The insurance companies: “The fine print differs from the larger political message."

William G. Schiffbauer, a lawyer whose clients include employers and insurance companies, said:

“The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.”

"...the same problems that we currently face in the nation's healthcare crisis will persist."

(Via Healthcare-NOW!)

The new health bill closely resembles the legislation written by Liz Fowler, former Vice President of Public Policy for Well Point, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, as she served as Senator Max Baucus' chief Health Aid in 2009. Unfortunately, this bill tweaks the same failing non-system of healthcare in the United States and further entrenches the for-profit private health insurance, drug, and hospital industries diverting to them the resources needed to achieve high quality, universal, comprehensive healthcare. While some of the holes in the barrel have been plugged, the same problems that we currently face in the nation's healthcare crisis will persist: huge numbers of uninsured people, denials of needed care, deaths due to lack of care, bankruptcies by those who have insurance due to inadequate coverage, and the waste of a third of our healthcare dollars on things other than healthcare to prop up the private health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industry.

Let's look to the social movements of our nation's history to remember what we must do to keep fighting. We are building a movement for the healthcare we need based on equality and fairness. Fire doesn't burn from the top down, but from the bottom up. We do not have to negotiate or compromise, but rather create a movement that is confident, educated, and action-oriented that is ready to do the hard work of advocating for the needs of our people to be met and getting others to join us.

Many folks who share the same principles of the national single-payer movement have identified the public option as a worthy goal to fight for in a path to universal healthcare, and we admire the courage and tenacity with which that campaign was led. We hope that those who supported the public option will join with us to build a renewed movement for truly universal, publicly funded healthcare. A movement that learns from the past and doesn't start out by negotiating against itself or allowing our less than visionary politicians to define our agenda. The enemies of our ideas are the same, and they will fight us just the same. Let's go to battle for what we truly want and need.

A Remnant of Reform

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author, most recently, of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”

The health insurance legislation is a major political symbol wrapped around a shredded substance. It does not provide coverage that is universal, comprehensive or affordable. It is a remnant even of its own initially compromised self — bereft of any public option, any safeguard for states desiring a single payer approach, any adequate antitrust protections, any shift of power toward consumers to defend themselves, any regulation of insurance prices, any authority for Uncle Sam to bargain with drug companies, and any reimportation of lower-priced drugs.

Most of the health insurance coverage mandated by this legislation does not come into effect until 2014, by which time 180,000 Americans will die because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.

The bill’s 2,000 pages afford many opportunities for insurance companies to further their strategy of maximizing profits by denying claims, restricting the benefits of their present customers, and the benefits of the new customers who are mandated to buy their policies, all backed by hundreds of billions of dollars of federal subsidies.

Its main saving grace is that it is so inadequate and so delayed in implementation that the position supported by the majority of people, physicians and nurses –- full Medicare for all –- will have abundant opportunities to build around the country. The spiraling price hikes by the insurance industry are sure to spur the single payer movement to new popularity. (See singlepayeraction.org)

Health Insurance Industry Celebrating Profits Ahead

By Glen Rose (Via OregonLive.com)

I don't know about anyone else but I'm quite disappointed in the so called victory for health care. I was working hard for a Public Option for all Americans to get health coverage at an affordable price. This is no victory. The insurance companies are forced to insure us and not drop us but they can charge what they want and raise prices as they see fit. That's the same as dropping and denying coverage. I would have to pay $900 a month for insurance now. That's not going to change. We are all still w/o insurance. No one is talking about how much the insurance companies can charge. They are popping champagne bottles over their victory. They now have a law that says every citizen must be insured at any price they deem fit to charge. This was a political victory for Obama not for Americans health coverage.

Glen Rose
Florence, Or 97439

The Bottom Line Remains: Profits Over People

"And I am very upset that a fundamental result of this bill will be funneling billions more in taxpayer dollars to large pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, and to large insurers. These industries already make obscene profits, and their greed is the principal cause of our existing, dysfunctional "disease management system." We'll be on the right track when passing a piece of legislation makes big pharma and insurance stocks tank - rather than soar, as they have lately."

Dr. Andrew Weil

The Death of the Public Option: After Parade of Lies, Democratic Leadership Now Stands Naked

By Jon Walker

After a full year of debate and dozens of excuses, the Democratic leadership now stands naked in their opposition to the public option. President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all claimed they that wanted one. They are the three most powerful people in Washington and have huge margins in both chambers. It is ridiculous to believe that the public option could not have become law if the leadership really wanted it. Yet, for months, people were lied to so the Democratic leadership could maintain the insane myth that the public option’s death was not their fault, but the fault of some insurmountable obstacle. What this mythic “insurmountable obstacle” actually was has shifted so many times it is hard to keep track.

Broad bipartisanship

First there was the excuse that health care reform must be bipartisan, and that you simply can’t do something so big without broad bipartisan support. We were told the public option must go to get a number Republican votes. That proves clearly wrong.

Olympia Snowe

When hope of broad bipartisanship faded, we were told that the public option must go because Olympia Snowe did not want it–and Snowe was the linchpin to everything. Now that reform has passed without Snowe, this, too is revealed to be a myth.

The “government takeover of health care” attack

We were told the public option would result in Republicans attacking the bill as a “government takeover of health care,” yet when the public option was dropped, the socialist nightmare, scaremongering attacks did not dissipate. If anything, they increased.

Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and 60 votes

After Snowe refused to play along, we were told that the public option had over 50 votes in the Senate, but it was that damn 60-votes-for-cloture hurdle it could not overcome, so we need to sacrifice it for Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. Of course, not only was no effort made to strongarm these two into standing with their caucus on what was just a procedural vote, but Obama did not even call Lieberman to politely ask him to please support the public option or early Medicare buy-in.

You can’t use Reconciliation

When some people said we should then use reconciliation for the whole bill, the idea was laughed at. We were told the Byrd rule would gut the most important parts of the bill, like the very important new insurance regulations. Of course, now we are using reconciliation and the new insurance regulations in the reconciliation bill were not removed by the Byrd rule.

We no longer have 50 votes in the Senate

Once they decided to use the reconciliation sidecar, we were told, as if by magic, there were no longer 50 votes in the Senate for the public option. The Senate leadership blamed the House, saying it was now the House that no longer had the votes for a public option (even though they passed it before).


We no longer have the votes in the House.

It is hard to know for a fact because right after the Senate blamed the House, the House leadership turned around and blamed the Senate. Steny Hoyer said they did have the votes and claimed it was the Senate’s fault. He claimed Obama did not ask to put a public option in the reconciliation bill because the Senate did not have the votes.

Reconciliation must pass unchanged so it does not go back to the House

When the reconciliation bill was brought to the Senate floor, where any Democrat could have offered a public option amendment to force an up-or-down vote on the public option, a new excuse was found to stop that. We were told the Senate must pass the reconciliation bill unchanged, so it could go straight to the President’s desk without another vote in the House. We were told leadership would whip against any amendments to make health care reform slightly better. This myth, too, withered in the face of reality.

Changing reconciliation will “KILL THE BILL!”

Because of a successful Republican Byrd rule point of order, the reconciliation bill would be force to go back to the House for another vote anyway. At this point, the excuse for not offering a public option amendment got weird. Senators like Michael Bennet (D-CO) took to saying saying it would “kill the bill,” and tried to falsely equate “the bill”–the reconciliation fix, which is mainly a package of minor tax changes that do not take effect for years–with the comprehensive health insurance reform measure already signed into law.

Occam’s razor

I’m sure there were some other excuses that I have forgotten to mention. The important thing is that, in the end, they did use reconciliation. They also could have added the public option to a reconciliation bill that could have passed with a simple majority, and had it not endanger the bulk of the health care reform provision. In the end, all their excuses fade away or became weird nonsense about some possible later promise and not wanting to risk anything. It is foolish to believe that a President, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House with historically large majorities couldn’t get a public option–which roughly 65% of the country supported–if they really wanted one. Clearly, if they all really wanted to include a public option, they could have done it using reconciliation. To accept their many different excuses of powerlessness requires one to completely suspend reality.

Occam’s razor teaches us the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Here, the simplest explanation is that, months ago, Obama promised to kill the public option as part of a secret deal with the for-profit hospital lobby, and that for months he lied to the American people about supporting the public option while working behind the scenes to stop it.

So, when exactly does that changing the way Washington works thing start again?

