Category: Healthcare

House of Representatives to Senate: Drop Dead

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House Liberals are manning up and have told Nancy Pelosi that they will not vote for the Senate bill. Period, full stop:

In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.

“We cannot support the Senate bill — period,” is the message that liberals delivered to the Speaker, Dem Rep Raul Grijalva told me in an interview just now.

Some had hoped Pelosi would push liberals to get in line behind this approach, in hopes of expediting reform, but that didn’t appear to happen in this meeting. Pelosi mostly listened, Grijalva said, adding: “We didn’t get any declarative statement from her.”

You know, coddling Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, etc. and sh%$ing on the liberals, in both the House and the Senate can only take you so far.

Notwithstanding the protestations of beltway boyz wannabees like Steve Benen, Matthew Yglesias, and Kevin Drum, it’s not the liberals who are at risk.

They have a coherent system of beliefs, and they can honestly sell their decisions, as opposed to the Blue Dog and New Dems, who keep saying how we have to protect the insurance companies, and the liberals generally come from safer districts anyway.

One of the things that people forget about 1994 is that it was the Conservadems who got voted out.

Josh Marshall is Right, and Was Right in 2004

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In the aftermath of the Massachusetts debacle, a lot of people are wondering what the hell happened.

The talking heads inside the Beltway are sure that it’s because Obama is too Librul™, of course, but I think that Josh Marshall talked about the core problem in August of 2004.

He was talking about the Bush-Kerry campaign, and he characterized it as follows:

Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.

It goes something like this.

………

Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.

………

One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.

………

Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person’s supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who’s receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.

………

Only now, it isn’t the Republicans bitch slapping anyone. It’s the Democrats who bitch slap themselves.

Or as Zaid Jilani’s southern ConservaDem friend says:

And can I say this? F*ck the Democrats. They couldn’t get s%$# done with 60 seats, why the hell would I care if they have 59? F%$# them seriously we deserve to lose Congress this year. And don’t bitch and whine about it either how much has changed since we took over in 2006? Ain’t s%$# as far as I can tell. We capitulated to Bush, then capitulated to Republicans and now are just capitulating to ourselves.

F%$# it dude, I mean Republicans get whatever the f%$# they want with 50 seats and we can’t do f%$# all we deserve to lose

(“%$#” mine, “*” original)

Fundamentally, when we look at what is going on in DC, it looks like no one in the Senate or the White House is even trying to make substantive change. (Pelosi, at least, creates the appearance that she is trying to do something)

What’s more, among the DC Dems, there has been near constant bitch slapping of the Party Base, whether it’s the capitulation on the public option, the labor union insurance surtax, or the constant drum beat of how “the left” hates the Democratic Party because they want to primary DINOs (Democrat In Name Only) who have safe seats.

The central campaign platform of the Republican Party is that government can’t do anything. The Democratic Party seems to try very hard to prove them right.

41

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The Boston Globe calls it for Scott Brown, so he will be the 41st Republican in the Senate.

I was right with my prediction, and that sucks. Normally I’m wrong.

For the optimists, refer to my earlier take on potential positives of Coakley losing, (the bullet points toward the end of the post) but for me, this just sucks.

Two words: Budget Reconciliation.

Jon Stewart captures the essence of what is wrong with both candidate Coakley (first 5½ minutes), and the Democratic Party (after).

Barack Obama Lobbies for Tax on Elderly and Labor Unions

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Yes, Barack Obama is finally taking a stand in the healthcare bill, and he is lobbying for a tax on high cost healthcare plans, as opposed to a tax on the wealthy. This means that older people, who have to pay more for health insurance, and labor unions, who literally shed blood for their health care, are getting completely screwed.

It’s also horrifically bad policy:

  • It will target a much larger swath of the population than is promised.
  • It will do little to reign in healthcare costs, just look at the Health Savings Account debacle, and the “Rand study from the 1970s found that higher co-pays and deductibles led patients to limit medically necessary care as much as wasteful care, possibly leading to more costly health-care needs later.”
  • Much of the tax revenue from this is from the completely delusional assumption that the money taken out of insurance will be returned to employees as wages by their employers.

Seriously, I knew that we had elected a center-right Democrat as president, but I am surprised that we apparently elected a Republican.

Unsurprisingly, Obama is getting some pushback from the liberals in the House, most notably Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is saying that this clusterf%$# is his baby now, and he needs to work to make the bill better, and that this tax proposal violates Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Of course, whenever a politician promises not to raise taxes on the middle class, he’s lying.

First Massachusetts Senate Special Election Poll Out

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It’s Rasmussen, and they say that Democrat candidate Martha Coakley leads Republican Scott Brown by 50% to 41%.

Not particularly surprising.

Obviously special elections are rather quirky affairs, what with turnout being low, but Coakley’s turnout machine worked well in the primary, so I think that this is, absent her doing something really stupid, is in the bag.

