BRA-fucking-VO

[drwex]

Lee Stranahan's Huffington post piece starts with the rumors that Rahm Emanuel has told Harry Reid to cut a deal with Lieberman, ditch the public option (even the delayed, emasculated version we have left) in order to get a bill - any bill - passed. Then he goes on to say some of the same things I've been saying. To wit: Obama has screwed up, backed off, and compromised away the positions he ran his campaign on, and enough is enough. I voted for Obama last time but if he thinks he's going to get re-elected this way he ought to be in for a surprise.

"[I]f you voted for Barack Obama realize that you voted for an idea, not just a man. Just because this man hasn't delivered on those ideas doesn't mean it's time to give up on principles like changing Washington to get rid of the power of the lobbyists who run things. Or real health care reform for that matter."

Too goddamn right. The point is not to pass just any bill, particularly not one that is this big a giveaway to the insurance companies. The point is to do the right thing. If Joe Lieberman wants to go down in history as the guy who killed healthcare reform then write that on his tombstone.

(I will now wait for Cos to tell me why I'm wrong again this time and it's how OK to pass a Senate bill with no public option because magically it'll get fixed somehow at some future point, just like it was OK to pass a House bill with abortion restrictions.)

Comments

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

what the Legislative branch does is much like a sausage factory -- even if the output is tasty, you don't want to see the inner workings.

i suspect that there are more than a few republicans up there who have made it their business, by hook or by crook, to stall, delay, and if necessary, outright lie to keep obama from accomplishing anything of note. i just wish someone would come out and publish who they are, the bastards.

[ringrose.livejournal.com]

Even without a public option, we need regulation which prevents some of the current worst practices. An insurance company should not be able to deny you treatment for aggressive breast cancer because you never disclosed that you were treated for acne as a teen. Or rescind your coverage because an old CT scan showed gall stones... which your doctor never told you about.

The fact that an insurance company can slap a million dollar increase on a company's insurance because someone covered by that company contracted leukemia is obscene. What they want is for the company to let the person whose wife has leukemia go, and a small company has no choice because they can't afford the increase.

They do this right now and it doesn't take much google searching to find examples.
http://www.slate.com/id/2223680/
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/7/751100/-How-I-lost-my-health-insurance-at-the-hairstylists

Will the regulation stop these behaviors? I don't know, honestly. But last I knew it was _supposed_ to stop rescission. Maybe some Republicans are managing to keep us from getting the whole thing, but I'll take what I can get.

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

I fully support a public option. In fact, the state I live in has one, but wait until you hear the exceptions. I was eligible for it because I was turned down by another insurance co, but the rest of my family was not eligible because they were insurable on account of being healthy. I went through a bloody nightmare trying to replace coverage that became stupidly expensive. I'm willing to start with some reform now, some regulation that might prevent what we went through, but I'll be very happy when the public option finally comes to pass, as I believe it will, eventually.

[stevie-stever.livejournal.com]

I have several issues with this. I admire the passion of the writing, but scratching support for the Executive branch when it was rather clearly the intervention by one independent Senator from CT(which is by the way the de facto 'capital' for insurance companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford,_Connecticut) that scuttled the public option is the most ignorant sort of action a politically aware citizen can make.

Yes, it hurts and stings that several senators (and congresspeople in separate bills) moved to scratch federally funded abortion.

Yes, it hurts and stings that so many in Congress moved to put language in that expressly forbid illegal immigrants from receiving care.

But putting Obama under the gun for a bill he'd not have watered down if he could find the support is precisely the type of voter apathy that:

1) is responsible for the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994
2) allowed for an election close enough to get GWB into office in 2000. And trust me, if you're passionate for better healthcare, the opposition by and large is significantly less of a friend to you than those currently in power.

Outraged voters need to aim their frustration at the critical points in which the system is failing, NOT the points at which the system is trying to be changed for the better.

For what it's worth, in the last Senate race, Dems in CT actually did their part. Lieberman was defeated in the Democratic primary, and despite pleadings from other Senate Democrats, he put together a war chest of various campaign contributions, ran as an Independent and won. This victory for him is, in essence, the one that is biting us in the ass.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

No, regulation will not stop those behaviors - the financial incentive for the insurance industry is too immense for them to simply give up on looking for ways to force the actually sick out of coverage. That might mean clever work-arounds, it might mean simply bribing congress to water the rules down to meaninglessness, but it will continue to happen.

