December 21, 2009 05:26 PM UTC
An opportunity for bipartisanship in stopping HarryCare?
113 Comments- by: Rossputin
(A conservative blogger’s “modest proposal,” thoughts? – promoted by Colorado Pols)
As I watched soon-to-be-former Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) cave in on health care reform, my initial reaction was one of despondence followed by a Randian sort of “the voters are getting what they deserve.”
But after a conversation with one of my favorite political reporters, Connie Hair, she has convinced me that while the odds may not be on the side of liberty and rationality right now, this is not over and we should not give up. And by “we”, I mean both the left and the right.
She convinced me, so I’ll try to convince you — as well as discussing some of the reprehensible substance of what just happened. Again, the politics should offend Americans of every political stripe. (Also — I’m pointing this out early so you’ll read the whole thing — I’ll explain at the end of this note why I believe this is a rare opportunity for “bipartisanship” as the left and the right both have legitimate reasons to oppose HarryCare.)
First, let’s start with what Ben Nelson did.
Nelson is just the latest, clearest example that “conservative Democrat” means “Democrat who wants to be able to extort more favors than the average politician”. Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012, but I believe and hope that his actions this week will cost him dearly.
[Before I jump into this next part, allow me to make clear that while I am pro-choice, I am against government funding of abortion.]
All the talk was about him being “strongly pro-life”. Right. He’s strongly pro-winning as a Democrat in a red state, and must have the support of pro-life forces in Nebraska (or at least not their opposition) to stand any chance. So while we see breathless reports of Nelson on the phone with a leading pro-life activist in Nebraska, he nevertheless settled for language which the House of Representative’s leading pro-life Democrat, Bart Stupak (D-MI) appears to find unacceptable. Rather than a ban on government-funded abortions, the Examiner reports that Nelson went along with language that “any State may opt to prohibit any new insurance exchange from covering abortion services.” While Nelson may have gotten his Nebraska pro-lifers to cave in along with him, the Democrats will have a much harder time with national pro-life groups who may have just enough influence over just enough Democrats to prevent Pelosi from having enough House votes to pass a Motion to Concur with the Senate Bill.
If Pelosi does not have the votes in the House to just go along with the Senate bill, she’ll have no choice but to send the bill to a Conference Committee where the odds increase dramatically of a change which will cause the bill to be unable to pass one or both chambers of Congress.
But let’s get back to Nelson. As I said, all the talk was about abortion, trying to make Nelson look like a man of principle. And I’m sure he cares a little bit on principle. But two other issues seem to have been important to Nelson behind the scenes. First, in a story which Connie broke on Saturday, Nelson seems to have gotten language removed from the Senate bill which would have removed the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption. I haven’t thought a lot about the issue, and the little academic research I’ve read is inconclusive. My gut instinct is that if Chuck Schumer wants it repealed, then we should keep it. Essentially, it gives regulation of insurance to the states. The major downside is that the regulation seems to be a primary reason that there is not interstate competition for health insurance, probably the thing that is singly most responsible for our health insurance inflation problems.
Given the size of Mutual of Omaha, with over 5,000 employees and over $4 billion in revenue, Nelson’s action is good news for one of his state’s largest businesses and certainly a political boon for him.
But even bigger fish hiding behind the minnow of Ben Nelson’s pro-life position was the recognition that Harry Reid’s “reform” bill will bankrupt states by increasing the Medicaid rolls. So, much like the $300 Medicaid payoff of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Nelson got language added to the bill which will force all federal taxpayers to pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid cost increase. A must-read article in the Politico describes Reid’s payoffs to Democratic senators in order to reach 60 votes, “Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.”
http://www.politico.com/news/s…
Furthermore, “Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.”
Does anyone recall when just a few days ago, Nelson said his vote was “not for sale at any price?” Apparently there is a price, and it’s to be paid for almost entirely by people outside of Nebraska.
While there are clearly no rules in Washington DC anymore, how could it possibly be OK for politicians to carve out single-state (or 2- or 3-state) exemptions to federal rules, dumping their share of costs on to every other state? Why don’t representatives of other states make more noise about this since those carve-outs damage not just the nation but also their constituents? And if not the Congressmen, then where are the Governors, even the Democratic governors? Should Coloradoans be forced to pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion? This is NOT a left vs. right issue. This is an issue of one state stealing from all the others and we must not stand for it.
It points out the utter misunderstanding in Congress these days of the Commerce Clause which, when it talks about Congress “regulating” interstate commerce, meant the term in the sense of “making or keeping regular”, preventing tariffs and other barriers between states, etc, rather than how it is now interpreted as the right to make regulation about any commerce that crosses a states’ borders. What could be less “regular” than 2 states getting an exemption from an excise tax or 1 state getting an exemption from funding its own Medicaid expansion? Again, I strongly urge you to read the Politico article, but not either just before or just after eating.
The bill itself relies for funding on new taxes, a Medicare tax increase, and Medicare spending cuts which will never happen. As with all of the current Democrat bills, it begins the tax increases immediately but doesn’t “reform” health care in any substantial way for several years. Thus, it’s all pain up front in return for a promised gift several years from now. Furthermore, the structure of paying for 6 years of “reform” with 10 years of taxes allows the Democrats to game the CBO score so that the measure appears to cut the deficit. However, if you start counting at the time when all provisions of the bill are in force, the cost will end up somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion dollars to the American taxpayer over 10 years. For perspective, total US federal government spending, including “off-budget” items in 1986 was less than $1 trillion, and was about $2.4 trillion in 2006. In other words, this bill is likely add something on the order of 10% to the cost of the federal government while massively increasing the cost of insurance in the private sector.
Again, I realize that liberals think it’s OK for the government to spend money on health care, but this bill does not achieve universal coverage and it is likely to double or triple private health insurance premiums. It is an utter disaster, and should be seen that way by liberals and conservatives alike.
President Obama came out (in his distinctly unpresidential shirt-with-collar-unbuttoned look) to say with a straight face that this bill was a great deficit-reducing measure. I can’t imagine that even he believes it to be true, but certainly nobody else does. Even the CBO when announcing the “score” noted several caveats, warning as best the CBO can that the “savings” the Democrats claim is unlikely to be achieved.