There is an interesting point here though: If Brown were to win, the Dems would be down to 59 seats, and the Republican filibuster would hold, which might force the White House and Congress to use reconciliation, which might create a much better bill.

So, which is it, The Lady or the Tiger?

Completely F%$#ing Delusional

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Click for full size

Part of a trend, not a result of selling out American workers

Rahm Emanuel believes that by voting against the Democratic base, you improve the electoral prospects of the Democrats:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democrats a win on the health issue will reverse the slide in public opinion, just as passage of another controversial proposal, the North American Free Trade Agreement, lifted President Bill Clinton in the polls.

Let’s be clear: Clinton’s popularity did rise after the passage of NAFTA.

It was a part of a trend (see pic). When people finally noticed the passage, a few months later, his ratings fell through the floor, and the Dems lost both houses of Congress.

To be fair, a part of this might have been the collapse of healthcare reform, but NAFTA demoralized labor, and pretty much the entire Democratic base.

A bad bill is worse than no bill, and immeasurably worse than one that passes through reconciliation.

The real problem with Rahm is not that he’s determined to offer succor to right wingers because he believes that it will somehow benefit Democrats, but that he’s wrong, and incompetent.

H/t A Tiny Revolution

Pushback on the House on Healthcare Reform

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Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, has said that the Senate version of the bill is so flawed that the whole bill should be killed, in an OP/Ed that she wrote for CNN.

In addition to a lack of a public option, she lists:

  • The Senate bill keeping the insurance companies’ antitrust exemption.
  • Allowing much higher rates to be charged with older people and people with preexisting conditions.
  • Fewer incentives/penalties on employers who do not supply insurance.
  • The anti-abortion language, which will have the effect of eliminating abortion coverage in insurance nation wide.

It’s unclear as to whether or not she is suggesting reconciliation or not.

Additionally, Representatives Barbara Lee, head of the CBC, and Lynn Woolsey, head of the CPC, are lobbying to kill the bill without a public option.

I would note that part of the dynamic is a push-back against the proposition that the Senate is calling the shots here.

The Senate Passes Obama’s Healthcare Bill

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The vote was 60-39.

Say what you will, but it’s been clear from the start that what Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel have been interested in is Barack Obama signing a bill called “Healthcare Reform,” whether it helped ordinary people or not, and the Senate version fits the description to a “T”.

Obama has already made it clear that he wants the Senate bill to be the one out of committee, as shown by his full throated support of the tax on “Cadillac” insurance plan tax.

It means that, in addition to everything else, the bill is anti-union too, because protecting health care for their workers has been the Unions rear guard action for the past 28 years, ever since Reagan made union-busting cool with PATCO.

So, we will now allow insurance companies to levy a tax on ordinary Americans, and Rahmbama just loves that.

I had rather hoped that a few of the Senate Democrats, and those who caucus with them (I’m talking to you Bernie Sanders) would have had the guts to vote for cloture but against the bill, but no such luck.

At the rate things are going, we will get someone even more batsh%$ insane than George W. Bush in 2012, because there is no Republican on the national scene who is saner than he is right now.

Positively Nixonian

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It’s Called Lying Like a Rug

In support the idea that he will put his name to anything marked healthcare reform, barack Obama gave an interview to the Washington Post, and he told a complete and utter lie:

Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year. The House bill includes a government-run insurance plan favored by progressive Democrats; the Senate version does not. “I didn’t campaign on the public option,” Obama said in the interview.

(emphasis mine)

It takes about 15 minutes on Google and Youtube to see that it’s a lie, see the video on the right.

It certainly wasn’t something that he pushed hard during the campaign, unlike, for example, his support for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and family benefits for gay couples, where his administration is now aggressively fighting to prevent real progress.

With this level of hypocrisy, it’s no wonder that Drew Westen, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and political scientist whose book The Political Brain was widely considered to be the bible of the Obama campaign just wrote a scathing article condemning Obama’s unwillingness to lead:

As the president’s job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it’s time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those “pesky leftists” — those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

………

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

………

What’s they’re seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That’s a recipe for going nowhere fast — but getting there by November.

(emphasis mine)

As I’ve said before, the problem is that he believes that he is likable enough that he can bring people together even when there is no common ground, and the idea of people actually having honest differences of opinion, or of having legitimate political reasons for opposing his policies, appears to be completely beyond him.

What Does Matthew G. Saroff Look Like?

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Original Courtesy of Quentin Tarantino, with typography by mdaisey

What?

What country are you from?

What, what?

What ain’t no country that I ever heard of. They speak English in what?

What?

English, muthahf%$#er, do you speak it?

Yes.

Then you know that I’m saying!

Yes.

Describe what Matthew G. Saroff looks like!

What?

Say what again! Say what again! I dare you! I double dare you muthahf%$#er! Say what one more God Damned time!

He’s white! He’s bald! …… He could stand to lose 40 pounds!

Does he look like a bitch!

What?

(Bang! screaming)

Does … he … look … like … a … bitch!?!?!