The Bottom Line Remains: Profits Over People

"And I am very upset that a fundamental result of this bill will be funneling billions more in taxpayer dollars to large pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, and to large insurers. These industries already make obscene profits, and their greed is the principal cause of our existing, dysfunctional "disease management system." We'll be on the right track when passing a piece of legislation makes big pharma and insurance stocks tank - rather than soar, as they have lately."

Dr. Andrew Weil

Congressman Kucinich just sent this message: “For we progressive Democrats caved in to prove to millions of Americans... our promises mean nothing."

The Letter:

Friend –

Last Sunday I wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that "the bill that the President is proposing is a step in the wrong direction." On Monday, I took my first ride on Air Force One and I got to meet General James Jones. On Wednesday, I held I press conference to announce I was flipping my vote. On Sunday, I voted for the same bill that I had previously disparaged.

I am pleased to have played a role in helping to make this historic moment possible.

For we progressive Democrats caved in to prove to millions of Americans, yet again, that our promises mean nothing and that we are always willing to elevate the goals of others above our own. Even those of us, such as myself, who felt the bill should have gone farther stifled our concerns and came up with some B.S. excuse for why we were voting yes.

Now the DCCC wants me to write this letter. I could have refused, but I figured once you’ve sold out why not go whole hog. So I will henceforth refer to this bill as "great progress" and a "new beginning."

And of course our slow downward spiral depends upon your continued financial support. Please contribute before our critical B.S. deadline.

Thank you,


Dennis J. Kucinich
United States Congressman

P.S. Requests for refunds should be directed to my Cleveland office, not the DCCC.

The Public Option: The reconciliation process going on in the Senate means it would only take 50 votes. The time to fix it (the bill) later is NOW.

By Michael Whitney

"For all the people who said “pass the bill and fix it later,” the “later” is now. The big health care bill has become law, and now reform supporters have a vehicle with which to fix health care reform that can’t be filibustered. A chance Democrats are unlikely to get again for years. This is probably the best opportunity Democrats have to get some important improvements through Senate, yet the silence from many in the “fix it later” crowd is deafening."

With the Senate vote-arama commencing this afternoon on the health reform fixes in the reconciliation bill, the AFL-CIO is telling Senators to vote no on any and all amendments. That includes the public option, if it’s introduced.

But leaders have decided, for better or worse, on a “don’t rock the boat” strategy. They want the final vote on the reconciliation bill in the Senate to be the last vote in this grueling health care process. Period.

To help keep members in line, the AFL-CIO is telling members they will not be penalized for voting against progressive amendments. They’re sending the following message: “a NO on amendments is a YES on health care.”

The biggest part of the reconciliation bill is the fix on the excise tax on middle class health care plans, negotiated between the White House and the labor movement in January and passed by the House Sunday night. It revises the tax to hit a broader range of union and nonunion workers with expensive health care plans, and delays the start of the tax until 2018.

The deal was key to flipping the AFL-CIO from its insistence on the inclusion of a public option to outright support and advocacy for the bill with the excise tax fix.

Back in September, Trumka drew a clear line in the sand for the health care bill:

Richard Trumka, who will replace Sweeney as president in a couple of weeks, said there are “three absolute musts” for health care: the public option, an employer mandate, and no taxes on employer-provided health care.

“That means we won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it,” Trumka said.

Of course, Trumka got none of the “three absolute musts” for the health care bill except for staving off the excise tax for eight years. So it makes sense for the AFL-CIO to want to protect the deal at all costs, even if it means whipping against amendments it would otherwise support.

The AFL-CIO’s initial publicity around its no votes on amendments push framed any amendment as “a ploy to defeat the bill.” But that counted out the real possibility of Democratic Senators introducing amendments of their own – such as Colorado Senator Michael Bennet introducing a public option amendment. I asked about that possibility to Josh Goldstein, spokesperson at the AFL-CIO.

“There’s the possibility we’re going to have to say no to a lot of issues that normally are major priorities.” said Goldstein. ”We’re for the public option – always have been and will continue to push for that. But to finish this critical first step in health care reform for all Americans, the Senate must pass the reconciliation bill passed by the House.”

Unfortunately, any move to “continue to push” for the public option will face a steeper slope than the one it faces now. While the public option would normally have to pass with 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, the reconciliation process going on in the Senate means it would only take 50 votes. The time to fix it later is now.

Pelosi: Health Care Bill a Conservative Bill (Time to Go Back Under the Bus, Veal Pen)

"In the end, “progressives” should be honest and admit that they are clapping for a health care plan that most found to be moral anathema when the GOP proposed it in 1994..."

Just before the House passed the health care bil, Nancy Pelosi sent out a letter. In it, she said that “An op-ed by E.J. Dionne on Friday reveals that the current health reform legislation pending before Congress was “built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.” She bolded Dionne’s headline:

Why Democrats Are Fighting for a Republican Health Plan

It’s great that the Speaker of the House is telling people that intellectual credit for the health care bill belongs to the GOP. But Brad DeLong concurs:

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have an incentive to discuss the Republican roots of Obama’s health-care plan. But that doesn’t mean they’re not real—and deep….The conservative DNA of ObamaCare is hardly a secret. “The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan,” [David] Frum wrote. “It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to ClintonCare in 1993-1994.”

DeLong says the Republicans are so busy demonizing the bill for political advantage that they don’t want to admit it’s essentially the plan the GOP has been putting forward for years. He believes that the political calculus for the Democrats was “Romneycare or nothing”:

But if they pointed out the intellectual origins of the plan—oh, and by the way, the guts of the plan came out of the conservative über-think tank, the Heritage Foundation, and it was what Mitt Romney thought was good policy back in 2004—then the left-wing Democrats’ heads would have exploded and their votes would have vanished.

If it was so politically wise for Democrats to pass an essentially Republican plan, one wonders why Obama never campaigned on it. Pursuing this logic, Obama rode into office espousing something that was too wacky and “liberal” to ever pass Congress — even though the majority of Americans supported him for it.

I think Armando calls the out the laughable notion of this bill being a “progressive victory” most succinctly:

The fact that is is a conservative bill filled with Republican ideas does not make it bad substantively. But it certainly does make it hard to argue it is the greatest progressive achievement since Medicare. Indeed, that has been a long standing point for me – comparing the health bills to Medicare is absurd. Medicare and Obamacare take two fundamentally different paths. Medicare adopted a public insurance based approach and Obamacare took a regulated private health insurance market approach. One is the progressive approach – Medicare. One is a conservative approach – Obamacare. Whatever the merits of the health bills, surely adherence to progressive ideas on health care is not one of them.

It has been both dissociative and bizarre to watch progressive veal pen organizations line up behind this bill, but their support was critical to the party both when it came to invalidating progressive opposition and whipping Congressional Democrats (ironically from the right, while pretending they came from the left). But after they didn’t need them any more, leadership couldn’t wait to start throwing these outfits under the bus, laughing at what chumps they’d all been. It was just too irresistible.

Right now the veal penners are patting themselves on the back for their pragmatism, their steely eyed realism as they enjoy their moment of unity with the “pack.” But they are already being mocked by the media for abandoning their principles, for getting hoodwinked into throwing their weight behind a Republican bill, for being suckered by an oh so clever President who kicked their asses in a masterful game of 11 dimensional chess. They’re ridiculed for participating in their own ritual humiliation — by the very people they thought they were helping. The Speaker of the fucking House does not release something like this unless she’s chortling uncontrollably at them for thinking they would now get to be members of the “club.” As I wrote the last time it happened, “Nancy Pelosi laughs at progressives — and so should you.”

Armando says: “Shorter E.J. Dionne – progressives got rolled.”

The health care debate was essentially a fight between political parties, not political philosophies. And the public understood that (via Scott Payne):

If Bush had tried to pass this bill the entire progressive movement (such as it is) would have squealed like stuck pigs, with the volume and intensity they responded to Bush’s privatization of Social Security. Instead, we’re hearing about the “twilight of the interest groups” and the second coming of Abe Lincoln. It’s no surprise that Pelosi and others are trumpeting the bill’s conservative underpinnings today: now that they no longer need liberal veal pen validators to whip Democrats in order to pass it, they are anxious to insulate themselves from GOP attack by distancing themselves from progressives once again and trumpeting the bill’s Heritage Foundation roots. The question is why anyone was ever hoodwinked into thinking this was a “progressive” victory simply because the Republicans were against it. It was a Democratic party victory.

The White House is betting that those who committed themselves to Obama during the campaign won’t be bothered if he triangulates against his own campaign rhetoric and passes a right-wing health care bill — that their commitment to the ideals of the campaign will be trumped by their commitment to him as a personality. They may well be right. And the interest groups? Well, have a look at ACORN, because that’s where the dumb ones are headed. The smart ones (and they know who they are) got their payoffs.