Reid wants to demoralize the “tea partyers”. Indeed, it would be easy to feel somewhat beaten after many of us thought the August/September “town hall meeting” revolts around the country would have scared enough Congressmen or at least one Democratic senator away from the bill to prevent its passage. But politics ain’t beanbag. Reid and Pelosi know that this battle is for the medium-term future of their party. In my view, they can’t win no matter what happens at this point. However, they clearly agree with Bill Clinton that passing anything is worse than passing nothing.
So we have Obama and others talking about a long “struggle” for health care reform when in fact the bill does NOT include a “public option” or government-run plan which is really the goal of the left. Instead, it is just a massive tax hike to pay for massive regulation and some subsidies.
When the left (as represented by Howard Dean and the DailyKos, among others) complains that this bill is nothing but an enormous gift to insurance companies, they’re right. And I don’t say that often. Much like the tobacco “master settlement”, this measure simply guarantees customers to the insurers and guarantees them the ability to raise prices almost without limit.
Looking at the prices of health insurer stocks is instructive. Look at this chart which shows two of the biggest, Wellpoint and United Health, in comparison to the S&P 500 (the green line):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?…
What you can see is that they tracked the market fairly well until late September when it became clear that Congress was going to proceed with health care “reform” despite the public outcry against it. The insurance stocks cratered and stayed weak through October. In November, when the Democrats’ plans became clearer, i.e. that they would force both willing and unwilling Americans to buy health insurance and would not encourage interstate competition, the health care stocks took off and have now outperformed the S&P over the last 3, 6, and 12 months.
My point is that nobody other than politicians and insurance companies want this deal. (Oh, and the AARP likes it too because the plan guts Medicare and one of AARP’s main sources of income is selling “Medigap” insurance.) The right should (and does) hate it. The left should (and does) hate it. I am not one who believes in bipartisanship as an end in itself. But in this case, conservatives, libertarians, and liberals should be working together over the holiday break to put as much pressure on their Congressmen as possible to vote against this bill. It is, as Mitch McConnell properly noted “a legislative train wreck.” It accomplishes only two things: Increasing insurance company profits and allowing Democratic politicians to claim a victory, no matter how Pyrrhic. (And just watch Obama come out with his own victory lap even though he’s been strikingly absent from the entire debate, knowing as he must that he has in less than a year turned from The One into The Liability.)
I urge my friends on the left (of whom I have few, but you get the point) and on the right to defeat this bill, to cause a Conference Committee Report to be unpassable, and then to start again with a true “war of ideas” and let the better argument win.
Update: Another blogger makes a similar proposal this morning:
http://www.redstate.com/dan_pe…
Oh wait, you had 8 years – and did nothing. So don’t expect me to believe any bullshit about how the Republicans so want to participate in a comprehensive bipartisan health-care effort.
We’ve had our war of ideas, your side showed up unarmed, and the better (and only) argument is moving forward.
just makes me support the bill.
And Jane Hamsher’s proposal that we need a “left-right alliance” between supporters of the public option and teabaggers isn’t helping the progressive cause either.
I didn’t say that the GOP wanted a comprehensive bipartisan health care effort in the past. And I wouldn’t even say they want it now.
As for “present your proposal”, several have been presented, along the lines of removing restrictions on interstate sale of health insurance and other pro-competitive items.
You probably think that any “proposal” must include increasing government involvement. And it’s not surprising since liberals don’t learn from history. They just think that “if only smarter people executed the plan, it would work.”
Anyway, I can’t imagine anyone with a brain thinking that the current bill is a “better idea”. Please tell me just what of your major goals it even attempts to accomplish other than slightly increasing the number of insured, at a massive cost to society.
By the way, “insurance” against a pre-existing condition is not insurance, it’s socialism. Insurance by definition is for unforeseen events.
When I was a kid I still thought such things were a good idea. That’s what you get for growing up libertarian.
The original “point” of your post started as a fairly legitimate criticism of a particular Senator’s role in the Health Care Debate. The follow-on hyperbole is the same useless bullshit that is the hallmark of Right-Wing Radio.
The process usually follows this pattern:
1) Insult
2) Dismiss
3) Change the Subject
So let’s steer things back on track – since there was no alternative bill of ANY workable substance presented by the minority party, and no serious amendments were presented other than the usual Repub Junk Economics, hooting and screeching about the result is simply a way to boost your ratings.
And shriekiing “Socalism!” and “Tax Cuts!” as a way to appease the Invisible Hand of the Market doesn’t demonstrate a viable rebuttal to criticism, it makes you look like a button-pushing chimp behind a microphone.
that was fun to read.
That’s an ideological difference that I see as a deal breaker. You are probably right–most liberals see quality health care as a universal right, not a privilege for those that have the means to afford it. Most Republicans view it as a privilege, not a universal right. I don’t see how that difference in ideology can ever bring a bipartisan effort to fruition. And as you stated, there doesn’t appear to be that will on the part of the GOP.
Unfortunately, as I read through your diary, I don’t see any concrete ideas for reform. Mostly just an editorial (very well written) about why you oppose this bill. That’s my biggest issue with the Republicans–they are all about No and No Ideas. What’s the point of starting over when there won’t be a single new idea offered? You all have had 9 months to bring something innovative to the table. At this point, your chance to weigh in seems to be coming to an end.
I agree with your coloring of the debate:
What makes this frustrating to me is that the R side can’t see the forest for the trees on this. Common sense says that we will pay a lot less money overall for health care if everybody is given access to basic care as a basic right. Excluding people without means from primary care means we will spend 100x on emergency care for those people. But go on, keep playing the socialism card and stick to your principals (even though one of your principals used to be responsible management of public resources).
on what basis do you believe costs will go down if everybody gets health care as a right? that violates the most basic principles of economics…and lessons of history.
that shows cost savings when you transfer people from a emergency care regime to a primary/preventative care regime?
you assume that that’s what this bill’s main impacts are, which is absolutely untrue. furthermore, studies do not show preventative care to save money.
and furthermore, the guaranteed issue provisions massively swamp any of your hypothetical savings from that one relatively minor issue.
