Health Care

Kucinich is holding his press conference right now and said he will vote for health care reform, but pledges to continue to fight on towards true reform. You go boy!

Michele Bachmann is telling people to break the law and calling for civil disobedience:

At a rally at the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday, Bachmann declared illegitimate the potential route that House Democrats could take to pass the health care bill. She was specifically railing against a parliamentary tactic by which the House could skip voting on the Senate bill by declaring it passed as part of the reconciliation bill. Bachmann pronounced this to be taxation without representation. "They have just started a revolution -- and they did it," said Bachmann.

"But mark my words, the American people aren't gonna take this lying down," Bachmann later said. "We aren't gonna play their game, we're not gonna pay their taxes. They want us to pay for this? Because we don't have to. We don't have to. We don't have to follow a bill that isn't law. That's not the American way, and that's not what we're going to do."

Not the American way? Where were her complaints when the Republicans did the exact same thing?

– The 2001 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 1836, 3/26/01]
– The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 2, 3/23/03]
– Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 [HR 4297,5/11/06]
– The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [H. Con Res. 95, 12/21/05]

(By tlw3 via Alan.com)

Bachmann never once called those pieces of legislation illegal or un-American, despite the very same rule being used to pass them. As matter of fact those are the very issues that Republicans, like Bachmann, love campaigning on. They consider it huge victories for their party.

But the fact that Bachmann is out there trying to provoke people to break the laws of this land is a violation of her oath of office. She is supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not define it. Given that, she should be either censured or suspended from the Congress, and that should actually come from the Republican leadership. Instead they stay silent on her crazy ramblings, so from now on when she calls for illegal activities we will say it’s the GOP calling for them. By their silence, it makes it obvious that the GOP is sanctioning what she says, so they must agree with it – right? That’s exactly what we would have heard if this was 2006 and a Democrat was doing this.

How many times have we heard Republicans say that health care reform will lead us to “socialized medicine”? How many times have they used Canada as an example of what we don’t want to be? Well check this out:

Sarah Palin's family use to "hustle" across the Canadian border to get healthcare, the former Alaska Governor said
this weekend.

In a speech in Calgary, Palin called it "ironic" that while growing up in a small Alaskan town near the Canadian border, her family used to sneak across to take advantage of the Canadian healthcare system.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," she said, according to Medicine Hat News (via Dave Weigel.) "And I think now, isn't that ironic."

Yup – the queen of the GOP used to use that horrible Canadian medical system. She has brought an entirely new meaning to the word hypocrite.

One of the long time corner stones of the Republican Party has been trying to rid ourselves of any government regulation. They believe that people and business should be able to regulate themselves. Here’s an example of what that system produces:

The market concentration for health insurance is so monopolized in some areas that insurance companies are willing to raise prices and lose customers in an effort to improve their bottom line, a leading insurance broker told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.

In a conference call organized by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Steve Lewis, a highly regarded broker at the world's third largest insurance broker, Willis, painted a picture of the health insurance market in which employers seem likely to be priced out of coverage.

Because they have no real rules/regulations to follow, the insurance companies can do this and get away with it. It will lead to more uninsured Americans, who now have to use the emergency room as their doctor’s office, which increases wait times and leaves more Americans picking up the expenses. Yet when we talk about health care reform, the Republicans constantly say “let them regulate themselves”. Well – here is what it gets you.

But the examples don’t stop there. Let’s take another real life example – one that has happened in our neck of the world.

This year we have seen two serious earthquakes rock our hemisphere. The Haiti earthquake has claimed nearly 1/4 million lives. Last weeks earthquake in Chile, which was 500 times more powerful than the one in Haiti, has claimed less than 300 lives.

Wait! How can an earthquake that is about 500 times less in power claim almost 1,000 times more lives? Well the answer is simple.

Haiti is a Republican Mecca – a nation with no pesky regulations. That means no rules for people, like construction workers, to follow. Compare that to Chile, a nation accredited with being one of the toughest on building regulations, and you quickly see how the big GOP enemy of regulation lead to a lot of lives being saved.

The examples don’t just stop there. How about mining deaths? Hearing about countless people dying in mines is common news coming out of China, but we rarely hear it here. Why? Because we have regulations. And the adverse effect of that could be seen in 2006 during the Sago mine collapse, when Bush decided to let one of the regulatees (to make up a new work) play regulator:

In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.

Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease....

Safety and environmental regulations often shift with control of the White House, but the Bush administration's approach to coal mining has been a particularly potent example of the blend of politics and policy.

This hatred of government regulation by the GOP lead to 12 lives being lost.

