LA Times reporters Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger assess how well health care consumers are faring in the battle against the mega insurers, and the verdict is not good: the insurers are winning.
. . . the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.
The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers — many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies’ premiums.
"It’s a bonanza," said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive for 20 years who now tracks reform legislation as president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates Inc. . . . Laszewski said the industry’s reaction to early negotiations boiled down to a single word: "Hallelujah!" . . .
"The insurers are going to do quite well," said Linda Blumberg, a health policy analyst at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. "They are going to have this very stable pool, they’re going to have people getting subsidies to help them buy coverage and . . . they will be paid the full costs of the benefits that they provide — plus their administrative costs."
But the insurers are not done fleecing the public. Baucus’ Gang of Six deliberations have been done entirely behind closed doors, in violation of every principle of open government and accountability. You and I don’t know what they’re giving way, and even other members of Senate Finance have been kept in the dark. But the insurers know, because their lobbyists are on the inside, and they’re working the committee to increase the health care costs consumers must bear:
In May, the Senate Finance Committee discussed requiring that insurers reimburse at least 76% of policyholders’ medical costs under their most affordable plans. Now the committee is considering setting that rate as low as 65%, meaning insurers would be required to cover just about two-thirds of patients’ healthcare bills. According to a committee aide, the change was being considered so that companies could hold down premiums for the policies.
Most group health plans cover 80% to 90% or more of a policyholder’s medical bills, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Industry officials urged that the government set the floor lower so insurers could provide flexible, more affordable plans.
"It is vital that individuals, families and small-business owners have the flexibility to choose an affordable coverage option that best meets their needs," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s Washington-based lobbying shop.
Consumer advocates argue that a lower government minimum might quickly become the industry standard, placing a greater financial burden on patients and their families.
"These are a bad deal for consumers," said J. Robert Hunter, a former Texas insurance commissioner who works with the Consumer Federation of America.
And who’s in there helping this along? Why it’s industry-paid insider and White House BFF, Tom Daschle.
In the first half of 2009, the health service and HMO sector spent nearly $35 million lobbying Congress, the White House and federal healthcare offices, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
With more than 900 lobbyists, that sector — whose top spenders are insurance giants UnitedHealth, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna — was poised to spend more than in 2008, a record lobbying year.
UnitedHealth spent the most, $2.5 million in the first half of 2009, and hired some of Washington’s most prominent political players, including Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who served as an informal health policy advisor to Obama.
It’s time to open the doors and windows and let in some sunshine. Shut down the closed meetings and end the insider deals. Publish the proposals coming from lobbyists and reveal all the deals and demand the Senate conduct the public’s business in public.
The corrupt, secretive and unrepresentative Gang of Six process is an affront to American democracy, and the White House endorsement and manipulation of that cabal is a shameful disgrace. Clean up that act, Obama.
Related:
Commonwealth Fund Study, Employer-based Health Premiums increased 119 percent; will double again in decade
Kaiser Health News, Industry may benefit – AHIP lobbying
Kaiser Health News, Gang of Six not in agreement
WSJ, New splits emerge in health-plan talks
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I thought the era of lobbyists writing the Congressional legislation was supposed to have ended when the Dems took over Congress again.
How naive of me.
Yes, thank you. Also, stop supporting some vague promise of a “public option”. It means something different to everyone. Start defining it in crystal clear terms. I know FDL is trying to do that, but the comments in blogs, what I hear from my neighbors, etc., is confused. The term “public option” is strategically amorphous, so it must be clearly defined. Otherwise, a bill will come out with something called “public option” that does not meet the tests FDL has supported and advocated for, but it will be too late. The vast majority of people supporting “public option” will not understand the nuances.
I agree the public option needs eventually to be carefully defined in ways that ensure its viability and attractiveness. I don’t think the legislation is likely to do that, nor am I that worried about it at this point. The concept — and directive to the Sec. of HHS — that there should be a viable choice that is committed to fair coverage, practice reforms and reasonable costs is what I want to see in the bill — Congress is probably not the best entity to define all the features or dictate the arrangements for how this works, and who would we trust there? I think those battles will occur in the development/administration, and I see it as an ongoing struggle. The bill is just the first step, and even that limited effort is difficult. But I hear the concerns that an ill-defined concept might easily fail.
Uh, which administration would that be? That’s a terrible idea. You seem to think a) that the legislation doesn’t already narrowly define the public option to include firewalls and a host of other features that render it useless, and b) that political appointees will be better a assigning components of the plans than Congress.
