Author: chasdarwin

Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU

Health Care Insurance reform

“Last month the Senate voted to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most meaningful improvement to our health care system since enactment of Medicare and Medicaid four and a half decades ago.

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From Sherrod Brown:

“Last month the Senate voted to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most meaningful improvement to our health care system since enactment of Medicare and Medicaid four and a half decades ago.

The Senate and House of Representatives are now merging their respective bills and expect to deliver a final piece of legislation to President Obama in the coming weeks. While the negotiations continue, I wanted to provide an update on how health reform would help Ohioans.  The bill passed by the Senate, with my support, would lower costs for middle-class families with insurance, while providing help to 31 million Americans who lack it – including the 1.4 million Ohioans who are currently uninsured.

It would eliminate the $1,100 hidden tax that Ohioans with insurance now pay to help cover the costs of caring for the uninsured. It would also prohibit insurance companies from using huge portions of your premium dollars for advertising, corporate retreats, executive salaries, and unheard-of profits instead of providing coverage for your medical care. And it would give more than 118,000 Ohio small businesses an immediate tax credit to help them afford health benefits for their workers.

The bill would curb insurance company abuses – like denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, charging women more than men for the same policy, and imposing arbitrary annual and lifetime caps on benefits.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would end the shameful insurance practice of rescission, which retroactively cancels your insurance when you get sick. It would close the prescription drug coverage gap (the “donut hole”) for seniors and provide them with free annual checkups and preventive services for the first time. The bill would also extend the financial security of Medicare by nearly a decade.

This bill means insurance companies will have to play by a new set of rules – that will lower costs and expand coverage. It means you will no longer be denied medical care because of a pre-existing condition, age, gender, or medical history. It means health security for you and your family, whether you’re uninsured or have health insurance that could be eliminated with a job loss or illness. It means Ohio’s seniors will be able to afford prescription drugs and access much needed medical care. And, this bill means Ohio small business owners can do right by their employees and no longer face double-digit premium increases year after year after year.

Once President Obama signs this important bill into law, I’ll be certain to provide you an update on this historic step toward a health care system that works for all Americans. ”

Sincerely,
Sherrod Brown www.brown.senate.gov.

(Emphasis Mine).

Understanding Movement Conservatives

Terrorist Attack: ” Something that can only occur during a Democratic Administration.”

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Movement Conservative Vocabulary

Big Government: ” Spending taxpayer money on the less fortunate.”

Death Tax: ” The Estate tax, which applies only to the wealthiest Americans.”

Tax Relief: ” Reduced taxes for the wealthiest several percent of Americans.”

Taxes: “A burden to waste money on roads, schools, and the infrastructure which a modern society requires.”

Terrorist: “Almost any person whose religion is not Christian – particularly Islam – and who disapproves of US middle East  policies.”

War on Terrorism: ” An excuse to suppress civil liberties, expand the military,  and give government funds to your friends by attacking countries whose people look different, and whose religion is non Christian.  Since the attacks create hostility, we can declare the victims ‘terrorists’, and self perpetuate this situation.”

Terrorist Attack: ” Something that can only occur during a Democratic Administration.”

Pro-Life: ” Its fine to kill innocent people of another country, or execute innocent victims for crimes they never committed, or let 45,000 die each year because they don’t have access to health care, but it is a crime to cause an abortion of a pre-human.”

Deficit spending: “Something that only Democrats cause” – see Big Government.

Family Values: ” Oppose gays; venerate guns; legislate morality; and vote Republican”.

Global Warming: “A commie conspiracy dis proven every winter in the Northern Hemisphere”.

Scientists: “People who think facts are superior to ancient dogma – often inconvenient.”

Only A Theory: “A label to use for inconvenient facts – see scientists. ”

Worst GOP Cash Flow in a Decade

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From RawStory: http://rawstory.com/2009/01/gop-2010-races-historically-cash-flow/

By Daniel Tencer

“In recent months pollsters have been pointing to softening support for Democrats as a sign that the GOP may make a big comeback in the 2010 elections. But the party’s historically poor financial position means it has more of an uphill battle than many political observers realize.

