Saturday, August 8, 2009
Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform
By Stephen Pearlstein Washington Post
"The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems."
"The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems."
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Health-Care Reform: How the Bills Stack Up
Click on this link to see the health care bills compared in the House and Senate.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Enough of The Mob
Washington -- The Democratic National Committee today released a new web ad "Enough of the Mob" highlighting the angry mobs of a small number of GOP and special interest backed rabid right wing extremists who are disrupting thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country.
"It's become clear that Republican leaders, having lost every major legislative battle on Capitol Hill, the confidence of the American people and two consecutive national elections, would rather incite angry, special interest funded mobs and disrupt and drown out legitimate discussion of the issues instead of working for real solutions for the American people,” said DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse.
“This activity is reminiscent of the manufactured, Republican Congressional staff protests during the Florida election dispute in 2000 and the more recent displays of right wing extremism at McCain-Palin rallies in last year’s election. These acts of mob rule are a direct result of and are being encouraged by Republican leaders who have vowed to ‘break’ the President for political gain and who have said that they hope that the President fails. This is the very type of anger and extremism that cost Republicans dearly in 2008 – and it is bound to back fire again.”
"It's become clear that Republican leaders, having lost every major legislative battle on Capitol Hill, the confidence of the American people and two consecutive national elections, would rather incite angry, special interest funded mobs and disrupt and drown out legitimate discussion of the issues instead of working for real solutions for the American people,” said DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse.
“This activity is reminiscent of the manufactured, Republican Congressional staff protests during the Florida election dispute in 2000 and the more recent displays of right wing extremism at McCain-Palin rallies in last year’s election. These acts of mob rule are a direct result of and are being encouraged by Republican leaders who have vowed to ‘break’ the President for political gain and who have said that they hope that the President fails. This is the very type of anger and extremism that cost Republicans dearly in 2008 – and it is bound to back fire again.”
The "spontaneous" crowds at health care reform rallies
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Sunday, August 2, 2009
Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is fine just the way it is.
What’s Not to Like?
Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is.
By Jonathan Alter | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 31, 2009
Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.
I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!
Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less.
I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."
I like the absence of catastrophic insurance today. It meant that my health-insurance plan (one of the better ones, by the way) only covered about 75 percent of the cost of my cutting-edge treatment. That's as it should be—face cancer and shell out huge amounts of money at the same time. Nice.
I like the "lifetime limits" that many policies have today. Missed the fine print on that one, did you? It means that after you exceed a certain amount of reimbursement, you don't get anything more from the insurance company. That's fair.
Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what's reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.
Yes, the insurance company status quo rocks. I learned recently about something called the "loading fees" of insurance companies. That's how much of every health-care dollar gets spent by insurance companies on things other than the medical care—paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. According to a University of Minnesota study, up to 47 percent of all the money going into the health-insurance system is consumed in "loading fees." Even good insurance companies spend close to 30 percent on nonmedical stuff. Sweet.
The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up! According to the Council of Economic Advisers, it will hit $25,000 per family by 2025. The sourpusses who want health-care reform say that's "unsustainable." Au contraire.
And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a "public option"? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest? Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it's government-backed doesn't mean you can't compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete.
I'm glad they don't. I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare's what we've got, and it's a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don't touch that baby. You'd be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists.
You know what part of the status quo I like best? It's a longstanding system for paying doctors called "fee for service." That's where doctors get paid for each procedure they perform, as if my auto dealer got paid separately for the steering wheel, brakes, and horn instead of for the car. Fee-for-service is why the medical care at that doc-in-a-box at my mall is so superior to the Mayo Clinic or Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the doctors are on salary. Who would want to mess with that?
OK, if you really press me, I'm for one change. It's the one that Republicans trot out to prove they're "reformers," too. We could save our whole system if we just capped malpractice awards. Two of our biggest states—California and Texas—did it a few years ago and nothing has changed there, but who cares? It sounds good.
So tell your congressmen and senators when they're home for the summer recess that it's too soon to address this issue. We've only been debating it for 97 years, since Theodore Roosevelt put national health insurance in the Bull Moose Party platform of 1912. We've only had 745 congressional hearings on the subject (I made that number up, but it's got to be close). That's not enough! Let's study this problem more before we do anything about it.