[cos]

>> (I will now wait for Cos to tell me why I'm wrong again this time and it's how OK to pass a Senate bill with no public option because magically it'll get fixed somehow at some future point, just like it was OK to pass a House bill with abortion restrictions.) <<

Which shows that you completely failed to understand? Because I don't get how this follows from that discussion.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I think it's most of them, to be perfectly honest. The Senators from Maine are the only ones who seem to be attempting to work with the Democrats *at all*.

Nonetheless, I am NOT impressed with Obama right now.

[c1.livejournal.com]

I found this quote hilarious:

It's time for Obama voters to be outraged. Many of us voted for Obama because we felt he was different -- after all, he told us he was different. He said he wasn't about politics as usual. Okay, now we know that's not true. Let's be adults and act like it.

Barack Obama is just another politician; willing to lie on the campaign trail to get elected. Then treat him like any other politician.

Really? Politicians lie? How outrageous!!

Being adults and acting like it should have started at least before the primary, by demanding concrete answers. Instead, voters sat passively until the nomination, and afterward, deified him. (These same voters would have deified Hilary, as both represented "a new hope" and a break from the status quo-- forget that Hilary has already spent eight years living on the Federal dime.)

America has made its bed. Now, it's time to lie in it.

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

Some of us did more than sit passively. Some of us actively supported through the primary, seek verification regularly and are, on the whole, pretty happy with the result of our efforts. Disappointed in some things (I'd like every single soldier currently stationed overseas to come home for mandatory language training in Arabic and courses in Arabic literature, for example. But I can't have nice things.), very pleased about others (I am impressed, daily, with the way the man composes himself, and the way he does business - it's not perfect, or always successful, but he's better at it than any president in my lifetime). I don't just lie in my bed - I sleep very well in it.

I've been watching the health care debate with interest, but I knew that the public option was doomed as soon as the Democrats failed (as usual) to control to debate, and "public option" became equated with "socialism."

What I wanted was never going to happen, anyway. Everything beyond equal health care for everyone is a compromise, as far as I'm concerned. Anything short of socialized medicine and we might as well call it the "Poor People Deserve to Get Sick and Die" option. As long as we're compromising to "save," in any way, a system that's more broken than Tiger Woods' marriage vows, the degree of compromise is splitting hairs.

Wex, I don't think you're wrong to be upset about it, I just think that the revolution is too small.

[c1.livejournal.com]

Everything beyond equal health care for everyone is a compromise, as far as I'm concerned.

So if the government gives everyone the same size band-aid, the same quantity of tylenol/advil/asprin, and tells everyone to go home and rest for the same amount of time, that's equal health care for everyone.

Well, that was easy.

On socializing medicine. I'll point out that the government has been handling socialized warfare for ages now. How's that working out in your opinion?
Socialized rail? Ride Amtrak lately, outside the Washington/Boston corridor?
How's everyone doing in New Orleans? Everything fine in the socialized trailer parks?

I've been unimpressed for a while

[drwex]

Part of the point of the Stranahan piece is that Obama has been making bad decisions and backtracking on campaign positions since he got elected and it's time to stop blindly supporting him. Which is what I've been saying for a while. He was hella better than the alternatives, but that doesn't mean he gets a free pass.

I tend to agree with MRF

[drwex]

In particular, the notion of for-profit and healthcare may never mesh but they certainly don't mesh under the current system of incentives. If we changed to a pay-for-outcomes system I might be more sanguine, but there would still be an incentive to ditch the truly sick, difficult-to-diagnose, and other unprofitables.

It's not just about the insurance bill

[drwex]

But it's about the dozens of other ways he's failed, from bad appointments, to defending DOMA, failing to remove Don't Ask/Don't Tell, continuing to support "extraordinary rendition" and other CIA torture programs, defending the worst excesses of the Patriot Act. And on and on.

Thanks

[drwex]

I knew I could count on you.

Two things

[drwex]

As I noted above, it's not just the failures on the health care bill, but that those failures are stacked on top of a string of policy reversals (DOMA, torture, etc), bad appointments (primarily on the financial side, but see also environment), and broken promises in other areas.