….but then again, you’re on the radio and I’m not.
Until and unless you actually provide something along the lines of a hyperlink, cited news story or something the rest of us here like to call PROOF, all of what you say is the usual, talk-radio bullshit.
I’d even take a self-serving link on the Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation – but unlike talk radio, the debate is not controlled by the producer on the switchboard. If you throw out unsupported bullshit, we call you on it.
Provide a link or STFU…
Studies have shown that preventative care saves billions of dollars. Colorado has done several studies and I worked with a State House candidate in 2004 that had the exact figures of what we would save if we just insured the children in this state. Instead, millions of people without insurance end up waiting until they have no alternative but the hospital emergency room. Preventive care works just about anywhere in the world–vaccines, hello?
Also every country that has universal healthcare as a right has much better care for all at a much lower cost than our system. Besides, if I have to lose as a progressive who wants single payer or at least a public option or at the very least the medicare buy-in, I’d much rather have it be an even bigger loss for the GOP.
We are at least getting a little something and if that little something makes GOP heads explode, the huge majority of us certainly aren’t going to partner up with Rs against it. Remember how much the GOP got from partnering with HRC supporters who vowed to support McCain against Obama? Remember how most of them weren’t Dems in the first place?
We may be pissed off at our own, but don’t worry. We’ll always oppose your kind more, Rossputin. We still know what you get from lying down with dogs: Fleas.
1) allow interstate purchase of health insurance
2) equalize tax treatment, i.e. either give individuals and the self-employed the same tax break that companies get, or remove the deductibility that companies get
that’s all you need to start.
“Reform” doesn’t need to be incredibly complicated, at least not to start!
So, in point#1 – How do you propose to regulate said purchasing of insurance across state lines? Will that fearsome spectre, the “Invisible Hand of the Market”ensure that the policies will be honored when claims are made? Who will enforce payment – the issuing state’s insurance agency, or the state where the claim is made? If said insurance company refuses to pay, where does the lawsuit get filed – state or federal court? If the policy offers treatment that violates certain state laws (the terrifying “A” word, perhaps) does the State void the policy? And does it have to reimburse the holder, or find him alternative insurance?
Point #2 – please define “tax treatment” and more importantly, “tax break.” for example, does an individual get a tax break for taking out a health club membership, since that’s a “employee benefit that promotes wellness and loyalty?” If said individual takes a tobacco cessation class, do they get a tax break since that “improves individual productivity and lowers company costs?”
Gonna have to do better than that….
you’re kidding, right?
is all of your other insurance purchased from companies which are based in Colorado?
My car insurance company is based in Texas. Am I worried that they won’t pay my claim?
I was talking specifically about the tax deduction for the purchase of health insurance. I shouldn’t need to explain it further.
As for breaks for health club memberships or tobacco cessation, those are patently outside any defensible sphere of the federal government and most certainly should not attract federal tax breaks of any sort.
…the car insurance you buy here in Colorado is (despite the giveaway the Repubs built in) regulated by the COLORADO State insurance commissioner. There’s no such provision in ANY of the interstate plans floated and teased by the Repubs in either chamber.
Again, links, quotes or STFU…
links:
quotes;
STFU: gets my vote
Is based here in Colorado? Or your Kaiser plan?
If you think we’re buying that all you want is some basic national corporation coming in and “improving” your health insurance – well, we’re already there and it doesn’t, and we don’t.
I still can’t buy insurance, at any price, because I had cancer 5 years ago. For the tens of millions in the same boat, you haven’t improved squat.
And as to your comment that this is unfair as I have a pre-existing condition, at 5+ years out for the cancer I had, I have no greater statistical chance of getting it again than someone who has never had it.
I guess I should get over my deep disappointment if this bill means they have to give you and millions like you coverage. Even if it’s very expensive it will be better for those who can afford it than nothing. Still hope we can get just a little more before this is over.
But I jest.
It’s not that I think that interstate purchase of health insurance, equalized tax treatment, or tort reform are bad things, it’s just that
I fail to see how they will (1) significantly reduce the number of uninsured Americans, (2) address denial of insurance for pre-existing conditions, (3) or eliminate rescinded coverage.
Perhaps you can provide some reasonably convincing resources that show this?
The number of unwillingly and chronically uninsured Americans is probably under 15 million, hardly worth destroying the system for.
The public (outside of far left web sites) doesn’t care about universal coverage. They care about cost containment, which has never been done and will never be done by government mandate.
There is nothing irrational about denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. In any case, my first paragraph also addresses this issue to some degree. It’s too bad that people have pre-existing conditions. But it’s not the responsibility of the federal government to force everyone else to subsidize those people.
While we certainly hear the worst possible stories, I do agree that we should look at the problem of insurance companies trying to drop coverage of people who have paid their premiums, who didn’t lie on their applications, and who happened to suffer a high-cost illness or injury. To me, that sort of behavior by the insurance companies is fraud.
And what are you basing it on?
I’ve heard 35 to 45 million people and that number has been documented.
I just find this absurd:
Again, stick to your principals, and what do you get? A whole class of people who need to go bankrupt and then on public assistance because they can’t get coverage for a pre-existing condition? How is this even remotely rational? The vast majority of people with a pre-existing condition can’t afford to pay $100K out of pocket to keep themselves alive when their condition reappears. So when it comes down to it, who pays when they go to the ER anyway? We all do. We’re all paying for this already.
By the way, 15 million people is 5% of the population. That’s a shitton of people you’re leaving behind.
No. Not if providing basic health care is a for profit operation. That’s why, in all other civilized countries, basic healthcare is non-profit and universal right.
It’s both irrational and immoral to distribute or withhold healthcare, to hand out death sentences, via a for profit business model. Defense of such a system is especially hypocritical coming from the alleged, self-styled culture of life crowd.
a) your math is irrefutable
b) nice use of shitton
but here’s what I need:
I need it to be illegal for insurance companies to deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condidtion.
