Howard Dean, Wendell Potter, Mike Lux health-care blogger call: Fighting for the public option
As you know from Susie's post, on Friday Howard Dean and Wendell Potter held a blogger conference call to address their concerns about the Lieberman/Nelson Senate Health care bill. Mike Lux was the moderator and a host of bloggers asked questions about the bill. What followed was a detailed discussion debating Gov. Dean's problems about the Senate bill. As much as the Villagers try to smear Dean, it's all about policy and not ideology when it comes to health care.
It's a long call that features more actual policy debate than what you would find on most political TV programs that are supposed to actually carry the same type of substance, but often fail to do. They are more interested in shouting matches than a substantive debate. You can go to DFA's website where they want you to call Harry Reid's office and say no mandates without a public option.
And as mcjoan notes while looking at the new CBO scores, the public option had a better cost saving effect for the federal government in the Health care bill than it does without it.
TPM has more:
The CBO has concluded that, on average, premiums will be the same as they would have been if the Senate had the public option, but that the public option saved the federal government more money by putting downward pressure on the premiums of low-cost private plans, which will be heavily subsidized.
The bill remains a big deficit slayer--$132 billion in the first 10 years. Over the next 10 years, CBO warns all estimates are very uncertain. But here's a key conclusion: "CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the ensuing decade relative to those projected under current law--with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP."
Update: Of special note from the CBO report--which Pelosi should be trumpeting:
[FN 11] The presence of the public plan had a more noticeable effect on CBO’s estimates of federal subsidies because it was expected to exert some downward pressure on the premiums of the lower-cost plans to which those subsidies would be tied.
If the deficit scolds are really so worried about the federal deficit why aren't they backing the public option to be in the bill too?
to current health care mess. That is, Congress's last major attempt to fix things. That was the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act enacted in 1986. It mandated that effectively all hospitals had to provide emergency room care for all comers, regardless of ability to pay. with no provision on when they could be released, and without any sort of taxpayer subsidy. Likewise ambulance services.
The effect is a form of national health care. What it created was a system where hospitals have to treat head colds in the emergency rooms for free and ambulance services are being used like taxi cabs.
The financial effect is that hospitals are forced to recover these large additional costs from people who can afford to pay, or from their insurance companies. That raises hospital fees and insurance premiums substantially.
Perhaps part of the solution is to have our dear Congressmen undo some of damage they've already done before they fix things any more.
Has for years now been recruiting , funded , supporting and electing republicans or persons will corporate policies on our democratic ticket..
I refuse to vote for any democrat which supports and votes for this piece of crap...
If there is not a real democrat runnning against them in the primary , I will vote for anyone else... If there are no other choices , I will vote for a republicans just to make sure they lose 2 votes and maybe if this is done enough their arrogant a.. will be gone..
These so-called democrats are not real democrats , but paid corporate employees..
None
December 19, 2009
Senator Tom Colburn: "The crisis of confidence in this country is now at an apex that it has not seen in over 150 years". Video
Reporter Ask Senator Tom Colburn:"Do You Think We're On The Brink Of A Civil War"?
"Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much." A James Pence Quote
look at his approvals...and his repub buddies..Shameless corporate shills.!!! The nation will remember that because the REPUBS did nothing to support HC Reform 45,000+ Americans DIED this year!!!
I don't know if the public option would've put any downward pressure on what insurance companies can charge, if it remained as small a presence as Obama was specifying in his speech about a month past.
It would have to be more robust, where the governmental Economy of Scale could dwarf the Economy of Scale of giant insurance companies that either merged with or destroyed their competitors.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
it's simply a massive upward transfer of wealth to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, just as the financial bailouts were a massive upward transfer of wealth to speculators and the financial sector.
Private insurance companies will be written into the law and the system in a systemic way that will be extremely difficult to undo, and drug company profits are guaranteed. It works fine for them.
difficult to undo: the idea that health is a commodity.
