Ezra Klein has a draft summary of Senator Baucus’ Finance Committee health care reform bill. It contains no provision for a public plan, though the co-op is still under consideration.
Apparently, the major focus is on cutting federal budget costs, rather than providing health care at affordable cost to all Americans. That follows from the CBO estimates that the original package might have cost $1.6 trillion.
From Ezra:
Sources say that it’s a major scale-back of the outline they had before. Specifically, subsidies have dropped from 400 percent of the poverty line to 300 percent. Medicaid eligibility has been tightened to 133 percent of poverty for children and pregnant women and 100 percent of poverty for parents and childless adults. The plans being offered in the exchange have seen their actuarial values sharply lowered.
Beyond the changes, this is also the clearest look we’ve had at the specific policies being considered. There’s a fairly strong individual mandate, albeit with exemptions for those beneath the poverty line, those who would have to spend more than 15 percent of income for a plan, and undocumented workers. There are a variety of options for an employer mandate, or the absence of one. Sen. Kent Conrad’s co-op idea is up for discussion. There’s no public plan mentioned anywhere in the document.
That’s a pretty pathetic package, and the Committee should be embarrassed to call it "reform." It also looks like the Committee is just bouncing alternative packages off CBO to find one that gets the budget impact under $1 trillion. There’s no connection to any other public policy goal.
Ezra provides a pdf link to the Committee draft.
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“It also looks like the Committee is just bouncing alternative packages off CBO to find one that gets the budget impact under $1 trillion.” ; now if they would only do that for the ‘wars to keep us safe’ !
As an aside, met with two STRONG NRA supporters in efforts to sell an old rv I have and they also think the the Congress is just too damn corrupt for a public option- which they favored- to come to pass. (they weren’t too fond of ’single payer’ but soon realized they hadn’t been told the whole story).
Send your FREE fax to the Whitehouse and Congress:
http://www.1payer.net/
Insist on CBO scoring of single payer.
http://www.pixelfish.com/produ…..s_cut2.wmv
abso-fucking-lutely. let’s get all the competing plans scored — so we can have an informed and honest discussion about the issue and our options.
and i want to see scoring not just for the fed budget numbers, but also for total national health care expenditures as well as budget projections for fed, state, employers and households (by income levels) by year.
also i want numbers for uninsured and underinsured.
this is basic stuff and should be a no-brainer — something that everyone, no matter what policy they favor, ought to be able to support.
from singlepayeraction: SINGLE PAYER AND THE DUPLICITOUS RAHM EMANUEL
that was the duplicitous hoyer part. if you want to see the duplicitous emanuel part you have to click the link and scroll down.
The current healthcare debate is shaping up as a contest between a plan that will be a sham of a sham or one that will be a sham of a sham of a sham. As we don’t have the final plan yet, higher orders of shammery are possible, even likely.
DrSteveB provides essential reading on this, as ever. Keep him recc’d up.
Maybe it’s for the best — in a “let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out” kind of way — that the Finance Committee has chosen to fellate the private insurers so unabashedly, without even a pathetic Schumer-style pretense of a public option. At this point the only valuable public service they can serve is to piss the public off.
the more i think about this, the more i astonished i am. i really expected a crappy public plan (with bogus cost assumptions) to give some surface shine to an insurance industry bailout. but they aren’t even trying to pretend.
In the conflict between life and death issues for citizens vs. profits for vulture insurance scams it is obvious who won in the finance committee.
Sorry for the OT so early but there’s a live blues/gospel celebration of Juneteenth at WMNF Tampa.
Why does the finance committee draft not deal with financing?
thanks!
Look this is a nonstarter the GOP is famous for government programs that are costly and won’t work because they don’t want them to it gives them a reason to hate big government.
We have to oppose this we need standards.
Methinks I hijacked the thread. Ooops.
Hugh,
We need a Hugh’s List of broken Obi promises.
because they think their job is to generate campaign dollars?
this isn’t a policy debate, this is policy by sloganeering with an occasional talking point thrown in. i am heart broken over what the democratic party has become.
I wish the writer included all the relevant legislative information:
1. There is very liberal legislation with a public option being drafted by Kennedy’s HELP Committee.
2. There is also very liberal legislation with a public option being driven through the House of Representatives by Nancy Pelosi.
