In which I am Descriptive and not Prescriptive

So our old blog mate Nick Beaudrot and I were discussing his latest post on the political dynamics of health care reform and I was giving him my thoughts and just decided to post this to give a somewhat more complete sense of my feelings on all of this:  

Nick,

I think there is just enormous inchoate rage that after we have all worked so hard these last two election cycles and seemingly accomplished our goals, we are being held up by and fucked over by Lieberman of all people, not to mention those worthless assholes Landrieu, Lincoln, and Nelson, while also having to fear the perfidy of Bayh, Baucus, and Conrad, among others.
 
Progressives made these victories possible -- it was our money, our advocacy, and our footsteps that brought about this huge sea change and yet, we don't hold the cards.  And because of the unprecedented fuck- headedness of the Republicans including those two worthless skanks from Maine, Holy Joe holds the trump card every fucking time.  Our fate is in the hands of a sanctimonious sociopath, a man with no moral compass other than his own self-regard and his deep sense of grievance and bitterness towards the left.
 
It ain't exactly a recipe for happiness. 

I fear it is making us lose our collective minds.  As you know I have tried to stake out the "fucking grown up" position, but it is wearying. 
 
Right now I am watching Keith Olbermann and Markos Molitsas trash the Senate bill and basically issue a call to blow things up -- which I think is a disaster.  (kos is being a lot more tempered than Olbermann, who is in full-on rant mode.)
 
But what is so frustrating is the Blue Dog Senate douche bags have forced bad policy and bad politics on us.  This should have been a signature moment for us all, an historic moment on par with the passage of Medicare and Social Security.  Because of Ben Nelson and Lieberman, we are stuck with a bill that is hard to sell, not nearly as good for average people as it should be, and may actually be an electoral liability.  It's inconceivable in a way.
 
Possibly the worst thing that happened was getting that 60th Senate vote.  It created unrealistic expectations -- those of us who have long known Nelson, Landrieu, Bayh, and Lieberman knew they would never adhere to the party line.  Not for any decent substantive reasons, but because they are people who reflexively believe that splitting things down the middle is always a sign of wisdom.  (Oh and they are corporate whores too.)
 
So our compatriots rage and despair.  I despair and rage.  It's pretty much a fucking gut punch to find ourselves at this pass.  But that's where we are.
 
Merry Fucking Christmas to you and yours!

Sir Charles

 

Comments

[MR Bill]

if this thing is really (as Atrios says) a case of "you're forcing people to buy shitty insurance that they can't afford", hell yeah, I'm pissed.
And the insider Dems cluelessness about the way this will piss off most of their constituency is, well, puzzling, the sell out of the progressive base aside.

[Sir Charles]

MR Bill,

I would read Ezra to give yourself a more balanced view as to the upsides of the legislation even as it currently exists. (Actually Nate Silver has a pretty good "20-point" post on it as well, but Ezra has been drilling into the details of it thoroughly from day one.)

Having said that, I have enormous respect for Atrios's gut political instincts, even if he has gotten pretty cranky lately. I hope he is wrong on this, but fear he could be right.

[John]

I hope Atrios is wrong about the political implications, but there's little I can do to prevent Democratic politicians from making themselves unpopular. If they want to get re-elected, they have to succeed on their own merits. I do think it would be politically worse at this point to pass no bill than to pass the Liebermanized health care bill. It's better for them to be seen as mediocre than failures.

Ezra's probably right on the policy merits. It just may not feel that way to everyone getting drafted into the new health care policy, especially in the short term.

[big bad wolf]

alternate title: In Which My Language Is Even More Colorful and Amusing Than Usual

[oddjob]

LOL!

On the other hand, there were only three "fucking"s! ;)

[Corvus9]

bbw, I especially loved "those two worthless skanks from Maine." No, no, Sir Charles! Tells us how you really feel!

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

One further trouble is the success simple lying about the bill has brought the Republicans, particularly when it comes to the less well-infrmed to begin with. Yesterday Steve Benen reported on a poll that showed that people with NO insurance are split 50-50 as to whether the current system needs changing. (This after an election in which everyone, even most Republicans including both members of the National ticket, was deploring the current system and demanding it be changed. But the 'scorched earth' policy that the Greedy Old Party has followed has caused people to forget what they knew fourteen months ago, that we are in a crisis, that people are dying because of the current system, that those who aren't are trapped in jobs or going bankrupt, etc.