Did I say "problem"? Who said there was a problem? Not me. I like the status quo.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/209817
© 2009
Reform? Why do we need health-care reform? Everything is just fine the way it is.
By Jonathan Alter | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 31, 2009
Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I've got health insurance and I don't give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don't. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I'm better off the way things are.
I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!
Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less.
I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."
I like the absence of catastrophic insurance today. It meant that my health-insurance plan (one of the better ones, by the way) only covered about 75 percent of the cost of my cutting-edge treatment. That's as it should be—face cancer and shell out huge amounts of money at the same time. Nice.
I like the "lifetime limits" that many policies have today. Missed the fine print on that one, did you? It means that after you exceed a certain amount of reimbursement, you don't get anything more from the insurance company. That's fair.
Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what's reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.
Yes, the insurance company status quo rocks. I learned recently about something called the "loading fees" of insurance companies. That's how much of every health-care dollar gets spent by insurance companies on things other than the medical care—paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. According to a University of Minnesota study, up to 47 percent of all the money going into the health-insurance system is consumed in "loading fees." Even good insurance companies spend close to 30 percent on nonmedical stuff. Sweet.
The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up! According to the Council of Economic Advisers, it will hit $25,000 per family by 2025. The sourpusses who want health-care reform say that's "unsustainable." Au contraire.
And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a "public option"? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest? Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it's government-backed doesn't mean you can't compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete.
I'm glad they don't. I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare's what we've got, and it's a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don't touch that baby. You'd be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists.
You know what part of the status quo I like best? It's a longstanding system for paying doctors called "fee for service." That's where doctors get paid for each procedure they perform, as if my auto dealer got paid separately for the steering wheel, brakes, and horn instead of for the car. Fee-for-service is why the medical care at that doc-in-a-box at my mall is so superior to the Mayo Clinic or Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the doctors are on salary. Who would want to mess with that?
OK, if you really press me, I'm for one change. It's the one that Republicans trot out to prove they're "reformers," too. We could save our whole system if we just capped malpractice awards. Two of our biggest states—California and Texas—did it a few years ago and nothing has changed there, but who cares? It sounds good.
So tell your congressmen and senators when they're home for the summer recess that it's too soon to address this issue. We've only been debating it for 97 years, since Theodore Roosevelt put national health insurance in the Bull Moose Party platform of 1912. We've only had 745 congressional hearings on the subject (I made that number up, but it's got to be close). That's not enough! Let's study this problem more before we do anything about it.
Did I say "problem"? Who said there was a problem? Not me. I like the status quo.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/209817
© 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tapped: The Group Blog of The American Prospect
July 28, 2009
IS IT HEALTH CARE PANIC TIME?
Like Dana, I'm extremely dismayed by what I see coming out of the Max Baucus committee. But TAP alum Ezra Klein cautions that this isn't the final version of the bill and that there may have to be some concessions for liberals to go along too:
The question is whether Baucus's final product will matter. Rockefeller and the other Democrats on the committee have felt excluded from the negotiations and will want major changes before they can sign onto the final product. Then the Finance bill will have to be reconciled with the more liberal legislation built by the HELP Committee. Then it will have to go to the floor, where it will need the support of people like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown just as much as it will need Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. And then, if it passes those tests, it will have to be reconciled with the House's legislation.
It's frustrating to see this group of conservative senators having so much influence on the health-care bill, not only because the states represented make up a tiny proportion of the population relative to their influence but also because their political interests lie in making reform as ineffective as possible in order to ensure reform doesn't pay political dividends for their opposition. But Klein adds some useful context to think about as Baucus and friends strip almost everything useful out of the finance committee's version of the bill.
-- A. Serwer
Posted at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
MUMBLINGS ON THE FINANCE COMMITTEE HEALTH BILL.
The AP has an anonymously sourced report on the compromise health-reform legislation emerging out of the Senate Finance Committee. It isn't looking good. Some features of the bill:
No government-funded public-insurance option, and no national health-insurance exchange. These features of the House tri-committee and Senate HELP bills are intended to bring down costs by fostering competition on the largest scale possible. Instead, Finance is suggesting regional health co-operatives in which private insurers compete without government intervention. This is likely to lower premiums somewhat, but the smaller size and geographic reach of the co-ops will make them far weaker than a national exchange. And no for-profit company is likely to offer a plan as inexpensive as national public insurance.