Having spent large amounts of cash winning the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races in 2009, the Republican National Committee ended 2009 with $8.7 million in the bank, down from $22.8 million at the start of 2009, when Michael Steele took over as party chairman. It marks the lowest amount of cash on hand going into an election year in a decade, The Hill reports.

The NRC spent $90 million through November, or $20 million more than its Democratic counterpart, leading some observers to wonder whether the GOP has been wasting money. The Hill reports:

“They’re spending money at 2002 levels when they are not raising money at those levels,” said a GOP operative. “That kind of thing worked when RNC was awash in money, but you can’t do that in this environment.”

Off-years like 2009 are generally a time for committees to get their financial house in order. … The RNC, though, made huge investments in New Jersey and Virginia, betting on the momentum created by those gubernatorial races to spur more giving. Both were big GOP wins, but the question for many in the party is whether they were worth such a dent in the party’s coffers….”

“They’re spending money at 2002 levels when they are not raising money at those levels,” said a GOP operative. “That kind of thing worked when RNC was awash in money, but you can’t do that in this environment.”

Writing at Newsweek, Suzy Khimm suggests that the GOP’s fundraising woes may have something to do with the rift between the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party leadership.

[L]ast year’s elections also revealed the significant rift between the grassroots movement and the Republican apparatus. The right-wing base revolted against the NRCC when it poured money into moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava’s campaign in New York’s 23rd District, backing third-party challenger Doug Hoffman instead. As more mainstream conservative politicians joined the revolt, Scozzafava dropped out of the race─but Hoffman lost the general election. The election was both a stinging rebuke to the conservative activists who skewered Scozzafava and the national Republican leadership who failed to handle a revolt from their right flank.

Such rifts point to a more fundamental problem that’s plaguing the GOP: the party’s leadership vacuum. If the GOP proves unable to unite the right-wing populist base with moderates and independents, Republicans might not be able to channel public frustration into all the results it wants to see at the ballot box─or in its campaign coffers.

Politico reported over the weekend that the National Republican Congressional Committee, the main instrument for fighting congressional elections, raised one-third as much money last year as its Democratic counterpart. While the DCCC has $15.3 million going into 2010, with $2.6 million in debt, the NRCC has $4.3 million left, with $2 million in debt.

Politico suggests that this is in part due to “tightfisted” Republican incumbents who aren’t donating to the party’s coffers in nearly the numbers that Democrats are donating to their party’s coffers.

But conservative commentator Matt Lewis told The Hill that individual donors are also staying away from the GOP leadership, instead sending their money to conservative activist groups or specific candidates.

“I think conservatives have decided it’s better to donate to groups like the Club for Growth — or to the candidates themselves,” Lewis said.

That lack of enthusiasm for the GOP has many inside the party taking a hard look at the leadership of Michael Steele, The Hill reports.

Steele has endured a series of questions about the committee’s finances and his stewardship. The committee spent heavily on a new website, and Steele has drawn heat for renovating his office, awarding high salaries for close associates and accepting speaking fees.

Earlier this year, a group of RNC officials headed by Treasurer Randy Pullen presented Steele with a resolution asking for more checks and balances on his ability to award contracts and spend money.

(Emphasis mine)

Economic polarization and political polarization

We have been undergoing income redistribution in the USA for three decades: from the less wealthy to the very wealthy.

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One hears the term “income redistribution” used to disparage progressive agenda.  We have been undergoing income redistribution in the USA for three decades: from the less wealthy to the very wealthy.

Robert Creamer notes in HuffPost:” We frequently hear pundits pontificating about the rising level of political polarization in Congress.

Often the blame is ascribed to plummeting levels of civility among Members. In fact, ten years ago the House actually conducted several “civility retreats” aimed at fostering a more civil atmosphere inside the body. These events featured motivational speakers and smaller “encounter-group-like” seminars – and were widely attended by Members and their families. Needless to say, this approach didn’t do much for the actual “civility index” in Congress.

And then there are the “centrists” who think that the partisan divide can best be bridged by proposals that seek to “moderate” the Democratic “change” agenda. Of course, most of these “moderates” want to water down Democratic proposals to change the status quo — proposals that would reduce the power of the Wall Street gang, the private insurance industry, the energy companies and Chamber of Commerce. This presents a serious problem to most Democrats because the interests of these special interests are generally diametrically opposed to the interests of the American people. But it turns out they are also counterproductive when it comes to ending political polarization as well. Here’s why:

Several years ago, a group of political scientists that included Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, conducted an important study on the causes of political polarization. Their results were published in a fascinating book, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Their study found that there is a direct relationship between economic inequality and polarization in American politics.