I need it to be illegal for insurance companies to cancel someone’s insurance, without notice, when they become sick.
This bill does both of those things and that is fundamental reform. I won’t argue with you that the insurance companies, without a public option included in this bill, become the big winners here. But I can live with that if people like our own DavidT. can get health insurance again.
why do you NEED that first thing to be legal?
how does it fit into the idea of insurance?
how is it fair to every other insurance buyer whose costs will be massively increased?
I agree with your second point.
FYI, I went years unable to get insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
Just a brief sidenote, but I have been turned down for insurance, NOT because of anything with me, but because of my families medical history which disqualifies me. I find that patently unfair and I’m sorry you went through a similiar experience. I currently do not have insurance–not because I can’t afford it but because my family history falls under the “pre-existing condition” category.
Why do I need it to be illegal? Besides the fact that it directly affects my life and millions? Because I think it is a gross injustice that you pay your premiums for 30 years, get sick, get your policy cancelled and cannot get reinsured because of your shiny new “pre-existing” condition. I think that borders on criminal. Insurance companies make billions off of yearly premiums and refuse to pay out when an insured patient finally needs what they have been faithfully paying for for years.
The whole system reminds me of sharecropping.
really ought to abandon, even to death, anyone who has had the misfortune to become ill or who has any chronic condition or congenital defect because that person can’t be used to create maximum profit for a private company? let me guess…you object strongly to a woman’s right to choose because all life is sacred. How do you hold those two opinions at once?
If you kill off enough poor people, maybe they won’t have a chance to breed.
Just the social Darwinianism that was never part of Darwin’s theory…
You’ve got it.
okay, so define pre-existing as uninsurable. Then, by logic, you would have to define those pre-existing conditions at the time of the contract. That is not what happens. Insurance companies come back, years later, and say that insurance won’t cover something. If you want to use pre-existing conditions, then the onus must be on the insurance companies. In current practice, it is not.
By your definition flood plain insurance is socialism, fire insurance for homes in the mountains is socialism, etc.
Someone who has no insurance, is diagnosed with cancer, and then goes to get insurance – I’ll agree with you on that one. But someone who has had cancer and is cured – we all are physically imperfect and refusing to cover someone for that reason would be akin to car insurance refusing to insure males ages 18 – 29.
I am against federal flood insurance. But based on my definition of insurance, flood insurance and fire insurance are still insurance unless the policies are issued during a flood or fire.
The flood example does get fairly close to non-insurance because a flood is so likely. Fire insurance is a bad example on your part.
The Dems want someone who is newly diagnosed with cancer to be able to get insurance at the same price that a healthy person pays, thus massively increasing the cost of insurance for everyone.
My comment was:
And your reply was:
You’re telling me I’m wrong where I directly agreed with you – and you then claimed I said the exact opposite. It would be nice in your screed against us Dems if you would not flip what we say 180 degrees.
people with cancer continue to be covered and those countries spend much less per person on healthcare. Next lame excuse for retaining the most barbaric healthcare system of any western democracy please?
Maybe what you are really arguing against is the whole concept of private health insurance. Maybe what we need and what would be the most effective, least expensive is simply universal healthcare, not health insurance at all.
We all pay in, the pool spreads costs by including everyone, including all those healthy 20 somethings, and next thing you know we have quality healthcare for all at a half to a third of our present cost. People who want more bells and whistles can pay for private for profit plans.
And since this already exists in the world, it is hardly a utopian dream. Just like we all have access to police protection, you know, that awful socialist institution, and people are still free to buy extra security in the form of alarm systems or body guards. if they are really rich.
The fact that we all have some security system, the police, as a right, doesn’t interfere with anyone’s right to have more and makes us all safer for less cost than if we all had to hire personal security. Likewise, healthcare for all would make us all safer by creating a healthier public environment.
Suggesting that universal health care is the best solution for saving this country – government and private industry alike – money. Of course, it’s true. We even had a study here in Colorado that said so. But we can’t let idealism get in the way, can we?
Correct, it is not insurance in the sense of auto insurance, for example. That is why this whole effort should be about health care reform, but instead it got diverted into limited insurance reform.
As for “socialism,” call it what you want. I call it compassionate. I call it making a moral decision to provide universal health care, which every other developed, industrialized country in the world has done while spending much less of their GDP on health care than does the US.
Don’t pay a thing until I get sick, and then just join an existing health care plan with no penalty.
Unfortunately for someone trying that scheme under the proposed Senate bill, they’ll get taxed to offset the potential future burden on the system they might be causing.
The reality is that Dems want someone who’s covered under insurance to remain covered even if they switch plans. Right now, if my pre-existing condition and I switched jobs and health care plans, I’d face a potential 9 month period during which I had virtually no health care coverage, even though I was paying into my new job’s plan – as a diabetic, virtually anything can be related to my pre-existing condition. In some states, it’s considerably longer than 9 months.
about why Ross doesnВґt even prevail on the semantics are good ones, but I do not want to concede the point that we should deny care to people who are sick and uninsured simply because we have thus far relied on a system that denies health care to such people.
Not all people who are uninsured are uninsured by choice: Many simply canВґt afford it. So, this comes down to a question of what kind of country we are: Are we the kind of country that lets people die unnecessarily because they were unfortunate enough to be poor, or are we the kind of country in which we try to take care of one another, in which recognition that we are joined by bonds of belonging to a society and that we do not need to disregard our interdependence merely because blind ideolgoues name all recognition of it “socialism,” and thus, through the artifice of an empty and abused word, “argue” against acting with any degree of social cohesion.
Government is not evil, it is not our enemy, it is not the antithesis of all that is good and true and holy. It is an invaluable tool in our shared efforts to confront and deal with a complex and continuous flood of challenges and opportunities. We need to stop letting ths utterly silly and self-destructive (and economically illiterate) anti-government meme reproduce with such vitality, and return our national focus to the design of precise responses to specific challenges and opportunities, using all of the tools in our tool kit.
