Victory Puts Health Reform One Step Closer
In the words of President Obama (as contained in the fund raising email that hit my inbox a scant 1 hour and 24 minutes after the event),
“This evening, at 11:15 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to pass their health insurance reform bill. Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform. This is history.”
History indeed, and it was passed with 39 Democratic defections and only 1 Republican – Anh Cao, of Louisiana – the man who replaced William “I left hid the money in the freezer” Jefferson.
Congratulations are in order but don’t celebrate too soon. The fight now moves to the Senate where I am certain things will only get more complicated.
“We Are All Batshit Insane”
I know that batshit insane has become the default setting in certain quarters of the right, but the response at RedState to Rush Limbaugh’s failed attempt to buy the St. Louis Rams is so far gonethat I seriously considered the possibility it was meant as satire. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is:
The Cheney Family Business
Maureen Dowd gets only one detail wrong in her lacerating take-down of the newest Cheney Family venture — the probable name:
It’s hard to believe that the Bush dynasty, which limped away in disgrace after smashing our economy and the globe, has spawned another political dynasty.
But Jason Horowitz reported in The Washington Post that Mary Cheney, the younger daughter of the former vice president, is starting a consulting firm modeled on Kissinger Associates.
Since it involves the Cheneys, it’s shrouded in unnecessary secrecy. But Mary’s friends say her plan is to make it Cheney cubed, bringing in her dad and big sister, Liz, when those two finish cleaning out the Augean stables of Dick Cheney’s legacy for his memoir.
Horowitz wrote that Mary, who is expecting her second child with her partner, Heather Poe, next month, may be hanging the shingle for the “gruff clan who speak in dour unison when bashing the current president, second-guessing the previous commander in chief and chiding wayward G.O.P. leaders.”
The influence-peddling firm will be wildly successful, no doubt, because if anyone has shown a golden touch, it’s Dick Cheney. And there are bound to be oodles of clients who want coaching on how to make things look totally the opposite of what they are.
Saudis, right-wing dictators and Bernie Madoff calling for image makeovers? Scooter Libby calling to see how to get his career back after taking the fall for his scheming boss? Rush Limbaugh calling to strategize about how to buy an N.F.L. team with black players as he says offensive things about blacks? Rupert Murdoch seeking tips on how to merge Fox and NBC into Brian O’Hannity?
You can hear a receptionist chirping: “Cheney, Cheney & Cheney. Who would you like to target today?”
Never. Never, never, never. No Cheney worthy of the name would ever leave their fingerprints all over their handiwork that way. No, Liz and Mary are much likelier to pick a name like “Solutions for a Safe America” or something like that.
Response from U.S. and World Leaders to Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize
Sen. John McCain and Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Pawlenty, at least, chose the classy route. McCain told Greg Sargent through his press spokesperson, “I congratulate President Obama on receiving this prestigious award. I join my fellow Americans in expressing pride in our President on this occasion.” And Pawlenty used his weekly radio show to say this:
GOP Leaders in House Hate Gays and Lesbians More Than They Support U.S. Troops
Several Republican leaders in the House announced their intention today to vote against the latest Defense Authorization Bill, because it includes a provision to include gays and lesbians as a protected group under existing hate crimes law:
British Columbia Hands Out Free Tamiflu
No, not f0r the hell of it but rather because it simply made sense. Good job BC.
Generals to Dick & Liz: Stop Scaring People!
Josh Gerstein at Politico:
About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.
“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.
“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”
The former vice president and his daughter declined comment on the criticism.
The former military officers, whose Washington visit was organized by Human Rights First, argued rather bitterly that the Cheneys have exaggerated the risks of bringing Guantanamo prisoners from Cuba to the United States.
“Can you imagine getting a terrorist from Guantanamo convicted and put in a federal penitentiary in your town?” Maddox asked. “Have you ever checked who the hell’s in there already? Have any of them gotten out? The person who we’re putting in is probably a heck of lot less dangerous than most of them who are already in there.”
Needless to say, Michael Goldfarb — being the big supporter of the military that he is — thinks that 12 former U.S. generals and admirals are addled in the head and don’t know what they’re talking about — because, of course, they are not talking the talk that he likes to hear.