Nooooo!!!!!

Then why are you trying to f%$# him like a bitch David?

Axelrod promises to push for drug re-importation after healthcare reform
By Kevin Bogardus – 12/20/09 09:59 AM ET

A senior White House adviser said Sunday that the Obama administration will push forward on safe re-importation of pharmaceutical drugs after the healthcare reform bill is finished.

As a candidate in 2008, President Barack Obama promised to allow cheaper drugs to be re-imported into the United States from Canada and other countries. He also co-sponsored legislation that would allow re-importation as an Illinois senator. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a key White House ally in the healthcare reform push, has lobbied heavily against re-importation, though, and would likely not support the final bill if it was included in the package.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” David Axelrod, Obama’s top political aide, said the White House still favors drug re-importation and wants to move forward on it.

Do I look like an idiot? After fighting tooth and nail to keep drug re-importation out of the healthcare bills, you are going to fight to bring it back, like you promised during the campaign, just like you promised to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, promote marriage equality, and to go after people who broke the law in the Bush administration?

Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ are trying to f%$# anyone who wants to improve healthcare, and that means that they are trying to f%$# Matthew G. Saroff, and Matthew G. Saroff don’t like to be f%$#ed by anyone except Mrs. Saroff.

60……Until Leiberman Knifes Everyone Again……

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We now have reports that Reid and Obama have managed to cajole Senator Ben Nelson into not filibustering the helathcare bill:

Senate Democratic leaders achieved a breakthrough Saturday in the drive for health overhaul legislation, securing the 60 votes needed to ensure passage after a late-night deal on abortion coverage locked in the support of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson.

The bill is at best marginally better than what we have now, it might be a bit worse, since the mandate in a monopoly situation is a disaster, and the abortion language allows states to forbid insurance companies to cover abortions.

Let’s be clear, insurance companies don’t customize their plans unless forced to, and over the next few years, this will have the effect of eliminating abortion from insurance coverage, as NOW notes:

Statement of Terry O’Neill, NOW President

December 19, 2009

The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Manager’s Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a sweeping anti-abortion law for the rest of us. And by the way, it’s the rest of us who voted the current leadership into both houses of Congress.

The National Organization for Women is outraged that Senate leadership would cave in to Sen. Ben Nelson, offering a compromise that amounts to a Stupak-like ban on insurance coverage for abortion care. Right-wing ideologues like Nelson and the Catholic Bishops may not understand this, but abortion is health care. And health care reform is not true reform if it denies women coverage for the full range of reproductive health services.

We call on all senators who consider themselves friends of women’s rights to reject the Manager’s Amendment, and if it remains, to defeat this cruelly over-compromised legislation.

###

I’ll still be calling my Senators, and asking them to vote against the bill and against cloture.

Obama Gets Revolt from the Faithful on Healthcare

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Which is not particularly surprising, as his behavior has been pretty revolting on healthcare.

It turns out that OFA, originally “Obama for America,” and now “Organizing for America,” just called for a phone bank to support the Nelson/Lieberman healthcare reform sellout bill, and the base decided that they had to wash their hair:

On Wednesday morning, Organizing for America, as Obama’s reconstituted campaign organization is now known, e-mailed its list of 13 million Obama supporters asking them to “call your senators now and help us ‘ring in reform.’”

The campaign yielded 150,000 calls — less than half the number of a similar effort in October — and it prompted a backlash among online and local activists who had logged countless volunteer supporting Obama’s campaign and legislative agenda, but who felt betrayed by recent Democratic concessions in the health-care reform fight.

………

………while some OFA subscribers replied directly to the call-to-action e-mail with angry messages and others asked to be removed from the list entirely.

(emphasis mine)

I had myself removed from the OFA mailing list some months ago, and I do not regret this at all.

Additionally, the latest This Research 2000/Progressive Change Campaign Committee/Democracy for AmericaPoll shows that the public overwhelming opposes the personal mandates in the bill if there is no public option.

Respondents said that they supported a public option 59% to 31%, opposed a madate without a public option 33% to 56%, and that Obama didn’t fight Lieberman hard enough: 63% to 29%.

What a surprise. Hoocoodanode that the American public would object to a tax on breathing with the proceeds going to insurance company executive bonuses?

The real problem here is not that the bill sucks, the problem is that it’s increasingly obvious, as Senator Russ Feingold notes, that Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel thought that forcing people to buy overpriced insurance and overpriced pharmaceuticals was a good way to keep those industries from donating to Republicans, the average citizen be damned:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said Feingold. “I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.”

It seems that Obama’s fetish with signing a bill with “healthcare reform” on it, to the exclusion of any principles, or the need to actually make things better, so he could have a trophy on the wall has bitten him on the butt.

DeForest Kelly put it best when he said, “It’s not enough! You didn’t care as long as you could hang your trophy on the wall. Well, it’s not on it, Captain Mr President, it’s in it.”