3. Barack Obama has said repeatedly he wants a public option.
“President Obama, selling his healthcare reform plan on the road in Green Bay, Wis., told a townhall meeting that he believes any plan should include a “public insurance option.”
The insurance parasites obviously have an excellent whiskey, hookers and blow program for our congress critters.
The Senate should be forced to find care the way the rest of us do. They clearly don’t understand what is happening or how to fix it.
what public option?!!?
can you show me any draft legislation? any cost analysis that doesn’t show increased total costs? how are the structural and incentive problems in our current system addressed?
if you can’t answer those questions then you are just exhibit A in evidence of policy debate by sloganeering with an occasional talking point thrown in.
i want some evidence based policy proposals — and that shouldn’t be too much to ask for from a bunch of democrats.
His definition of “public insurance option” may be very different from how many here define it.
Write your own Oxdown diary then, it’s easy.
Called Specter’s office – and his staffer said he is Open – to a Public Option. I stressed the need for a Public Option – because there is no other affordable option with private insurance.
I think people need to keep calling and send emails – hopefully they will see the volume of public outrage at the current proposals. Apparently they are ignoring a Poll saying that 75% of Americans want “Real” Health Care change.
depending on how a public plan is designed, it could just end up being an underfunded dumping ground for the sickest people the insurance companies don’t want to cover (so they can have higher profits, ceo bonuses, etc).
a public plan could be a disaster too — that’s why i keep asking “what public plan?!!?“
Not necessary – I just pointed out it’s flaw.
No one is ignoring the public option. Baucus’s committee is not the end all. Kennedy, Pelosi and Obama all say yes to a public option. Baucus is sending out trial balloons to gauge reaction.
The Peterson Billion-Dollar Babies Brigade is flooding the TradMed with “it’s TOOO EXPENSIVE!” bullshit.
Time for us to start dialing our congresscritters again:
http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov
Which is why our reaction needs to be hard, firm, and immediate:
http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov
Redfish — I agree we need to be keeping all the alternatives in our heads; it’s just not possible to do them all justice in a single post. You might want to scroll through this list:
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/author/70
except that what congress appears to be proposing IS TOO EXPENSIVE.
added overhead for the connector. hundreds of billions continuing to go to insurance companies.
of course they are getting hammered on cost — they might as well be asking for it.
That is such an easy question to answer. There is no draft legislation YET. They just started working on this, it is a massive endeavor, complex and nuanced. What don’t you understand about that? Kennedy’s committee and Pelosi are firmly behind a public option and so is Barack Obama. Eventually we will see the legislation, it will get batted around in committee, there will be plenty of time to debate the merits and people will go on the record supporting or not. Give the process time to work.
i’m calling, and i’m saying hr 676 – single payer universal health care.
Point well take and thanks for the link. However, see this post as another attempt to attack Obama from the left. Sorry – that’s how I see it.
hr 676
s 703
hr 193
draft bills. real legislation. the last one has even been scored in the commonwealth report.
sigh.
Have you noticed that the costing of health care reform which should be called health insurance company bonanzas is almost always forecasted over ten years so that it can be cast as costing at least a trillion dollars? Why is that? So the number will scare people into opposing it. If it were forecasted on an annual basis, the cost would have to be reported at 100 billion dollars per year. And that is peanuts in terms relative to what we spend on other stuff, for example, killing people.
Oh, and the House has released its plan — which includes the public option.
But the TradMed, flush with Pete Peterson money and/or bogus “talking points”, is framing the narrative to try and kill it. Start dialing now to fight back!
Per slinkerwink’s diary above:
You know what to do.
Also use
The Gavel—– http://speaker.gov/blog/
And, if your outrage lasts 4 hours or longer, you need to see a physician. If you have insurance, otherwise, I don’t know…
Again, there is no real legislation until it goes to committee and gets spit out. These are trial balloons to gauge reaction, support and non-support. I repeat, Kennedy’s effort and Pelosi’s both include public options and Obama has gone on the record time and time again voicing his support for a public option.
sigh.
hell, scarecrow is much more even-handed than many of the professional critics here
what bugs me is that all the talk is of fed budget costs – not total national health care costs and components. what good does it do if the fed budget costs are controlled but the total costs go up?
it’s just nuts.