In the end, “progressives” should be honest and admit that they are clapping for a health care plan that most found to be moral anathema when the GOP proposed it in 1994, and that going forward they will settle for nothing from the Democrats. And like it.

On the Republican side, there is a huge gap between the GOP corporatism of this bill and the libertarian anti-tax critique that the GOP is attempting to harvest with their “stop the mandate” ballot initiative campaign. But since the GOP won’t have to take responsibility for passing this bill, they can exploit it to turn out the vote in November without much fear of anybody noticing. Democrats will protect themselves by blaming the “liberals” for the bill’s shortcomings, and run to the right — as if they weren’t already there.

Before it’s all over, this thing is gonna make NAFTA look like the Emancipation Proclamation. And as for NAFTA itself — well, when Bart Stupak tries to repeal it, progressive leading lights will no doubt oppose him on the grounds that the President thinks he’s “icky.”

Spkr Pelosi Agrees: Health Bill Conservative

By The Big Tent Democrat TL

Via Matt Taibbi:

As she inched toward the triumphant win, Nancy Pelosi issued a fact sheet about the bill that cheerfully quoted an E.J. Dionne editorial. The passage:

An op-ed by E.J. Dionne on Friday reveals that the current health reform legislation pending before Congress was “built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.”

The most progressive legislation since Medicare? Puhleeeaze.

Will Michael Bennet’s Senate Seat Be the First Casualty of the Public Option?

By FDL's Jane Hamsher FDL ACTION

I was on the premiere of John King Live on CNN last night, talking about the primary problems Michael Bennet now faces as he moves away from his commitment made only a month ago to an up-or-down vote on the public option in the Senate.

The Denver Post also writes about it this morning:

In the past month, Bennet has become the hero of progressives, after he authored a letter — signed by at least 23 other senators — to Senate leaders pressing them to use reconciliation to revive the public option.

“He didn’t put out a letter saying, ‘I support the public option except if leadership wants me to be a toady to the party,’ ” said Jane Hamsher, who runs the influential liberal blog firedoglake.com.

Not all liberal groups are challenging Bennet, however. The Progressive Campaign Change Committee, which had actively touted his push for the public-option vote, is hoping that there can be a later vote, perhaps attached to next year’s budget, said co-founder Adam Green.

But that’s not enough for Hamsher.

“He raised money, he built his list,” she said. If Bennet doesn’t offer an amendment, “he’ll look like a hack who was only in it when he thought there was nothing he could do.”

Romanoff issued a challenge to Bennet last Friday to honor his commitment, saying “where’s the ‘public option’ champion?” Colorado columnist and radio host David Sirota added fuel to the fire, asserting that “thanks to Romanoff’s demand, [Bennet] will have to put up or shut up. If he refuses to offer the amendment, he shows his past efforts to be kabuki theater — grandstanding for attention while refusing to actually take the steps necessary to do what he publicly claims he wants to do.”

In response, Bennet’s campaign manager Craig Hughes said that “issuing a press release is not leadership…What we’re not going to do is kill the bill to make a point.” And Bennet spokesman Adrianne Marsh reiterated that to the Denver Post, saying “He will not recklessly sacrifice this bill while tens of thousands of Coloradans are losing their health insurance and seniors are facing critical decisions about their medication.”

But adding an amendment to the Senate reconciliation “fix” later this week cannot possibly jeopardize the health care bill, which President Obama signed it into law at 11am this morning. Bennet would simply be introducing an amendment to the sidecar legislation which was crafted to satisfy union demands that the excise tax be reduced. A Medicare tax on unearned income and $22 billion that would have gone to student loan reform will make up the difference.

Bennet’s sudden lack of awareness of the Senate legislative process is certain to raise questions about his campaign contributions from companies who have spent tremendous sums to keep a public option from being included in the bill. Bennet has been a prodigious campaign fundraiser from the medical industry ever since his appointment to replace Ken Salazaar, who was named Secretary of the Interior. The political action committee of Abbot Labs, Aetna, the American Hospital Association, Amgen, Apria Healthcare, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Glaxo Smith Kline, HCR Manor Care, Humana, Johnson & Johnson, Medco, Medtronic, Novartis, Pfizer, United Health Care, Wellpoint and Wyeth have all made generous donations to Bennet’s campaign,

Additionally, Bennet has has also accepted generous donations from the PACS of lobbying firms Akin Gump, Baker Botts, Barnes & Thornburg, Bryan Cave, Murson-Marsteller, DLA Piper, Hogan & Hartson, Holland & Knifht, Husch Blackwell Sanders, Jones Walker Waechter Poitevent, Kirkland & Ellis, Patton Boggs and Williams and Jensen.

It stands in sharp contrast to Romanoff, who in a chat on Firedoglake yesterday pledged to turn down contributions from special interest groups.

Yesterday a CNN poll found that 16% of Americans oppose the health care bill because it is not liberal enough. That could cause problems for Bennet, whose silence on the public option last year was a big factor in drawing Romanoff, former Colorado Speaker of the House, into the race in the first place. It was only after Romanoff announced his intention to mount a primary challenge against Bennet in September that Bennet declared his support for the public option. Until that time, he maintained that Senators shouldn’t be “drawing lines in the sand.”

After Romanoff’s entry into the race, however, Bennet launched a website called Save the Public Option. He organized 23 of his fellow Senators to write a letter to Harry Reid, calling on him to “give the public option the up-or-down vote it deserves.“ He blogged about it on the Huffington Post, twittered about his growing list of 19,000 signatures and started a Facebook group entitled “I bet we can find 1million people to Save the Public Option.”

This latest round could fuel the already intense debate that has erupted on Colorado blogs surrounding both the Romanff-Bennet race, as well as the health care bill itself. While 80% of all Democrats favor a public option, they are increasingly skeptical about commitments made by politicians for the purpose of manipulating online support in an attempt to harvest emails and emulate Barack Obama’s successful 2008 grassroots fundraising model. After 65 members of Congress pledged to vote against any bill that does not have a public option, online supporters raised $430,000 in campaign donations to thank them. Every one of them subsequently abandoned that pledge, but none except Dennis Kucinich has offered to return those contributions.

Bennet could easily get caught in the backlash. While he maintains that a vote can be taken on the public option at a later time, such a would require 60 Senate votes whereas the current amendment would require only 50. And as Bennet well knows, there are not 60 votes of support in the Senate for a public option. His current actions only add ammunition to those in Colorado who have questioned the sincerity of his commitment from the start.

Romanoff’s actions could create problems for other Democratic incumbents as well. Joe Sestak is challenging Arlen Specter for his Pennsylvania Senate seat, but Specter has maintained a steady lead in the polls after coming out aggressively for the public option. Specter signed an October 8 letter urging the inclusion of a public option in the health care bill. Should Sestak decide to follow Romanoff’s lead, Specter could likewise find himself on the hot seat about the sincerity of his commitment as well.

The public option challenge could not come at a worse time for Bennet, who lost the Colorado Democratic caucuses to Romanoff last week — Romanoff had 49.9 percent to Bennet’s 41.9 percent.

Not Historic: Obama is not the successor to FDR & LBJ, & this bill does not carry on the legacy of social ins that defined Social Security & Medicare

Health Care Coverage Facts

Let's not confuse this with Social Security and Medicare. Those two programs are social insurance. The burden is placed on the collective to help vulnerable seniors age with dignity and security. The government does not simply force seniors to purchase mutual funds and health coverage or face a tax penalty.

Unlike social insurance, this health reform bill places most of the cost burden on the individuals who are being "helped," particularly the middle class. As Jane Hamsher’s team at Fire Dog Lake has pointed out, a middle class family of four making $66,370 could end up paying more than $14,000 in a given year – over 20% of their income – on premiums and out-of-pocket costs. If this family did not previously have insurance, it was probably due to issues of affordability.

Now, we’re telling families like this one they need to go out and purchase private health insurance, and voila- they’re covered. When we hear that this bill will expand coverage to 32 million Americans, it’s because many of those people are being coerced into buying what may be for them an unaffordable product.

To quote Robert Kuttner, "There is a world of difference between true social insurance and a mandate to purchase a private product. The former reinforces the value of government and of social solidarity; the latter signals a coercive state in concert with private industry profits."

