No Public Option No Campaign Funds Period

As we come down to the end of the debate on health care reform, I made a personal decision that I hope others will adopt who support a strong public option. It’s pretty simple – if there is no Public Option in the final bill then I will not donate or support any political campaign for anyone who voted to either water it down or keep it out. I made up a graphic that breaks this idea into a sound bite.

It is so obvious it makes me sick

Like dragging ones feet across the carpet on a cold dry day and then getting a jolt when touching anything, I get to a point where some things in life and the world become so obvious to me I wonder why it seems I am the only one who sees it and why can’t I get others to see it too. When others get that way they get ulcers or fly into a rage – me? I beat my head on a wall and write about it in my blog. Here is the latest obvious crap flaking my pie crust.

1. Where’s the change I voted for? It seems even with a new administration in Washington and the bullies out of power in Congress, we were to see actual real change. I’m still waiting. The Health Care reform debate is a prime example. It’s been obvious for years that we must end the monopoly by private insurance companies who profit from the pain and suffering of their customers. We don’t tolerate it for any other industry except health insurance.

Now it seems both spineless Democrats and the GOP bullies are planning a big wet kiss to the insurance companies along the same lines as we saw when the Medicare D pharmacy plan came out – huge payments to big insurance companies for crappy coverage for those least able to afford any medical bills in the first place. Can you say Donut hole? 

Republicans have lied about the reform from the beginning – just plain lied – and our fourth estate and even Democrats just let them do it.

Here are the facts 40 MILLION people have NO insurance and approx 40,000 DIE each year because of having NO insurance.

What kind of human would allow that to happen? Republicans for one and Democrats who accept money from the insurance industry.

Polls show overwhelming public support for reform and a public option, yet some in Congress let the money do their thinking for them. SHAME ON THEM!!!!

2. Passing off “talking points” as news. What boils my blood almost as much as the GOP lies about health care reform that go unchallenged is the general incest that goes on within the Washington DC media complex.

We had an election in November and the Democrats won handy majorities in both houses and have the White House but you wouldn’t know it if you watch or read the mainstream media that comes out of DC.

It seems that the Sunday talk shows and political news in print supposedly needs to have a 1 to 1 “balance” of left and right views. While it seemed on some Sundays, former VP Dick Cheney, or for some odd reason, his daughter, was allowed to basically give a monologue about his version of events when he was President and approved of the criminal torturing of human beings among other GOP centric discussions.

Do you remember tug-of-wars from your childhood? I remember the adult in charge lining up us kids by height and then going down the line, alternating which team we would be on, to ensure that neither side was unfairly stacked. That notion of balancing the sides to make things fair has morphed in modern media to this simplistic binary equation of Republican vs. Democrat. But it’s a false equivalence, because it assumes a completely valid argument on both sides, and as we chronicle daily here at C&L, rarely do we see sensible, much less valid, arguments coming from the right to make the “balance” actually informative. Instead we get death panels, socialicommunistmarxism, concern trollism over deficit spending and the Olympic Games.

Sunday Morning Bobblehead Thread

The point again is this assumes that both sides have equally valid arguments and in some cases, like the health care debate, this is not even close. The lies about death panels, lack of public support for a public option, and “socialized medicine” told by the right are lies. Lies are not valid arguments.

Only a few years ago if you dissented against the President your words were treasonous and you should be “sent to Gitmo” or worse, where regular people wearing T-shirts saying “Bush Sucks” were detained by police when they showed up to protest Bush in public. Since November if you bring a gun to an event the President is appearing, it’s called “free speech” and you want to “take back your country” from a black guy and his uppity ways.

It kind of has an Orwellian “doubleplusgood” ring to it all.

3 Finally, who the hell is Kim Kardashian? What has she done to merit any mention in the press? I had to look her up in Wikipedia and just as I guessed she is famous for no real reason. She didn’t land a plane in the Hudson, she didn’t cure a disease, and she doesn’t contribute to society in any memorable way.

If she was someone of substance I could see why she would be newsworthy but unless I missed her winning an Oscar recently then her celebrity worth is very small compared to the amount of press she gets.

I’m just fed up with narcissism being passed out as something important. I don’t care about her or any other “celebutante” and I’ll now have to spend time scrubbing the taint from this blog. UGH!

And THAT is this edition of my Obvious rant….

Why progressives and every one should be fighting for the real Public Option

Last weekend, progressives got in an uproar over what appeared to be an attempt by the Obama administration to chuck the Public Option from the current health care reform plans. What I finally figured out is that Obama and the White House cut deals with the health care lobbies (hospitals, insurance, drug makers, and doctors) which caused them to change their idea of what “Public Option” was meant to be. It went from a separate, Medicare like, plan to one that would have subsidies given to private plan providers and no chance at negotiation on pricing. It would be just like the corporate welfare given to the pharmacy industry under the Medicare Part D plan passed during the Bush administration.