I agree that all the proposals should be scored. And they should updated to include where they stand now and include Rockefeller’s proposal which includes a public plan.
The problem now is that most of the authors think they have complete proposals, but most of them are not complete, and the missing pieces have major effects on what the CBO would score, especially the tradeoffs between budget vs national economy effects.
One example? Since employers are contributing to their employees’ premiums when they provide health insurance at work, what happens when a group of employees aren’t covered, or they say, “we want the public plan” (or open access to Medicare).
The employer would like to say, “fine, and I don’t have to contribute to that,” but the public plan advocate, Jacob Hacker is saying, “yes you do; otherwise we’ll have incentives to make uneconomic choices, cost-shifting, etc) In that framework, he’s right.
That disagreement appears under the name “pay or play.” It says to the employer, you must contribute to the health care (or insurance) costs of your employees. You can contribute to their premiums if your company has a plan, or you can contribute to the fund that helps pay for the plans your employees purchase elsewhere. Pay or play.
The Senate Finance committee is debating this.
Whatever you think about Single payer, it’s simplicity does help us think about this more clearly: everyone gets health care. There’s a cost, so we have to collect revenues, via taxes, etc. We can tax individuals and/or businesses via payroll taxes, tax tranactions, impose a value added tax, whatever. Those are tax adequacy, efficiency and equity questions, which can be completely separated from how people select their health coverage. But once we attach them to employment, for any reason other than it being a simple collection method (payroll taxes), we run into cross-subsidy problems, and that’s where the Senate is stuck and much mischief is likely.
Absolutely predictable.
The easy path:
Provide the care
Count the costs
Implement quality/cost control
Collect the revenues
Allocate to providers
Our Congress is insisting on making this an order of magnitude harder than it needs to be.
you have a bill number so i can look at it?
Works for me! Even if we don’t get single-payer, pushing for it makes it more likely to get at least a real public option (which would eventually drive the private insurers out of business as it’s a much better deal so long as it isn’t hobbled to death).
By the way, if your voice gets hoarse from talking to Capitol Hill people, for a change of pace try writing letters to the editor or posting on various media sites (not just progressive ones) to counter Pete Peterson’s billion-dollar bullpucky brigade’s spewing garbage like this from AP.
A-yep. Which is why I encourage folks to step away from the Amen Corner of the progressive sites and to venture into the wilds of the TradMed, where the unconverted await and where Pete Peterson’s money is currently framing the narrative.
reminds me of geithner’s bailouts. after awhile i had to think the complexity was intended to hide the rip off.
p.s. re cbo scoring and missing pieces. another thing the cbo could do for us is identify what is missing from each proposal. i’d find that very helpful.
what will the people who work in the industry do when it is crushed?
Collect what revenues?
As an example on a state level. California Revenue (-) California Cost To Operate (=) $20 Billion Dollar Budget deficit with 1/3 of every budget dollar going to Medicare.
Any discussion that doesn’t include dealing with costs is going to be a non-starter with voters. Yes, people want a public option. People also want to know how we are going to pay a 1.6 trillion dollar bill — that doesn’t take into consideration fixing what’s broken with Medicare and Medicaid.
obama has promised that his public plan will not do this.
There is a difference between “attacking him from the left” and “pulling him to the left.” The latter is how I see the activity on this site.
Okay, I want a brand new Lamborghini, but I don’t want to pay over $20,000. That sounds about like the Baucus plan.
Canada manages. We can, too.
Stop giving so much frigging money to the Pentagon and give ALL Americans health care that doesn’t end up enriching a bunch of assholes praying on the sick.
This isn’t rocket science.
One more thing that doesn’t get discussed here in the context of health reform. Since Medicaid’s birth, Congress has moved 43% of the costs to the states.
Obama has ruled out single payer, though he once preferred it. Instead, he has endorsed a public plan; he’s open to an individual mandate with some form of employer mandate, but wants exclusions for low income, maybe small businesses. He supports subsidies to help people buy insurance. He would have MedPAC induce improvements in care, incentives, etc.
