Greenwald comes up with yet another blisteringly brilliant post on health care reform.
But whatever else one might want to say in favor of this health care bill — and there are compelling arguments to make in its favor — the notion that Democrats have “stood up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades” is too blatantly false, insultingly so, to tolerate. As even the bill’s most vocal supporters acknowledge, the White House’s strategy from the start was to negotiate in secret with those very special interests in order to craft a bill that they liked and that benefits them. If one wants to invoke the Obama-era religious mantra of “pragmatism” to argue that this was a shrewd strategic decision necessary for getting a bill passed, that at least is coherent (though not, in my view, persuasive). But this bill is unquestionably one of the greatest boons in recent history for the private health insurance industry and other “special interests” that have long been opposing “reform.” It’s a major advancement for the corporatist model on which both parties rely. It should lead a rational person to want to buy large amounts of stock in Goldman Sachs and Citigroup in anticipation of the upcoming “reform” of that industry. Whatever this bill is, “standing up to special interests” is not it; quite the opposite.
just read this
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p>http://src.senate.gov/files/OA…
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p>Forget CBO, go w/ objective actuaries. No “teabaggers”, just a guy who is used to actually used to projecting future costs. Was at a meeting in ’94 with Roland King (a Carter appointee BTW) who basically tore the Clinton proposal to shreds on its assumptions. Anyone on this board familiar with the phrase “unintended consequences”?
It’s non-partisan and is interested in the question of how it affects the government budget. Not that actuaries don’t have valuable information, but they’re looking at things from a different angle and I think asking and ansewring slightly different questions.
Richard Foster is the Chief Actuary for the Deoartment of Health & Human Services, not the Heritage Foundation. I read (and write) enough actuarial reports; there are some pretty damning things in the linked report.
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p>CBO evaluates based on assumptions provided to them; I’ll agree they’re nominally objective, but think Foster probably has better insight as to what will actually happen. Read the report. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
I clicked the link and now at least realize it came from within the government. I’m in no position to comment on the merits. I just assumed that the CBO was created for a reason and that office made the most sense for scoring legislation. To be clear I’m not accusing anyone of having an agenda.
I agree with Greenwald on this: Obama saying that the Dems “stood up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades” is a bit rich. The special interests were co-opted, as was the health care reform model. However, I can imagine that the insurers were brought to the table at least partly by a sense that things couldn’t drag on in their current state; and politicians were elected to fix the problems. It so happened that there was a ready model to cut them into the deal. So yeah.
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p>However, his and others’ defense of Jane Hamsher is really reverse ad-hominem to me. He links to Ezra’s article which addresses Hamsher’s “10 points” one by one, substantively; and Greenwald seems to think that was a personal attack. Well, it wasn’t.
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p>This whole paragraph by Greenwald is basically horsehockey; I’ll bold the bits that are unsubstantiated, inflammatory, or otherwise dubious:
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p>(Sorry, didn’t transfer all the Taibbi links; that’s a different issue and I’m lazy.)
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p>Klein’s article was precisely a substantive critique.
And oh, all the pushback against Dean and Hamsher is from the Prez’s “loyal supporters”?? It’s “coordinated”?? [By whom?] Wow, I didn’t get the talking points email from the mothership — how will I know what to say?
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p>If Hamsher is slinging BS, she should be called on it — by everyone! And I hope and trust you all would hold me and us (eg.) to the same standard.
This may be slightly off point, but do you think Obama and Reid fought really hard for either a national public option or expanded Medicare buy-in?
Obama clearly said that he wanted a public option, but he also pretty clearly wasn’t willing to give up an OK bill for it. He played it verrrry carefully to avoid the appearance of a “defeat”, either on the dropping of a PO or the failure of the whole thing. It was a “conservative” (small c) play; and it worked.
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p>I think Reid wanted to please members of his caucus (like Rockefeller, Schumer et al) and tried to bake the PO into the cake. I don’t think he was expecting Lieberman to nix it; and in fact Lincoln flip-flopped the hell out of the PO as well. And I think Reid can be forgiven for not expecting Joementum to stick in the shiv on the Medicare buy-in, seeing as it was, like, his idea. (I think?)
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p>Here’s the problem: The libs wanted the bill more than the mods and cons. When you can make a credible threat of being willing to nix the whole thing, that makes you powerful when there’s no room for error. Obama really wanted the bill. Bernie Sanders (and his constituents) wanted it more than Nelson or Lieberman — obviously! So would Martha Coakley, btw — that was the point of my earlier post.
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p>I just don’t know what they should have done. Maybe Obama should have gone shootin’ with Nelson, or loofahed Joe’s bunions, or carved his portrait in wax, or something. But I think it just comes down to that Nelson’s a conservative who needs to seem really conservative for a conservative state … and Joe’s a lying douchebag; and they held the keys in a 60-vote world.
I appreciate your saying this. I sure don’t know either and I am far less knowledgeable about policy, law-making procedure and tactics than so many BMGr’s. I’m left, however, with a gut feeling that our top Dems didn’t exert the kind of public (and private) leadership I expected on such a momentous piece of legislation. The same goes for Afghanistan.
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p>I hope that we liberals listen to FDR and exert more and sustained pressure:
I think it is apocryphal and perhaps never was said, but I’m certainly willing to be proved wrong.
To have Feingold blame the President for not pushing the PO harder … I don’t know about that at all. That’s like saying Obama should have run for Senate from Connecticut.
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p>Obama’s strategy was to have Congress write the law, b/c they have to do that anyway; it’s one of the lessons of 1994, when Hillary et al basically dumped the law as a fait accompli on Congress.
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p>In that light, Feingold’s anger is misplaced. It’s the Senate’s freakin’ bill. He might take the plank out of his own branch’s eye before he points out the mote in another branch … or something.
I would say that attacks from Axelrod and Gibbs against Dean, calling him insane and irrational, were coordinated.
they’re not “loyal supporters”; they work for the Prez. I don’t think that’s who Greenwald is referring to; if so, that’s an odd way to put it.
That’s why Greenwald links, for example, to this Politico article headlined “David Axelrod: Left ‘insane’ to sink health bill” to substantiate his point about “loyal supporters.”
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p>Please explain why them working for him exempts them from being loyal supporters.
First, accusing Jane Hamsher of being “purposefully misleading” is a very harsh statement, and deserves a sharp slap up the side of the head. This is an issue about which principled people can disagree without asserting bad faith.
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p>Second, his refutations are extraordinarily feeble. Consider just the first two.
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p>Hamsher: “1) Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.” Ezra “You,” huh? For the 85 percent of the country already covered by health-care insurance, it doesn’t force “you” to do anything at all.” Bob: What rubbish. Of course it forces you to do something you didn’t have to do before: buy health insurance.
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p>Hamsher: “2) If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.” Ezra: “There’s a very good case to be made, in fact, that paying the 2 percent penalty is the best deal in the bill.” Bob: That’s not the point Hamsher made. All she said was that if you don’t buy insurance, you get fined. That’s true for God’s sake!
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p>I’m with Greenwald here.
Fritz is still alive, I was happy to discover on HuffPost. But he’s not happy about the President and way the country’s going. He hits directly or indirectly on the Big Three: War, the Economy, and Jobs and on what is perhaps the root of all evil, corporate control, to wit:
There’s now great oversupply of labor because of lay-offs, so corporations can underpay/reduce benefits for employees (but never CEOs!).
A new WPA would take some psychological and financial pressure off the many, many families who are burdened by unemployment.