The team measured political polarization in congressional votes over the last century, and found a direct correlation with the percentage of income received by the top 1% of the electorate.

They also compared the Gini Index of Income Inequality with congressional vote polarization of the last half-century and found a comparable relationship.

Why should this be? It doesn’t take a political genius to figure out that if people have more in common they are more likely to support similar proposals and perspectives. Political polarization in Congress does not result from some new inability to “communicate” or “empathize.” It results from the fact that the major constituencies of the two parties have increasingly divergent economic interests.

To put it simply, Republicans increasingly represent the interests of the wealthiest elements of American society, and Democrats represent everyone else. As the gap between the incomes of these segments of the population grows, so does the gap between their economic interests and the policy proposals they support.

So in other words, if you want to do something about the political polarization of Congress, you have to deal with the underlying cause. You have to reduce the growing level of income inequality in America. Unfortunately, when “Moderate” Democrats attempt to defang Democratic proposals to rein in private insurance companies, Wall Street banks, energy companies, and the Chamber of Commerce they have exactly the opposite effect. The actions of these “Moderates” serve to perpetuate income inequality – and as a direct consequence, the political polarization they are so quick to attack.

We should remember that the level of income inequality is far from being a static feature of American society.

Paul Krugman points out that at the beginning of the Great Depression, income inequality, and inequality in the control of wealth, was very high. Then came the “the great compression” between 1929 and 1947. Real wages for workers in manufacturing rose 67% while real income for the richest 1% of Americans fell 17%. This period marked the birth of the American middle class. Two major forces drove these trends – unionization of major manufacturing sectors, and the public policies of the New Deal that were sparked by the Great Depression.

The growing spending power of everyday Americans spurred the postwar boom from 1947 to 1973. Real wages rose 81% and the income of the richest 1% rose 38%. Growth was widely shared, but income inequality continued to drop.

From 1973 to 1980, everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3% and income for the richest 1% fell 4%. The oil shocks, and the dramatic slowdown in economic growth in developing nations, took their toll on America’s and the world’s economies.

Then came what economist Paul Krugman calls “the New Gilded Age.” Beginning in 1980, there were big gains at the very top. The tax policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations magnified income redistribution.

In the last 20 years, there has been a massive re-polarization of incomes in America between the wealthiest 1% of the population and everyone else. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that fully two-thirds of all income gains during the last economic expansion (2002 to 2007) flowed to the top 1% of the population. And that, in turn, is one of the chief reasons why the median income for ordinary Americans actually dropped by $2,197 per year since 2000.

From 1990 to 2004, the income of the top 1% of the population has increased 57%. The richest Americans – the top one-tenth of 1% – have experienced income growth of 85%. Yet the median income of the bottom 90% has increased only 2%

  • Now the CEO of the average company in the Standard and Poor’s Index makes10.9 million. That means that before lunch, on the first workday of the year, he (sometimes she) has made more than the minimum wage workers in his company will make all year. That translates to5,240 per hour – or about 344 times that pay of the typical American worker.
  • Most people would consider a salary of100,000 per year reasonably good pay. But the average CEO makes that much in the first 20 hours of the work year.
  • And that’s nothing compared to some of the Kings of Wall Street. In 2007, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged588 million in compensation each- more than 19,000 times as much as the average U.S. worker. And by the way, the hedge fund managers paid a tax rate on their income of only 15% — far lower than the rate paid by their secretaries.

So if all the “moderates” who say they want to help end the polarization of Congress are serious, they need to get to work supporting the Democratic agenda to end the stranglehold of the wealthiest, most powerful economic interests, and support measures to once again increase taxes on the wealthiest among us at least to the levels they were back in the Clinton Administration. In other words, if you want to end the polarization of Congress, you have to end the economic polarization of America….”