Precisely, Scarecrow. I consider this to be the unanswerable response to the bad-faith, posturing pretense of a desire to achieve “bipartisanship.”
“Bipartisanship” at the expense of open government and democratic debate – never mind worthy substance – Mr. President, Mr. Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Powerful Finance Chair Baucus?? Really? Let’s hear you explicitly say that then, on the record.
I don’t know how many people recall the details of the (non-public) manufacturing and subsequent passage of the FISA Amendments Act in the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2008. But Russ Feingold, I believe it was, at one point along the way revealed in frustration that the Intelligence Committee was basically presented with a fait accompli – a completed FAA bill, obviously mostly written by the White House – by Jay Rockefeller and Kit Bond, that was essentially ordered to pass, as was in the name of bipartisanship.
Meaning that, in practice, no meaningful committee amendments were to be entertained on this vital bill, for fear of disrupting said purportedly-delicate “bipartisan” deal (bipartisan meaning one Republican and one Democrat), per the dictate of Chairman Rockefeller. And, unbelievably, the Democrats on that committee went along with that outrageous command (partly in hopes, it’s true, that they could remedy problems and actually offer amendments in the sequential referral of the bill to the Judiciary Committee – but Harry Reid had the last laugh on that plan, didn’t he…). And thus the FAA bill was promptly passed out of Rockefeller’s Intelligence Committee with all but three Democrats voting in favor, upon which it was forever-afterward hailed by its proponents as a triumphant and overwhelmingly “bipartisan” achievement, and declared unimprovable by further (or any) amendment, as a result… Talk about the bastardization of democratic process and the deliberate subversion of full and fair legislative debate and amendment.
Well, apparently Obama and Baucus watched that insidious Bush/Bond/Rockefeller/Reid power play with admiration, because the same damn thing is being attempted on the health insurance reform issue, this time by Baucus and a Democratic White House assisted by Reid, with a few Republican friends providing the holy grail of “bipartisan” cover. And now the vast majority of yet another Senate committee, proving its members irresponsibly serve Party power at the expense of public democratic deliberation and debate, silently and uncomplainingly waits for Baucus to present to them for rubberstamping his privately-drafted Chairman’s Mark as an untouchable, delicately-balanced, no-amending-possible done deal – not just for the Senate Finance Committee, but for the Senate as a whole, never mind the publicly and democratically-amended Senate HELP Committee bill, whose ‘inconvenient’ components will be quickly jettisoned by Reid when the time is right.
Included in that democracy-spurning finance committee membership, and getting a taste of his own Intelligence Committee medicine, is Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the shut-out finance subcommittee of jurisdiction, and Chuck Schumer, a powerful Senator with genuine clout on Party leadership, who’s glibly pretending to be powerless to influence the doings of Baucus & Co., while the actual committee of which he’s a member sits idle, obediently waiting for the final dictates of Obama and Baucus.
Just a thought scarecrow… You should probably name names when mentioning the gang of six.
So many senate gangs… so little time.
No, I’m aware of the firewall restrictions. But I also believe that lots of details about programs congress enacts should be worked out by Administrative agencies through rule-making processes, which can be more transparent that what we’re seeing in Congress. It’s not a guarantee of good results, but we don’t get that in any event.
Let’s hear some more about the shrewd 3-dimensional chess game that obama is playing to get his desired legislation done. Health care is following in the footsteps of all that was going to change in the DC political landscape. I know that people with say that I can’t give up and drop out of the national political process because that is what the dim and rethug leadership is hoping for: the fewer of us that participate, the easier it is to do the backroom deals. I must ask, however, how hard is it for them now to brush aside approximately 3/4 of the voting public and do whatever they want to do? If obama wanted real health care change, he would have defined it and gone after it strongly; there would not have been such ambivilence in message and lack of definition in shape for the legislation.
Maybe the Obama we got to know in October and November will return from Martha’s Vineyard. Hope it’s not the timorous wonk that we’ve seen this summer. What a disaster!
i want to move to France
Excellent, terribly important analysis, pow wow.
Thank you.
And thank the people who are beginning to step up and confront this arrogant, anti-democratic behavior.
The “people” are, as never before in my lifetime, including the Vietnam era, growing in awareness and beginning to develop the courage which may, just possibly, turn our nation into a country we once more may be proud of.
Proud of for the right and proper reasons.