Regulations are a necessary evil – one that keeps us safe and helps our capitalistic system thrive. If you still don’t buy it, then consider this when you are out at the store this weekend. With no government regulation, that store wouldn’t have things like fire protection systems. Say some unregulated electrical work happened and now sparks a big fire. When they built the store they decided to only make the exits at the very front and the loading dock. Why should they pay for more doors when no one makes them? Now you have a death box, complete with people getting trampled, and you are stuck in the middle of it.

Does it sound far fetched? Tell that to the families of the 165 people who died in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in 1977. That’s a fire that happened very close to me, and being a former firefighter and fire inspector, one I studied a lot. Every contributing factor in that horrible tragedy can be attributed to a lack of regulations.

So the next time we hear some Republican or tea bagger whine and complain about “government regulation”, remind them of these facts. These aren’t hypothetical points, but rather real life situations in which we have seen the deadly outcomes.  If they still don’t buy it, then ask yourself if this is a person you really consider mentally fit to be a decision maker in our nation.

Ben Stein decided today to declare that more Republicans pay taxes than Democrats and that is the reason they are against the healthcare bill:

You asked one of the most brilliant questions I have ever heard anyone ask on TV, which is why are so many Republicans against more government interference in the health care system, and so many Democrats in favor of it? And the answer is much higher percentage of Republicans are taxpayers than Democrats and the Republicans are the people paying for it, and the Democrats are the people receiving it. So that has a lot to explain there.

There are a tremendous number of wealthy Democrats and wealthy Republicans, but as a general matter, Republicans as a group pay income tax at a much higher rate than Democrats, and I think that has a lot to do with everything. They also have a much higher rate, and are paying members of the insurance pools, and they realize that the insurance premiums are going up so that people who otherwise would not get insurance are going to get insurance and it has a lot to do with the fact that Republicans are a different group of people than Democrats.

I have heard some pretty ridiculous claims come from the right wings brain trust before, but this one has to take the cake.

Remember last month how the GOP constantly said cameras should be rolling during health care negotiations? Now that there’s a chance for that, well look at what’s happening:

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) today echoed Rep. John Boehner's (R-OH) supposed concern that televising President Obama's bipartisan health care reform summit would turn it into a "media show" -- even after both called for him to make the process more transparent.

Much like Boehner, Enzi was one of the Republicans who earlier called for Obama to televise the health care debate on C-SPAN, in the name of "increased transparency."

What are these Republicans afraid of? There must be something there. I mean if they had such a great position then you would think they would want the cameras rolling. I guess their position isn’t that great after all….

At the annual Democratic Party meeting there should be a mandatory seminar on communication. Not properly communicating has cost the Democrats dearly. It was a big nail in the coffin on health care. People couldn’t understand things like “health exchanges” or “public option”. Even the one simple word left a bad feeling with voters - “mandates”. Democrats tried to make mandates sound like a good thing, but you can’t change how people feel when hearing that word.

Now we are seeing the failures of communication spread beyond healthcare:

Nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday morning also indicates that 63 percent of the public feels that projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit, with 36 percent saying those projects will benefit the economy.

Twenty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say nearly all the money in the stimulus has been wasted, with 24 percent feeling that most money has been wasted and another 29 percent saying that about half has been wasted. Twenty-one percent say that only a little has been wasted and 4 percent feel that no stimulus dollars have been wasted.

Again the Republicans took advantage here. They used key phrases like “government welfare” and that strikes anger in voters, while Democrats go out and get to technical trying to defend the stimulus.

American’s understand catch phrases better than anything. Look at “death panels”. It was a flat out lie, but because it was such a small and catchy phrase, it ended up causing damage.

Here’s a good example of a “what should have been”. Take the Bush tax cuts. Republicans sold them as just “tax cuts”. Ohhh that leaves a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Democrats referred to them as “the Bush tax cuts”. Oh – Bush gave us that warm fuzzy feeling. Instead Democrats should have come up with a catchy phrase like “millionaire welfare”. Now you are throwing that evil “welfare” term in there and associating it with the rich. Talk about sparking outrage.

Or how about using the stimulus example. Democrats are guilty of trying to over explain it. Dumb it down some. Call it the “economy safety net”. Yeah the economy is going to continue to fall, but this safety net is the difference between a light bounce at the bottom or a fatal splat into the hard, concrete floor below.

For Democrats to lead successfully they have to learn how to dumb things down so Americans can understand them. I’m not saying Americans are dumb in nature, but in our very busy lives we just don’t have time to investigate everything and figure out what the meaning of that word or phrase really is when put in context. Democrats really need to find their own Frank Luntz.