That basic premise is the root of free marketism.
The airwaves as a commodity, national and international travel, telecommunications, financial services.
The basic premise that ANYTHING can be rendered a commodity and packaged and sold is what has led to this point.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
The democrats will not say a word or attack republicans no matter how republicans attack democrats with their lies , deceit and nasty name calling..
But the Democrats arrogantly attack other democrats which do not kiss Emanuel and other corporate democrats a.. or join in line behind them in their demands,,,, Then they attack them like Kucinich and Dean..
Bipartisan to Emanuel and Obama is for them to kiss the a.. of the republicans , not for the progressives and their base..
Remember Emanuel was responsible for throwing Dean out as head of the DNC.. This was because Dean would not give Emanuel extra campaign money every time he ask , for the republican candidates Emanuel had recruited to fund and support on the democratic ticket as democrats..
Notice that Emanuel has republican Spector running on democratic ticket as a democrat.. Spector votes for Republican policies over 95 percent in the past.. I believe Emanuel was behind the scenes supporting Lieberman against Lamond in the general election for senator..
This is why we are at the point we are today.. The democrats are brought by corporations and passing these trillion dollar welfare bills to give our tax money to the banks , health and drug company.
Emanuel is a joke and his policies are not that for the working class but to gain more power no matter what he has to do...
Emanuel is no longer the American's working class friend... Emanuel is building the democratic party for his power and control..
None
relation to the promises candidate Obama made all during his long campaign for the White House, which he began in 2003 still declaring himself an advocate of single payer.
The Obama administration it seems has stepped up its frontal attack on Howard Dean. Check this out folks:
The Obama White House it seems has asked Mrs. Victoria Reggie Kennedy to write an Op-Ed for Sunday's Washington Post entitled: "The moment Ted Kennedy would not want to lose," for December 20, 2009. Here are some excerpts of her article for Sunday's paper:
"My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars -- and competing interests -- were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation's working families and of our economy as a whole....Still, Ted knew that accomplishing reform would be difficult. If it were easy, he told me, it would have been done a long time ago. He predicted that as the Senate got closer to a vote, compromises would be necessary, coalitions would falter and many ardent supporters of reform would want to walk away. He hoped that they wouldn't do so. He knew from experience, he told me, that this kind of opportunity to enact health-care reform wouldn't arise again for a generation....As Ted wrote in his memoir, he was deeply disappointed that the Clinton health-care bill did not come to a vote in the full Senate. He believed that senators should have gone on the record, up or down....Ted often said that we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. He also said that it was better to get half a loaf than no loaf at all, especially with so many lives at stake...."
Read the full article by Victoria Reggie Kennedy @:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...
I guess the White House is covering all its bases and is still trying to counter and attack Howard Dean with this article by Ted Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy. It's unbelievable but I wonder if the White House would have asked Mrs. Kennedy to conveninelty write this article only days after Dr Howard Dean, M.D. penned his fine article in the same paper.
Sorry for your loss Mrs. Kennedy, but I still oppose this bill. I also have noticed a typical Obama administration and media phrase here as well which is "that we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
Well this bill is far from perfect and is not even good. It is neither. In fact it sucks!
Your late husband said "Medicare for all Americans." He also said Americans should be able to have the "same healthcare as members of Congress."
This bill is so far away from Medicare for all and it actually contrary to your article will raise people's premiums, put people in a deeper financial hole and will not alleviate the existing structural problems in the healthcare system.
I did not know that your late husband was a proponent of corporate fascism either. I am sorry for your loss but I do not and will not support this bill even as much as I admired the late Edward M. Kennedy.
The White House now is dragging Ted Kennedy out of his grave to counter Howard Dean and we don't really know whether he would want to have gutted any of the public programs from Medicaid to Medicare and that is why it's unfair to speculate on what he'd think or agree to at this time.