Amid the shameful behaviors of so very many who were elected or appointed to “serve” who instead serve the interests of their true “clients”, those who bribe and direct them; the will of the people has begun to become action, encouraged by Jane Hamsher and others, here at the lake and elsewhere, whose long and diligent efforts are truly affecting the body politic.
The struggle is begun in earnest now, there is no turning back, no retreat into numb despair nor distraction into meaningless diversions … to turn back now would be disastrous for the genuine hopes for a humane, just and sustainable future.
It is not hyperbole to suggest that this is as critical a time as any this nation has ever faced – from the struggle for its beginnings to the Civil War and all the wars which followed (most fought for dubious reasons and always to the clear enrichment of a “special” few), to the Great Depression whose depths we may yet plumb, ourselves.
The very nature of our society and whether the Constitution itself will survive, intact and meaningful, are the questions of our moment…
Yet we, the people, are far more prepared, resilient and powerful in our desire for liberty and justice, than our adversaries can imagine or believe.
The future is ours, if we can earn it.
DW
Now there’s a health care plan we can support.
So, let me get this straight, you write a post about how the insurers are poised to reap huge benefits from the health care “reforms” being bandied about in Congress, but you are willing to trade off huge yellow flags like the articles you cite for an undefined public option, even though the articles do not say that an undefined public option would mean insurers would not greatly benefit from the reforms they helped craft, correct?
I think the main thing the legislation needs to do is make it clear that the public option is to be used to control costs, meaning that it relates to Medicare and the government can use its purchasing power to drive down prices. None of this level playing field junk.
Isn’t the Gang of Six doing exactly what Clinton tried to do this in the 90s? Where’s Ira Magaziner?
Health care reform failure means all the other sharks are circling Obama.
Some of us are going to try it out.
Can someone please tell me when these negotiations will be re-played on C-SPAN? I must have missed the live broadcast then-Senator Barack Obama promised during his presidential campaign. I’d really like to see these meetings, too.
I fault FDL for not alerting me to the original broadcast.
No, not even close. Given the absence of a proposal to displace the current system, which I believe is justified, we’re left only with the possibility that an institution can be planted that could, over time, gradually displace the current system, or at least create the conditions in which such displacement would finally be seen as political feasible. We don’t have a choice between something very good and something very bad; we have only a choice between something that seems unacceptable and something that is marginally less unacceptable but that could become transformative over time. It’s all we have. I didn’t create the choices; I’m just acknowledging where we are.
Any real reform has to strip away a least some of the profits from the health industrial complex. The reform has to address the notion that when lives are at stake the market is not going to save them, it’s there to make profits.
The reform has to decouple for profit from life and death issues – ie health of the people.
It’s not JUST the insurers who provide NO VALUE ADDED to the delivery of health care, it’s all the greedy SOBs who are in it for the money (big money and fat profits). This includes the for profit hospitals, drug companies, doctors and makers of med equipment.
There are some things that should not be profit centers. Education is one of them. Police and fire fighting is another and so should the health industry. No one is expected to starve, good middle class even upper middle class incomes should be possible. But let’s get real here. People are making tons of money of the sickness and “healing” of our citizens. It’s a huge profit center and growing.
We can afford health care if we get rid of the profits – the obscene ones in every nook and cranny of the health industrial complex.
I think you are correct, but the issues are not being laid out. Health care and free market capitalism don’t mix.
I think (hope) the actual nature of the “final” “marginally less unacceptable” “something” is flexible, depending on just how clearly the majority of citizens insist that their collect voices be heard …
There is some nervousness in the swamp.
Let us continue to work on that uncertainty.
Thugs are unnerved when their perceived victims do not act according to plan … especially when there are many more than the lovers of brute power expected.
DW
Ok, but your choice actually further entrenches the US populous in a health finance system administered by for-profit, private third party payers. We have a system that could be expanded upon if the idea was to have a government financed health care system somewhere down the road. It’s Medicare. In the mean time, while you seem to be pining your hopes on what might, maybe, perhaps will happen at some later date, millions of more Americans will be enrolled into the costly private system, and not only that, but millions of tax payer dollars will be spent virtually completely on the private, for-profit system in the form of tax subsidies. The policy you are choosing to support will grow the private, for-profit health finance system. I don’t know how you can not be concerned that a behemoth private, for-profit industry would have even more lobbying power in Congress.
This whole healthcare debate has demonstrated all that is rotten about the process. At this point, I would favor defeat of the whole package and resubmission of a smaller bill prohibiting the most egregious insurance company practices.