In lieu of single payer, that could be argued to be a coherent proposal, but it all has to fit together. If he compromises on any of the key components — such as the public plan, or the MedPAC authority — it could make matters worse, or improve things only marginally at great cost. I’ve beat the shit out compromises that look like sell outs. I’m not subtle about this.
I’ve supported him when he hangs tough on the package; I’ve criticized Obama and Sebelius when he seemed to get undue credibility to compromises that I don’t think will do the job — such as substituting co-ops for public plan.
So yeah, I’ll criticize Obama when he proposes something that might work, asks for our support, I give in spades, but then he undercuts us with pointless efforts to obtain one stupid Republican vote by compromising the whole effort.
Jane has a new post up…
I can read. It’s attacking; often vulgar, demeaning and full of hatred. And what about Obama is a surprise to you? . . . that he is a moderate, pragmatic liberal progressive instead of a radical extremist one? Shouldn’t be a surprise — he has basically communicated that all along.
Understood, very valid. Everyone knows single payer is not a viable option in this country. We are not Canada or France, that is just the reality. Obama will try to get the best plan with a public option that he can get through Congress. I do agree that the devil is in the details and that we shall see. It’s fine to debate the merits but until we get final bills out of committee it’s all conjecture. There are many trial balloons being sent right now.
Bottom line in the end will be cost.
No, I don’t think he made that promise. He said it’s not his purpose to create a trojan horse for socialized medicine. He’s playing with the words the critics are misusing.
Ironically, one could realize an upside to this…
It could actually force people to cut down on their High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption…! ;-)
:-) agreed
that’s how i understood this:
maybe i’ve misunderstood but i think that my understanding is backed up by this statement (via ralphbon):
Folks surely must realize he is a moderate, as you have pointed out. I can’t disagree that there are a lot of harshly worded comments here. But, as you have also read, kind and thoughtful comments usually don’t get a lot of feedback. There seems to be an abundance of crickets when a comment is critical of the ongoing snarkiness so prevalent here.
I’m not advocating censorship, just wish there was a little more openness to divergent opinions.
Yes. That’s probably more “pro-active” than CBO likes to be; they have to remain bi-partisan. So even creating a list of elements, or questions that have to be answered, would be viewed as biasing the debate. So it’s up to the Democrats to ask the right questions and define the alternatives well, because you know the Republicans are gaming the outcomes by what they ask CBO to score — that’s how they embarrassed Kennedy, and then Baucus.
I love how these Senaters, like Orin Hatch, talked about my good friend Ted, and then screw him, score points and hurt the country.
Obama’s advocacy of single payer in 2003 was at an AFL-CIO convention where it would have been suicide not to advocate single payer. How many other times did he repeat this?
This is a Trojan Horse for the final stages of The Shock Doctrine, not socialism.
Love your posts. Juicy. Keep them coming.
I totally concur. I think people can/should agree to disagree in a polite and reasonable manner.
good point. i hadn’t thought of that.
“Everyone knows single payer is not a viable option in this country. We are not Canada or France, that is just the reality.”
It’s people like you repeating that mantra who make it an unviable option.
We should all take a lesson from Orrin Hatch. (I disagree with him 99% of the time politically). But he demonstrates that one can be civil and disagree on the issues.
No it’s not sir. It’s people like you who refuse to deal with the fact that there are millions of Americans who live between the coasts that do not think like you do. There will never be a single payer system in this country; that is just reality.
My email to Daschle:
Mr. Daschle,
My husband could die because of your failure to support what the American people want in health care reform. 76% want a public option. Why could we bail out crooked bankers with trillions of American citizens’ dollars but not find the money necessary to fund decent, affordable health care?
You are a corporatist and made 2.5 million from the health “care” industry in the last two years. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you would like to apologize to me my phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Ever Pissed,
Mary McCurnin
Why not? Maybe some day we will have people in the Congress smart enough to realize that we are paying twice the amount for health care than any other developed country. That’s just plain dumb and inefficient. That’s really what we should be yelling about.
So, this is not true:
“a real public option (which would eventually drive the private insurers out of business”
Selise: obama has promised that his public plan will not do this.
A public plan may or may not draw consumers away from private insurers. My belief is that it will, and could, if designed well, draw most of them away over time. Whether they get driven out of business, or retain significant, or only niche markets is impossible to predict.