However, at least one thing CAN be said for the current bill, that there is still an outlawing of 'previous condition' rules, of 'recissions' -- and that alone is reason enough to support whatever first baby step we get.

[Eric Wilde]

One further trouble is the success simple lying about the bill has brought the Republicans, particularly when it comes to the less well-infrmed to begin with.

How is this different than the last 60 years?

[oddjob]

Heh!

Even the Boston Globe officially joins in hating Senator Sanctimoniously Self-righteous.

Mind you - that isn't just an op-ed column, that's the paper's lead editorial today:

...It’s entirely too easy to portray politicians as self-interested, but Lieberman stands out even among his Senate colleagues for his self-righteousness and egotism....

[oddjob]

How is this different than the last 60 years?

It didn't used to be quite so much the case that journalists were glorified stenographers. Thirty years ago there were journalists, and publishers who supported them in their efforts, who gave presidents, Nixon in particular, but not only Nixon, serious cases of heartburn with the information they found out and published that was being kept secret from public view.

[Sir Charles]

Eric,

I don't think that blatant lying of this nature was common until the last twenty years or so, largely for reasons that oddjob points out.

Once upon a time the press would have felt the need to point out the lying as opposed to writing "some say this, others say that, who knows."

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Yet today the NY Daily News has an op-ed from ex-Sen Bob Kerrey defending Joe Lie.

[oddjob]

Bob Kerrey was a rather different Dem., too.

[low-tech cyclist]

I started reading Nate Silver's "20 questions, 20 responses" post, where Markos, along with Jon Walker of FDL, respond to Nate's 20 questions.

By the time I'd read their responses to Nate's first two questions, I could only conclude that both of them had lost their minds.

"Who with a following is saying this shit?" I had to ask that, didn't I?

Next time God unexpectedly gives me a super-power, I want one I can use for the benefit of humanity, dammitall.

Markos: "The assumption here is that this bill is the only option on the table." Well, yeah.

Jon: "Killing the current deal does not preclude passing the good parts of health reform through reconciliation." If 50 Dem Senators were ready and willing to push the good parts through via reconciliation, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

I hate to say it, but what color is the sky in their reality?

But here's the part where I'd have thrown something at the TV, if I'd been watching them on TV:

2. Nate: Would a bill that contained $50 billion in additional subsidies for people making less than 250% of poverty be acceptable?

Markos: This betrays a simplistic view of liberals, as if our answer is to merely shovel money at a problem. What we're looking for is good policy, which in this case, would also be good politics. So no, throwing money at the insurance companies doesn't change a thing. The insurance industry would simply absorb the new subsidies just like universities have raised tuition to shovel up any increases in financial aid.

Jon: That money will help a few people in the short term, but, in the long run, our system built on private insurance companies is unsustainable, and will ruin our entire economy. I have zero confidence that the subsidies promised today will remain the same in the future. They might be increased by future Democrats or reduced in 2016 by a Republican Congress. Without cost controls, that money will quickly be eaten up by the ever-growing cost of health care. This reform is about trying to fix the system, not patch it with more money.

I'd remind Markos that when affordability is a key issue, as it is here, yes, shoving some more money at the problem is exactly the necessary solution. And Jon, this reform is about insuring 30 million or so Americans, and making sure the ones who already have insurance can't wind up losing their coverage the moment they need it. Yeah, we'd like to fix the system too, but a progressive should value insuring the uninsured over a pony-plan hope of 'fixing the system' that just ain't gonna happen.

[oddjob]

Markos appears to have forgotten that all during the 1950's & beyond there were continuing incremental changes to Social Security, usually expanding its scope beyond what the Dems. were at first able to achieve when FDR first proposed it.

Foot in the door, camel's nose under the tent, & all that.

I also agree with Prup that even if it only prevented recissions, & exlusions based upon pre-existing conditions it would still be a bill worth passing.

[oddjob]

If I feel abandoned, it's not by Obama and the Democratic party, it's by those on the left advocating to kill the bill.

I am unemployed and have a pre-existing condition that requires daily medicines, quarterly doctors visits and an annual test. I am on COBRA, which runs out mid-2010, when I will have to find new health insurance. I will need to purchase some kind of health insurance, assuming I can find provider who will insure me.

