proposals on the table that are more interested in compromising adequate health care for citizens while allowing corporate interests to maintain their large profit margins. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus - (D-MT) released his Committee's long-anticipated bill earlier this week. Baucus insisted on keeping negotiations on the bill between his Committee's so-called "Gang of Six"(three Republicans and three Democrats) in order to produce a bill that could gain bipartisan support. The result? A "bipartisan" bill that no Republicans are supporting and that many others are finding fault with as well.
Republicans don't like it because... it's a health care bill. Democrats don't like it because... it's a bad health care bill designed to kowtow to Republicans who won't even vote for it. Health care advocacy groups don't like it because it "would give a government-subsidized monopoly to the private insurance industry to sell their most profitable plans - high-deductible insurance - without having to face competition from a public health insurer." A good reason not to like it! And unions don't like it because there's no employer mandate and it would "tax health plans."
Wendell Potter, former Communications Vice President for Cigna Health Insurance, was before House Steering and Policy Committee and he gave his feelings on the Baucus bill:
What motivated Baucus to put out a bill, that Wendell Potter says, should be called "The Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act"? Perhaps motivation comes from the health sector's large campaign donations to Baucus. From OpenSecrets:
According to OpenSecrets's data summarized in a Sunlight Foundation blog post yesterday, five former Baucus aides are presently lobbying on behalf of 27 different organizations with big stakes in the health care debate. These ex-staffers, either as in-house lobbyists or as part of private firms, are serving a comprehensive roster of tier-one insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and business advocacy groups such as Humana, Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble. We've also profiled nearly two-dozen Baucus staffers that have gone through the "revolving door," which ranks his office as the No. 7 slot on the most action between service in Congress and the lucrative private sector.
[...]
Baucus has received more than $2.8 million from the health sector since 1989. Only individuals and PACs affiliated with the finance, insurance and real estate sector have given him more. Seven of Baucus' top donors over the past five years are part of the health care industry, including four insurers. Critics of the "public option" argue that government-delivered health care will threaten private insurers and drug makers. Last fall, Montana voters re-elected Baucus at a nearly 3-1 margin against perennial candidate Bob Kelleher, a staunch supporter of single payer health care. (Kelleher ran as a Republican for Senate in 2008, although he has previously run for office as a member of the Democratic Party and the Green Party.)
So really, Baucus spent all this time making concessions to the Republicans in order to get bipartisan support and now that the bill has been released, Republicans are saying that it isn't good enough and they are not going to support it.
No more compromises. Baucus' bill is simply inadequate to deal with the problems that this country faces. The public option is the compromise down from a single-payer system. Any type of meaningful reform must work hard to reduce the 45,000 deaths each year due to lack of health insurance and work toward a day when health care will be viewed as a human right.
President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress this evening in a nationally televised address on the topic of health care reform. I decided to tune into NBC's coverage of the address which was hosted by Brian Williams and featured commentary from Kelly O'Donnell, Host of Meet the Press David Gregory, and NBC political analyst Chuck Todd.
I tuned prior to the speech when Kelly O'Donnell was reporting that Sen. Olympia Snow (R-ME) has a direct line to the President and that she has encouraged him to drop the public option from his proposal from health care reform. Brian Williams followed up by putting the historical nature of Obama's spech into a weird context. Williams compared the historical moment to President Bush addressing a joint session of Congress after the attacks of September 11 and to President Johnson addressing Congress after the assassination of President Kennedy. While the issue of reforming health care is an important issue, putting President Obama's speech into this context seemed like a really odd comparison for Williams to make.
After Chuck Todd made some of his typical observations from inside the beltway about Obama needing to create "political space" for Democrats, Obama entered and gave a speech that packed more punch than I had anticipated. Prior to the speech, it was known that Obama was going to reveal some details on where he stands on health care reform, but Obama's tone (while measured during some moments) was at times stern and drew some interesting responses from the Congressmen in attendance.
The President started out with a statement that his Administration did not come to Washington to simply fix problems, but to "build a future". He launched into historical references where past Presidents that have attempted to reform health care and made note of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) and his efforts at reforming health care by introducing the same reform bill at the beginning of each session of Congress.
Obama went on to outline the problem of America being the "only advanced Democracy" and "only wealthy nation" to force the hardship of lack of affordable health care on its citizens. Obama then spoke to advocates of a single-payer health care system and those who advocate for the elimination of employee provided health insurance. Obama lumped both groups into the same category and said that either of these plans would be too much of a radical shift for those who already have insurance plans. Obama said that it is his wish to build on the parts of the current system that work and to fix the parts that don't.
The President then outlined his plan which he stated would provide "security and stability" to those who already have insurance, provide insurance for those who currently don't, and slow the costs of health care for all involved. Obama outlined the basic tenants of his plan in which he stated that those who already have insurance and are happy with it, can keep it and that a new "Insurance Exchange" will be created over the next four years to provide incentives to insurance companies to compete in providing Americans with health insurance at lower costs.
Obama also spoke of providing tax credits to those who can still not afford insurance plans and Obama gave his support to a public option that would be available to compete with the insurance companies. Obama stressed that this public option, while important, should not be overblown by the left, the right, or the media because it is simply one portion of what is being proposed.
Obama moved on to address the misrepresentations that have circulated at many town hall meetings and by many members of Congress. Obama called the claims that the government would form "death panels" a "lie, plain and simple". He also said that no federal dollars would be used to fund abortions and that in no part of the bill does it say that illegal immigrants will be given health care. As Obama stated this last point, you could hear rumblings on the floor of the chamber and you could hear Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shout out either "that's a lie" or "you lie" (I have seen both reported). I can't recall another moment where a member of Congress shouted out that the President was a liar during a joint session of Congress though I do find it a fitting representation of some of the behavior that some of the Republicans and some of the attendees of town hall meetings have engaged in during the month of August. I am sure that interviews with Rep. Wilson will be numerous tomorrow and I wonder how he will defend his outburst considering that the facts are not on his side.
Obama finished by quoting portions of a letter that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) wrote back in May and Obama paid tribute to Kennedy's life-long work on the issue of health care reform. I thought this moment was fitting and it also allowed for Obama to cite the bipartisan work that Kennedy had engaged in with John McCain, Charles Grassley, and Orin Hatch while highlighting his own wish for bipartisan work on this bill. NBC's Political Analyst Chuck Todd seemed to miss this moment as in his post-speech analysis he stated that Obama had only mentioned two Republicans during his speech - President Bush and John McCain.
The Republican response, given by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), was short and can be summarized by Boustany's statement that he had hoped the President would announce that he would scrap the current reform plans and start all over again. He also stated that this reform was nothing more than a "government run" proposal. Super.
While I thought Obama's speech was a good one (while surprising in its tone at times), I am skeptical to learn more of the details of his plan. Certainly I agree that the system needs to be reformed and that health care costs are out of control, that is not in dispute. It is the details of how serious the President is about fighting for the public option and how much the Conservative Democrats will be able to control the debate that is in dispute. It is also worthy of note that the ridiculous claims that we have seen some Republicans advance, are probably not going away any time soon. It will be interesting to see if this continued approach will result in stalling the legislation or will be successful in convincing Republicans to vote against any type of legislative reform.
This battle still has a long way to go and I will be posting further analysis and observations about this debate as we continue to move forward.