Chris Matthews proved again tonight that he in no way should have the job he does. First off he gets into with Alan Grayson, who is supporting the plan for the House to pass the Senate bill and then “patch” it through reconciliation. Matthews accuses Grayson of not being from the “real world” and instead being part of the Netroots.

This is some netroots plan? This is the exact plan that Nancy Pelosi was pushing Wednesday morning and even David Shuster talked about it.

Also tonight Matthews appeared oblivious to what the Supreme Court decision on campaign financing meant. He kept saying it means that corporations could give unlimited amounts of money to candidates, which is false. It means that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money for a candidate, such as in advertising.

It’s far past time for MSNBC to bring in some new talent and get rid of Matthews. His time is long past gone. The guy doesn’t even understand the basics of our system. He has also become impossible to watch. He doesn’t interview or even try to debate. Instead he just rambles on and on, hardly ever letting his guests talk. The guy is a total waste of two hours a night.

One of the staunchest bill backers out there seems to be getting fed up with President Obama. After summing up President Obama’s statement today on the future of health care reform as, “Run away, run away!”, Krugman finishes with this:

Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

(h/t Aravosis)

Welcome to my side Paul. It has been obvious for months that President Obama wasn’t so much worried about real health care reform, as he was saying “hey I got a bill passed”. He has flat out lied about his campaign promises and given the cold shoulder to the millions who worked to bring him into office. In short, President Obama proved that he isn’t about change, but more so about business as usual. That is something we have sadly come to expect from our leaders.

Does this mean I won’t vote for Obama in 2012? No. What it does mean is that if we have a primary challenger who I like better I will support them over Obama, but if Obama gets the nominee (as he most likely would) then I will support him. Regardless of how much Obama lets us down now, one thing is for certain – he will be better than any Republican alternative. Now we just need to find a great progressive candidate to run in 2016.

If Massachusetts race ends up very close, I predict one of the 2 scenarios:

Brown wins:
Coakley will challenge it. This will spark outrage from the right as they start yelling how the election was stolen from them.

Coakley wins:
Brown will challenge it. The right will circle around Brown claiming he is standing up for democracy.

No matter what happens tomorrow it will be fun to watch. This is why I love politics – it’s the best sporting event out there.

As far as the future of health care, well I really don’t know. If it does go down then we can at least say we got closer than ever before. I also suspect if it fails we will see health care costs continue to sky rocket, and it will remain a good platform for Democrats to run on, but that’s only if the Democrats take some lessons in “message control” and don’t stand there like the old deer in the headlights when tea baggers show up.

And perhaps all this will be for the best. Democrats could put forth new legislation this year that doesn’t do public options, exchanges or any of that stuff. Instead put in regulation reform for health care. Open it up to national competition and tighten the reigns on what insurance companies can and can not do. Push the reform as a “consumer advocacy” type legislation and then it will become harder for Republicans to vote against it. That will be a good foundation that we can expand coverage upon at a later date.

New numbers came out today and one of them shows that inflation rose 2.7% last year. That’s pretty bad when people aren’t making us much money and we still have a big unemployment problem, but the problem doesn’t stop there.

Social Security recipients didn’t get a raise this year. The calculated that in June, so the inflation is mostly since June of last year. So these fixed income seniors will be stuck paying higher prices and not having more money. This is a serious flaw in the system. Add to that the cost sharing on prescription drugs went up a dollar for Medicare, seniors are going to have a really rough 2009.

Also it will be interesting to see what the new federal poverty level looks like. Currently it is at $10,830 for a single person. Will the 2010 level reflect real inflation? If so then it should be at $11,122 this year. It will be interesting to see if the number actually reflects real inflation. If history is any indicator, it won’t. To put this into perspective, the CBO estimates the FPL will be at $11,800 in 2016. Again – we have a seriously flawed system that needs to be fixed.

From TPM:

"As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with [Snowe]," Reid is quoted as saying about the White House in a forthcoming New York Times Magazine piece, "because she had no intention of ever working anything out."

I really wonder if Harry Reid actually knows how politics work. Arlen Specter would have been a great indicator. He sided with the Democrats on the stimulus and the Republicans decided to make an example out of him, basically forcing him out of the party. I guarantee this was in the mind of Snowe during the health care debate. She knew that if she backed the plan then the Republicans would start forcing her out of the party and might even try to get someone to primary her.

Sadly, in Washington, they are so drowned in politics that they don’t realize every decision is based upon politics. That politics isn’t the politics for the future, but rather the politics for personal gain and viability. To those of us watching at home, it is painfully obvious.