Moving beyond the terminology of who is "covered," a second issue I have with the historic nature of the bill is how some are calling it "universal health care." Again, using the disingenuous definition above of who is covered, this bill reaches 32 million out of about 52 million uninsured, or about 60%. You simply cannot say that we’ve made health care a right in this country, in the same way Canada and other countries have – unless those 20 million uninsured don’t count.

In addition, there are all the groups that were shoved under the bus to reach this point: women and pro-choice voters, first and foremost; union members; immigrants.

And finally, this bill may well end up turning into the biggest piece of corporate welfare since the Wall Street bailout. Health insurance companies won’t have their anti-trust exemptions revoked, there will be no national insurance rate authority to monitor premium increases, and there is no government payer to keep prices in check.

So we’re putting an awful lot of faith into the idea that state-based exchanges won’t end up being controlled by a few firms with monopoly or oligopoly power.

The Democratic Party has replaced an ideal of social insurance with a coercive form of corporatism while it utterly caves on reproductive rights. In many cases, Democrats also chose backroom deal making with powerful interests over the needs of many working and middle class families, which negates the core purpose of the Democratic Party.

We’re going to see a lot of stories over the next few weeks about how historic this vote is, but I hope we’ll remember that Obama is not the successor to FDR and LBJ, and this bill does not carry on the legacy of social insurance that defined Social Security and Medicare.

Failure to make that distinction means we’ve set the bar way, way too low as a progressive movement, and that we’ve lost our vision of a truly just society.

Dionne: Why Democrats Are Fighting For A GOP Health Plan

By the Big Tent Democrat TL

That's the title of E.J. Dionne's latest column:

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it. Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans—or at least large numbers of them—should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

Republicans always say they are against “socialized medicine.” Not only is this bill nothing like a “single-payer” health system along Canadian or British lines. It doesn’t even include the “public option” that would have allowed people voluntarily to buy their insurance from the government. The single-payer idea fell by the wayside long ago, and supporters of the public option—sadly, from my point of view—lost out last December. [. . .] Democrats, including President Obama, are so anxious to get everyone health insurance that they are more than willing to try a market-based system and hope it works. It’s a shame the Republicans can no longer take “yes” for an answer.

Shorter E.J. Dionne - progressives got rolled.

"No wonder polls indicate a majority of Americans are suspicious of or openly hostile to the plan."

wsws

The Obama administration, in the guise of “reform,” has crafted a measure that will enable the health insurance companies to rake in untold revenues from millions of new customers forced to purchase bare-bones health coverage. Moreover, hundreds of billions of dollars will be cut from Medicare, the program for the elderly and disabled. There is nothing progressive about the health care measure; it is not a step or half-step forward. It represents a full-scale social regression.

No wonder polls indicate that a majority of Americans are suspicious of or openly hostile to the plan.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich knows all this perfectly well. As recently as last Sunday, in an op-ed column published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he pointed out, “Unfortunately, the president’s plan…leaves patients financially vulnerable to insurance companies. It requires all Americans to buy private health insurance policies, while failing to ensure those policies do what they are supposed to do—protect people from financial catastrophe caused by injury or illness… [T]he bill that the president is proposing is a step in the wrong direction.” The piece clearly implied that Kucinich would vote against the measure.

Aside: On Monday, March 15 President Obama held a rally for passage of the health care bill in the district represented by Kucinich. The Congressman traveled to the rally with the President aboard Air Force One. Two days later Congressman Kucinich held a press conference to announce he would be voting "yes", but in doing so said he would not retract any of his previous comments regarding the health care bill.

Myth/Fact Sheet: The Truth About The Health Care Bill

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NY NOW President Marcia Pappas to Women in Congress: Make History and Walk Out

NY NOW

Pro-choice members of the House are in revolt tonight, threatening to kill the health care bill after Nancy Pelosi agreed to give Bart Stupak a vote on a concurrent resolution which would tie his language on abortion to the Senate bill and substitute it for the Nelson language.

Marcia Pappas, President of New York Now, released an open letter encouraging the women in Congress to oppose the deal:

March 19, 2010

An open letter to every woman in Congress:

Today, women in the United States are fighting for their lives. You must fight too! A woman’s right to have safe and legal abortion is about to be traded away.

We are asking all of you fight like you have never fought before. Tonight, It has become clear that the our Democratic President Obama, Democratic Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and Democratic Leader (Harry Reid) are trading away women’s lives.

Every woman in Congress should MAKE HISTORY AND WALK OUT ! This is your chance to stand up for what is right! Forget politics, forget saving your seat! You must take a chance!

If you sit back and allow the passage of the health care bill with “Stupak,” women in America will not vote for another Democrat…..myself included. Because there will essentially be no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

What will it be? Will you all go down in history following the boys, or will you finally stand up for what is right? It’s up to all of you. We elected you because we believed that having women at the table would make a difference. Don’t let us down.

Marcia A. Pappas
President
NOW NYS

According to The Hill, “were the resolution to pass the House, it would instruct the Senate clerk to change the healthcare bill to reflect Stupak’s more restrictive language to prohibit federal dollars from going toward abortion coverage.”

There were 41 members of Congress who signed Diana DeGette’s letter saying “we will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.” Although the language in the Senate bill most certainly goes way beyond current law, the members have thus far stayed silent and DeGette has not released the names on the letter.

Jan Schakowsky, Mike Capuano, Mike Quigley, Carolyn Maloney, Judy Chu and Louise Slaughter have publicly said that they signed the letter. Betsy Markey and Anne Kirkpatrick are also signatories.

As I mentioned this morning, abortion would not be an issue in the “Plan B” alternative that the White House was contemplating three weeks ago, which would evidently expand existing programs — Medicaid and SCHIP. It would cover half the people at a quarter of the price, but it would not include the politically toxic mandate that threatens to trigger nationwide opposition in the form of 2010 ballot amendments. Because it creates no new infrastructure for the purpose of funneling money to private insurance companies, there is no need for either Bart Stupak’s or Ben Nelson’s language dealing with abortion — which satisfies the concerns of both pro-choice and anti-choice members of Congress.

Both programs are already covered under existing law, the Hyde amendment.

Myth/Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill

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My Letter To President Obama

By Larue

Well Pups, I just couldn’t take it anymore, and below is the message I sent to our leader this evening through the White House website.

Dear President Obama:

I voted for you because you promised to bring change to our political system and improve the lives of the middle class.

Sadly, your recent gutting of single payer, public option, drug reimportation and so many OTHER cost saving reforms for healthcare is costing you my vote.

I looked the other way when you caved on FISA, I looked away when you gave away trillions to failed, crooked bankers and financial investment houses, I looked the other way when you backed down on investigating the previous administration for war crimes/terrorism, I looked the other way when you failed to end Iraq and now Af/Pak.

Your so called ‘centrist’ healthcare reform effort is nothing but a giveaway to private insurance, PhRMA and Big Med.

For american citizens to be FORCED to purchase a product from private business and then be faced with federal punishment from the IRS if they don’t is likely unconstitutional.

So, there it is, you’ve lost my vote, and you’ve cost Senators Feinstein and Boxer to lose my vote and Rep. Matsui to lose my vote.

I will work vigorously to primary you and my present elected officials in 2010 and in 2012.

As of tomorrow morning, I will change my voter status from Democrat (since 1971) to Independent.

I’m sorry you lied to the American People, about Change. It cost you my vote and support.

**********

That’s it, end of story.

Barack Obama: “I have rejected a whole bunch of provisions that the left wanted.”

By t0dd

During his interview with Bret Baier, Obama made these remarks about the health insurance bill:

Now, we can fix this in a way that is sensible, that is centrist. I have rejected a whole bunch of provisions that the left wanted that are — you know, they were very adamant about because I thought it would be too disruptive to the system.

The truth has finally come out. I had always thought the public option, drug reimportation, and direct Medicare drug price negotiation were traded away because large corporations hate them. But there is more to it. Apparently, saving the country $350 billion a year, halving our per capita costs, saving over 45,000 lives annually, making lifesaving biologic drugs of the future affordable, and achieving better health outcomes are ideas too "disruptive" to our President because these are ideals espoused by radical leftists!

You’d think a man that has such disdain and scorn for progressive principles would run into fierce opposition from the Progressive Caucus, but every member that pledged to oppose any final bill without a public option has already caved. I guess having deeply held principles on how to reform health care is only important when it doesn’t interfere with scoring a political victory for leadership. Nevermind that supporting the bill will only enrich and strengthen the same industries that comprise our immoral health care system.

The Obama administration will begin to tout this as a major victory this November, but you have to wonder how much longer they can continue making a mockery of liberals and not see their support become truly eroded. As long as we support representatives that are only interested in our vision for America when it is convenient for them, don’t expect this to change any time soon.