Lastly, the people walking away from this bill are doing so because its not real reform and its more money into the pockets of the big insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers and that people will face fines and penalized if they cannot afford it. Yes, if they cannot afford it and in this sense it does not address the core issue at the heart of this healthcare debate. So, I reject your view on this one entirely.
I also find it interesting how Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama and yes, Joe Biden are recruiting the likes of Mrs. Kennedy to legitimize this awful and disastrous healthcare bill.
On this issue, I am on the side of Doctor Howard Dean, M.D., not the Washington Insiders.
How Emanuel and the other Clinton's group stopped Caroline Kennedy's name from nomination for Hillary's Clinton senate seat.. They also replaced Hillary's senate seat with a Blue dog representative.
The Clinton'a group was also behind the lost of Lamond to Lieberman in the Connecticut senate race.
Emanuel and Clinton are creating a group which now controls the democratic party...
This health bill the democrats are passing now is just about a carbon copy of the bill Emanuel wanted in the very beginning of the process..
None
You are correct.....
I know that Rahm Emanuel did not support Hillary because he did not think she could "win" against the Republicans.
The Democrats wanted Obama because he was easy to market as a brand and that he did not yet amass a long Senate voting record that the GOP could effectively use against him as in the Kerry election against George W. Bush in 2004.
The way Obana was chosen without a large Senate voting record and lack of paper trail is similar to how the Republicans pick their Supreme Court nominations.
Check out John Pilger's take on the branding of Barack Obama.
From Nelson agrees to be 60th vote
The system we have now causes the insurance companies to negotiate down their costs, in order to maximize their profits. I’m thinking the insurance companies will stop having any incentive to negotiate lower charges from providers, as they are on a percentage basis of the premiums collected. A combination of higher premiums and higher payments to the providers leaves them more for overhead and profits. A public option will have to be created at some point to force insurance companies to stick to a lean model. Otherwise, their interests are served by increasing the premiums, paying out the mandated percentage, to have more to keep for themselves. This is the biggest worry I have with what I've seen so far about the bill.
Until you respect the citizenship of those with which you disagree, you're not a true American.
No oversight the insurance company can give them any figures and these a.. holes will never know the difference..
Do you really believe the Drug and Health companies around with all the other Corporations gives the IRS or any government agency their real figures..
Kerry and other wealthy democrats have ways of highing their income and creating lower profits...
None
"If the deficit scolds are really so worried about the federal deficit why aren't they backing the public option to be in the bill too?"
Do we really need an answer to that? This has never had to do with the deficit. Every Deficit scold in congress has added their own pork to bills time and time again. Deficit reduction is only for things they don't like. Things they like, like military spending, get a blank check.
Have become a dead party.. They stand for nothing... They laugh about the republican statements they make for having no facts or basis.
But they are becoming a joke... Emanuel is building a house of cards and it is starting to fall down...
None
Have become a dead party.. They stand for nothing... They laugh about the republican statements they make for having no facts or basis.
But they are becoming a joke... Emanuel is building a house of cards and it is starting to fall down...
None
"Ted often said that we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. "
I am so sick of this cliche. It assumes the speaker knows the definition what both perfect and good are.
Here's the deal:
Medicare for all was the "perfect," a public option was a compromise of perfect that was probably still good, the medicare buy in was a compromise of the good but we were willing to settle for "pretty good"
What we have now is not good. It's bad. Lets not settle for the bad because of straw-man slogans.
IT is a complete sellout and this is the legislation which Emanuel had his puppets write from the very start ..
So they have done a complete circle...
The democrats must have been paid well for this piece of crap...
None
First, I think this tape and the positions presented is a little out of date in that bill as described since it was released by Sen. Reid seems to take care of some of the criticisms leveled by Gov. Dean. For example, the percentage that insurance companies are required to spend on benefits has been set by an amendment proposed by Al Franken and Jay Rockefeller is 80% for small companies and 85% for large companies. (Would I like it to be 90%? Sure, but can you get 60 votes to pass that?)