An individual mandate to buy health insurance, but no employer mandate. This is regressive. Large employers that refuse to offer health coverage to their workers will have to reimburse the federal government for part of the cost of subsidizing those workers' coverage....
BUT Finance also drastically reduces the number of people eligible for subsides, to only those within 300 percent of poverty ($32,490 for an individual or $66,150 for a four-person family). Senate HELP subsidizes those within 500 percent of poverty and the House bill subsidizes those within 400 percent. Those plans are far more supportive of middle-class families and the self-employed.
Like the House and HELP Committee, Finance would prevent insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions.
House moderates -- like the Blue Dogs -- are likely to grasp on hard to whatever the Finance Committee suggests and run with it, calling it the only politically viable compromise. That's why Finance's proposal is so important. We don't know yet whether Finance, like the House and HELP, will aggressively expand Medicaid coverage. But probably the most worrying aspect of this compromise is how drastically it weakens competition, by asking insurance companies to compete only on a regional basis, and only with one another. This is a plan that leaves employers and insurers in the power seats, while giving consumers far less support than either of the other reform proposals on the table.
--Dana Goldstein
IS IT HEALTH CARE PANIC TIME?
Like Dana, I'm extremely dismayed by what I see coming out of the Max Baucus committee. But TAP alum Ezra Klein cautions that this isn't the final version of the bill and that there may have to be some concessions for liberals to go along too:
The question is whether Baucus's final product will matter. Rockefeller and the other Democrats on the committee have felt excluded from the negotiations and will want major changes before they can sign onto the final product. Then the Finance bill will have to be reconciled with the more liberal legislation built by the HELP Committee. Then it will have to go to the floor, where it will need the support of people like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown just as much as it will need Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. And then, if it passes those tests, it will have to be reconciled with the House's legislation.
It's frustrating to see this group of conservative senators having so much influence on the health-care bill, not only because the states represented make up a tiny proportion of the population relative to their influence but also because their political interests lie in making reform as ineffective as possible in order to ensure reform doesn't pay political dividends for their opposition. But Klein adds some useful context to think about as Baucus and friends strip almost everything useful out of the finance committee's version of the bill.
-- A. Serwer
Posted at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
MUMBLINGS ON THE FINANCE COMMITTEE HEALTH BILL.
The AP has an anonymously sourced report on the compromise health-reform legislation emerging out of the Senate Finance Committee. It isn't looking good. Some features of the bill:
No government-funded public-insurance option, and no national health-insurance exchange. These features of the House tri-committee and Senate HELP bills are intended to bring down costs by fostering competition on the largest scale possible. Instead, Finance is suggesting regional health co-operatives in which private insurers compete without government intervention. This is likely to lower premiums somewhat, but the smaller size and geographic reach of the co-ops will make them far weaker than a national exchange. And no for-profit company is likely to offer a plan as inexpensive as national public insurance.
An individual mandate to buy health insurance, but no employer mandate. This is regressive. Large employers that refuse to offer health coverage to their workers will have to reimburse the federal government for part of the cost of subsidizing those workers' coverage....
BUT Finance also drastically reduces the number of people eligible for subsides, to only those within 300 percent of poverty ($32,490 for an individual or $66,150 for a four-person family). Senate HELP subsidizes those within 500 percent of poverty and the House bill subsidizes those within 400 percent. Those plans are far more supportive of middle-class families and the self-employed.
Like the House and HELP Committee, Finance would prevent insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions.
House moderates -- like the Blue Dogs -- are likely to grasp on hard to whatever the Finance Committee suggests and run with it, calling it the only politically viable compromise. That's why Finance's proposal is so important. We don't know yet whether Finance, like the House and HELP, will aggressively expand Medicaid coverage. But probably the most worrying aspect of this compromise is how drastically it weakens competition, by asking insurance companies to compete only on a regional basis, and only with one another. This is a plan that leaves employers and insurers in the power seats, while giving consumers far less support than either of the other reform proposals on the table.
--Dana Goldstein
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