But Obama is not promising any of these outcomes. He’s saying we need a public plan to provide consumers a choice (which implies some would choose the public plan instead of private) and to keep the private insurers honest. That’s not a promise to keep the insurers if they lose the competition or a promise that they won’t be driven out.
The trojan horse rhetoric is false. The public plan is not a secret. It’s an open proposal; the insurers see it coming. That’s why they’re screaming. The Greeks are coming! They fear it will be too competitive, but that threat is not hidden. It’s staring them in the face.
You could argue, well the hidden piece is some future plan, not revealed, to so strongly subsidize/support the public plan, that it will drive the private insurers out of business. But nothing Obama has said supports that view. So when he or Sebelius deny the trojan horse argument, there is no evidence they are not telling the truth. What they really think? Who knows?
I can support this open challenge to the current system, primarily because if forces the industry to explain why it’s afraid of competition. I want that challenge to be “robust,” hence I’ve argued against “hobbling” the public plan.
Describing this as giving people choice and making insurers honest is a brilliant political strategy, and it’s the argument that, IMO, is keeping us in the ballgame. And I’ve tried to reinforce the argument by reminding folks that the industry by itself is highly concentrated and thus incapably of achieving an efficient, competitive outcome without strong competition from a robust public option.
I wish the world were as you describe. In the meantime, I would sooner take civics lessons from a snake than form Orin Hatch.
plus he lisps
I do not disagree with you on single payer; that is my strong preference. However, I am a political pragmatist that believes there is no chance a single payer plan would pass Congress. Accordingly, I choose to focus on what is attainable – health care reform with a public option.
I agree with just about everything you’ve said. However, it seems to me that a government option can only be prevented from evolving into a single payer system if the electorate and future administrations wish to continue to limit it arbitrarily. Otherwise, without stockholders and with CEO’s on civil service salaries, I don’t see how it would fail to provide a more viable option for all except those desiring the most exorbitant procedures.
P.S. Please keep this opinion to yourself and don’t allow it to get out to the right.
Be that as it may, his friendship with Ted Kennedy is genuine and meaningful to them both. I suggest you consider what Ted Kennedy feels about the relationship. Life is too short.
Your secret is safe with me. You make a really excellent point — getting the foot in the door is often 80% of the battle. Hint, hint. Let’s get the tiny snowball rolling downhill and I’ll meet ‘ya at the bottom.
Out entire system has always been based on competition and I’m certainly not going to worry about the health care industry or the AMA. If they can’t compete maybe they need to get out of the business – there’s always banking.
I hope you will express these views here, and often.
i’m not trying to get all semantic on you, but if PW had written “eventually drive SOME private insurers out of business” instead of “eventually drive THE private insurers out of business” (my emphasis) i wouldn’t have disagreed that it’s possible with a well design public option and that nothing i’ve seen obama or sebelius say contradicts that possibility.
but driving THE private insurers out of business would leave us with only the public option. and that, i think, is what obama and sebelius have said will not happen.
I don’t deny these men have genuine friendships. And those friendships may, over the long run, allow them to produce joint efforts that are in the public intereest — or not.
We don’t send them there to become buddies. They’re job is to produce legislation that’s in the public interest. There are too many examples of them doing the opposite.
My generic point was that the civility shown in the debates is belied by their dishonest actions and statements outside the chamber. It’s like a game: they respect each other’s ability to kneecap the other while calling them “my good friend. And when they’re outside the arena, they can sit down, have a beer together, and laugh about it, while 50 millions Americans go without health insurance.
Well, thanks.
It seems that when we have longer threads, there tends to be more genuine back and forth. Like now. I’ve had some great conversations with many commenters, like Selise for example, or Thingscomeundone, where we started out at seeming cross purposes, or at least not exactly on the same page. But, then after a thoughtful and civil conversation, could see where the other person was coming from, respected each other and in the end, felt some satisfaction.
(((Communication)) Ya gotta love it!
Scarecrow, Thank you for continuing to provide us with excellent information concerning this evolving legislation. In addition, I commend you for not shouting down opinions that might be different than yours.
No, Obama has not said that. The quotes you cited don’t say that; that is your interpretation of what you think he means, which is fine. You can believe what you like.