...

My case is not unique or unusual. In fact, it is common. I am one of thousands if not millions with the same issues that this bill would affect. And when I read or hear people from the left arguing against the bill that would likely provide me and people like me with some modicum of security because the bill doesn't accomplish everything they had hoped it would or it doesn't help every last person or the insurance industry will benefit, I do feel abandoned.

[Matt12]

I'm not pissed. Just horribly depressed. The blatant lies over the past few months and the fact that so many Americans are gullible enough to believe them is a big part of it. The other part is the dawning realization that our political institutions might just be entirely incapable of dealing with the large problems our society and planet faces with good, sensible policy. I knew Congress was a fucked institution and was not fertile soil for enacting big, sweeping changes in social policy. So I reconciled myself to the fact that we were going to have to take an incremental approach. Now it appears I have to settle for incremental-incrementalism.

My religion is democracy and the events of the past few months have given me a crisis of faith. I haven't felt this way, this powerless, since Spring 2003.

[oddjob]

SEIU President Andy Stern, whose union, along with other major labor organizations, is agonizing over the current state of the health care fight, told reporters today that the Senate should pass a controversial reform bill that has riven the left. In so doing, he defended President Obama from his critics, and offered a scathing critique of the United States Senate, which he says is not up to the task of governance anymore.

...

Still, Stern said he opposes the Senate bill in its current form--a bold stance for a consummate insider like Stern, who has often shied away from critiquing the Democrats' agenda.

"We don't like the bill," Stern said. "It has to be improved."

...

Stern added that the clumsy, year-long fight over health care in the Senate needs to serve as a wake up call to elected officials that the upper chamber is broken.

"After this bill is passed," Stern said, "the Senate needs to take a very hard look at how it's going to deal with the future in our country."

"They have a process now that is not meeting the needs of the American people."

And what if, in conference, Stern's chief concerns (affordability, access, the financing mechanism in the Senate bill) are not addressed? It's far from clear that he'll break ranks with the Democratic party.

"There are lots of parts of the Senate bill that are really good," he said.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

You had to ask. Who knew that a mere query from you had the potential to yield madness.

Matt,

Where's your God now? :-) Seriously, the Senate is dysfunctional enough under ideal circumstances -- when one party is gripped by madness, and the other plagued by middling sell-outs, it's a complete cock up of an institution.

oddjob,

It looks like Ben Nelson may be the one to kill the bill. Did I mention that he's a ginormoous douche bag?

That TPM link is really important. This preexisting condition stuff is not an abstraction. I know any number of people who live in fear of being uninsurable because of current conditions and feel if they lose their jobs they will be seriously screwed. We need to give these people our serious consideration in posturing over this bill.

(God I'd like to head up to Capitol Hill with a flask of Jack Daniels, a 40, a can of pepper spray and a thin- handled composite baseball bat -- I could do the Lord's work.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Paul Krugman has, perhaps, said it best, in today's column:
"By all means denounce Obama for his failed bipartisan gestures. By all means criticize the administration. But don’t take it out on the tens of millions of Americans who will have health insurance if this bill passes, but will be out of luck — and, in some cases, dead — if it doesn’t."

My emphasis, just because the kossacks and similar seem to need help reading.

[Matt12]

Yeah, because of its inherent features the Senate has always been an impediment to social change. It's just that there have been times in our history, periods of major social or political upheaval, when it was possible to get major things done. Big bang eras, y'know? With the complete implosion of the Conservative movement and the financial crisis last year, I thought we might be living in such a moment. It should be such a moment.

Remember this cover? Instead here we are, still everyone's "bitch."

[Davis X. Machina]

But don’t take it out on the tens of millions of Americans who will have health insurance if this bill passes, but will be out of luck — and, in some cases, dead — if it doesn’t."

I am sure those people understand their role in the inevitable forward march of progress, and will understand. Progress has its price.

Later, when we all have single-payer-and-a-pony we can have, like, a day of commemoration for them. Or something

The prospect of such a memorial I am sure will provide them with great comfort in their present suffering.

[Sir Charles]

DXM,

Omelettes for everyone!

[oddjob]

This preexisting condition stuff is not an abstraction.

I was apparently born with epilepsy. (The very first time I got sick with a fever, at about nine months old, was when I had my first seizure.)