Health Care Reconciliation: Increases In Affordability Tax Credits Only Temporary

From the CBO

One of the Democratic leadership’s talking points for the reconciliation bill is that it increases affordability tax credits for people on the exchange. What they aren’t saying is that the increase in subsidies in the Senate bill is only temporary. From the CBO:

An important component of the longer-term analysis is that, beginning in 2019, the reconciliation proposal would change the annual indexing provisions so that the premium subsidies offered through the exchanges would grow more slowly; over time, the spending on exchange subsidies would therefore fall back toward the level under H.R. 3590 by itself.

This means that the increase in affordability tax credits provided by the reconciliation package starting in 2014 would disappear only a few years afterwards. That is a pretty big caveat. Given that this reconciliation bill does not include a public option, Medicare buy-in, a national exchange, a higher medical loss ratio, all-payer, or direct Medicare drug price negotiations, and is unlikely to keep the National Insurance Rate Authority, and now add the fact that the much touted increases in affordability tax credits are only temporary, and it becomes apparent that this reconciliation package is a tremendous wasted opportunity.

Way to go, House Democrats! You basically get one bill a year that can’t be filibustered, and this is all you can think to do with it to “improve” the Senate health care bill?

It‘s Not That the Health Care Bill Does Too Little Good, It’s That It Does Too Much Harm

By Jon Walker

The greatest problem with the Senate health care bill is not that it does “too little” to help people. The problem is that the bill does too many terrible things to help all the bad actors.

The Senate bill further entrenches the private health insurance system. It continues the terrible pattern of privatizing our social safety net in such a way that business skims 20% off the top. It makes sure the big, life saving medications of the future remain incredibly expensive, so as to enrich the drug industry. It takes a giant step towards eroding women’s reproductive rights. It wastes hundreds of millions to fortify the same, broken health care system that is crushing our economy. The worst part is I don’t see anything in this bill that might serve as a path to real reform. There is no public option or Medicare buy-in. There is no proper state single payer waiver. There is no mechanism to move to an all-payer system and/or a clear path to force for-profit companies out of the health insurance market.

I would gladly fight for a smaller health care bill that just gave Medicare to people over 50 who don’t want to keep their current insurance. That would help fewer uninsured people, but would do it the right way. It would be real help, and it would be done in a simple, cost effective, and fiscally conservative manner. It would be a small step, but, importantly, it would be a step in the right direction. That would actually be a health care reform foundation I would be proud to build on.

I have no problem fighting for incremental reform as along as it is improvement done the right way, or at least with a pathway in the right direction. What I do have a real problem with is taking big steps if they are steps in the wrong direction. If anyone can actually explain how this bill, which will funnel hundreds of billions of dollar into private hands, and force millions of Americans to be customers of the same private health insurance companies that helped ruin our health care system, will actually serve as a vehicle for the real reform we will eventually need, I would love to hear it. Personally, I just don’t see how the fight will be easier in the future, once the health insurance industry is a few hundred billion dollars richer, and already has a captive market thanks to the IRS.

“If private insurance companies are evil, why are you (President Obama) forcing me to be their customer?”

A Deeply Corrupt Bill

Last July, in response to a campaign we launched the month before, 65 members of Congress pledged to vote against any bill that does not have a public option. At the suggestion of Rep. Donna Edwards, online supporters raised $430,000 to thank them. Dennis Kucinich was one of those members of Congress.

July was also the month that President Obama made a “quid pro quo deal” with the hospitals to exclude the public option from a final health care bill. Miles Mogulescu reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina confirmed the deal to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.

President Obama disingenuously confirmed his support for the public option in his September address to a joint session of Congress, but, behind the scenes, he was actively working to kill it. Obama wanted Harry Reid to be responsible for taking it out of the final health care bill so he, the president, could remain popular, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.

But Reid is facing a tough challenge of his own and didn’t want the honors, so — as predicted — Joe Lieberman was called upon to do the dirty work. Far from opposing the President, Lieberman was doing exactly what Obama wanted him to do so that the deal with the hospitals to kill the public option would be honored.

Tom Carper famously said that it was the Senate’s responsibility to honor the deal that Obama made with PhRMA, because after all, they paid for it with $150 million in political advertising for House Democrats. And although PhRMA was nervous about putting more money in until the President delivered on that deal, they have now agreed to another $6 million ad buy in the districts of 38 Democrats.

The objective of the White House with the health care bill has been from the beginning to secure donations of the medical industrial complex for Democrats and assure their re-election in 2010. But recently, they switched their battle plan. While Rahm Emanuel may have been protecting Blue Dogs from “fu&1ing r#%&rd” liberals who wanted to challenge them last fall, the Democratic establishment have now turned on Democrats in conservative-leaning districts for their unwillingness to take a vote that will no doubt cost them their seats. So much for the “big tent.”

The generals are firing on their own troops in the trenches for their unwillingness to go on a suicide mission. It is indeed like a scene from Paths of Glory.

There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against. It will become a rallying cry for the right.

John Shaddegg gives a preview of what the GOP will be saying in the fall:

SHADEGG: You could better defend a public option than you could defend compelling me to buy a product from the people that have created the problem. America’s health insurance industry has wanted this bill and the individual mandate from the get go. That’s their idea. Their idea is “look, our product is so lousy, that lots of people don’t buy it. So we need the government to force people to buy our product. And stunningly, that’s what the Congress appears to be going along with. Why would they do that?

As Jon Walker noted, the President’s recent campaign wherein he railed against insurance companies for jacking up premiums was an exercise in incoherence. “If private insurance companies are evil, why are you forcing me to be their customer?”

The claims made by the administration about the virtues of the health care bill are outright fabrications. As Marcy Wheeler has documented in her post entitled “Health Care and the Road to Neufeudalism,” it does not control either insurance premiums or health care costs. Forcing 31 million people to buy a product they don’t want and can’t afford to use does not constitute health care reform. Once again, the poor get used as human shields so corporations can be the beneficiaries of massive government bailout.

Rather than actually helping the poor, this bill is a dangerous and unprecedented step on the road to domination of government by private corporate players who use it to suppress competition and secure their profits — the textbook definition of fascism.

When we launched the public option campaign in June of 2009, I made several assumptions. One, that the White House ultimately cared more about preserving the Democratic majority than they did about passing a corporate bailout and when forced to choose between the two they would pick the former. And two, that members of Congress have a base interest in keeping their seats and would not cast a vote that jeopardize them.

Both of those assumptions were wrong. Members of Congress are dealing their seats away, planning to retire after the vote is cast in exchange for appointments or other sinecures from the administration. The alternative, as Dennis Kucinich found out, was to be hounded from office by liberal interest groups whose job is now apparently to play enforcer on the left so the President can follow through with his PhRMA and AHIP deals.

This bill has already triggered an electoral crisis that will continue, not only for members of Congress in 2010 but for Democrats across the country.Polling indicates that Democrats plan to stay home just as they did after the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Down ticket races are at serious risk of the “Coakley effect” as independents flock to the GOP. While members of Congress in strong Democratic districts may feel safe from the repercussions, state legislatures that progressive activists have worked so hard to take over the past few years could become casualties of war.

I spoke with Dennis following his speech, and his campaign will return the money to those who have donated in support of his pledge to vote against any health care bill that does not have a public option. It’s the honorable thing to do. While he shouldn’t be expected to carry the weight of the health care bill on his back when the other 64 members of Congress have abandoned him, it is both disheartening and illuminating to realize that the progressives in Congress have no true commitment to anything but putting on a show. Rep. Edwards and her fellow members of Congress should follow Rep. Kucinich’s lead and return the $430,000 they collected from donors for their part in the House kabuki as well.

A PR blitz by the President may sway liberals to support this bill, but it won’t hold. You can’t fight for Medicare prescription drug price negotiation in 2008 when it has no chance of passing, and then fight against it when it actually can, and hope that nobody notices. This is a deeply corrupt bill that among other things puts lifesaving cancer drugs out of the financial reach of many cancer patients by keeping them from becoming available as generics, even after taxpayers footed the bill for their development.

Cokie Roberts said on This Week that the reason the health care bill is so unpopular is because the public option campaign dragged out its passage for so long. She’s right. By forcing the President and members of Congress to keep passing the public option hot potato and reporting on the corruption, lies and lack of affordability that were the hallmarks of the bill, it allowed the public to measure the gap between what Obama says and what he actually does.