The ONLY reason that single-payer isn’t a “viable” option is lobbyists:
Health Care, Health Insurance, & Pharma
5. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000
8. Pfizer, Inc: $6,140,000
12. American Medical Association: $4,240,000
18. American Hospital Association: $3,580,000
19. Eli Lilly and Company: $3,440,000
37. America’s Health Insurance Plans, Inc: $2,030,000
39. CVS Caremark Inc: $2,005,000
47. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association: $1,800,000
49. GlaxoSmithKline: $1,780,000
63. Merck & Co: $1,500,000
65. United Health Group, Inc: $1,500,000
69. Sanofi-Aventis U.S. Inc: $1,460,000
76. Novartis: $1,347,134
87. Abbott Laboratories: $1,260,000
89. Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals, LP: $1,250,000
92. Medtronic, Inc: $1,238,000
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/…..licy-sucks
if only scarecrow was writing the regulations, i’d agree. as it is that’s not how it has been working in practice. perverse incentives (adverse selection, lobbying to game the regulations, etc) are very much an issue.
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5739
like i said, maybe i’m misunderstanding. hope that is so.
Redfish,
Perhaps in the political climate today many FDLers are considered extreme. The right has pushed the balance of public discourse and political reason so far to the right that even the middle has become very conservative. But the stances taken here are really not extreme they just don’t mesh comfortably with what the powers that be want. It is the job of progressives to push that balance back towards a more humane center. Just because we are told that the American people are a conservative bunch doesn’t necessarily make it so. I say this with respect.
The Senate has always been the more civil and distinguished of the two bodies. Yes we sent them there to work — but that doesn’t mean personal friendships don’t develop. I don’t care one way or the other but I always like when civility trumps open disdain.
Ah — I see the distinction you’re making. I think what you are saying is,
“Obama has proposed something than cannot drive the privates out of business, because it’s not good enough, etc, so by proposing that, he is, in effect, promising not to drive them out of business.”
You seem to be describing cause/effect and drawing the implication; I’m parsing the literal words by saying, “no he never [literally said] that.”
Please bring that to every health care thread. It may be the most relevant set of facts.
Okay, I guess we’re speaking. In my view the incremental approach that opens the door and leaves the evolution to the future electorate is preferable to throwing everything in on one shot, in a nation in which the majority of voters only stopped endorsing the second Gilded Age less than a year ago.
Same reason they’re working so hard to get rid of the public option. They think that both the employers and employees will flee to the public option and make private insurance obsolete. What’s more, likely they’re right.
Hey, Mare!
I was listening (with a barf bag in my lap) to Ginny Fox’s yapping on the house floor this morning. Her typical gross generalization of Democrats. It reminded me that when people start yelling, all I hear is the volume, not the words. When Ginny’s getting ugly, I don’t hear what she’s trying to say, I only hear mean wah wah wah. So, with that in mind, I just have to say that is really the only reason I ever bring up the way people speak here. Whether it’s a reaction to our current political climate, how one says something is as important as what they are saying. Or not. YMMV. :)
Mary thanks for that. I do have to disagree in this context. I consider myself a liberal and a progressive especially on social issues. I am a bit more moderate on foreign policy matters. First and foremost I have become a political pragmatist; that does not mean relinquishing one’s idealism or core beliefs. It does mean recognizing that when it’s raining it’s raining and no amount of shouting, hatred or intolerance will change that. I think that when you recognize the political landscape for what it really is — you have the chance to get the best deal you can. That is I think where Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel are coming from. I absolutely believe behind closed doors they are as progressive as you may be — they just are pragmatists that deal with the reality of the political landscape as they see it.
That having been said, the polls show pretty conclusively that America is a conservative leaning country so I respectfully disagree with your contention that the right is helping define the middle as being more conservative than it really is. A recent Gallup poll showed 40% of Americans saw themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate and 21% as liberal.
I think a sizable majority of FDLers are extreme and that’s ok, that’s their right to express their opinions anyway they so choose.
Yes. Single-payer is not extreme. Extreme is calling a viable, widely-supported option, one that works in other countries, extreme.
Is social security extreme? NO.
They want to keep health care in the hands of people who seek to profit off the sickness of others, who insert themselves between human beings and their doctors in order to make a buck. THAT is extreme.
