In contrast to the Saturday meeting in Chelmsford, this meeting
was civil. No one was shouted down, and in fact there were very
few out-of-order interjections at all. There was some applause
— on both sides — but nothing that was objectionable.
I’m not certain why this was. It may be that the Republicans
have decided that acting as thugs was backfiring. There is some
indication that this may be true — I understand that Sarah Palin
is trying to get her supporters to tone things down. But I claim
no real insight into this matter.
Some of their speakers were, to be sure, attempting to be
inflammatory. The first speaker asked Rep. Tsongas if she agreed
with a statement of Steny Hoyer (the second most senior Democrat
in the House, after Nancy Pelosi — and by the way he’s not a
liberal by any means) that “opponents of health care reform are
un-American”. Well, Niki Tsongas was clearly taken aback at
that, as was I. I had no idea what this person was talking
about. Rep. Tsongas said she hadn’t seen the statement in
question but certainly wouldn’t agree with it. When I got home,
I saw in the paper where this came from. Nancy Pelosi and Steny
Hoyer had written an op-ed (in the New York Times, I think) in
which they said that those people who were disrupting these
meetings with members of Congress were acting in an “un-American”
manner. Rather a different point, don’t you think? The
dishonesty of some of the oppositional speakers just continually
amazes me.
The other thing that was painfully evident was that they are much
better organized than we are. While I think we comprised about
half the people in the auditorium, we amounted to a small
fraction of the speakers.
Allow me to put in a plug here. The Sudbury Democratic Town
Committee has put out on its web site a paper (“Single-Payer
Universal Health Care — An Idea Whose Time Has Come”). Our
purpose in doing this was precisely to help us all frame the
discussion and find ways of speaking to this. So I encourage
everyone to take a look at this. Perhaps it will inspire you to
speak out at the appropriate time, and perhaps it will help you
organize your ideas as you decide what you might want to say.
While many of us are not accustomed to public speaking, it’s
really not a terribly difficult thing to do, especially if you
think through what you want to say beforehand — even make some
notes. And remember — you have many friends in the hall with
you, even if you don’t know who they are when you walk into the
room.
Rep. Tsongas again — as she did in Chelmsford — exhibited a
command of the issues. She talked at some length about a public
option. She believes that it will be part of the final bill.
She certainly conveyed (in my opinion, anyway) that she strongly
supports this. But she pointedly did not commit to insisting on
a “robust” public option. (She was asked about this by several
speakers, some of whom I did not know.) So from my point of
view, I think her heart’s in the right place, but I don’t really
see her as being a leader in this effort. She clearly was trying
very hard — and I think was pretty effective — in recasting the
objections that were raised to the proposed health care
legislation in non-ideological terms where they could be properly
addressed. This most likely defused a lot of anger that seemed
at times stage-managed and ready to erupt.
When I got a chance to speak, this is what I said, as closely as
I can remember it. (I was speaking shortly after a person who
was opposed to any health care legislation because it would be
“too expensive”.)
—————
I’m also concerned about expense. And it’s unfortunately true
that a large proportion of the health care premiums that we pay
to insurance companies for health care — about 30 to 40 percent
— goes not to health care at all but to administrative expenses.
And it’s not like we get anything good for this. Our health care
in this country is really not good at all. If you look at
standard measures of health — infant mortality, say, or life
expectancy — we’re not at the top of the list at all. We’re
down around 47th or 48th in the world. This is not so great.
And the wealthiest third of American citizens have general health
only equal to or somewhat inferior to the poorest third of
British citizens. We’re just not doing well here. Just about
all European countries have much better general health than we
do. And they pay much less for it — per person, they pay at
most half of what we pay.
They are able to do this because just about all of those
countries have some form of single-payer health care that cuts
out the 30 to 40 percent administrative overhead of the health
insurance companies.
So my question is this: how can we possibly attain a standard of
health in this country that is up to the level of what we see in
Europe, at a comparable cost, without a single-payer plan that
cuts out that administrative insurance company overhead?
–Carl Offner
sue-kennedy says
to continue and expand these Town Hall Meetings and it seems to be paying off.
<
p>On the way home I was listening to Michele McPhee on 96.9, when a woman who identified herself as being the designated reporter on the event for Michele, came on a reported that she got a better understanding of the Health Care Plan after listening to Congresswoman Tsongas. Our Representative rocks!!!
<
p>As Carl reports the crowd was about 50 – 50 which consisted of a considerable number of LaRouchies and Republican Party leaders.