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/to-reduce-political-polar_b_410282.html

(some italics mine)

Socialist Health Care System

American medicine is superb–for those who can get it

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By Paul Abrams, HuffPost:

“According to Rush Limbaugh, the health care reform that may be passed by Congress is socialism. Yet, it bears a striking resemblance to the universal healthcare system that just treated him in Hawaii that prompted his remark: “there is nothing wrong with the American health care system. I received no special treatment.”

Yes, Rush. That’s the point! American medicine is superb–for those who can get it. And, in Hawaii, no one gets special treatment, because everyone can get it.

[Er, by the way, just to help you out, Rush, a fair percentage of your listeners do not know Hawaii is part of the United States, so clarify that for them…otherwise, they will wonder about you]

By accepting socialist medical treatment in Hawaii, therefore, Rush Limbaugh has shown that, when one is ill, what matters is the availability of quality health care, even if it is socialist.

Rush follows a long litany of conservatives, such as all Members of Congress that have a medical office paid for by taxpayers available in the Capitol, by Dick Cheney who had socialist pacemakers implanted paid for by the government, and George W who had a government-paid socialist colonoscopy while in office. Members of Congress over 65 get single-payer socialist medical care from Medicare.

Hawaii has had nearly-universal employer-mandated health insurance since 1974. Although its Pacific Island location makes the costs of everything–from gasoline to milk to ice cream to housing–the highest in the nation, health care premiums in Hawaii, for comprehensive care with small co-pays and deductibles, are nearly the lowest and their costs per medicare beneficiary are the lowest in the nation.

Why? There are a variety of reasons, most traceable to universality. With everyone covered by primary care, emergency room visits tend to be for real emergencies, not the non-emergent care mainland ERs dispense for people without coverage. That reduces the costs of ERs and the costs of non-emergent medicine since patients can be handled less expensively and more effectively by their primary docs. Hospitals have not overbuilt, acquiring expensive machines to compete with their neighbors for patients. Insurance companies have instituted screening and other measures to improve wellness among their covered populations.

We can all be pleased that Rush appears to have survived his encounter with socialist medical care. He seems to be very happy himself, commenting on the results of a socialist angiogram that showed no disease in the arteries that feed his heart muscle.

Now, of course, Rush does not live in Hawaii and so his costs are not covered by the Hawaiian insurance system, but having that “socialist” system for more than 3 decades has not reduced the quality of the care he received. Who would have thunk it!

If Hawaii-style medical care is good enough for Rush Limbaugh, it is good enough for me.

Thanks Rush, and with it my hopes that your medical insurance covers all your costs and that the greatest country in the world can make that same care available to everyone.

Happy New Year!

”

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/limbaugh-lauds-socialist_b_409378.html

Why do (some) Christians LOVE War?

There are no “blessed wars”. Yet virtually all evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders were active supporters of the Bush wars.

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From Alternet: (By Gary G. Kohls, Consortium News)

“There are no “blessed wars”. Yet virtually all evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders were active supporters of the Bush wars.When Gulf War I ended (during George Bush the Elder’s presidency), General Norman Schwartzkopf, the field commander, triumphantly proclaimed, “God must have been on our side!”

Such statements aren’t unusual for glory-seeking dictators, kings, princes, presidents and generals, regardless of what religion justified their particular war, but I cringed when I heard this self-professed Christian warrior claim God’s blessings on the war that made him famous.

I cringed when I heard Schwartzkopf claim God’s blessings on the carnage that he helped orchestrate because similar claims have been used to rationalize killing throughout history, from ancient times to some of the darkest days of the modern era.  Jesus’s God would not be on the side of the war-makers, but on the side of the peacemakers, the compassionate and long-suffering ones who work to prevent killing and to relieve the suffering of the victims of war.

As the German Nazis went about their systematic purging of any and all leftist or anti-fascist groups – Jews, socialists, homosexuals, liberals, communists, trade unionists and conscientious objectors to war – they insisted that God was on their side, too.

Adolf Hitler claimed that he was doing God’s will. German soldiers, both in WWI and WWII, went into battle with the words “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us) inscribed on their belt buckles….

Though Hitler’s Nazi regime represented an exceptional form of horror in the industrialized slaughter committed during the Holocaust and related mass killings, it must be acknowledged that other countries, including the United States, have undertaken actions that have destroyed other populations and cultures, often with the blessings of religious leaders.