That in itself has value, because without broad awareness of the bad faith with which the President engaged in the health care debate, it was difficult to get people to shake off the pixie dust of the 2008 election and deal with the reality of what progressives are up against. We also got to see that the veal pen institutions will be flooded with corporate money expressly for the purpose of neutralizing progressive organizing attempts against corporate control of government.

Few organizations resisted the urge to whip for the very bill they asked members of Congress to oppose last August during the fundraising drive for the public option. The entire progressive movement devolved into complete message incoherence as the unions announced their willingness to step outside of the Democratic party in order to enforce corporate deals within it. The PCCC deserves special mention for staying true to their word throughout.

If indeed this bill passes, people across the country will have to start examining the basic assumptions with which we have heretofore approached politics. The thing I have learned above all else in this campaign is that the corporate control of government is much more extensive than I ever imagined, and the tools we have to fight its influence are ineffective.

We need to develop new partners in the fight, because there is tremendous public will to resist and the old ones can’t be trusted. We also need a new language to describe it, because the old “right-left” paradigm is firing past the true opponent.

The effort to keep this bill from passing lives on after Dennis Kucinich’s defection, though it did indeed signal the death of the progressive resistance in Congress. In the end, what we learned is that we can’t count on members of Congress in either party to do anything but play their part in “villain rotation” — a game they can only play as long as we let them. It is up to each of us to challenge our old ideas and forge new ways to seek out those who are truly willing to oppose the corporate domination of our political system, and help them to do it.

NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

By Miles Mogulescu HuffPost

For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. I've been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

"That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product."

Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

The media should be digging deeper into this story. Washington reporters should be asking Robert Gibbs if President Obama is still honoring this deal. They should be calling Jim Messina and hospital lobbyist Chip Kahn to confirm the specifics of the deal. They should be asking Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leaders Dick Durbin and Harry Reid the extent of their knowledge of this deal. They should be asking Pelosi if the reason she's refusing to include a public option in the House reconciliation bill to be sent to the Senate is that there are at least 51 Senate Democrats who would vote for it and she needs to insure that a final bill with a public option does not end up on President Obama's desk where he would then have to break his deal with the hospital lobbyists and sign it, or veto it to honor his deal.

More deeply, there are serious questions about the extent to which Obama, with the help of Rahm Emanuel, used a K Street strategy to pursue health care reform. The strategy seems to have been to make backroom deals to protect the interests of the likes of the drug industry and the for-profit hospital industry in exchange for campaign cash, even if this meant reversing campaign promises to include a public option to put competitive pressure on private insurance premiums, and to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada. The result is a health care bill that is generally unpopular with voters. Questions need to be asked, too, about the extent to which the White House is following a similar K Street strategy with Wall Street financiers when it comes to shaping financial reform and new regulations to reign in the banks who brought the economy to its knees.

Voters viscerally sense that the White House and Congressional Democrats may be as concerned with protecting special interests -- whether it's drug companies, private hospitals, or Wall Street bank -- than they are with protecting the people, and this is feeding a populist backlash against Democrats that resulted in Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts and is making a Democratic bloodbath in the fall elections increasingly likely.

Polls indicate that about 60% of voters support a public option while only about 1/3 support the overall Democratic healthcare bill. There still time -- very little time -- for Democrats to shift course and include a public option in the final bill, even if it means going back on the White House's backroom deal with the hospital industry. If the media picks up on this story, perhaps the White House and Congressional Democrats can be embarrassed into changing course. If, on the other hand, Democrats continue to honor these special interest deals, then passing an unpopular health care bill may just be walking into a Republican trap.
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RESPONSE TO COMMENTS: Whenever I write blogs which are critical of Obama and Congressional Democrats for making corporatist deals, I get numerous comments from people who believe they are progressive but say they will never vote for Obama or Democrats again, that they will stay home at the next election, or that they will vote for small third parties who have no chance of winning. It's not my intent to encourage those views. Do people making these comments really think bringing Republicans back to power would make things better?

My goal is to shine a light on these backroom deals in order to embarrass Obama and Congressional Democrats to put the interests of the voters over the interests of special interests so that Republicans can't play at being faux populists and use that to take back Congress in order to enact even worse corporatist policies.

Progressives need to have a sophisticated and nuanced relationship with elected Democrats. After the 2008 elections, too many progressive organizations demobilized believing their job was simply to take orders from the White House to support Obama's agenda, whatever it was. That was a mistake. It's equally a mistake for progressives to overreact in the opposite direction and think they can abandon electoral politics and do nothing to prevent the Republicans from regaining power. What's needed is a powerful grassroots progressive movement to force elected officials to do the right thing more often and to counter-balance the power of big money in politics. The periods of progressive change in American politics, like the Progressive Era, The New Deal, and the Great Society, have come when strong progressive movements have forced elites and elected officials to enact somewhat progressive legislation.

Back in June, 2008, I wrote a blog entitled "Obama Will Break Our Hearts--But Progressives Need to Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time" in which I argued that progressives needed to both elect Obama and create a strong grassroots movement or pressure him.

More recently, I wrote a blog entitled "The Democrats' Authoritarian Health 'Reform' Bill and the Ascendency of Corporatism in the Democratic Party" in which I critiqued Obama's Clintonian New Democratic corporatist ideology of trying to use subsidized private sector entities to achieve supposedly "progressive" policy results, thus promoting a corporate takeover of the public sector. I explained why, in my view, this is likely to lead to failure both in bringing meaningful progressive change, and in creating a politics that can keep Democrats in power.

I will continue to write the truth, as I see it, and to criticize Obama and corporatist Democrats when I think they're wrong. But my goal is to create greater understanding and progressive mobilization, not to discourage readers or lead them to give up and stay home.

“…the bill Obama wanted all along, w/ all the secret deals w/ PhRMA & the for profit Hospitals persevered ... why are House Dems not in full revolt."

By Jon WalkerFDL

One thing that has really bugged me is why vulnerable House Democrats are willing to walk the plank on health care reform to protect weird, stupid Senate rules they all hate anyway. Instead of passing the Senate bill as is and then hoping the Senate approves the changes they want through reconciliation, the House Democrats could technically create a “new” clean merged bill and pass that whole bill (and every provision) using reconciliation. They don’t need to worry about the Byrd rule as as long as Joe Biden promises use his right according to the actual rules to overrule the non-binding suggestions of the Senate Parliamentarian. Biden can simply rule against any Republican Byrd rule point of order, therefore protecting every provision from the Byrd rule.

I can understand why Democratic senators don’t want to do that. I can even understand why the Obama administration is insisting House Democrats pass the Senate bill as is. Clearly, it is the bill that Obama wanted all along, with all the secret deals with PhRMA and the for profit Hospitals persevered. What I don’t understand is why the House Democrats are not in full revolt.

The House Democrats don’t need to vote for a bill with the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana Purchase,” the publicly toxic excise tax, the hated individual mandate to buy private insurance, or the special Medicare Advantage deal for Florida, and they would still be able to pass comprehensive health care reform. All it would take is for Joe Biden plus 50 Senate Democrats, willing, as a result of unprecedented Republican obstructionism, to exploit the existing rules to the maximum extent possible. Heck, House Democrats should proceed with the strategy anyway and drop the burden for passing health care reform squarely on the Senate Democrats instead.

The Democratic leadership has a choice between protecting stupid Senate rules, which the whole Senate Democratic leadership agrees need to be changed, or sacrificing their rank-and-file House members by forcing them to vote for a politically toxic bill. The Democratic leadership clearly chose to make the House Democrats walk the plank. Why rank-and-file House Democrats are going along with what seems like an act of collective insanity is beyond me. I guess House Democrats just really want to protect the weird Senate rules more than their own seats.

Michael Moore Defends Rep. Dennis Kucinich's "NO" vote on Countdown

By the Blue Texan BT

Last night Michael Moore thanked Dennis for being true to his word on Countdown:

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The only eloquent voice I have heard in opposition, in actual political voting opposition to this bill — is from Dennis Kucinich, where the President went to his district today to try and change his mind. Dennis Kucinich criticism coming from the left, point by point, knocking down Democratic talking points — what would you say to Congressman Kucinich in the vote that he faces at this point?

MICHAEL MOORE: Thank you. Thank you. One out of 435 is standing up for the 300 million. How truly sad is that.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: When the vote comes, if he’s the decisive vote, would you tell him to go practical in the end?