If and when depression hits in 2011, it may be easier to get Medicare for All passed just to keep Americans from rioting in the streets.
I don’t think I’ve ever written that health care and/or health insurance can be provided efficiently via “free market capitalism.” I’ve been saying the opposite and been siting Krugman and others in support.
Nor have I said that simply adding a public option suddenly makes the insurance market a model of efficient competition. I doesn’t. All it does is give consumers another choice, a different choice with a different set of incentives, and one that we hope would be a viable, attractive alternative to what the industry offers. If it can’t do that, then it can’t do what people are hoping.
Netanyahu is a fascist. He was never going to play ball with Obama anyway.
Maybe so, but he won’t be the last to realize that Obama’s clock has been punched.
A most reasonable “plan”. Given what we face.
And probably, how things, economically, will actually play out.
Thanks for hightlighting Wendell Potter. I put up a diary of another clip of him last week. The more exposure the better. The real question is why the corporate media has censored informed discussion of health care reform. Hope Scarecrow doesn’t mind, but I am reposting the media contacts I gave in my diary last week. Everyone should contact the media and ask why Potter has only appeared on PBS and the ‘liberal’ MSNBC shows.
Also, it is becoming clear that information and mass marches will not be enough to budge the hopelessly corrupt system it is now clear we live in. Time to Money Up for the Midterms (MUM, for mom and apple pie) (in edit: prolly ‘for deal old mum’ would be a better explanation, but that would bring on more attacks against the NHS). I hope FDL and associated organizations consider ramping up their health reform political donation campaign into seed money needed to primary some of the most egregious and vulnerable crooks. And go after some of the vulnerable republicans.
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3068843
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/…..ml?tag=ftr
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
NBC and MSNBC news shows
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/
Chris Matthews
http://www.thechrismatthewssho…..ntact.html
A sure bet, eCHAN.
If H1N1 hits in September it’ll definitely be easier.
You make assumptions I don’t share. Of course there’s a concern about pouring billings into the existing system and making them even more powerful. The public option is a way to draw some of that off and, over time, draw of a lot of it away from the industry. If there’s no Public option that can do that, I wouldn’t support a mandate with subsidies, for that reason.
Would I prefer to limit the federal subsidies to getting more people into Medicare/Medicaid? Of course. I’ve said that in other posts. Would I like to see the PO modeled on/linked to Medicare? Sure. Would I have preferred to have the debate be between a national/universal health care system versus what we have? Yes. I frankly don’t understand what you think the disagreement is.
Do you think Obama’s CDC is any more prepared than W’s was for anthrax? Buncha jerks running around like chickens with their heads cut off. (Any CDCers on the thread feel free to educate me.)
The disagreement is that I can not fathom how someone can support a private, for-profit, tax payer subsidized health finance plan based on a hypothetical public option. The firewalls prevent nearly all “consumers” from having a choice.
thats like a prosecutor saying in his closing statement:
“ladies & gentlemen of the Jury, you and I both want to see health care reform in this great country.
Defense counsel has a strong case that it is the insurance industry that is writing this bill that will profit enormously, co-opting the might of the state to force everyone to buy their crappy product at whatever price they see fit to sell it at, and dock your pay in taxes to pay for those who cannot pay the price demanded by the insurance cartel.
This will be very costly to the taxpayer and to society overall, but extremely profitable to those who are currently benefitting the most from todays broken system.
We do not dispute these claims, indeed, we cannot.
Instead we say, does not the passage of something we call ‘Reform’ galvanize you with excitement, knowing that it “could become transformative over time”?
By analogy, we know in the criminal justice system that the best way to find the real perpetrator of some terrible crime, is to convict and imprison some other guy and lock him up.
That is all we are asking you to do, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury – vote for the terrible plan we have concocted, because that is clearly the only way forward. And let me remind you, you basically have no choice!”
Did anyone expect anything different? Remember the drug plan. Justa replay.
The firewalls aren’t permanent. The Sec of HHS has the discretion to open the gates starting in 2015. The fight about opening the firewall will come in 2014, but there will be no fight at all if there is no PO. If you don’t think that possibility is worth fighting for, then fine; it’s a reasonable judgment. I don’t see another alternative on the table.
Perhaps, but I am more of the opinion that what is happening with healthcare is in line with what Obama wanted in the first place. So not exactly punched. As for Israel, the loathesome Dennis Ross is back at the White House so the likelihood of any new or fresh thinking on the Middle East is pretty much toast.