Obama’s Careful Dance
The other day I wrote a piece detailing one Congressman’s opinion about heath care reform and the public option. Today I found this excellent breakdown of the current White House position on passing health care reform by the always prescient Pennsylvanian, BooMan. The crux of his argument is that things are unfolding just as planned. Pass something with a public option in the House. Something without in the Senate. Reconcile later.
So, of course, the way to make this bag of shit smell better is to offer people the option of buying their health insurance from the government. Yeah, maybe you are only going to give that option to the self-employed, uninsured, and impoverished, but it’s a far-sight better than just compelling people to become customers of the very corporations they hate the most.
Even before Obama took office he started canvassing the Senate to see what kind of support there was for his health care plan. He quickly discovered that there was no Republican support for the plan he ran on. He also discovered two disconcerting things about the Democratic caucus. They were more favorably disposed to Clinton’s mandate than his own plan, and there were a few Dems who opposed the public option.
He realized that he probably wouldn’t have 60 Democratic votes in the caucus (Kennedy and Byrd were ill, Specter was still a Republican, and Franken’s election was tied up in the courts). Therefore, he made sure to get a provision included in the budget that would allow him to come back in late October and pass a bill using the budget reconciliation process (which only requires 51 votes). [emphasis mine] But he knew he couldn’t announce that he was going to go that route without giving an honest effort to pass the legislation under regular order. Even if it was a pipe dream, he had to try to win over a few Republicans.
I recommend you read the entire piece as it presents a very well constructed argument and should make many people who are otherwise freaking out over the process calm down just a bit. I would also like to point out that the immediate reaction in the comments section was exactly what I expected. The first response was that without a public option health care reform is meaningless.
Personally I do not believe this to be the case at all. We need to understand that our health care system is severely damaged. Think of it as a high priced German sports car that has gone without service for 300,000 miles. You are likely to have issues with the transmission, the engine, tires, suspension, brakes, electrical, etc. Each of those systems require an overhaul but right now we simply want to get the damned thing into the garage and start working on it.
So far, Obama is the first mechanic to actually give us an estimate worth entertaining. Oh, by the way, he will get the thing running and maybe replace the tires and brakes. For the rest? Well, start saving up baby, this is a ten year project.
Ireland’s Newest Citizens
As reported today, Pres. Obama has freed three more Guantanamo detainees. One is headed for Yemen; the other two are going to Ireland:
That aspirin will cost you 100 BILLLL-ION DOLLARS!
It looks like Dr. Evil is in charge of the pricing scheme for drugs we get in hospitals which, when taken at home, would be cheaper. Much, ahem, cheaper:
Medicare and supplemental insurance covered most of the costs, but there was still a bill of $730. Charges for what the hospital calls “self-administered drugs” – drugs that Bujalski takes regularly at home.
“What I found out is that $730 plus a few pennies normally cost me under $30,” Buljalski said.
He did a cost comparison. St. Anthony’s Central charged him about $497 for two tablets of Plavix, a drug Buljalski usually pays 8 dollars for. A Crestor tablet cost $65 in the hospital, at home he pays about $3 for it.
The article notes that Mr. Buljalski’s total bill, for a one day hospital stay, topped out over $58,000. Luckily he had insurance to cover most of those costs. The article goes on to note that the medications — which weren’t covered by insurance — had an astronomical “3,495-percent mark-up.” If hospitals are overcharging by the thousands of percentage points for medications, you wondering how much else of Mr. Buljalski’s $58,000 bill for one day was similarly overcharged.
Look, there’s a huge debate over the government’s role in health care right now, but there needs to be some things the left and right can both agree on — and lowering these outrageous hospital costs should be one of those things. The cost of health care in the United States as a percentage of our GDP is nearly 16%. In Canada, the same figure is a little above 10%; in Britain it’s on the low side of 8% — and those countries cover every citizen. In fact, out of the industrialized world, America’s health care to GDP ratio is the highest. And when it costs a middle class worker’s yearly wage to spend one day in the hospital — one day — we see why American health care is so expensive. These ridiculous hospital costs are going to bankrupt us. Something has to be done to reign these charges in and make health care affordable for all.
If the left and right can’t agree on this, then political course in this country has retarded further than I thought.
Where Did All the GOP Health Care Bills Go?