I have tried to get an explanation as to why the Dems are so against changing our system now to allow for interstate sales, but have not been answered.
This would help my case greatly. My wife now lives and works 1100 miles away but her employer is very small. Pays decent but offers no insurance. She can not use my insurance because of these stupid rules, so she will be forced to buy insurance on her own.
Therefore now I get to pay for our coverage twice on seperate plans.
What a deal this is.
And I haven’t heard others say they do, either. But I’m skeptical that this will significantly reduce the cost of health care insurance. Can you point me to any reasonably convincing (and quantitative) evidence? It must be out there with so many R’s saying that it will solve all of our problems.
to answer your questions but I am smart enough to assume that allowing people like me to cover my wife in another state with my policy can save me a great deal of money. And if myself and all others were allowed to shop around other states for better policies, common sense say that alone could save millions.
If health insurance can be billed by out of state companies (my wife works for a company that does medical billing from doctors in states all over the union), why can’t it be purchased that way? Why drag the government into the works and create another humongus entity that we all know will end up costing us ten times what they predict.
Just look back at the original cost calculations by the brains of our government in the early 60’s on what Medicare would cost. They were only off by 11 times and growing!
…you can’t buy a policy that covers you and your wife from a major HC carrier who has a national network in place and pay out-of-network rates for the services she may utilize.
Anthem, Kaiser, Aetna et al would be more than happy to sell you such a product.
Calm, rational explanations, with factual information, are cause for suspicion.
At least throw in some name calling, or swearing or allusion to tin foil hats or something.
I’ll blame it on the Winter Solstice falling on a Monday. That’s a double whammy that leaves me out of sorts.
I’ll endeavour to try harder in the future.
It is pretty funny that someone like Gecko wants the government to get involved when it works to his advantage. Otherwise, it would be interfering with the great and all knowing “free” market and somehow stealing someone’s liberty. Or precious bodily fluids. Also. Death Panels!
And we’re on the light side of the Solstice now. The darkness breaks at dawn.
You must be younger than 60.
Because they sure as shit aren’t falling all over themselves to sell ME one.
…anything about it being affordable or that they would actually accept those in less than ideal condition.
I may not be of AARP age quite yet, but trust me–nobody’s beating down my door to offer me coverage either.
Ah well, just another example of the almighty free market in action.
Son of a bitch.
Insurance, by its definition, is a promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment.
By your illogical and incorrect definition, life insurance isn’t insurance because death is not an unforeseen event.
And in opposition, now calls for “bipartisianship.”
The war of ideas you are calling for has been fought, will be fought and is not obstructed by the left. Obstruction comes from the R this time around.
I was going to take the holiday weekends off, but having read your post and the included links, I’ll be working hard reminding Congress that we need to pass this bill and move on to the next subject.
Whether it’s immigration or financial regulation or clean energy or global warming, can we count on your continued desire for an open discussion of ideas with actual information, a bipartisan approach that we can all get behind? I didn’t think so.
Elections have consequences.
If this was an effort for bipartisanship it would offer what was good about the current bill and needs to be changed in return for votes. As it is, the offer, if I have read it correctly, is to defeat the current proposal and start another year (or 60) of negotiations with a party whose members have no interest or concern about relieving the American people of problems with health care.
Wow, I’ll have to really consider that … NOT!
that you use the word “reason” without, apparently, understanding its meaning.
We are all shocked, SHOCKED, i tell you, to discover that politics is involved in Congressional politics! My god, man, had I known earlier, I (or my predecessors in interest) would have blocked all similarly pernicious legilstion, such as The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, Midcaid, The Social Security Act, and the ratification of the United States Constitution. We should not tolerate political bargaining when important matters are on the line!
Now, if you have a semantic issue with using the word “insurance” to describe providing health care to all who need it, then, by all means, let’s refer to this as “Health Care Reform,” or “the health care bill” (as, indeed, it most often is), and recognize that the former system of underregulated private insurance is the problem we are trying to solve rather than a semantic cage from which (in your well-reasoned view) it is impossible to escape.
Most Americans are reasonable people of good will, at heart (though not always in action), and poll after poll has shown support for significant health care reform, and even for significant government involvement in the new health care regime. Repeating the refrain that, because an obnoxious and loud minority got themselves onto the front pages of newspapers by being obnoxious and loud, that is evidence that the majority of Americans are in agreement with that obnoxious and loud minority, is the antithesis of reason, and the antithesis of bipartisanship.
The best of all options was taken off the table before it was on the table, thanks to your and your friends’ irrational and incorrect use of the word “socialism” to oppose any and all government involvement in the challenges that we, as a people, collectively face. You, collectively, have done the people of this nation a great and tragic disservice by imposing, by thuggish tactics when necessary, your blind (and erroneous) ideological certainty on the rest of uw, as we try to face specific problems with precise analyses in pursuit of effective solutions.
ThereВґs nothing “reasonable” about you, or the movement you represent.
polls are showing that Americans prefer no legislation to this legislation.
polls show that the public is against this bill, period.
as for as imposing ideology, I have done no such thing. i support allowing competition and economic liberty. to the extent that you think those things are the same as imposing ideology, I dare you to say so, as it will show that the ideology you choose to impose is economic irrationality and servitude to the state.
“allowing competition and economic liberty” as an a priori certainty, before considering the specific challenge involved, then, by definition, you are adhering to a blind ideology.
Of course, not even you, in all likelihood, are that extreme: You probably donВґt believe that our military should be privatized and provided by independent market actors, or that currency should be provided by independent market actors rather than backed by governments. But if there is any challenge that is not answered by what you call “allowing competition and economic liberty,” then invoking it as the answer to a particular challenge prior to doing the anlysis of whether it is indeed the best answer to that challenge is clearly an expression of blind ideology.
Steve,
I love your answer. Really.
I am absolutely “extreme” enough to believe that competition and economic liberty are ends in themselves, particularly the latter.
Liberty is more important than any particular outcome.
I am NOT an anarchist and I do believe there are legitimate functions of government (as quite well specified in the Constitution), which include the military.