I’ve never made such an argument.
If Obama wanted this outcome, and I won’t argue that he didn’t, then he played his hand to look like a loser. Being or looking like a loser has consequences.
(BTW you can take the double negative in this first sentence out and shoot it if you’d like.)
2015 would be at the end of an increasingly unlikely Obama second term. If Obama isn’t re-elected in 2012, all bets are off. If there is a depression in 2011, all bets are off. Given where we are now, 2015 is a couple of political ages away.
Pow wow that’s a post. Hope you put that up.
watertiger is upstairs!
Late Night: I Asked For Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams Attached to Their Heads!
He does indeed look like a loser. But he is following a game plan that has become old hat for him by now. Big speech promising change. Immediately walks back most of what he promised. Does outreach to Republicans who demand more changes although they will eventually vote against it anyway. Passes it on to the Blue Dogs and conservative Senators who with the lobbyists finish the process of evisceration. Et voilà presto we have another crap conservative piece of “reform” legislation ready for him to sign.
The progressives out in the country were as usual to be completely ignored and those in the Congress, the few that were needed, would be stripped off. The problem was the progressive blogosphere was watching, the Congress moved too slowly, the Republicans were too crazy, and the lobbyists too greedy. Obama may still get the bill he wants but I agree it will be a political defeat for him, one that could well doom his Presidency.
yeah allright, its a strained comparison, a work in progress.
But doesn’t this advocacy for the Least Worst get a bit tiresome, eventually?
the Sec of HHS might reduce some firewalls in 2015, might make it easier for a few more people to opt into a PO that was weakened and enfeebled and postponed on purpose … that is worth fighting for for you, now, but the compelling case for true Single Payer, HR 676, that is not worth fighting for because you Party Leadership has deemed it “off the table”?
Naw, just I’m saying a health care debacle at this time would remind the forgetful people of how very important health care is.
imposing individual mandates on an impoverished nation would doom his Presidency to infamy, but might inspire a 3rd party coalition to form in order to repeal the despised mandates.
maybe that is Obama’s secret plan . . . hows that for 11th dimensional chess!
Actually, yeah.
There was no viable anthrax vax in 2001. Actually, there still isn’t a viable anthrax vax today.
We’ve got what appears to be an effective H1N1 vaccine in trials now. It’s a big race between production and flu season at this point. We’re light years ahead of where we were wrt anthrax in 2002.
I don’t disagree that the politics five years out could be even worse than they are today. But so what? Should we make no efforts today because it will all be undone then? This is the fight we have now, and so far, you’ve chosen not to be in it, Hugh, and I’m sorry about that. We need you.
Look, the post is about why the idea of strong government involvement in the economy should be a given, when it’s obvious that such an involvement is a necessity. The post says you can justify huge government involvement in health care and/or health insurance, and yet we’re having to fight like hell just to keep open the possibility of a choice of a modest public option that may or may not be expanded eventually. It’s a complaint about the cramped debate and a plea to broaden it.
In the years you’ve been commenting/posting here, I don’t recall you ever arguing against those principles, and yet you come here every day to complain about how we’re not doing enough to advance the cause. Jeez, Hugh, we’re barely hanging on to a concept because that’s all we’ve got at the moment; this is where the battle is, right now, and we need you.
that battle is lost, and that battle is stupid. You should distance yourself far, far from such a battle, because a plan that imposes mandates (with or without a symbolic PO that needs a small squad of policy wonk apologists to try to explain) will be gravely detested by folks subjected to it, and they will blame the Democrats for it, always.
It isn’t even the Least Worst that you are used to presenting as ‘the only choice’, this is a far worse worst.
Tiresome does come to mind.
can’t respond to a single point?
you said you wouldn’t support mandates without a PO – do you think if they do impose mandates without a PO that it would be good for your party?
ok, I’ll break it into little tiny, small pieces for you, maybe you can handle one of them.
“that battle is lost” . . . au contraire, it is not lost, because, there is a chance that some PO plan can be expanded in 2015?
“that battle is stupid” . . . . this is an easy one, the battle is not stupid, because …. ??? really say anything, I’m curious.
“You should distance yourself far, far from such a battle” using your militaristic metaphor, this is me saying something along the lines of “He that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day” … an old nostrum.
“a plan that imposes mandates … will be gravely detested by folks subjected to it” I’d love to hear the official Democratic Party talking point response to why mandates are so great, and people will like ‘em, but so far, no luck.