[Davis X. Machina]

Or a stamp. We could put them on a stamp.

[Sir Charles]

That's going to be a bit messy.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And remember, according to some insurers, domestic violence is a pre-existing condition.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Sir C: But aren't Republicans doing their best to 'stamp' them out? As are the Romantic Idealists.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

Group health plans are forbidden under HIPAA from excluding coverage for domestic violence. I would be curious if there is any treatment of this issue for individual policies under HCR.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I have found several references to the statement that, in eight states and DC, domestic violence can be considered a pre-existing condition. This may be inaccurate, but it is even on the heathreform.gov site:

It is still legal in nine states for insurers to reject applicants who are survivors of domestic violence, citing the history of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition.

(Other cites make it 'eight states and DC.')

If this is wrong, please let me know.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

SEIU lists the states as follows:

But, in DC and eight other states, including Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, insurance companies have gone too far, claiming that "domestic violence victim" is also a pre-existing condition.

[Sir Charles]

Jim

It's not wrong, but it can only apply to individual rather than group policies.

[Mandos]

I've voluntarily self-exiled myself from tussling it out on Ian Welsh's comments section, but I created a simple, handy table to explain thing to people on my own almost-defunct blog:

http://politblogo.typepad.com/politblogo/2009/12/freedom-is-slavery-health-is-insurance-the-metabenefits-of-a-bad-bill.html

[oddjob]

("Mandos")

A Tolkien fan?

[Mandos]

Yes. Mandos as in Námo of Valinor. I've been that on the interwebs for a really long time now.

[Corvus9]

Yes, I remember Mandos from my years as a lurker. Always irreverently poking fun at lefty blogs from a lefty perspective. Very entertaining.

You should visit here more often. We don't bite so much, and there's liquor.

[minstrel hussain boy]

dead, doornail dead.

there was simply too much money being made off the status quo.

it seemed like everytime bush and his bunch did something fucktarded i would find myself saying "we get the government we deserve."

yup. we got that shit. we have nelson, who is more obsessed with forcing his way into the most personal and agonizing choices women have to make. we have lieberman who is all caught up with having his fucking feelings hurted by them mean democrats in his home state and he's gonna make them pay he is...

mandated insurance. oh, yeah, sweet hooly sayntid muthera swate swettin' jayzus (you have to imagine me da's kerry brogue when you say that out loud). i bet that shit will work just like it did when they mandated that everybody has to carry automobile insurance.

rates were jacked. payouts were cut. deductables and co-pays increased.

the insurance bastards in california were so flagrantly crooked that the state had to create a whole branch of government just to ride herd on the cocksuckers.

the insurance guys shrugged their shoulders and bought the entire department off. they weren't even shy about letting everybody know they had done it.

thank. god. for. chocolate. it's the only thing keeping me grounded and sane.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

You really have no choice but require people to have insurance if you are going to eliminate pre-existing condition provisions. Otherwise people would wait until they were sick to purchase insurance.

What needs to be done is assure that the insurers cannot gouge people on the insurance meaning at a minimum you shoud treat health insurers like public utilities with strongly regualted pricing and profits. Or move to a non-profit model as is done in much of Europe.

[minstrel hussain boy]

the part that makes my head spin the most sir charles is that i thought we were supposed to be talking about health care.

what i hear is a lot of talk about insurance, and not much about doctors and nurses.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

I hear you, but absent a state run health system like England's or a single payer system like Canada's you are going to be dealing with insurance. The thing is, insurance doesn't have to be a pernicious or rapacious concept -- it's just that we have allowed it to be.

Insurance is just basically a socialistic concept of pooling risk. And it is used in some of the most effective and progressive of the universal health regimes in the world such as in France or Germany. However, what they don't have is insurance companies that run on a maximization of profit model, where denying coverage is good and bouncing the sick from a policy is part of the model. Properly regulated insurance companies can serve the public interest just fine -- it's the regulation part that is the rub.

[oddjob]

Properly regulated insurance companies can serve the public interest just fine -- it's the regulation part that is the rub.

Your describing a society that treats its health insurers as if they were (essentially) not unlike how we treat public utilities.

[oddjob]

(Sorry about the garbled grammar, but I think my point's clear.)