There is no ECONOMIC challenge that cannot be dealt with through competition and liberty. State control always ends badly, either in terms of outcome, cost, or both, because of the government’s incentives.
Again, I love that you think supporting liberty is a blind ideology. That says a lot more about your ideology than mine.
This is yet another missing the forest for the trees problem. In general my politics are probably more center-center-right than anything, but it’s always been clear to me that the market does not solve problems of policing the commons well. The list of market failures having to do with shared resources is longer than this post. We got the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and regulations like them because individuals (be they large corps or common citizens) were polluting common resources with impunity. That was a problem that was never going to be solved by the market. Much as I’d like to, I just can’t buy your “There is no ECONOMIC challenge that cannot be dealt with through competition and liberty” BS.
Not to mention the municipal acquisition and delivery of water. Clearly an economic transaction is occurring – I buy water. But just as clearly, I would not benefit by a private water market.
Likewise, electricity (unregulated), roads, bridges, and dozens of other economic transactions.
oh god, it’s not even worth imagining. Maybe that’s the more apt analogy here, not car insurance. Completely privatize health care and you get 10%+ of the country without any. Completely privatize water delivery and you get….?
unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what Libertad wants
I’ve made into a sig line.
In fact two Colorado economists have written a paper showing that the typical supply and demand curve breaks down at the boundary when the transaction involves a necessity.
Rather than any marginal cost factor being relevant- prices go right to the top and keep the consumer at subsistence level for all other potential purchases. If I read it right, for example China built the Great Wall with a tax on salt. India broke the Brit colonial hold by breaking their salt monopoly.
And, though not in the paper and arguable tea is not a necessity, the Brits lowered the price of tea with the Tea Act of 1773 in order to try and keep peace in the New England colonies. Locals not happy about the lower prices rebelled and threw the East India Company’s load into Boston Harbor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…
How does that square with this:
I’ll throw out one example: overfishing.
Your rebuttal?
I’d like to point out the rhetorical technique you employed: While I used your phrase as a single unit, you chose to isolate one word within it (that I had not used in isolation) for its emotional content, and suggest that anything that can be construed as opposition to the ideal embodied in that word is, by definition, wrong.
In truth, like most of us here, I am a huge advocate of liberty, but not one who simply employs the word like an undifferentiating sledge-hammer to beat up anyone who disagrees with me ideologically. For a more nuanced discussion of “liberty,” click the link to my campaign website, and read my blog entries, particularly the one titled “The Politics of Consciousness.”
Your use, Ross, of a word to invoke an emotional reaction, and then to use that emotional reaction as a means to avoid the argument, is a favorite tool of blind ideologues.
you arbitrarily distinguish economic challenges from other challenges. Economics is a system of analysis more than a particular segment of human activity: Your argument is thus tautological. You are saying that that which is currently identified as economic (which, to you, means subject to market dynamics) can be addressed by recourse to market dynamics. In fact, defining the line between that which the market provides most efficiently, and that which can more efficiently be provided via hierarchies or normative arrangements, is one of the central challenges of economic analysis, not the pre-existing line between that which is and is not “economic” in nature.
Your assertion that there are some legitimate uses of government, but that all economic challenges can be met by market dynamics is, to an economist’s eye, a self-contradiction, since no challenge is somehow essentially economic or non-economic by its nature. A Nobel Prize Winning Economist from the Univrswity of Chicago about 40 years ago (his name slips my mind; “Gary” something…, “Berger”?) did an economic analysis of family, for instance. Not family finances, but the social institution of family itself. Doug Heckathorn at Cornell has made his mark by doing microeconomic analyses of social norms.
You employ a sloppy form of argumentation, ignoring the ambiguity of words and the complexity of the concepts they are symbols for, and by turning these complex concepts into emotionally gratifying absolutes, all arguments are reducible to a few simple platitudes. Once again, that is the essence of blind ideology.
And I mean the stand 3″x 10″ variety.
I would be doing what I fundamentally oppose: reducing the world to overly tidy platitudes and sound-bites, rather than going to the trouble of delving into its complexities and subtleties. I know that that choice offends some, but it is the choice I am standing by, not because it wins elections (it doesnВґt), but because it is a part of the end to which winning elections, IMHO, should be subordinated and placed in service to.
short pithy sayings certainly have their place, and are good for certain purposes. Here are some of mine:
“May our disputes be defined by the limits of our reason rather than by the extent of our bigotry.”
“reasonable people of good will working together for the common good”
“The genius of the many is a captive giant, whose freedom is both the ends and the means of all other things.”
And Danny’s favorite:
“It’s best to be both smart and humble, but if you canВґt handle both, at least achieve one of the two.”
And, of course, the one that was the open-thread quote one day several months ago:
“You see? I’m not calling you a racist; I’m calling you a monkey. Now, donВґt you feel better?”
What no “now go outside and play….”
as nice there as it is here (in Mazatlan), or if thereВґs a particularly inviting snowfall on the ground! 🙂
add one more to the list, most appropo for posters here:
“Learn to distinguish volume from density.”
The assumption that high volume necessarily implies low density is as wrong in composition as it is in physics. Low information density, not high volume, is the measure of whether a post is too long or not. Two words that say nothing are two words too many, while thousands of words that distill into them thousands of pages of information make for a very efficient and parsimonious post.
Or are you talking to someone other than Steve?
“hound of polsterville,” the revised and reprised edition:
With his nose in the crotch
Of his unlaundered briefs,
He picks up the scent
Of his own petty beef, (double entendre)
Yapping with glee,
He’s fast on the trail,
Of the dingleberry
Dangling beneath his own tail,
No purpose, no point,
No benefit sought,
This hound self-annointed
Himself only has caught.
