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Sunday, August 16, 2009

Healthcare - why would something that necessary take that long to achieve?

An interesting link.


______UPDATE -- Who's "we?" Other stuff. A petition you can sign.______
This teaser image will be returned to later in the post. But it's a good lead.



Two reader comments, one attached to the post, you can read it. It unfortunately may be true. If so it only would be because Obama lied - while politicians lying is not unusual. However, to be duplicitous on something that the people so strongly want, is offensive.

Second reader comment, a friend phoned, and said all I did was post a link and that was a disappointment or at least unusual, no bloviating. He wondered if Blogger had malfunctioned.

On this update there will be more.

Start with this, after the weekend, from a Kansas City outlet today, Aug. 18 - somewhat neutrally worded, somewhat lightweight, tepid actually, but the item and comments are worth reading as a starting point [go to the link for the comments]:

Sebelius backtracks: Public option still alive
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Kathleen Sebelius has stumbled badly during her first time in the national spotlight as Health and Human Services secretary.

By Tuesday, the former Kansas governor was backpedaling furiously from statements she made Sunday regarding President Barack Obama's health care insurance plans.

On Sunday, Sebelius stunned many Americans (and plenty of liberal Democrats) when she said that a public option was "not the essential element" of health care reform.

But on Tuesday, here was part of Sebelius' message at a Medicare conference:

We continue to support the public option. That will help lower costs, give American consumers more choice and keep private insurers honest. If people have other ideas about how to accomplish these goals, we'll look at those, too. But the public option is a very good way to do this.


OK, let's start with this question: Who's "we"?

Is Obama still aboard, even though he, too, has backed away from insisting on a public option in health care reform?

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was saying on Tuesday that, yes, Obama still thinks a public option ought to be part of the discussion.

That would be news, however, to people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She hit the roof Monday as she strongly spoke out in favor of a public option and against the idea Obama appeared to be favoring -- insurance co-ops.

The back and forth on a crucial element of health care reform reflects just how badly the Obama administration and his supporters -- including Sebelius -- are handling this entire issue after a few days of criticisms from a minority of angry Americans at town hall meetings.

What a disappointing mess.


Please, do read the comments - again, this link. Cogent, not strident. When facts are on your side, the majority of real people on your side, you don't need to rudely shout.

At least, apparently, we still have Pelosi showing an apparent conscience. Showing she's still up for something of a good fight. It's good we have that.

But, the fact is the dark side of the force has shifted the debate to should we have even a lame "public option," vs where debate belongs; is there any sane and cogent argument to be made against single payer? There is none or at least the inept rhetoric from the GOP and other Dogs has presented none.

Argument, there's been plenty, sane and cogent from the Dogs, however, is distinctly lacking. Same old disinformation stuff from that bought and owned chorus and their paid disruptive hooligans.

While all that is theater, paid for by corporate status quo mongers, things need to be redirected to the real issue - lack of any decent reason to not go single payer and only a lack of will and fortitude among the Dems to simply do so. The efffectiveness of the obstructionists wanting to stage the battle at public option is apparent, when corporate media unfortunately plays along, witness THIS. It's biased, it's dreck, but the media's owned too by status quo mongers, so expect it.

Now for something a little less polite, a little more blunt and truthful; here, from Brad Blog, yesterday [links and italics emphasis in original]:

In the final analysis, the ideological differences between Republicans and the corporate/controlling sector of the Democratic party are relatively narrow and insignificant as compared to the bi-partisan link to corporate wealth and power --- a link both share with the corporate-owned, mainstream media.

Today, it's imaginary "death panels" and the undereducated, easily manipulated wing-nut mobs sent to shut down one of the oldest forms of American democracy --- the town hall meeting.

These provide the perfect cover. They permit the more gifted corporate Democrats, for example Barack Obama, to seduce the great masses of working stiffs who make up the American electorate with soaring, but ultimately deceptive, rhetoric; producing brief euphoria on the eve of the last election, followed by no real substantive change.

A Business Week piece, "The Health Insurers Have Already Won.” reported: "The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."

This back-room deal was, in large measure, cooked up by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Charles "I-killed-the-death-panels" Grassley (R-IA) inside the corporate occupied confines of the Senate Finance Committee --- a development that should surprise no one given the Washington Post's report that the health and insurance lobby "gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats..." An additional $15.3 million was doled out to federal lawmakers between April and June of this year by the health care sector.