“they will blame the Democrats for it, always.” … I mean, who else would they blame?
“It isn’t even the Least Worst that you are used to presenting as ‘the only choice’, this is a far worse worst.”
fine, that was gratuitous to the current shenanigans, I retract it.
I fear you are correct. I’m starting to wonder if we need to find a way to kill this mess.
scarecrow, I understand the importance and urgency of good healthcare for all Americans. What I’m seeing though is an utterly corrupt and co-opted process. The very people, like Obama, who should be leading the fight for a strong public component are instead vying to see who will sell out the first and the most to insurance, drug, and medical companies. We are left with a vacillating group of some 100 progressive House members who say they want a strong public option. But we don’t know how firm their stance is and so far they have not enunciated what they mean by a strong public option. The corporations look set to get mandates, no cost controls, and either no public option or one that is so weak it may not even be minimally functional. I am not saying that you should not fight. I appreciate all the work you have done on this. It has been amazing. I am saying that we are likely going to lose on this, as we have lost on so many other issues. The question is do we stick with this process knowing it is going to produce a bad bill or do we break with it at some point and go to our plan C, a limited bill just addressing the insurance industry’s worst practices.
when Obama took over the white house…he made such a big deal of it.. I really cant make up my mind whether he is just a complete pushover, was always david axlrods straw man, or whether he really is this incredibly, nauseatingly, duplicitous. How can he talk about a “new era” of good govt and transparency, and we get what we’ve had for the last 8 mos..its WORSE than bush. Bush never promised to be anything other than a republican weasle, even if he deliverd on that spectacularly. Obama is just blowing my mind.
Max baucuss, olympia snowe, kent conrad, charles grassley, susan collins (inexplicably -why does maine get TWO dingbats on one small secret commitee) and some other conservative douchebag from the finance committe. THERE! that about sums it up
These are troublesome times. The big insurance companies are really becoming a very big brother. Big brother in a private appearance, as a private enterprise. And those who had so much criticism in the past over a meddlesome government in an over anxious welfare state, now watch with an ironic eye how gigantic private organizations have gotten an influence on so many aspects of our existence: our medical history is known to them, our lives insured, our holidays booked, our sports activities controlled, our eating habits encouraged in due time with premium cuts. In short, the welfare state has changed in ten years into an almost complete travel-through-life insurance with a very limited number of companies. In controlling this very few have something to say. And even the professional secret of the doctor and the privacy of patients or clients are no longer sacred, due to the enormous possibilities to link and combine data. Political control has shifted with it and seems to diminish further in the future.
These are also beautiful times. The Administration spreading the ideal of our Democracy over the world, and insurance companies spreading the benefits of US health care over the world, by taking over insurance companies in Europe. Really.. it can be done; that will show them that they were wrong all the time about their health care.
This is fantasy. I think you have so much sunk costs in pursuit of the vaunted public option that you can not see that the trade offs are not worth it. You tell Hugh he’s not in the fight? He is actually fighting the fight. If there were no pressure for Medicare for All from literally millions of individuals, including tens of thousands of doctors and nurses, and the organizations they represent, there would never have been mention of a public option to begin with. You ought to take a little time to pursue advocacy against trade offs in the bill that would enrich the private insurers who by your own account stand to win a “bonanza”. It’s folly to argue we’ll take any regressive policy as long as somewhere within it there is the chance of a government administered health finance system that may someday compete with the bonanza winners. For some of us, this is personal. We already live with the proposed reforms, make too much to get past the firewalls in publicly financed health care, and can not live with a new federal mandate that criminalizes our lack of health coverage.
Yes, it is always possible to lose perspective in the middle of a debate, especially when people are insulting your intelligence. And your point about Hugh, whom I respect, that there are other ways to be engaged, is valid.
You can keep the lectures, and the mischaracterizations, since you apparently haven’t read any of my earlier posts when I was warning/arguing against the tradeoffs you assume I accept without concern.
This, uh, discussion seems to boil down to different perceptions of what is politically feasible, and given that, what the strategy ought to be, and people can disagree on that.
Not true. A bonanza to the health insurers is clearly politically feasible. A public option as envisioned by Jacob Hacker turns out not to have been anymore feasible than extending Medicare to even some, and since it has not been tried since Bill Clinton, perhaps a Medicare extension would have been more feasible. My point is at what point do the trade offs in this bill make it infeasible for your support? Is there any pint?