For his nose is well browned
From a sun that don’t shine,
As he chases himself ’round,
And up his own ‘hind.
as IВґve often repeated here, 80% of American economists (according to The Economist magazine about 18 months ago; sorry, no link or citation) reported that they support Democratic rather than Republican economic policies. The Economist magazine itself favors universal single payer health care as the most economically rational solution to that particular challenge (as, indeed, empirical evidence strongly supports, since the Canadian system, for example, beats us by every single statistical measure of health care outcomes and economic efficiency). Actual practicing ecnomists remain overwhelmingly Keynesian in orientation (Keynesian economic theory remaining the textbook macroeconomic paradigm).
So, who should we believe regarding the definition of economic rationality: A blind ideologue posting anonymously on a political blog, or the overwhelming majority of practicing economicsts? If you werenВґt a blind ideologue, you would know the answer to that question.
To me, health insurance is not like car insurance, it’s like a utility. The gas company has to go to the state for a change in its rates. In return for their monopoly, insurance companies should do the same.
The public knows there are problems with our health care system and they want something done about it. Even though some of your criticism is legitimate, how can you expect to be taken seriously at this late date. As someone else said here this morning, the Republicans have had years to take on this issue and now this year, when the Congress finally came to grips with it, the Republican response has been simply to say no to the bill no matter how it has been amended and to never offer any constructive counter measures or ideas. Your post is a well written piece which supports the latest Republican rant that the bill should be killed and we should start all over, even though Republicans have no intention of offering any health care reform legislation.
Lets just say Congress did what you want, killed the existing bill and started over. Do you really think it would turn out any differently? This bill has been debated vociferously for months and the ideas individual representatives and senators will vote for won’t change if we begin again in January. They know what their constitutuents believe and will accept.
Anyone who has worked on the “Hill” knows that writing, debating and amending legislation has never been pretty. With the internet, it is now more open to scrutinny than in the past. Also, the fact the Republicans are all against this bill, is one of the major causes that it has amendments attached that seem repugnent. Without bipartisanship, the Democrats needed every one of their senators to vote for it and therefoe each one could extract a price for their vote if they desired to do so. So the responsibility, in part, for amendments like the one Senator Nelson (D-Nebraska) extracted, rests on Republican shoulders too. The universal Republican opposition gave individual Democrats the ability to ask for and get amendments. A little bipartisanship would have prevented many of these amendments from seeing the light of day but, alas, the Republicans said no to everything.
Republicans should be saying “no” to everything the Dems are doing right now. And so should the public.
I understand that this site is mostly trafficked by people who live in their own far-left echo chamber, and that’s fine.
But you will soon see the political destruction to your party that the Dems’ current actions will cause.
I’ve made this point before, but since you all try to tar me with George W. Bush, allow me to reiterate that I never voted for him, nor did I vote for John McCain.
As for your other question regarding would it turn out differently if this bill were killed? Yes, it would. We would get either no bill or a bill which began reform incrementally and with much more limited costs.
Weird how your screen name is “Republican”, by the way.
How can you be sure of that? The health care issues have been debated to the last inch this year.
What Republicans fear is the fact that once the bill is passed and signed by the President, Democrat polling numbers will begin to rise because they accomplished health care reform. This will happen because the public realizes the debate covered almost all aspects of health care reform and vented almost all positions.
Please keep in mind that a Rasmussen poll last week exposed the fact that 73% of registered Republicans don’t believe the Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate are representing their views them in Washington, DC and a week before that another poll exposed the fact that 59% of registered Republicans believe the Republican leadership in Washington has failed on health care reform. Here in Colorado, Democratic registration still (slowly) is increasing over Republican registration and the fact Republicans held a 180,000 registration lead just over three years ago represents an astounding turn around. The current is running against the Republicans.
With the passage of health care reform and an improving economy, the Democrats are poised for another victorious year in 2010.
My understanding is that the Bennett/Wyden proposal allowed and even required the interstate sale of insurance. Bennett/Wyden could have been a starting point for true reform, but the Republicans refused to participate in anything smacking of cooperation. Rather, they “doubled down” with the intent of bringing down Obama. Now we’re all stuck with this pig in a poke “reform” that extends coverage (admirable) but does almost nothing to bring down costs (despicable).
If this bill is defeated, do you really think the Republicans will play nice next time? Not a chance, they’ll be too busy gloating.
Wyden has been pushing his open market and competitiveness ideas for well over a decade, and health care has always been his #1 issue since back when he was in the House. Wyden is one of the D’s most likely to look for R co-sponsors and partners on his amendments and bills. The R’s have had a long, long time to take him up on it (i.e., back when they had both chambers and White House) and never did it. So for Ross to continue to push this line that the R’s want to do something on health care is just such bullshit.
If the bill died, I’d love to see it come back in little bitty pieces that would be harder to vote down individually.
Part of the pain of getting this bill through the factory is that it tries to gore everyone’s ox at once. Pass pharmaceutical rate negotiation separate from insurance regulatory reform, separate from exchanges, separate from the Public Option and my guess is we’d have a better solution.
But that’s not what we’re getting, and given the 40? 60? year history of failing to get health care reform through Congress, I suppose I should be happy we’re getting anything at all.
but I am also rec’ing your diary for the conversation it has generated. Nice job, Rossputin.
There are times when industries become so big and powerful, and the public becomes so dependent on them, that only the government can step in and stop those industries from gouging and colluding.
The health insurance industry for the most part has become an oligopoly. The competitive advantage for major health insurance companies is not outperforming other companies, but instead colluding and regionalizing their operations. This practice is inevitably bad for the consumer.
Government regulation is nothing more than the People, through their representation, saying to industries with one voice – “change your ways or take your business somewhere else!” It is a statement of our values as a nation. The People spoke last November with a pretty clear voice. Polls are nothing more than a snapshot of shortsightedness. Polls mean nothing, elections mean EVERYTHING!
I couldn’t believe someone from ColoradoPols bumped it to the front page.
For all of you saying “the GOP had their chance” to add “meaningful amendments,” you really don’t get how politics works. If they offer “meaningful amendments,” and enough of them actually make it into the bill…well, yes, it will be a better bill than it otherwise would have been. But offering those “meaningful amendments” presupposes passage of the bill. And the changes would likely result in, say, three Republican senators voting for the bill, while the rest still have several significant objections. Making a horrible bill better (from your own point of view) simply so that it can pass is a dumb idea if you have any principles at all, be you on the left or the right. If the bill is as bad as most Republicans feel every version of health care “reform” has been, there’s no reason to improve its chances of passing. All along, the point was to operate on the assumption the bill would remain a train wreck and pass, with no Republican help, or fail accordingly.