Over the weekend, President Obama referred to the public option as a “sliver” of health care reform, and Sebelius said the public option wasn’t essential reform’s success. Though the White House’s core position hasn’t changed, the intensity with which it supports the public option has varied over the last several weeks, and this weekend’s remarks were the first indication that the administration doesn’t even regard the public option as particularly crucial.

White House Strongly Denies It’s Given Up On The Public Option 

What I found out and why I liked the plan in the first place, was during the campaign, Senator Obama promised a separate public insurance plan that people could sign up for.

Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program, available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees; (2) create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses that want to purchase private health insurance directly; (3) require all employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees or towards the cost of the public plan ; (4) mandate all children have health care coverage; (5) expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs; and (6) allow flexibility for state health reform plans.

(1) OBAMA’S PLAN TO COVER THE UNINSURED. Obama will make available a new national health plan which will give individuals the choice to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to federal employees. The new public plan will be open to individuals without access to group coverage through their workplace or current public programs. It will also be available to people who are self-employed and small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees.

Barack Obama’s Plan for a Healthy America

Basically the public option was a separate plan – similar to Medicare – where the Feds would make the rules and pay the bills. The only difference was that since it wasn’t Medicare one would need to pay a premium based on income.

Now today it seems the public option has been merged into the Insurance Exchange as one of many choices. The difference seems to be that it would be through a private insurance provider with the government paying them to provide the plan and you paying a premium based on income.

If that sounds familiar it is because it is the same model used when the pharmacy plan known as Medicare Part D was during the Bush administration. Insurance plans were given money to provide the plan, members paid for their drugs and a monthly premium. The other features included deductibles, a doughnut hole (where members had to pay 100% of the cost of their meds), and Medicare not being allowed to negotiate drug prices.

It seems like others see the same thing. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake wrote:

The PhRMA deal on July 8 says that there won’t be any drug price controls, and the next day, Blue Dogs Heath Shuler and Debbie Halvorson author a letter demanding — no drug price controls

The American Hospitals Association deal was signed on July 8. The hospitals want higher medicare reimbursement rates for rural providers. On July 15, the Blue Dogs threaten to block health care reform — if it doesn’t increase reimbursement rates to rural providers.

And suddenly, the hospitals are spending $12 million running positive ads about health care reform with PhRMA and the AMA.

Mike Allen said earlier this week that “this weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip.”

The White House never cared about getting Republican votes — it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to “Republican” demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn’t need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good. 

The Baucus Caucus: PhRMA, Insurance, Hospitals and Rahm

So basically the reason why President Obama and the White House were shocked about the back lash is because Progressives, including myself, are expecting the original plan – a public plan that is a new and separate plan similar to Medicare. We don’t want an industry sell out that ends up lining the pockets of CEOs and screwing over members like the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D.

Organized disruptions of constituent town halls are un-American

Congress is in recess until September. At these times many go back to their districts and have town hall meetings with constituents to find out their views on issues the Congress member has been dealing with. It is one way to take the temperature of the electorate. During this recess and with health care reform on the table, conservative groups have been organizing so-called “grassroots” protests at the town hall meetings. They and their major insurance plan backers want to make it look like the “public” is opposed to reform and if the Congress person doesn’t agree then they shout them down and disrupt the meeting. These thug tactics by conservatives are un-American and give a false perception of major opposition to reform.

Here is an example:

David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars wrote:

No one has a problem with right-wingers marching in protest of the health-care plans. That’s certainly their right. And no one minds that they choose to participate in these forums. But town halls were never designed to be vehicles for protest. They have always been about enabling real democratic discourse in a civil setting.

When someone’s entire purpose in coming out to a town-hall forum is to chant and shout and protest and disrupt, they aren’t just expressing their opinions — they are actively shutting down democracy.

And that, folks, is a classically fascist thing to do.

Are Republicans and their thugs killing off the Town Hall as a democratic forum? 

But before you say “well liberals have done it before….”, Paul Krugman had this to say:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

The Town Hall Mob

The fact is that polls show majority support for Obama’s ideas on health care reform (starts with question 37) and the people who show up and disrupt the town hall meetings are the same people who can’t stand a Democrat is President, who has been encouraged by conservative groups and pundit douchebags, and many who are horrified that an African-American is President.

Rush Limbaugh got it wrong when he claimed the President and Democrats were using Nazi tactics in the reform debate, it seems the conservatives are doing the Nazi tactics. Back in the 1920’s Brownshirts would invade and disrupt meetings of other political parties in Germany. Even the Nazis learned that thuggery wouldn’t win them the election so they ended up reducing the influence of the Brownshirts and stopping the meeting disruptions.

When are conservatives going to learn the same lesson?