Stick around and we extremists will convert you. The transition is painful, but you get over it.
I cannot remember where the poll came from but when asked questions about health care, banking, etc. folks answered in a liberal way. They identify as conservative or moderate but when questioned in a very specific manner their answers reflected a liberal bent.
Does anyone remember the poll? I have to start saving all of this information so I can document better.
Hey Demi! Keep your barf bag handy. You will need it in the coming days.
Ha Ha. I’ve been here since the Libby trial and I’m still not converted. I care a great deal, but I’m just pragmatic or something. I also see the need for viewing things in context.
Now, I’m going to take my enigmatic ass to the gym for a pound of prevention.
And, thanks, Scarecrow, for all of your hard work.
Should be have a new nickname for this site: Barf Bags, Brain Bleach and Popcorn?
Here are some posted by a group in Western PA:
http://www.wpasinglepayer.org/PollResults.html
One recent poll concludes:
The Tide Appears to Be Shifting in Favor of National Health Insurance When given a choice of the current system or one “like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers,” voters overwhelmingly chose the latter. A solid majority (59%) say they would prefer a national health insurance program that covers everyone, over the current system of private insurance offered to most through their employer.
http://www.consumerwatchdog.or…..llMemo.pdf
Thanks!
Now I have to go make some moolaa. Keep up the good work folks!
We need to civilize this health care issue.
L.A. Times on Wednesday:
http://www.latimes.com/busines…..0586.story
Is there any better reason to get rid of this lousy health insurance system?
They are literally KILLING people for profit.
Does anyone know if any of these reform plans include a proposal for significantly increasing the number of doctors and nurses. I am convinced this is part of the solution.
Many people are applying to nursing schools and cannot get in because there aren’t enough slots. One of the reasons is that teachers cannot be found. Nurses start at about $70,000 a years. Try getting someone away from that kind of salary to teach nursing. The solution is to pay professors more. All professors in all subjects. And for that matter teachers in primary and secondary schools, too. That is any thread though.
My daughter is getting her masters in nursing in August!
Yes, I know about that problem with the nursing schools having a hard time finding instructors. In my state a plan for increasing the University’s nursing program was put on hold for this very reason.
Of course, the solution is to boost the instructors compensation. It should be part of this plan.
The same is true for medical schools and PA programs.
Just kill the whole thing. What a sham. At least if we let this problem fester for a while there may be impetus for real reform later.
IMHO.
Thanks for a great post Scarecrow and for all you do.
PW thanks for the extra push
What a glorious thread; hooray for you all, especially Scarecrow, Selise, and all those who have witty comments without being absurdly snarky.
Has anyone seen the Cal Thomas column (in today’s Sac Bee) excoriating ABC for their planned 6/24 event at the White House on health care reform and the Repubs demand equal time to give their side. It seems to me that their side – ie the medical industry, health insurance industry and Big Pharma have the dominant final say on all kinds of MSM reporting on the issue. I’m no longer amazed when the final word (in the interest of balance??????) declares that “single payer” or “public option” can’t possibly be approved.
I agree that those two terms need to be defined and will be defined differently by various speakers. The “robust public option” definition invitation elsewhere at FDL today is an intriguing invitation.
But I also had to laugh (with contemptuous scorn) over Thomas’ recitation of journalist ethics, remembering how MSM pretty consistently read the White House or other Repub institutional press releases as news rather than real reporting.
Reading the dialogue here has brought me out of my despair for a while and I praise God that FDL is here doing what it does, particularly on this issue.
Blessings to all
See http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/…..octor.html for a marvelous articulation for a robust public option position
Blessings to all
more like:
“Obama has promised not to propose anything that will drive (all) the private insurance companies out of business, because that would end up being a kind of single payer and he’s promised not to propose anything which could lead to single payer.”
from that i conclude that the only kind of public plan Obama is advocating is one that will NOT drive (all) the private insurance companies out of business. which i’d think means that the public plan won’t have the 20 – 30% cost savings we ought to see.
obama really is the master of vague. maybe you are hearing your hopes and i am hearing my fears? it would be nice if obama proposed some demonstration legislation — not with the intent to ask congress to pass it, but rather as an example of what the heck he is talking about.