While "30...lawmakers [involved in drafting] health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments" and while Grassley has certainly collected tidy sums from all sectors of the health care industry, Baucus is the number one recipient of health insurance lobby campaign funds.

Huffington Post exposed an internal White House memo which showed that the President entered a back-room deal with the pharmaceutical industry "to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada." This was followed late Sunday evening by a revelation that the White House was poised to abandon the "public option."


It seems, Money buys propaganda, as well as opinions and votes in Congress. And, back in the past, pre-election, would you have voted Obama if he'd said, "I've a good spiel, but wait until you see me do bait-and-switch. It will boggle your mind."

But what is it other than bait-and-switch? Promise reform, the bait -- deliver yet more to the voracious malefactors paying out their cash for bigger, bigger future returns, the switch.

When the first draft of a bill is a thousand pages, and the notions needed for actual reform so simple, you know you're being flimflammed - flimflammed about as much as within the tax code and regs, a foot tall stack of paper with all those beautiful loopholes for the rich and near-rich, those never needing to work but able to live off the earnings of vast capital assets, those setting up shelters and family trusts.

Please note, the Brad Blog item is somewhat excerpted, and truncated without the updates and some key links. SO - Again, the full original is HERE.

Again, the corporate onslaught has temporarily gained momentum, with reform advocates falling back to defending "public option" instead of pressing for single payer. And on the other fallback attempt we have our obstrucitonist poster child, that Senator Kyl (rhymes with vile), now reported as saying healthcare co-ops "will not win support."

It's simply and clearly getting to be time for a cramdown, if there's any heart and soul yet unsold in the Democratic Party. There might be.

Last item, back to the open Nader image, Ralph with Amy Goodman, Aug. 14, HERE, for the unexcerpted version:

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama is headed to Belgrade, Montana today and Grand Junction, Colorado tomorrow, on Saturday, for a pair of town hall meetings on his healthcare reform legislation. The meetings are part of a final public relations push by the President to answer critics of reforming the healthcare system before the Obamas go on vacation.

While much of the media coverage has focused on right-wing criticism of the bill, there is also growing concern by advocates of reform that the Obama administration secretly made concessions to the healthcare industry and drug companies.

A recent article in Business Week was titled “The Health Insurers Have Already Won.” The piece details how [Lois Quam and Matt Entenza benefactor] UnitedHealth and rival carriers have maneuvered behind the scenes in Washington and shaped healthcare reform for their own benefit.

[see original re very interesting Robert Gibbs press questioning on the pharmaceutical industry's deal omitted from this excerpt - Goodman continuing]

Well, to talk more about the healthcare legislation, we’re joined by former presidential candidate, longtime consumer advocate, Ralph Nader.

Ralph, you have looked at what came out in the Huffington Post. Explain what it is now that we’re understanding is the deal that the White House has, well, denied over the last week.

RALPH NADER: What is emerging here is what was being planned by the Obama White House all along, which is they would only—they would only demand legislation that was accepted by the big drug companies and the big health insurance companies.

You can see this emerging over the last few months. President Obama has met with the heads of the drug companies and the health insurance companies. Some executives have met with President Obama four to five times in the White House in the last few months. He has never met with the longtime leaders of the “Full Medicare for Everybody” movement, including Dr. Quentin Young, who is a close friend of his in Chicago; Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the head of the Health Research Group of Public Citizen; Rose Ann DeMoro, the leader of the fast-growing California Nurses Association—not once in the White House.

That’s all you need to know to realize that the deal that’s being cut here is from Obama to Senator Baucus, the Blue Dog senator from Montana, who is cutting a deal, largely in private, with right-wing Republican senators and getting it through the Senate and presenting Henry Waxman and John Dingle and others in the House with a fait accompli. So whatever they pass in the House will be watered down in the Senate-House conference. And what we’ll end up with is another patchwork piece of legislation, allowing huge and expanded profits for the health insurance companies and the drug companies, and continuing this pay-or-die system that has plagued this country for decades, a system that takes 20,000 lives a year, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. That’s about fifty to sixty people who die every day.

The big mistake that the Obama administration made was they did not have continual public congressional hearings documenting the greed, the fraud, the $250 billion in billing fraud and abuse alone that the GAO years ago has documented. They didn’t document the $350 billion of waste, the overhead of Aetna and UnitedHealthcare and other health insurance companies with their massive executive salaries and bureaucracies. They did not document the deaths, the injuries, the sickness that hundreds of thousands of Americans go through every year because they can’t afford healthcare. And by not doing that, by playing this behind-the-scenes game with these executives from the big health-industrial complex, they were vulnerable to the split in their own party in the House, with the Blue Dog Democrats emboldened by an apparently wavering and indecisive President Obama, and they made sure that they were placed on the defensive.