<
p>What seemed missing was the average citizen. It’s unfortunate that some of the exhibited behavior discourages the average citizen from being actively involved in one of the most important issues of our time. Congresswoman Tsongas’ “Congress on Your Corner”, has made the Niki approachable for ordinary citizens not part of any particular organized group, the ones who don’t usually get the opportunity to speak with a member of Congress. I applaud Niki Tsongas for her efforts to reach out to those without political clout and hope that “Congress on your Corner” can return and perhaps other elected officials can take note of Congresswoman Tsongas’ splendid example!
alanf says
I certainly hope so, since both of us were there! All kidding aside, the people who could make it were those who didn’t have to be at work. These days, with so many unemployed, that ends up being more than there’d be otherwise. I know of at least three people there who were in that category. But there are still some people working during the day. Otherwise, there might have been more people attending.
alanf says
Very good overview. I agree with just about everything you said, both here and at the mic, except that I think there may be room for quite a bit of improvement even without single payer, at least at the first go-round (which may well end up being what we’re stuck with). We may never achieve the savings that the Europeans do, but we can definitely do a better job than we’re doing now. As Atul Gawande pointed out in his article “Getting There from Here”, the health care system in each country is a consequence of history, of what social scientists call path-dependence.
<
p>On another note, just in case you didn’t get what Charley was saying obliquely, could you please reformat your post, removing the carriage returns at the end of paragraphs? It’s hard for people to read this way, and some may skip it as a result.
kirth says
I think you mean carriage returns in the middle of sentences, if that’s what’s making each line so short. Most browsers will automatically wrap a long line to fit the window. If the window is too narrow for even the manually broken lines, they get all chopped up.
johnd says
With regard to your sig line… how much does George Soros pay his Hedge Fund managers?
kirth says
did Soros get Federal bailout money?
johnd says
Isn’t the left angry at Wall St. bonuses regardless of whether they got Fed money? I personally DON’T think $91K is a lot of money especially for people living in NYC since they’ll be lucky to keep $40K of it.
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p>How much does Ortiz get for playing 1 game for the Red Sox? How much does David Letterman get for each show? What does Sean Penn make for 1 movie? How much does George Soros make in 1 year?
<
p>It seems inconsistent to me that we have companies who didn’t need Fed bailout money to be able to pay their top workers bonuses but then we take a company who does need help (Fed money) and we want to hamper their performance by limiting bonuses. Don’t you think their top people will go someplace else (go work for Soros)?
<
p>I’ll be putting my money with companies who perform and NOT companies who follow some arbitrary rule.
lightiris says
<
p>No. I think the anger is precisely at using taxpayer money to line the pockets of the idiots who got us into this mess.
johnd says
selling cars for Chevy and I sell shitloads of cars… BUT GM tanks then I should get “punished” for being one of the idiots that drove them into bankruptcy????
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p>I have been lucky enough to work as a salesman for companies and have “banner” years while the company did poorly in totality. Luckily, I still got my commission checks and would have been severely pissed if they punished me because some VP made stupid decisions.
<
p>I seem to recall you are/were a teacher and would you be ok with teachers pay being cut because the principle ordered the wrong replacement windows (or signed onto a stupid oil contract… or anything else) and now doesn’t have budget to pay the teachers? Wrong, fire the Generals making the wrong decisions and not the soldiers taking the orders and following them.
lightiris says
Here’s the story, then, for you:
<
p>You knowingly sold boatloads of cars you knew were junk to people who couldn’t afford them. You raked in astronomical bonuses on these deals while putting your dealership at risk. Your dealership, however, under the accumulated weight of its unethical business practices, tanked once the facts of your junk cars and deals were known far and wide. Your dealership, though, is so important in your community that the failure of that dealership would be catastrophic for the future (supposedly). So the government bails out your dealership with taxpayer money, money the victims of your unethical also paid in taxes, btw. They are really pissed off at you because they’re getting ripped off twice. They don’t want their tax money to keep you in a job or in business. But, at any rate, you still have your job–amazingly enough–and you go back to selling cars again. Is it any
surprise these same taxpayers don’t want their taxpayer money to wind up in your personal bank account?
johnd says
Round peg meet square hole…
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p>Not every person on Wall St sold crap. I have worked with BOA for years and own stocks, bonds and mutual funds through them and they serviced me well. I have 2 mortgages through Citibank and they are fixed rate 20 year mortgages at 5.5% which I am also quite happy with. If there were people at each place that got bonuses on these business transactions then they deserved them. What percentage of people receiving bonuses in Wall St firms sold the derivitive products you mentioned? How many of them believed these derivatives were good deals (as long as the market kept roaring)? Why shouldn’t the Wall St people over-performing at selling regular stable products to people get their bonuses?