In the last two decades, the two Bush administrations mounted wars in the Persian Gulf region that had the consent (or acquiescence) of the majority of U.S. church leaders, with prayers from Billy Graham in the White House the night before the invasions began.

Virtually all Christian evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders and their congregations were active supporters of the Bush wars.

Only four American Catholic bishops voted in opposition to Bush the Elder’s Gulf War I (at an annual conference of U.S. Catholic bishops). In Gulf War II, Pope John Paul II declared that the war was contrary to the teachings of Jesus, but most American Catholic leaders and parishioners ignored the pontiff’s warnings and supported the war. Most American Protestants did the same.

Yet, General Schwartzkopf and both Presidents Bush are in “good” company when it comes to believing that God is on their side in war. All U.S. presidents and presidential candidates in recent memory, even President Obama, end their speeches with “May God Bless the United States of America,” the equivalent of the German military’s “Gott Mit Uns.”  …

A major unasked question is “what should be the role of religion (specifically Christianity) in the starting and perpetuation of politically motivated wars?”

If war-makers mix religion and politics by invoking God’s blessings on the cannons and the cannon fodder, shouldn’t the churches, which are supposed to be the consciences of the nation, apply core Christian ethical principles to the war question and refuse to cooperate with the slaughter of fellow children of God?

(N.B.: What are “core Christian Ethics”?)

Sadly, for the past 1,700 years, Christian churches have not done so. They have largely failed in their moral obligation to teach and live the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.

(N.B.: The “Golden Rule” is older that Christ – see Lao Tzu, for example.)

One only has to read the gruesome history of the many “holy wars” and atrocities committed in the history of Christendom, including the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the wars of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, the various genocides including the Nazi Holocaust…

Recall how, when military spokesmen try to explain away the deaths of non-combatants in these wars, they invoke the term “collateral damage” (the euphemism for the unintended killing and maiming of innocents in wartime) and quickly dismiss those deaths by spouting the unconvincing phrase that Schwartzkopf and all other apologists for war use: “we regret the loss of innocent life.”

And they piously mouth these equally insincere words: “our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” The same rote phraseology too often comes from the lips of religious leaders…

How can the legalized mass slaughter of war, often progressing to the point of genocide, be a part of a Christian tradition that started out with a small group of inspired, oppressed and impoverished peasants who were trying to live by the highly ethical, nonviolent teachings of their pacifist leader?

Interestingly, the active pacifism of the early Christian church did prove to be successful – and even practical. During the first few centuries of Christianity, enmity and eye-for-an-eye retaliation were rejected. The Golden Rule and the refusal to kill the enemy were actually taught in the church.

Gospel non-violence was the norm, so the professed enemies of those communities of faith were not provoked to retaliation because there was nothing against which to retaliate. Rather, enemies were befriended, prayed for, fed, nourished and embraced as neighbors – potential friends who needed understanding and mercy.

The church survived the persecutions of those early years and thrived, largely because of its commitment to the nonviolence of Jesus. It was not until the church was co-opted by the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th Century that power and wealth changed the priorities of church leaders.

Today, American Christianity is at risk of going the way of the pro-war “Christianity” of pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, which may in the long run discredit the faith much the way Christianity lost credibility among many Germans because their churches and church leaders facilitated those destructive wars.

The vast majority of Germans before World War II were baptized members of a Christian church, but since WWII ended church membership has fallen sharply and the number of Germans attending weekly worship services is now estimated to be in the single digits.

The psychological and spiritual wounding of the soldiers and their families in the two world wars stripped the German churches of their moral standing….The world would have been far better off if the Christian leaders of the world had been faithful to the ethical teachings of the gospels and quit making blasphemous appeals to God on behalf of war, whether with those “Gott Mit Uns” belt buckles or the “God Bless America” political sloganeering.”

Emphasis and notes mine.

see: http://www.alternet.org/story/144818/jesus_hated_war_–_why_do_christians_love_it_so_much

Who is Obama?

When I hear Obama criticized, I state that one who journeyed from food stamps to editor of the Harvard Law Review must be both very intelligent and politically adept.

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N.B.: When I hear Obama criticized, I state that one who journeyed from food stamps to editor of the Harvard Law Review must be both very intelligent and politically adept.