And, Amy, when you’re on the defensive in a battle like this, with all these right-wing websites and Swift-boat-type people filling town hall meetings around the country, it’s very hard to get back on the offense. And when you’re cutting deals, as Obama is, with these big corporations, you will never focus the public attention on the sources of the abuse and cruelty.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, President Obama is going to be in Montana today. Democracy Now!, we traveled through Helena, Missoula, Bozeman, other parts of Montana in April. There was a very strong progressive healthcare movement, healthcare activists, throughout Montana. But the senator who really is in charge of this healthcare reform, Max Baucus from Montana, let’s just say wasn’t their hero. The Montana Standard reported he’s received more campaign money from health and insurance industry interests than any other member of Congress in the past six years. Nearly a fourth of every dime raised by Baucus and his political action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical supply companies, and other health professionals. The significance of this?

RALPH NADER: Well, the significance is that Obama is being undermined by his own party in Congress, because the Blue Dogs are getting far more money from these corporations and campaign contributions than the so-called liberals in the Democratic Party.

But, you see, I say “undermined”—I’m not quite sure that Obama is objecting to this. He has set the whole atmosphere of catering to these giant corporations. He has made every mistake that the Clintons made in 1993, ’94 with their health insurance plan, except that he’s leaving Michelle Obama out of it. He’s made every mistake.

You do not cut deals with the system that has to be replaced, which is the health insurance system and the monster costs imposed by the drug corporations, all of which are getting huge taxpayer subsidies, by the way.

So, what Obama failed to do, because he’s never done it when he was campaigning, he did not pay adequate and due regard to the folks that brung him to the White House. He has not mobilized the progressive base in this country. He has not done anything but, you know, humor the labor unions. And as a result, he doesn’t have a base out there.

You point quite clearly to, or you imply, that there a lot of people for a single payer, a full Medicare-for-All system. And that’s true. Every poll has shown a majority of the American people, majority of doctors, majority of nurses, are for the single-payer system.

So why isn’t the President of the United States, who was elected in large part by these same people, why isn’t he representing them in Congress and in the White House? Because he is not a transforming leader. He is a harmony ideology person. He’s a concessionary person. He wants any bill with the label “health insurance reform” on it, no matter what. He’s not even willing to draw the line and say there will be no bill, I will veto any bill that doesn’t have a vigorous public option, not a phony public option that will allow—that will allow people to be dumped into the public option when they’re the sickest and leave the healthiest people for [cherrypicking by] the profiteering insurance companies.


That is being very generous to Obama, letting him off the hook as only "weak" but not duplicitous, which seems more the case to me. But, Max Baucus is the real culprit in the story. More of the excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, last week we interviewed Democratic Congress member Henry Waxman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, you know, absolutely key in healthcare. And I asked him why he withdrew his support for HR 676, the bill to create a universal, single-payer healthcare system. Take a listen.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: A single-payer bill does not really have a chance to pass the Congress. It would be a radical transformation of our healthcare system. Some people could say, “That’s fine, we should do it.” But I don’t think the Congress would have any realistic chance of passing a bill like that. You’d have to take all the insurance coverage that’s provided on the private sector and switch it over to the government. There would have to be massive taxes, increases, to make up for the lost money that’s now being spent by employers for their employees. And by the time we would be through trying to accomplish something like that, the Republicans would demonize it. So what President Obama suggested was a practical compromise way to accomplish the goals that we wanted. [... In the past, in the minority, Bush having a veto, then] I wanted to argue that this was a way to cover people, and it’s the way many countries provide health insurance. And if we were starting from scratch in this country, we might well decide that that would be the way for us to go, but we have right now a system that’s been in place since World War II, where most people have their insurance through their jobs.


RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, Henry Waxman is going to be shoved aside even on his modest proposal, because the deal is being cut between Obama, Baucus, Grassley, Enzi in the Senate. And he’s not going to have much left, given the rebellion in his own ranks by the right-wing Democrats, even to put forth what he is proposing, which is a huge step backward from HR 676, which was the single-payer bill that he was on for a long time before he dropped out, before Nancy Pelosi and Obama, in effect, persuaded him to drop out.