<
p>You want to blame EVERYONE at company A for the poor decisions of VPs, Executives… If you are a loan originator and your underwriters approve a loan then why in the world wouldn’t you go process this loan? If it goes bad then blame the underwriter… OR if you find out the underwriters went by a set of rules determined by some VP then blame the VP since the underwriters are just following their rules.
kbusch says
Um, LightIris, why are you answering this question? It’s primitive tribal thinking to be talking about what “the left” is “angry” at. This question is anchored by no polling; it illuminates no interesting fact or policy. It’s like a frame from a Mallard Fillmore cartoon: it’s all stereotypes, none of them attractive, and bathed in a resentment expressed as a primitive notion of fairness. It requires no answer. It can simply sit on our beloved BMG embarrassing itself. Trust our readers.
At least, I hope you wore your galoshes.
kirth says
It’s the entire point, and the thing that most annoyed the judge who said it.
<
p>All your questions about Soros, Letterman, Ortiz, and Penn are irrelevant. In other words, they don’t matter.
johnd says
but shouldn’t they be irrelative?
<
p>I would love to have two competing companies of equal size and then have one of them using the “government” rules (with bonuses) and any other stupid restrictive rules they/you come up with… and then let them compete.
<
p>My company (with bonuses) would kick serious ass. I have been in sales almost my whole life and every so often you hear of a company which tries to have sales people NOT on commission (usually some hair brained scheme by an academic or an engineer) and they FAIL MISERABLY!!!
<
p>Bonuses and commissions exist for one simple reason… they work!!!
kirth says
before the companies got bailed out with our money. If they had, the companies wouldn’t need bailing out. What makes you think they’ll “work” now?
johnd says
as “those companies”. Obviously we cannot come to terms with this since you wan to paint entire companies as “BAD” with a broad brush while I think even in the worst companies which needed money to be bailed out there were outstanding workers. We will not agree and so be it.
christopher says
That makes it sound like the bonuses cause the performance. It seems to me that performance should be shown first and then they can get their bonuses. What upsets a lot of us is that these guys are getting bonuses supposedly tied to performance. Yet, if these companies require a bailout they obviously didn’t perform very well. Ergo, they clearly do not deserve a bonus. The potential of a bonus might be a good incentive and as such “cause” good performance, but the actual receiving of the bonus should only come if the performance proves worthy.
johnd says
But what I do know (and have said already) is that bonuses should be given to people who deserve them… period. If a company has 1,000 people on bonus pay and 50% of them make the criteria which is defined in the beginning of the year in a “compensation contract” then they should get it an the 50% who do not meet their goal/quota/criteria should not get it. But in this scenario I just laid out you could have 500 people getting bonuses and potentially the company could do poorly (maybe very poorly) but the 500 who attained over-quota performance still should get their bonus.
<
p>If the AL batting title was won by a player on the team that finished last, he still gets the batting title!!!!
christopher says
I guess I see this as a collective rather than individual measurement. I certainly don’t know the contract details. I realize it was just an example but I have a hard time imagining 50% of the individuals doing well enough to earn a bonus, but the company still doing poorly. I’m not even sure what these executives do individually. I was under the impression that they collectively manage the company, so if the company does well credit goes all around and everyone can get a bonus; if not blame goes all around and thus no bonuses. I don’t think this is the case of individually soliciting clients/sales and some doing a better job than others, but maybe so.
johnd says
“If a company has 1,000 people on bonus pay and 50% of them make the criteria which is defined in the beginning of the year in a “compensation contract” then they should get it and the 50% who do not meet their goal/quota/criteria should not get it.”
<
p>I am not in favor of companies who received Federal money paying people who don’t achieve their goals especially the higher up the chain of command you go. So I do think we agree… to a degree.
kbusch says
Possibly you didn’t need to answer this query. We were rewarded with a descent into primitive, tribal warfare.
<
p>Why, kirth, why? And you punctuate so well!
mr-lynne says
… dig at me.
<
p>…
…
…
…
<
p>:)
kbusch says
I will add teasing you to my to-do list, though.
kirth says
it was a dynamite opportunity to show off some killer punctuation!
<
p>Actually, next time, I’d appreciate getting an Admiral Ackbar warning.
alanf says
of paragraphs should be removed, or, to put it another way, that carriage returns in the middle of paragraphs should be removed. Leaving a carriage return at the end of every sentence also makes the text hard to read.