Ross Dothat, NY Times:

“Every presidency is the subject of competing caricatures. But almost a year into his first term, there’s something particularly elusive about Barack Obama’s political identity. He’s a bipartisan bridge-builder — unless he’s a polarizing ideologue. He’s a crypto-Marxist radical — except when he’s a pawn of corporate interests. He’s a post-American utopian — or else he’s a willing tool of the national security state.  The press has churned out a new theory every week,…

Obama baffles observers, I suspect, because he’s an ideologue and a pragmatist all at once. He’s a doctrinaire liberal who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf. He has the policy preferences of a progressive blogger, but the governing style of a seasoned Beltway wheeler-dealer.

This is a puzzling combination, for many, because we expect our politicians’ principles to align more neatly with their approach to governing. Our deal-making Machiavels are supposed to be self-conscious “centrists” (think Ben Nelson or Arlen Specter). Our ideological liberals and conservatives are supposed to be more concerned with being right than with being ruthlessly effective.

It’s also puzzling because Obama promised exactly the opposite approach while running for the presidency. He campaigned as a postpartisan healer who would change the cynical ways of Washington — as a foe of both back-room deals and ideology-as-usual. But he’s governed as a conventional liberal who believes in the existing system, knows how to work it and accepts the limitations it imposes on him.

In hindsight, the most prescient sentence penned during the presidential campaign belongs to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. “Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama,” he wrote in July 2008, “is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.”

Both right and left have had trouble processing Obama’s institutionalism. Conservatives have exaggerated his liberal instincts into radicalism, ignoring the fact that a president who takes advice from Lawrence Summers and Robert Gates probably isn’t a closet Marxist-Leninist. The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama’s professed principles and the compromises that he’s willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn’t one of them at all.

They’re wrong. Absent political constraints, Obama would probably side with the liberal line on almost every issue. It’s just that he’s more acutely conscious of the limits of his powers and less willing to start fights that he might lose than many supporters would prefer. In this regard, he most resembles Ronald Reagan and Edward Kennedy. Both were highly ideological politicians who trained themselves to work within the system. Both preferred cutting deals to walking away from the negotiating table.

The upside of this approach is obvious: It gets things done. Between the stimulus package, the pending health care bill and a new raft of financial regulations, Obama will soon be able to claim more major legislative accomplishments than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson….The downside, though, is that sometimes what gets done isn’t worth doing….

At the same time, Obama doesn’t enjoy the kind of deep credibility with his base that both Reagan and Kennedy spent decades building. When Kennedy told liberals that a given compromise was the best they could get, they believed him. Whether the issue is health care or Afghanistan, Obama’s word doesn’t carry the same weight.

This leaves him walking a fine line. If Obama’s presidency succeeds, it will be a testament to what ideology tempered by institutionalism can accomplish. But his political approach leaves him in constant danger of losing center and left alike — of being dismissed by independents as another tax-and-spender, and disdained by liberals as a sellout.”

(Emphasis Mine.)

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=1&hp

I still support our President.

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Jacob S. Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

From the New Republic:”…Since the first campaign for publicly guaranteed health insurance in the early twentieth century, opportunities for serious health reform have come only rarely and fleetingly. If this opportunity passes, it will be very long before the chance arrives again. Many Americans will be gravely hurt by the delay. The most progressive president of my generation–the generation that came of age in the anti-government shadow of Ronald Reagan–will be handed a crippling loss. The party he leads will be branded as unable to govern….

The public option was always a means to an end: real competition for insurers, an alternative for consumers to existing private plans that does not deny needed care or shift risks onto the vulnerable, the ability to provide affordable coverage over time. I thought it was the best means within our political grasp. It lay just beyond that grasp. Yet its demise–in this round–does not diminish the immediate necessity of those larger aims. And even without the public option, the bill that Congress passes and the President signs could move us substantially toward those goals.

As weak as it is in numerous areas, the Senate bill contains three vital reforms.

First, it creates a new framework, the “exchange,” through which people who lack secure workplace coverage can obtain the same kind of group health insurance that workers in large companies take for granted.  Second, it makes available hundreds of billions in federal help to allow people to buy coverage through the exchanges and through an expanded Medicaid program. Third, it places new regulations on private insurers that, if properly enforced, will reduce insurers’ ability to discriminate against the sick and to undermine the health security of Americans.