But, you know, this business of “it‘s impractical, they don’t have the vote,” well, these are self-fulfilling prophecies. How many times could that have been said to the civil rights movement, to the women’s rights movement in the past? Well, they didn’t have the votes in Congress. So did these advocates of civil rights and the women’s rights movement, did they back down? No, they worked. They fought. They were transforming leaders. These people are concessionary leaders.

Let’s give Henry Waxman some slack here. He says that Full Medicare for All is too disruptive and too fast. Alright, why don’t they set a system that’s described in an interview with the New York Times yesterday of Dr. Marcia Angell, who was formerly editor of the New England Journal of Medicine? She says the following: you could do Medicare, step by step. Right now Medicare kicks in at age sixty-five. In the first stage, you could take it down to fifty-five years or older, and then take it down to forty-five years or older. They don’t even want to do that.

That’s why the people who are building this movement called singlepayeraction.org, which confronts each senator as they’re going in and out of meetings and puts it on their website, that’s why they [status quo corporate interests] say there’s no piecemeal. They don’t want piecemeal. They want a continuation of the present system with more co-pays, more deductibles, enormous inflationary cost, and the fraud that’s enormously pervasive in the billing system, and the waste in the administrative bureaucracies of these health insurance companies.

[...] And right now, people don’t have choice of—free choice of doctor and hospital when they’re under these HMOs. What’s happening here is a Goebbels-type propaganda attack on Full Medicare for All, accusing Full Medicare for All of everything that the present system is furthering: rationing of care by these HMOs, number one; bureaucracy, number two; huge cost increases, number three; and making the taxpayers subsidize their profiteering corporate greed. [...] I would go for full Medicare for everyone, because people understand Medicare. Forty-five million people get it. They have free choice of doctor and hospital. It’s a three percent administrative burden, compared to 20 to 25 percent for the Aetnas and the private health insurance bureaucracies. It’s something that people understand. It’s something we should have had in 1964; instead of just for the elderly, it should have been across the board. That’s what I would go for. It’s supported by a majority of the people, majority of the doctors, majority of the nurses. It’s clear. It’s understandable.


And it is fair because decent medical coverage in the wealthiest nation history has known is a right, not a privilege. A right. So get it right.

That's how it is. And, Waxman, he appears disingenuous too. He can support the Conyers single payer proposal in the past, when it clearly was out of reach but good campaign fodder, but now, when it is feasibly within reach, it somehow is cast as being impractical and off the table at the outset of things. That's a total crock.


FINALLY: The petition. I give the link. That's a service, not a duty. The duty is yours. Sign it. Submit it. Voice yourself, or live with being done-over.

HERE IS THE PETITION LINK.


_______________FURTHER UPDATE______________
The petition has you sending a message to the Senate Democrats, mainly to push Baucus aside to get fair things done. And you put down info that includes zipcode, so they immediately know which senate office to route things to. And there's a box for an added personalized note to the Senate Democrats. I took advantage, saying:

We voted for you. We would not be GOP conservatives sending you this message.

I could say single payer a hundred times, but you, Al Franken, you Amy Klobuchar, you already know it is what's fair, honest, and needed. The rest is a sick charade. It can be passed if Max Baucus is straightened out. What if the Dixicrats had been appeased instead of having Humphrey stand firm and say no? What spine do you have, that way? Where would womens' rights be or one person one vote, if it had not been forced against opposition. Integrating schools, the Brown case; fair districting numerically, Baker v. Carr - that was when we had a Court that is unlike the several sitting robed individuals we have now. The Supreme Court is not going to do the heavy lifting. The House might, Obama might, but for the sake of the nation, throw Baucus under a bus.

GET IT DONE OR HAVE ZERO CREDIBILITY. With most Minnesota voters. With yourselves. View it that way.

It is that simple. There is no need to complicate it.

And, with the Obama position having been started as compromise, meeting halfway, and with that disdained and the Obama reaction appearing to be yet more concessionary - If both houses of Congress do not show the proper leadership, the job will not be done as you KNOW it should, and you will blame yourselves as much as I will blame you. Honor the system if Baucus will play fair, otherwise, under a bus. It's not rocket science. A bill a thousand pages long with smoke here, mirrors there, is a fool's bargain.

It's doing right, exactly as your parents taught. That's simple, uncomplicated.


I hope the tone of the message is not a put-off. However, they need to know that people really feel they are being cheated and abused; and that means we have to tell them so.