As for the argument about whether the government could run an alternative health-care system I'll point to Medicare in principle and take a pass on the specifics until something actually emerges. Talking about it in theory is pointless because the anti-public option forces want to have it both ways. They both want to claim that the government can't possibly run such an enterprise AND that such an enterprise would be unfairly better than private insurance. Which is it?

Re: Thanks

[cos]

You could count on me to respond by mentioning me by name, but count on me to tell you that the Senate should pass a bill without a public option? I still don't get why you think so.

Re: Thanks

[drwex]

I'm being sarcastic. I'm quite certain that you don't see the parallels and are convinced that I don't "get it".

Re: Thanks

[cos]

Oh, that's because you don't. To begin with, what to be done about the Senate bill is a matter of opinion and strategy with legitimate arguments for various different approaches, but the situation that a pro-choice pro-public option Rep was face with on the vote on the House bill, after Stupak passed, was one with only one correct answer, even though it was frustrating. That's why *every* pro-choice pro-public option Rep who was planning to vote yes before Stupak passed, did vote yes after it passed. It was the only vote that made any sense. That makes it very different from this situation in the Senate, where there's no simple clear-cut right answer.

Part of the irony of this, of course, is that part of the reason for voting yes in the House was that it was almost certain the Senate bill would suck, and it was necessary to keep the House bill alive in order to keep the option of killing the Senate bill alive. But you seem to think that it actually does the opposite: that it somehow must mean the Senate bill *must* be kept alive. That's why I think your comment here makes it clear that you didn't understand the reasons in that other discussion: I *wanted* (as did many of those Reps) to option of killing the Senate bill to remain open.

Whether we *should* take that option now, is a more complicated question. I'm not going to state why I lean towards yes (kill it) because that's beside the point here. I do see valid reasons for pro-choice, pro-public option Senators to take different positions on this, and since we're not at a vote yet, there are a lot more options (including saying that you'll vote no even if you might vote yes, or vice versa, as bargaining tools).

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

Well, that was easy.

Yes, it was. It's also a reductionist fallacy. Rhetoric fail. The people with the best medical care in the country currently have it provided for them by the government. Medicare has an 84% satisfaction rating, over twice what private insurance gets. Our troops have excellent health care, and so do Congress-critters. If your "band-aid" is a valid response, then I think it's certainly valid to say, "government-run health care would be like what we have now: the people who have it will be the happiest, healthiest people in the country."

To put it in simpler terms: I don't want everyone to have a band-aid. I want everyone to have the health care that our government currently gives our public servants. Fair, equal and awesome. Anything less than that is a compromise, and I accept that as a reality of doing business in the adult world. Even Mick Jagger knew that.

Now, to respond with honesty to your facetious questions:
Socialized warfare: I don't agree with how it's done, but I prefer it to the "bunch of yahoos with guns" approach outlined in the Constitution. Would I prefer a smarter military? Sure I would, but as someone who was in it for a short time, and who has a lot of friends and family who were, or are, part of the armed forces, I know the kind of young man or woman who chooses the military, and I think they do a great job with what they have.

I haven't ridden socialized Amtrak, but if it were up to private enterprise there would be no Amtrak, anywhere, because trains are a losing bet, money-wise. Some, poorly run, is better than none. (Why, yes, that is just like health care. Some, poorly run, is better than none, which is what 15% of Americans have. Thanks for the analogy.)

Are these approaches perfect? No. The "Perfect Solution" is another fallacy. I will settle for "less broken," and from the research I've done socialized medicine is less broken than our current system, which was never designed to handle the whole country. Study the last 100 years of medicine, starting with "no one has health care, anywhere" and going to "health care is a human right," and you'll see that the system we have was an accident. I'll take a system that is the result of deliberate planning, conscious effort and careful consideration (and, yes, concessions which I would not make - which is why I will never be in Congress). It will not be perfect, but pure socialized care would cover everyone.

As for New Orleans, unless you were down there volunteering, I don't think you get to cast aspersions on the little help those people are actually getting. Private enterprise will not help them, and private citizens have forgotten it happened (except when they need to bring it up to make a point). Ask them if they like having a roof over their heads, at all, then talk to me about "socialized trailer parks."

Where was private industry when the levees broke? Where was private industry when the rail failed? Where was private industry at Pearl Harbor? It was exactly where it is when most Americans get really sick: nowhere to be found.