Insurance industry lobbyists have crushed them, every one.
But seriously, folks… Glenn Thrush asks an excellent question: Where is the alternative health care reform bill that Republican leaders promised they would have for Democrats…. 100 days ago?
Dennis Kucinich: The Public Option is Dead, Long Live the Public Option
As I alluded to in this post on Tuesday, I participated in a conference call between the Canadian membership of Democrats Abroad and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich on the topic of health care reform. The reason for my participation is simple. I am an American citizen working for an American corporation but living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
When I was offered the opportunity to relocate from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Vancouver, British Columbia I did as any other person would do, I consulted my wife and together we listed out all of the pro’s, con’s, opportunities and risks surrounding this potential move. Uprooting a young family is not something that should be taken lightly no matter how lucrative the opportunity may seem. In the end, one of the items that helped tip the scales in favor of relocation was Canada’s single payer health care system.
Democrats Abroad Canada Meeting with Dennis Kucinich
I am sitting on a conference call with the folks from Democrats Abroad Canada awaiting the arrival of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I plan to provide an update later but in the meantime I ask that you pay a visit to the website Health Care Stories from American’s In Canada to see some highly relevant health care stories.
Come back to this post later for an update.
MUST SEE: Health Oversight Committee hearing on private health insurance
First off, I can’t put into words how pleased I am to see Dennis Kucinich swearing in the group testifying before this committee. The Bush era practice of not requiring people to swear in was simply reprehensible.
Second, this hearing is a MUST SEE for any person serious about understanding the debate around heath care reform in the United States. I know this is not the “sexy” hearing. That one is scheduled for tomorrow when the sitting executives from America’s top insurance companies will get grilled under the lights and likely say nothing of substance. No, this is the hearing where real Americans tell the stories of their lost loved ones who died as a result of intentional corporate malfeasance. This is the hearing where the ex-executives – no longer fearful of repercussions – testify about the practices of true corporate bureaucrats charged with denying coverage to these real Americans, sentencing them to death.
This hearing is pure gold. I urge you to watch it in it’s entirety. If you can’t seem to bring yourself to do so your comments will receive the same treatment.
This is serious stuff in need of serious review.
Simply Staggering Health Care Numbers
Arguably the most relevant bit of data in the health care debate was presented today by the Kaiser Family Foundation…Simple Arithmetic.
This week we put out our annual benchmark survey of employer health coverage and costs. Two numbers jumped off the pages.
The first number was the average cost of a family health insurance policy in 2009: $13,375. To put that number in context, if you are an employer, you can hire an employee at the minimum wage for about $15,000 per year. If you are a consumer, you can rent an average two-bedroom apartment nationwide for $11,136 per year (though it is quite a bit more here in Menlo Park, California where our Foundation is based). You can also buy a new Chevy Aveo for $12,000, and it gets 35 miles per gallon on the highway.
The other result that jumped off the page was the stark contrast between increases in health insurance premiums and overall inflation in the general economy. Premiums went up 5% and prices overall fell 0.7% (mainly driven by a big drop-off in energy prices).
Hat tip to memeorandum.
House Passes Resolution of Disapproval Against Joe Wilson
Politico has the story:
Andrew Sullivan Explains The U.S. Health Care Debate To The U.K.
He does it as only he could, weaving his complex and compelling personal story into a clear picture of what is right and what is wrong with the U.S. health care system.
There are many valid criticisms to be made of American healthcare, but let me tell a story that helps explain its strengths. Only 15 years ago, the retrovirus, HIV, was killing thousands in America — six times as many young Americans have died of Aids as died in Vietnam — and researchers had never found a way to stop such a sophisticated and constantly evolving organism from burying itself in people’s immune systems and slowly destroying them. I was told in 1993 that I had a few years to live. I write this 16 years later with a stronger immune system than I have ever measured before.
America’s much-maligned healthcare system did this. Without this vast and free market in medical care and pharmaceuticals, without the potential for making large amounts of money from affluent and insured patients, the innovation of treatments and regimens would never have occurred at the pace it did. Yes, publicly funded research was also vital — but it is rightly restricted to basic science, not finessing drugs for humans. Now we have dozens of anti-HIV drugs, from several private companies, competing with each other, and my life is saved. How do I put a price on that?
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