These are signal achievements, and they all would have been politically unthinkable just a few years ago….So a bill must pass. Yet it must be a better bill that passes. And  it must be understood by the President, the Congress and every American as only a step–an important but ultimately incomplete step–toward the vital goal that the campaign for the public option embodied: good affordable health care for every American.”

(Emphasis mine)

see: http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/why-i-still-believe-bill

On The Bill: Politics is the Art of the Possible

Politics is the Art of the Possible

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Krugman, 25 Dec 2009, the New York Times:

“…”…the legislation that passed the Senate on Thursday and will probably, in a slightly modified version, soon become law will make America a much better country.

So why are so many people complaining? There are three main groups of critics.

First, there’s the crazy right, the tea party and death panel people — a lunatic fringe that is no longer a fringe but has moved into the heart of the Republican Party

A second strand of opposition comes from what I think of as the Bah Humbug caucus: fiscal scolds who routinely issue sententious warnings about rising debt. By rights, this caucus should find much to like in the Senate health bill, which the Congressional Budget Office says would reduce the deficit, and which — in the judgment of leading health economists — does far more to control costs than anyone has attempted in the past.what really motivates them is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is receiving social insurance.”

Finally, there has been opposition from some progressives who are unhappy with the bill’s limitations. Some would settle for nothing less than a full, Medicare-type, single-payer system. Others had their hearts set on the creation of a public option to compete with private insurers. And there are complaints that the subsidies are inadequate, that many families will still have trouble paying for medical care.

Unlike the tea partiers and the humbuggers, disappointed progressives have valid complaints. But those complaints don’t add up to a reason to reject the bill. Yes, it’s a hackneyed phrase, but politics is the art of the possible.

The truth is that there isn’t a Congressional majority in favor of anything like single-payer. There is a narrow majority in favor of a plan with a moderately strong public option. The House has passed such a plan. But given the way the Senate rules work, it takes 60 votes to do almost anything. And that fact, combined with total Republican opposition, has placed sharp limits on what can be enacted.

If progressives want more, they’ll have to make changing those Senate rules a priority. They’ll also have to work long term on electing a more progressive Congress. But, meanwhile, the bill the Senate has just passed, with a few tweaks — I’d especially like to move the start date up from 2014, if that’s at all possible — is more or less what the Democratic leadership can get.

And for all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement. It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone. And it establishes the principle — even if it falls somewhat short in practice — that all Americans are entitled to essential health care.  (N.B.: This is what I call a ‘beachhead’.)

Many people deserve credit for this moment. What really made it possible was the remarkable emergence of universal health care as a core principle during the Democratic primaries of 2007-2008 — an emergence that, in turn, owed a lot to progressive activism. (For what it’s worth, the reform that’s being passed is closer to Hillary Clinton’s plan than to President Obama’s). This made health reform a must-win for the next president. And it’s actually happening.

So progressives shouldn’t stop complaining, but they should congratulate themselves on what is, in the end, a big win for them — and for America.”

(Emphasis mine)

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1261753212-RwiQATMIBUa+By+dIKRN/A

A national scandal, not involving sex, celebrities, or corruption

45,000 die every year due to a lack of health insurance.

chasdarwinLeave a comment
“With malice toward none, with charity for all…” spoke Abraham Lincoln at his second inaugural address. While some act as if our health care insurance reform legislation is a disease, a joke, or an onerous burden, a new study puts a deadly face on the consequences of the failure of the U.S. to offer universal health care to its citizens: 45,000 die every year due to a lack of health insurance. This figure has increased about two and a half times since 2002. (In addition the US ranks low internationally in measures such as life expectancy and infant mortality, all at more than twice the average cost.) The authors of the Harvard-based study noted that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t provide guaranteed health care to its citizens: a subject for serious thought at a time of year when charity and good will receive so many words, if not so much attention.

see: chattahbox.com/us/2009/09/18/study-lack-of-health-insurance-kills-45000-people-annually/ and

see: http://www.tophealthinsurancecompanies.info/study-lack-of-health-insurance-kills-45000-people-annually/