Down With the Senate

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0cec8e5a-e6d4-428c-8a34-cc5569ce217d
Down With the Senate

The sense most people have of the health care debate is that it's great drama in which President Obama is the central player. All the big news has centered around hints and whispers about what the White House wants. They're abandoning the public plan! They're standing by the public plan! They're giving up on bipartisanship! The press has covered the story as if Obama is Moses and we're waiting for him to come down from the mountaintop.

This is totally wrong. The Senate is what controls the process. That's the chokepoint for any health care bill. The question isn't how badly Obama wants a public plan, or how much he cares about bipartisanship. It's whether moderate to conservative Democrats in the Senate will filibuster a bill that has a public plan or lacks GOP support. Everything else is details.

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I still think there's a pretty good chance at passing significant health care reform. But if health care reform fails, liberals need to understand who to blame and how to fix it. They need to start knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman, who seem to be trying to kill health care reform, even if this temporarily costs the Democrats some seats. They need to commit the party to reconstituting the rules of the Senate along majoritarian lines--yes, even if this helps Republicans pass their agenda when they're in charge. If health care reform can't pass now, then a filibuster-proof Democratic majority isn't worth having. At that point you have to consider blowing up the party and waiting a decade or two to rebuild a new one that's able to address the country's actual needs.

unfortunately if this fails, it's pegged on Obama because it's his campaign promise and the reason why people voted for him.

Will the Deficit Save Health Reform? | The American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=will_the_deficit_save_health_reform
Will the Deficit Save Health Reform? | The American Prospect

Despite the president's focus on health care as deficit reduction and evidence that the Congressional Budget Office, charged with discovering the costs of these bills, chronically overestimates the costs and underestimates the savings of health-care bills, most experts think that no feasible bill will bend the curve as much as is necessary to directly slow the increase in spending -- ironically, the cheapest option, single-payer, is politically toxic. Savings that do result from reform will be required to subsidize health care for most of the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. But even this kind of health-care reform is important for reducing the long-term deficit.

First of all, reform will provide more information to policy-makers. Studies of comparative effectiveness and data from a public insurance plan will provide a deeper understanding of inefficiencies in the system and the solutions to those inefficiencies. The White House Council of Economic Advisers has also estimated that health-care reform will lead to increases in GDP, reaching over 2 percent in 2020 that would lead to proportional increases in tax revenue and lower deficits. But most important, eliminating the "crazy system of cross-subsidies," as Center for Budget and Policy Priorities economist Jim Horney calls the complex interweaving of publicly and privately subsidized care for the under- and uninsured, would create a much simpler framework for future cost-reduction efforts.

"It really is important to get universal or near-universal coverage in order to help create a system that is more sensible," Horney explains. "That system will help us to design [more efficient] reimbursement systems."

or we could just kill Medicare.

Kausfiles : "Public Option": The Centrist Alternative to Government Control?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/25/public-option-the-centrist-alternative-to-government-control.aspx
interesting way to sell the public option

1) Obama sells the "public option" as a way to "keep the private insurers honest." But the converse effect might be more important: the private insurers in the "exchange" would keep the "public" plan honest. Sure, in this marketplace the government plan will probably get the lion's share of customers. It will offer more security, for one thing. But if it starts to provide lousy service, or excludes too many treatments, the private plans might start to lure some of those customers away. Private insurers would provide an escape valve--an "exit"--unavailable in single-payer government monopoly. The obvious analogy is to private "charter" schools competing with public schools.

2) Likewise, if the public insurers managed succumbed to cost-bloat--if all the people who washed the laundry in hospitals became unionized, for example, and politicized government plans blithely passed the giant resulting bill on to their customers (not wanting to anger the SEIU and other good Dem supporters)-- the private sector might underbid the public plan and 'bend the cost curve' down! Again, that's something that probably wouldn't happen in a single payer scheme; and

3) As discussed, "public option" might help avoid having every "we won't pay for this treatment" decision become a constitutional issue in a way a universal, single-payer entitlement couldn't.

come on gop, private health insurance and public options will keep each other honest.

What Value do Health Insurance Companies Bring?

Yet Another Socialized Medicine Win

The Reaction: My brain and the Ontario health-care system

The following was written by a friend and colleague of mine here in Toronto. It is a response to the various right-wing attacks on Canada's, including Ontario's, health-care system -- one in which there is a real "public option," one in which basic government-funded coverage is universal. Supplementary private coverage can be provided through one's employment or otherwise acquired in the market, but there isn't a two- or multi-tier system that divides us based on how much money we have. There is choice -- I selected my family doctor, for example -- but we all go to the same hospitals. At the very least, there is health care for all. And excellent health care, as Paul explains in this very personal piece. I encourage you to read it in full.. (more).

tumor surgery and out to recovery in a week? Took my dad several weeks just to get a biopsy under our wonderful PPO-provided healthcare.

Matt Taibbi's about to lay the smackdown

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/08/17/key-feature-of-obama-health-plan-may-be-out-washingtonpost-com/
You remember his earlier piece about the bank bailout that began like this:

It's over — we're officially, royally fucked.

Well now he's coming after the Obama administration and healthcare and why they took single payer off the table to begin with:

Matt Taibbi - Taibblog – Obama’s Pre-emptive Health Care Surrender - True/Slant

Now, obviously (and this is will be explored in more detail in the forthcoming piece, which will be out this week), the public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness. But the notion that our president not only does not have any use anymore for a public option, but in fact “will be satisfied” if there is merely “choice and competition” in the market is, well, disgusting.

I’ll say this for George Bush: you’d never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer. Can you imagine Bush and Karl Rove allowing themselves to be paraded through Washington on a leash by some dimwit Republican Senator of a state with six people in it the way the Obama White House this summer is allowing Max Baucus (favorite son of the mighty state of Montana) to frog-march them to a one-term presidency?

To quote Method Man’s Calvin “Cheese” Wagstaff character from The Wire, “This is some shameless shit right here.”

it sure is