MICHAEL MOORE: No I would not. If I was a member of Congress, I would say, I may vote for it, if President Obama you’ll stand in front of the camera and tell the American people that this doesn’t really cover pre-existing conditions for the next 4 years. And the insurance companies are still going to be able to make outrageous profits, and they are going to be able to deny people care once they have insurance. Tell the people the truth of these things, and then we’ll vote for the things that are great about the bill

Dennis is getting the full-court press.

Obama invited Kucinich and undecided Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) to the ultimate pressure cooker as he tries to nail down a majority for his top domestic priority.

What was said at 35,000 feet is anyone’s guess, and Kucinich is — for once — not talking. The president talked one on one with Kucinich aboard Air Force One on the flight, a White House spokesman said. But Obama’s onetime presidential rival just smiled as he walked across the tarmac upon arrival in his home state.

“I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say,” Kucinich said. A spokesman in his D.C. office said the congressman was politely declining all requests for interviews today.

But there was a public hint of the kind of pressure he is under. When Obama introduced Kucinich at his rally in Strongsville, in the congressman’s suburban Cleveland district, someone in the audience called out, “Vote yes.”

Obama, not missing a beat, turned to his traveling partner. “Did you hear that, Dennis?” he asked.

Wonder why Blanche Lincoln or Joe Lieberman never get this kind of treatment.

Progressives Who Don’t Honor Their Pledge: Corporatists In Sheep’s Clothing

Last August, progressive groups including MoveOn, DFA and blogs across the country came together to raise over $430,000 for 65 members of Congress who pledged to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option.

Now every excuse made by the President and Congress for not including a public option has crumbled. MoveOn is demonstrating against Kucinich for keeping that promise, and far from supporting members of Congress who keep that pledge, the unions are threatening them with primaries.

If George Bush had tried to pass a health care bill that was the worst blow to the right to choose since the passage of the Hyde Amendment 35 years ago, liberal groups would be screaming bloody murder.

Instead, the natural fiscal constituency of progressive members of Congress — those who should be backing them up for standing for progressive values — are whipping from the right.

The veal pen groups have become the enforcement arm for sweetheart deals that Rahm Emanuel cut with AHIP and PhRMA. And college students across the country are footing the bill, because Larry Summers doesn’t want to tax rich people.

I was on Ian Masters’ show yesterday, and he asked me what I thought of Dennis Kucinich’s position on health care.

I said “I find it odd that when it’s down to Joe Lieberman’s one vote, everybody shrugs their shoulders and says ‘oh well, we just have to write the bill Joe wants, because what can you do, one vote.’ And when it’s Dennis Kucinich’s one vote, which represents what 80% of the American people want, it’s “lets crush Dennis Kucinich so we can give Joe Lieberman everything he wants.” Somehow the argument keeps switching so that the corrupt deal that the White House negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies gets passed no matter what.”

I still don’t know if they can pass this monstrosity of a bill. But if progressives stand down and do nothing while corporate America runs roughshod our institutions and our representatives, no member of Congress will ever have the political courage to stand up against corporate power again.

Call members of Congress who said they would vote against any bill that doesn’t have a public option. Tell them to keep their promise.

Tell Diana DeGette and Louise Slaughter to release the letter with the names of 41 members who said they’d vote against any bill that restricts a woman’s right to choose, because this one does.

And donate to Dennis Kucinich to send a message that the progressive left hasn’t become a completely incoherent tool of corporate America.

REP. KUCINICH: "I have a responsibility on behalf of all those people who want to see a public option and to help the WH cross that divide. . . . "

By Ian Masters ianmastersnet

I taped with Congressman Kucinich for "The Daily Briefing" (5 to 6 PM PT on KPFK FM Los Angeles and at www.kpfk.org). I was about to ask him to answer charges that he was the Ralph Nader of health care but he abruptly bailed to take a vote. My producer then sent him a text: "We just did a quick interview with you. Would you be willing to respond to charges you are the Nader of health care? Call this number." I was on the air running the incomplete interview when he called in, and we went live with the Congressman.

I was prepared to dismiss him like Marcos Moulitsas did as a suicidally self-righteous progressive in the Nader mould (see here and here), but after trying to pin him down on what he is up to, it appears Kucinich might be the only Democratic Congressman with the guts and brains to get something done about reforming healthcare, as opposed to health insurance.

As Kucinich told me, this is a matter of doing what an elected representative should do:

KUCINICH: I have a responsibility on behalf of all those people who want to see a public option to help the White House cross that divide. . . . If I cave in without any public option, that could kill any hopes of keeping it alive in the Senate.

I asked him what he thought of the comparisons to Nader. His response showed his appreciation of the consumer activist, but also his continuing loyalty to the Democratic party:

KUCINICH: If being the Ralph Nader of health care means I’m against consumer fraud and against monopolies, that’s OK. But if being the Ralph Nader of health care means that I’m scuttling the Democratic Party, that’s not true. I’m inside the party. I represent a voice inside the party that has helped to make health care an issue in three successive Democratic Platform committees and two national campaigns . . . I haven’t gone outside the party, and the party still has a chance to be able to deliver to the American people a health care bill that would be worthy of broader support.

After watching the Democrat’s Progressive Caucus dutifully roll over for the White House, Kucinich’s original House vote against the bill has meaning now, unlike Lynn Woolsey’s and others. Since the House has to vote on the Senate bill as is, without changing a comma, this is the only time to make a deal, not later during reconciliation when some Senate parliamentarian gets to slice and dice it. In taking a stand as the critical vote that the White House needs, Kucinich appears to be giving Democratic Senators cover as more and more of them declare their support for the public option.

Tell Progressives to Honor Their Pledge: Insist on a Public Option

By FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher FDL

Today, Dick Durbin says that if the House sends over a public option in their reconciliation bill, he’ll whip for it. But he won’t whip for a public option amendment.

Which is incredibly chickenshit of Durbin — it once again puts all the blame on the House for the public option’s failure, and accepts none of it himself. In other words, pure Durbin.

In response, Nancy Pelosi says she won’t include a public option in the House bill.

As I said the other day when I laid out FDL’s position on whipping the public option, I’m still not convinced they can pass this bill–period. And I don’t particularly want to get everyone riled up to whip on something that may never happen.

But as a pure matter of principle, after almost a year of blaming its exclusion on lack of votes in the Senate, there is no way it should die in the House.

The PCCC has done a great job getting members of Congress on the record as to where they stand, and I agree wholeheartedly with Adam Green:

Mark Warner, Tom Harkin, Herb Kohl, Claire McCaskill, and other undeclared senators are not going to vote against the president’s top priority, and if Speaker Pelosi refuses to even allow a vote on the public option, than [sic] she killed the public option. She needs to step up.

If the House is going to put a health care bill to a vote, we should at least be able to see who is going to stab their voters and turn their backs on Democrats on behalf of the insurance companies before the next election.

Let’s see who’s willing to do that.

Sixty members of Congress pledged to vote against a health care bill that didn’t have a public option. Others made videos and gave statements.

See them here

They need to make it clear to Nancy Pelosi that they will honor that pledge if she doesn’t include a public option in the health care bill.

Call progressive members of Congress who pledged to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option, and tell them to insist on its inclusion in the House bill. Then let us know what they say.

Call now

Health Care Reform and the Public Option: Without Trust Americans Are Screwed

By FireDogLake's milesz FDL

It is a wonder of incredulous proportions that Speaker Pelosi declared the other day that the House reconciliation bill will not contain a public option, because the Senate did not include it in their bill and it does not have the votes for one. This was after Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) said he will “whip” anything the House sends over to the Senate, after 41 Senators have now committed to a public option, and Adam Green, head of a progressive group, did its own whip count this past week and came up with over 50 senators who would support a public option. Add to this that the House has already included the public option in its version of health care reform and a voter would surely ask, what the hell is going on? The answer to this query is an easy one: Pelosi speaking for her caucus simply does not trust the Senate. She has pointed to the over 290 bills the House has passed yet they are gathering dust on someone’s desk over in the Senate. From some corners, it seems that even though 41 senators are publicly supporting the public option, when the “rubber hits the road” in terms of these senators having to cast a vote, maybe they are bluffing and really don’t mean what they say or do not really back a document (Senator Bennett’s letter) to which they affixed their signatures. But then again this would call into question whether the word of any elected official can be trusted. We surely know that answer. The icing on this cake is, of course, that Obama and his minions are remaining silent, preferring to let two chambers who don’t trust one another duke it out, and whatever mess is decided upon they call health care reform will be with what Americans will have to live. All the while, the American voter does not trust Washington regardless of whether it is health care reform or not. Even the reason the White House Press Secretary has given for Obama delaying his upcoming trip to Indonesia and Australia for a few days is to build trust among the rank and file.