Given the big news of the day, that Democrats plan to forgo the formal conference and instead ping-pong the health care bill into final legislation, I am now stuck turning to Michelle Malkin, who is citing the 2006 report from Democrats on the “death of deliberative democracy”:

The conference process in the 108th Congress is a case study in how the Republican leadership abused the Rules of the House to block Members, both Republicans and Democrats, from legislating in an informed and thoughtful manner. House-Senate conferences are a critical part of the deliberative process because they produce the final legislative product that will become the law of the land.

I want health care reform as much as the next guy, even this crap bill that I have come to accept will do more harm than good, but this isn’t the way to do it. We went through years of Republicans running Congress and twisting and turning and violating every rule and law they could. That became a catalyst to push Democrats back into power in November of 2006, and if we start acting like Republicans now then we are no better than them. It also opens our nation up to a vicious cycle that will do nothing but turn off more voters and leave more people with a feeling of disgust towards Washington.

I mentioned earlier how the Republicans will use the bypassing of conference to paint the Democrats as corrupt, and the very fact that Malkin is posting this today shows that is the route it will take. So what will happen next? Well the people will get fed up with a “culture of corruption” coming out of the Democrats and vote back in Republicans. Once the Republicans regain control then it will start all over again.

We need leaders in Washington who are willing to put it all on the line to enforce the rules that our democracy depends upon – rules that enforce transparency, openness and true legislative process. So going to conference will delay the process by a week or so, and so what if Republicans will be in the negotiations. They won’t be able to trump the Democrats vote strong hold, so let’s not engage in the very tactics we denounced as the Republicans were doing them. Instead let’s stick to our guns and morals and pass this bill the right way – using the full legislative process as it was meant to be. If you don’t then you are no better than the people you replaced in office. As matter of fact your new found hypocrisy will make you even worse than them.

When it came time for Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) to respond to claims by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) that health care reform was socialism, the FOX satellite decided to act up:

Given the history of FOX News and their extreme bias reporting, it does leave one wondering if this was by total accident. A quick loosening of a cable can cause this exact problem, as well as a few other tricks. I’m not saying that is what happened, but it is something feasible.

I was following the back and forth between Jane Hamsher and Katrina vanden Heuve on Twitter the other night regarding health care. I then noticed this post by Jane yesterday:

There’s a very slick PR letter posted online that’s being furiously retweeted by DC political operatives. I wasn’t going to address it, but the editor of the Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel started pushing it.   It becomes widely disseminated based on her role as a validator within the progressive community, and that necessitated a reply.

The letter says:

I do not doubt that you genuinely feel that your very vocal opposition to the Senate health care bill is in the absolute interests of the American populace and progressive politics. I honestly believe that you feel that the administration has let you and other progressives down by not publically pushing harder for elements in the bill that we all hoped would survive the legislative process.

What I doubt is that your actions will ultimately serve the advancement of the progressive agenda that you obviously care so much about. I believe in fact, that quite the opposite will be the result. Pushing for the very best bill that we can get through this congress is laudable, attacking the administration for dealing with the reality that is congress is not.

After some more quoting, Jane sums this up with the following:

Despite this evidence, there is an orchestrated, active, full-court press to discredit and silence anyone who tries to point out the responsibility the president bears for crafting this bill. I’m surprised that the editor of the Nation would take part in it.

Now I have been reading health care blog posts to the point my eyes feel like they are going to bleed and this was the first I heard of this letter. Now I know the origin:

A little history, I wrote an open letter to Jane Hamsher on Sunday 12/27 and posted it to my blog, the original is here. I tweeted the post and was promptly retweeted by some friends and fellow posters to the #hcr and #p2 hashtags.

Apparently the post struck a cord for it was retweeded multiple times and recommended by a few people beyond my typical reach. This morning Jane Hamsher responded not to me but rather to Katrina Vanden Huevel the editor of the Nation criticizing her for pushing it and thereby validating my position to the point of requiring a response, that post is here.

That is a post by a newer blogger on the scene called Arrgh Paine. I didn’t know of Paine until about a month ago when I found him on Twitter and have instantly become a fan.

It’s really interesting that a smaller blogger posts an open letter, a few people retweet it and now it’s a “orchestrated, active, full-court press to discredit and silence anyone who tries to point out the responsibility the president bears for crafting this bill”.

As I have been saying over and over again for the past week, we really need honesty in the health care debate, especially from the progressive side. If we must resort to distortions and lies then we are no better than the death panels crowd from the summer. I’m glad Paine put this into perspective and got the truth out there.