I think I do get how politics works and I certainly know how the Senate works, and any R with half a brain could have gotten a good amendment passed, still voted no, then gone back home and said, “I voted No but look at what I did get done on this!!”
I hate to break it to you but the bill is going to pass. Choosing to sit on the sidelines and not work to improve (from your own political perspective) a bill that is going to become law is pretty short-sighted.
Clearly no Republican support was needed to pass the bill so the premise of your argument is totally invalid.
vote with, well, your vote.
Elections have consequences. And sometimes so does 6 years of single party rule.
Interestingly enough Jon Chait has an article up at TNR today entitled “The Rise Of Republican Nihlism” that deals with Kaminksy-esque conservatives generally and also speaks to some of the specific issues in this thread.
http://www.tnr.com/article/pol…
First on some specifics on health care,
Now on the underlying philosophy at work,
In short we have one side who wishes to make substantive and objective improvements in people livess. On the other side we have an unbendin and uncompromising fealty to abstract philosophy with wanton disregard for the real world implications of such a blind and rigid ideology.
Wasn’t the history of the 20th Century the story of the disasters of blind ideology?
This happens every other month or so: Ross stops by, calls us all idiots, and then goes back to his column for a while.
He speaks of Pols as an echo-chamber. That’s quite rich coming from someone who spends his time on right-wing radio and posting at Human Events and who, when faced with input from sentinent human beings, devolves into churlish name calling and Tea Party approved talking points.
He’s like our own Jonah Goldberg, only without the good fortune of having been born into a well-connected family. Also, fewer Cheetos.
You say, “Nelson is just the latest, clearest example that “conservative Democrat” means “Democrat who wants to be able to extort more favors than the average politician”. Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012, but I believe and hope that his actions this week will cost him dearly.”
But Nelson, like most Senators, is pretty good at figuring out what will play with the folks back home. Constituents like pork (when it is their pork) – that is why it is so common.
When Republicans control the vote – they tell us Dems fuck compromise.
When we Dems control the vote, and reach out to compromise – they tell us to fuck off.
But when the bill moves to passage, they scream that we need to start over working together.
You guys were given ample opportunity. And your response every step of the way was a middle finger.
You will reap what you sow.
Not only did Reid not reach out to Republicans, he didn’t even reach out as far as the Senate Democratic leadership in writing this bill. It was basically his own staff and nobody else, putting in exactly what he wanted such that it would be acceptable to each of the 60 members in his caucus. Unfortunately, that’s about where the support ends. Americans reject it from both directions.
Hard to see the hand of friendship reaching out when your head is up the ass of obstinacy.
Which, of course, is subject to one more round of compromise at the conference committee.
If no-one really likes it, and the political spectrum of opposition is pretty uniform, then it’s probably hit the mark as the “right” compromise for the current Senate.
It’s not something you, or I, like – but that’s the nature of the sausage factory. And like the ongoing battle to elect “more and better” representatives to better reflect our individual beliefs, what matters is that we make progress. Political change in this country does not usually resolve itself overnight, but is rather the product of years. I’ll keep voting for the best candidate, and I’ll keep fighting to improve this flawed bill (soon to be law).
I’d love to kill the current HCR and restart it, but I’m a political realist. Killing the current Senate bill isn’t going to help reform our health care system, any more than casting a protest vote in a general election helps to move the political process in the direction I want.
…that your opposition is along the vein of “it’s not nearly as strong as I would like and they dropped some of the best provisions,” while mine is more of the “virtually every provision in this bill does SOMETHING to reduce quality of care, increase costs, create new bureaucracy, impede freedom of every stripe, etc…” variety.
If you share my point of view, you don’t want this bill passing, in any form. Stripping out provisions like the public option only makes it “less bad.” The same, from your point of view, makes the bill “less good,” but a step in the right direction nonetheless. I can’t support it or any attempt to make it “better” just so that it’s easier to pass. I want every available tool used to defeat it.
I’m not an unsuspecting GOP “tool”. And, despite their opposition to the current state of the bill, neither are the progressive Senators who have been complaining.
So – no bipartisanship in stopping the bill.
I just don’t see this as the end to western civilization.
And besides, LB says that R’s are going to take back congress in 2010, so you can just repeal it then, right?
Obama & Reid made it clear they would do virtually anything to have Olympia Snowe on board. If 6 Republicans had promised support in return for a couple of items, they would have given them almost anything.
They tried. But keep in mind a Democratic majority means that a true compromise would be more Democratic than Republican. That’s the way it works when one party wins.
Snowe could have written half the bill if she would’ve stopped bitching anytime in the last four months that things were moving too fast, and Grassley too had the opportunity to put his stamp on it but instead played bait-and-switch games that should have made Liebermann blush. BR is blowing smoke.
If your current sig line is reflective of what you believe (it seems to be) then what’s the problem?
In just under a year the R’s will be welcomed back to majority status by a beleaguered and relieved electorate all too happy to be done with D incumbents and challengers alike. And in just over a year, the dismantling can commence. In fact, then the imagined R majority can then reform healthcare anyway they want.
Yes, you can’t presume to get a veto proof majority in the Senate nor the veto thingy in the White House until 2012. But still – dismantle it then.
I’ve love to see that campaign. According to you, Americans of all political affiliation hate this, so this is actually a gift and the best part of it all is that hardly any part of it starts upon passage. Mostly it’s phased in- and before the phase in commences, it will be dismantled. So where’s the harm? Why the outcry?
In fact, I suspect a fair percentage of the R voters would agree that a less active and involved Congress is a good thing. I.e, the less legislation that passes in general the better. So that we burned an entire year focused on this – which is going to be repealed anyway- is a good thing.
from CNNMoney