During the Blair House summit on reform couple of weeks ago now, Pelosi said that a public option was not on the agenda because the insurance industry feared competition. Since then, reports by Goldman Sachs and the progressive group, Health Care for America Now, have both come out with scathing reports detailing how the insurance industry has vastly overstated the reasons why it has to charge the premiums that it does, and that this trend will not stop any time soon. We are also seeing double digit increases throughout the country now so there is no conjecture into this equation.

Competition is an ever-necessary ingredient for any final reform bill. Competition prevents monopolization and that is what the insurance industry has in spades around the country. Health care reform does not include competition, and without it the insurance industry will not only receive $billions more from the mandate that everyone have insurance over what it rakes in today, but will continue to gouge on premiums as they see fit. Moreover, has anyone asked, what mechanism will be in place from the very first day any legislation is signed into law that will effectively control premium increases? Or, what about these new reforms like no pre-existing condition will bar coverage. Has anyone asked who will be paying for these new goodies? The answer is, we will—unless there is strong and effective competition. And we must not forget about lifting the antitrust exemption for insurers. The antitrust laws ensure competition over monopolization. The bill that the House passed lifting this exemption did so with over 400 votes, but is one of those couple hundred sitting somewhere in the Senate that has yet to see the light of day.

In the end, trust begets competition, competition begets a public option, and a public option begets the necessary ingredient that enables every single American to afford health care. Without trust, Americans will remain screwed.

The Democrats' public option scam becomes more transparent

By Salon's Glenn Greenwald Salon

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats: all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.

But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."

The one last hope for Senate Democratic leaders was to avoid a vote altogether on the public option, thereby relieving Senators of having to take a position and being exposed. But that trick would require the cooperation of all Senators -- any one Senator can introduce a public option amendment during the reconciliation and force a vote -- and it now seems that Bernie Sanders, to his great credit, is refusing to go along with the Democrats' sham and will do exactly that: ignore the wishes of the Senate leadership and force a roll call vote on the public option.

So now what is to be done? They only need 50 votes, so they can't use the filibuster excuse. They don't seem able to prevent a vote, as they tried to do, because Sanders will force one. And it seems there aren't enough Senate Democrats willing to vote against the public option after publicly saying all year long they supported it, which means it might get 50 votes if a roll call vote is held. So what is the Senate Democratic leadership now doing? They're whipping against the public option, which they pretended all year along to so vigorously support:

Senate Democratic leaders are concerned about the amount of mischief their own Members could create if or when a health care reconciliation bill comes up for debate. And sources said some supporters of creating a public insurance option are privately worried that they will be asked to vote against the idea during debate on the bill, which could occur before March 26.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged Wednesday that liberals may be asked to oppose any amendment, including one creating a public option, to ensure a smooth ride for the bill. "We have to tell people, 'You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen," Durbin, who supports a public option, told reporters.

If -- as they claimed all year long -- a majority of Congressional Democrats and the White House all support a public option, why would they possibly whip against it, and ensure its rejection, at exactly the moment when it finally became possible to pass it? If majorities of the House and Senate support it, as does the White House, how could the inclusion of a public option possibly jeopardize passage of the bill?

I've argued since August that the evidence was clear that the White House had privately negotiated away the public option and didn't want it, even as the President claimed publicly (and repeatedly) that he did. And while I support the concept of "filibuster reform" in theory, it's long seemed clear that it would actually accomplish little, because the 60-vote rule does not actually impede anything. Rather, it is the excuse Democrats fraudulently invoke, using what I called the Rotating Villain tactic (it's now Durbin's turn), to refuse to pass what they claim they support but are politically afraid to pass, or which they actually oppose (sorry, we'd so love to do this, but gosh darn it, we just can't get 60 votes). If only 50 votes were required, they'd just find ways to ensure they lacked 50. Both of those are merely theories insusceptible to conclusive proof, but if I had the power to create the most compelling evidence for those theories that I could dream up, it would be hard to surpass what Democrats are doing now with regard to the public option. They're actually whipping against the public option. Could this sham be any more transparent?

UPDATE:One related point: when I was on Morning Joe several weeks ago, I argued this point -- why aren't Democrats including the public option in the reconciliation package given that they have the 50 votes in favor of the public option? -- and, in response, Chuck Todd recited White House spin and DC conventional wisdom (needless to say) by insisting that they do not have the votes to pass the public option. If that's true -- if they lack the votes to pass the public option through reconciliation -- why is Dick Durbin now whipping against it, telling Senators -- in his own words -- "You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen"?

No discussion of the public option is complete without noting how much the private health insurance industry despises it; the last thing they want, of course, is the beginning of real competition and choice.

UPDATE II: As I've noted before, the column I've written which has produced the highest level of hate mail over the past year (in terms of volume and intensity) was when I compiled the evidence back in August that the White House was working to ensure there'd be no public option in the final bill at exactly the same time Obama was publicly insisting he favored it. The very idea that the President might be saying one thing in public and doing the opposite in private was outrageous and conspiratorial; a politician (or, at least, Barack Obama) would never do such a thing. Yet all along, that's exactly what the White House was doing, and it continues to do exactly that even though there is, at least, a significant chance that there are sufficient votes to enact the public option. That's the reason their explanations and excuses make no sense: because the real reason there's no public option -- they don't want one -- is the one they can't or won't admit.

House Spkr Nancy Pelosi Will Not Include Public Option In Final Bill

By Huffington Post's Sam Stein & Ryan Grim HuffPost

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that she would not include a public option in a health care reconciliation package that the House will send to the Senate.

"We're talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation," Pelosi said, noting "with sadness" that the public insurance option won't be part of legislation. "I'm quite sad that the public option is not in there," she said.

Earlier Thursday, a spokesman to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Majority Whip, said Durbin would "aggressively whip" a health care bill that included a public option.

Pelosi, however, put the onus back on the Senate, saying that the chamber didn't have the votes needed for it.

"I'm not having the Senate, which didn't have a public option in its bill, put any of that on our doorstep," she said. "It did not prevail. What we will have in reconciliation will be something that is agreed upon, House and Senate, that they can pass and we can pass... It isn't in there because they don't have the votes."

Progressive activist Adam Green, who's been leading an outside effort to reintroduce the public option into the debate, said that Pelosi's whip count is unconvincing. "When the Senate Whip says he will aggressively whip the House reconciliation bill through the Senate unamended and onto the President's desk, the Speaker doesn't get to say the Senate lacks the votes," said Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Mark Warner, Tom Harkin, Herb Kohl, Claire McCaskill, and other undeclared senators are not going to vote against the president's top priority, and if Speaker Pelosi refuses to even allow a vote on the public option, then she killed the public option. She needs to step up."

Pelosi is correct that the Senate bill did not include a public option, but when the upper chamber passed its legislation, the vote threshold was at 60 and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) vowed to filibuster it. But under reconciliation, only 50 votes are needed.

Sen. Bernie Sanders to Make Sure Public Option Gets Up-or-Down Vote, Defying Reid, Durbin

By FireDogLake's Jon Walker FDL

We recently learned that Harry Reid (D-NV) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) were actually whipping against the public option and trying to deny the American people a real up-or-down vote on the issue in the Senate. It is good to see that Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is willing to defy them and instead go with the will of the American people. From Greg Sargent:

“I think somebody should do that, and I’d certainly be prepared to do that,” Sanders told me when I asked him if he’d be willing to commit to introducing a public option amendment. This is, in effect, a commitment to introduce the amendment if no one else does.

As I have explained earlier, if even one senator offers a public option amendment, and it is ruled germane, it would likely get an up-or-down vote as part of the reconciliation vote-a-rama. Designing a public option/public program buy-in that would be ruled germane and does not violate the Byrd rule should definitely be possible.

Durbin’s argument against the public option amendment, or any other smart, pro-consumer, Democratic amendments, is that they could endanger passage of the reconciliation bill if it is sent back to the House. Given that Republican sources are saying the Senate parliamentarian ruled the House must first pass the comprehensive Senate health care bill before the reconciliation fixes can be taken up, the fear that the public option amendment could derail the reconciliation fixes seem strange.

If it gets to that point, Durbin will already have the health care reform bill he originally voted for signed into law. The reconciliation fixes are minor, and clearly not overly important to Durbin, since he already voted for a bill with all the “problems” in it. Since Durbin does not want the very important student loan reform bill as part of reconciliation, there is no reason to actually worry about the fate of the reconciliation sidecar bill from his stand point.