In an article by Brian Beutler concerning so-called Blue Dog Democrats who are worried about the potential of the so-called "public option" for government offered health insurance, Beutler hits the nail on the head when it comes to what truly is the biggest hurdle to health care reform:
my immediate read on all this is that the Senate--its rules and its political makeup--remains the biggest hurdle to health care reform.
The Cato Institute recently highlighted an interesting May 17, 2009 Washington Post article that really puts certain stereotypes and conventional understanding of Canada into proper perspective.
Reports last week that the recession is draining Social Security and Medicare funds were just one more reminder that the United States needs to fix its finances. For inspiration, why not look to Canada? Long derided by American conservatives as "socialist" and praised by the left for its generous government spending, Canada is casting off those stereotypes. Over the past few years, while U.S. politicians presided over huge increases in spending and debt, the Canadian government tightened its belt, slashed tax rates and balanced budgets.
Spending: Spending by all levels of the Canadian government peaked at 53 percent of the country's GDP in the early 1990s, then plunged to 40 percent in 2008. U.S. government spending has risen, reaching 39 percent of GDP in 2008. And with the stimulus package, that number is likely to jump even higher.
Deficits: Canada has balanced its budget every year since 1998 — not by raising taxes, but by cutting spending. The United States balanced its budget for four years in the late 1990s, but now deficits are so large that it's difficult to imagine that ever happening again.
Federalism: While the U.S. government grew more centralized in recent decades, Canada's federal government ceded power. President Bush's education policies increased federal control over American schools; in Canada, K-12 education is left to the provinces.
CNN reported that the AMA's new President, Dr. J. James Rohack, is open to the idea of a government sponsored health insurance plan for Americans who don't have health insurance:
Dr. J. James Rohack told CNN that the AMA supports an “American model” that includes both “a private system and a public system, working together.”
In May, the AMA told a Senate committee it did not support a government-sponsored public health insurance option.
“The AMA does not believe that creating a public health insurance option … is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs across the health care system,” the organization wrote, explaining that a public insurance plan could lead to “an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.”
Rohack, who recently became AMA president, suggested Wednesday that the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program available to Congress members and other federal employees could be expanded as a public option. That would avoid having to create a new program from scratch, he said.
“If it’s good enough for Congress, why shouldn’t it be good enough for individuals who don’t have health insurance provided by their employers?” Rohack said.
The objective of current health reform efforts should not be to abolish the employment-based system to which so many Americans feel attached, brittle and expensive as that system may be. Instead, the aim should be to develop a robust, parallel system of fully portable insurance that individuals or families can purchase on their own, in a properly regulated and organized market, with public subsidies where deemed necessary.
In today's op-ed for the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes:
The big question here is whether health care is about to go the way of the stimulus bill.
At the beginning of this year, you may remember, Mr. Obama made an eloquent case for a strong economic stimulus — then delivered a proposal falling well short of what independent analysts (and, I suspect, his own economists) considered necessary. The goal, presumably, was to attract bipartisan support. But in the event, Mr. Obama was able to pick up only three Senate Republicans by making a plan that was already too weak even weaker.
The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.
Which brings us back to health care. It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/76545/trembling-before-g-d
powerful film
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/himmelstein_woolhandler
Can anyone say single-payer?
A good example of how even a public-option plan can still flounder if it is gutted by conservative and business interests.
Same authors, earlier piece with some additional information: http://www.counterpunch.org/woolhandler09212007.html
There are additional articles out there about the failures of the Massachusetts system. Do you think that the data coming out of Mass. (which is more mixed than these articles admit) will aid conservatives in defeating a public-option in national health care reform. Or will it serve as an example for liberals to advocate deeper liberal structural reforms in the system?
I'll go with the former. It will come down to rhetoric and name calling. Anything with any resemblance of structural reform will be a labeled a "non-starter" by conservatives and center-right democrats. I'm admittedly jaded, I say torch the system and the parties like Atlanta.
While poll after poll show that Americans support a public health care option (which is remarkable given that many Americans confuse the watered down public option proposals with "socialized medicine") The democratic leadership, including Obama, are not offering true reform (testimony to the influence of campaign donations and lobbying).
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_152/news/36261-1.html Glimmer of hope that there is enough pressure on the left to achieve true reform. Also serves a sad reminder that the US does not have a true center-left party.
I believe that President Obama has indeed caved into political pressure to be more outspoken on Iran than experts, Republican experts, like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and the like, would otherwise suggest.
This is not the only front on which he is trying to move to the center, or the perceived center, of the political/discursive/rhetorical spectrum.
The apppointment of Tim Geithner and Larry Somers to the Treasury Secretary and Economic Council Chairman position, respectively, signaled that two Wall Street insiders with serious ties to the financial industry, in favor of corporate-friendly policies, would get to set financial/economic policy. The results are less than overwhelming.
Further exampes to follow as the days and weeks proceed.
A Harvard Law Student asks legitimate questions of Congressman Barney Frank but is scolded contemptuously by Rep. Frank.
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"People should note that this one did not come out of the Treasury initially, this was a Federal Reserve decision...this decision to give billions, 80 billion intitially to AIG...actually came before Congress passed the rescue plan."
The new AIG package includes a $40 billion chunk of the $700 billion financial bailout. It's the first time money from the big rescue bill has gone to any company other than a bank.
"The revamped rescue plan -- now totaling $162.5 billion -- commits another $30 billion to AIG. The payment will come from the second half of the $700 billion rescue package enacted last fall."
"Key Democrats in Congress, backed by party presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama on the campaign trail, made it clear Sunday that their support for the rescue blueprint offered by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. comes with a price.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, vowed late Sunday to push for an independent oversight board for the Treasury bailout effort, as well as protections for homeowners facing foreclosure and new restrictions on lucrative Wall Street executive salaries, both of which Mr. Paulson has opposed.
"We will not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome," Mrs. Pelosi said.
"Secretary Paulson and I have a lot of agreement, but we have a difference of opinion on what's clean," Mr. Frank said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Mr. Frank echoed Mrs. Pelosi, saying he would be looking to add provisions limiting compensation for executives in failed banks and other financial firms that receive taxpayer aid. Democrats say they will redouble efforts to pass a $100 billion economic stimulus bill targeting Main Street.
"I don't think that dirties up the bill," Mr. Frank said.
"Today is the decision day. If we defeat this bill today, it will be a very bad day for the financial sector of the American economy."
"These people may have a right to their bonuses. They don't have a right to their jobs forever," said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
"Like the Iraq war and Patriot Act, this bill is fueled by fear and haste."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's John King that
"President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack"So clearly, the opposite must be true. This is the same Dick Cheney who on Sept. 14, 2002 predicted that if the U.S. invaded Iraq that:
"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"A few years later on May 15, 2005 he also predicted that:
"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."And that's just Dick Cheney the predictor...there's a whole slew of actual lies about the threat of Iraqi WMD and what Saddam had or didn't have before the Iraq War.