Second, Dean's derisive comments as to the necessity of passing a bill now is literally ignores reality. When does Dean expect Democtrats to have more than 60 votes that do not include conservative Democrats? Reconciliation? It ain't gonna happen. As to his self-assurance that a better bill will come along soon - he's just pulling "facts" out of his butt.
Bottom line -- Pass the Senate bill, go to a House-Senate conference committee, and try to develop the best bill possible with the fewest give aways to the insurance companies and core controls that will make reasonable and reliable health insurance available to people like my 27 yr. old son who has health issues that make it virtually impossible in the current situation to obtain any health insurance.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008,,,,,Obama's speech from Dunedin, Florida
http://speeches.demconwatchblog.com/2008/09/o...
Chuck full of deceit and lies...
I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95% of all working families. My opponent doesn’t want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan.
Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.
the American people should not be spending one dime to reward the same Wall Street CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility got us into this mess. There has been talk that some CEOs may refuse to cooperate with this plan if they have to give up their multi-million-dollar salaries.
I will finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums.
There will be no control over these health and drug monopolies that is a lie..
Medicare costs 4 % to operate and The health companies receive off the top 25 to 30 percent...
None
Do you happen to understand what that word means? Because it doesn't appear you do. When the Franken amendment is passed then that would be something. But proposed doesn't mean SHIT!!! Not a damn thing!! It NOT IN THERE!! "There's not there there" as seems to be the correct and popular saying these days.
"If the deficit scolds are really so worried about the federal deficit why aren't they backing the public option to be in the bill too?"
Then again, if they are SO worried about the deficit, why aren't they screaming about the cost of 2 wars? (And actually wanting 3 or 4 more?)
I was always happy to show up and Vote for the Democrats.
However they can grab all the Cash they want from the Corporations
but that will not make people show up and Vote for these Clowns.
As long as Rahm Emanuel is involved in any Policy issues that
pertain to the Democratic Party i will simply sit home and not
Vote. Sorry Al Franken but you have now Joined the Rahm Emanuel Club.
Go to the polls and vote third party!! Sitting home accomplishes absolutely nothing at all. Voting third party gets politicians attention and accomplishes something!
"Emanuel has built a house of cards and it is starting to fall down " you summed up the shit-uation well Pete . Unprincipled , trying to stand in two boats at the same time and having it both ways , a recipe for disaster . Can't make deals with the devil and gain or win anything , you will lose .
My mother said you can always tell the character of someone by the company they keep.
Barack Obama's friends: Rahm Emmanuel, Timmy Geithner, Larry Summers, Goldman-Sach's, etc...............
Mr. Prez., you won the nomination over Hillary, because the vast majority of democrats wanted to get rid of the Clinton, corporate republican-lite DLC - and remove its odious stench from the people's party FDR put together. Remember, these are the same DLCer's who lost control of congress after a 60 year democratic run.
So instead of representing the people, you let the coup of Clinton flunkies take away OUR hard fought victories, and replaced the real democrats we supported with republican-lite corporatists'.
Well, I have news for you Barackypooh; this isn't 1994, republicans are not ascending - in fact, they are about as popular as herpes, and the triangulation bullshit Rahm is selling you might have worked for a southern white guy like Bill Clinton, but it will be you demise.
You plan on replacing liberal votes by picking up southern bigot votes like Clinton was able to do? Good luck with that one.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
Reids voice mail boxes in DC and Carson City are full. I did get through to the Las Vegas one. Told him that I wasn't going to be buying for profit health insurance and wasn't going to be paying a fine for not doing so. Also told him if he wanted to throw me in jail for it that that would be fine because then I would have single payer universal health care while I was there. Then called Leahy and told him the same with the added fact that he should pay attention to Bernie who knows what the score is.
"proposed Franken and Rockefeller amendment"
Actually, the 80/85% loss ration provision is in the Reid bill as I understand it.
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