[minstrel hussain boy]

I understand the history and foundations of insurance well. I know that it began with the Presbyterian Widows and Orphans Funds of Scotland. I know about the London shipowners banding together to help each other survive the dangers of the open sea, and the predations of pirates.

Here's the deal though. I was sitting through a sales pitch on life insurance many years ago. The salesperson went on and on and on.

Then I said:

Let me see if I have this right. I'm betting you I'm gonna die. You're betting me I'm gonna live. We bet each month, and I'm hoping you win. Hayzeus Chreestoze, my bookie has got things all wrong, your racket is the best I've ever seen.

Once, on a European tour I got brutally sick. We were in the town of Stavanger, Norway when I developed a life threatening case of pnuemonia. I went to a clinic, was placed in an O-tent and given intravenous tetracycline. They flew me to Oslo for a five day hospital stay.

The cost you might ask?

Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkis. Nuthin.

That experience, more than anything else, made me into the Social Democrat I am today.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

I totally understand where you're coming from. I am squarely in the single payer camp as well.

The sad thing is, when people from Canada, Western Europe and Japan come here, they have to purchase these travel health insurance policies. I was talking to a lovely Canadian couple this summer in Miami and they were expressing amazement that we tolerate a society in which an illness or injury can be positively ruinous to a person and where people forego needed care because they simply can't afford it.

And although I pay a rather large life insurance premium twice a year I continue to hope fervently that they win that bet too.

[minstrel hussain boy]

as you know, i grew up on an isolated, remote rez. our "health care" consisted of now and then visits by missionary docs. one of those bastards had the goddamned gall to "prescribe" bible verses for sick people.

it's a hard realization for a kid to make when it hits you that for most folks, whether or not you live or die is of no concern. those that did show concern were usually from the "go ahead and die" camp.

nobody should ever come to that realization. nobody.

i find it very sweet revenge to see the way my nation has funded free health care, mobile clincs, docs who make house calls and stuff like that from the casino money we rake off of rich white folks.

we've also built a sawmill, a co-operative cattle company, taken over our school system, and a ski resort. if a white tourist breaks an arm or leg at our resort the treatment is free. our mobile clinics visit neighboring reservations too. the navajo and hopi aren't getting big ass gambling revenue and still rely on the BIA (which is firmly in the "go ahead and die" camp, they want the hopi coal and the navajo uranium without all those pesky redskins messing up the deal).

spotted tail, the brulè souix, after one of his trips to washington, said this about white society:

the white man can make anything. he can't give it anything away for shit.

true dat.

i guess our elegatarian social structure of taking care of each other is nothing but proof of our lack of sophistication and primitive natures.

after our hunts, my son and i always make the rounds of the elders of our clan to give away meat and hides and stuff. the elders, when we do this, never say "thank you." instead, they say things like "you're a fine hunter" or "our people are proud of you." they don't thank us because they are not beholden in any way, shape, or form. we are instead, giving them their just due as elders of our people.

a few more generations of gambling revenue and we might be able to get a grip on the whole greed thing. then we can do great purges of our tribal roster like the cherokee, chocktaw, and penchanga nations have done. once we understand how much richer we can be by narrowing the pool of folks who get money for nuthin' we can then take our rightful place beside the rest of ya'll.

we will be finally civilized.

[oddjob]

And Lucy Van Pelt strikes again...........

[Sir Charles]

Shabbat waits for no one my friend. Not even Harry Reed (and 45 million uninsured.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

It's gonna be worse than that. Tomorrow is the day of The Storm, which already deserves the bold letters. The one that is already having Sir Charles looking for his English-Canine dictionary so he can tell the Legal Beagle "Will you hurry the fuck up? One more lamppost and your Master is going to turn into a snowman!" (I'm sure he already has the top hat, certainly he would feel it proper attire.)

But that same storm is heading for Conecticut. Not only will it likely hit the state before sundown -- or at least before the Z'man (shopping at Orthodox-run stores and ya gotta know such things), but there is no way that even if it is late that there will be any form of transportation from Connecticut to Washington. So Harry and the boys better bring out the Bushmills and the packs of cards, ain't nothing else they're gonna get done this weekend. (Trouble is, so many Republicans are Religulous types that there's no way they'll wager for votes, but at least it will give the good Dems more of the Irish to drown their sorrows.)

Merry fucking Christmas, everyone. Maybe Santa will deliver insurance policies rather than toys this year.