Corporate welfare bill to private health insurers passed in US

The right wingers heads are starting to explode...Talk of revolution and insurrection!!!

hehehehehehe....

I'll bet Wall Street bankers can afford health care, and especially now that theyve been provided so many guarantees in life by US taxpayers. I'll bet not one fat-cat banker will have to declare bankruptcy and lose everything if or when they're ever sick. Not a single one.

The exploding teabagger heads are worth celebration in itself.

This is the most anyone there has been able to achieve since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid - all other attempts at universalizing health insurance at the federal level have gone down in flames. It's sad that this was probably the most they could have done as the insurance and other medical lobbies are so powerful. Glass half-full. It's only the end of the beginning of the struggle for better health care.

David Frum has been trying to position himself as the voice of reason on the American right. 

Talk about cherry picking.

Anyway.  One could have an easy time slice and dicing this health care reform bill as not measuring up.  But, I think if those who were active in supporting health care reform in the States look at it as a foot in the door, and build on it, it could yet measure up to the victory Obama claims it to be.

BBC provides a sampling of US media response

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/seealso/2010/03/us_view_obamas_healthcare_bil...

Again: how do you sqare this with these simple facts that should have been observable to even the most superficial observation of what has been going on in the US for months now?

1.] The private insurers spent TONS of money lobbying and TONS more on advertising against the basics of the Obama plan.

2.] Republicans in Congress coordinated with that playing upon peoples' fears. They also stoked the Tea Parties and exploited the opening they created.

It is obvious the private insurers wanted nothing to do with Obamas plans- they put EVERYTHING behind it going down in flames.

Please square that with "The Republicans couldn't have come up with a better plan to reward their corporate buddies than this one."

And think about how you answer that in its own right, before moving on to the next questions in reply to your comments.

"Obama could have used his incredible influence to" get the public option "if he'd really wanted to."

Excuse me. Obama just staked everything on getting what he got. Once he took that step, hed have no clout to get anything done if he lost. No small gamble in its own right when there was nothing like a guarantee he would win. Plus the credibility on a number of other things he torched to get this [and not just the ones that matter to people around here].

He staked all of that, and barely won.

Yet we have people saying "if he had really wanted it he could have got a public option."

How about sqaurieng that one too?

Not to pick on you personally Michelle. You express what is easily the majority opinion around here.

It's a lesson for us all.   Whatever you think of that bill, it represents the biggest challenge to established power in the States that we've seen in the longest time.    And, look at how the stops were pulled out by the establishment to fight it.  I think, through the Teabaggers and their media flying monkey squad, they were nakedly trying to incite violence, even.

That's why we've got to be fighting now, and continually, against such enterprises already lined up and waiting to defeat anything we try to do.

You know, many here are quick to point out the short memories of the general public and of right wingers, but I often find it short here too, being the only crank who remembers Navigator and their tendrils in the media.    They, and PR firms, formal and informal, who operate more competently than Navigator, truly behind the scenes and under the radar are already working on ways to privatize our system.    

This is a battle of no quarter, make no mistake.

 KenS.  I've followed the healthcare debate quite and have to agree with most of your assessment.  Obama has influence yes but he's not a miracle worker.  Republican antics aside it became quite clear that when the public option came initially on the table that there were a significant amount of more conservative Dems that weren't going to fly that way no matter what sort of behind the scenes arm twisting occured and boyo there was a lot of it.   Most of this debate happened within their own caucus with the Republicans on the outside shouting, no, no, no! death panels!, omg killing grandma, ABORTION funding and socialism/marxism/facism booga booga.   Sad to watch from the outside but to me it was a major example of the differences between our system and the US's.  Here the PM would just say you are going to vote this way, deal with it and it's done.  

 Of course I would have loved to see some sort of single payer implemented and bar that some sort of public option.  It sucks that political climate and discourse stinks to high heaven right now.  With all things considered I'm actually surprised they managed to get as much as they did.  I'm uneasy about the whole fining people thing though I get the reasoning behind it.  I think it's a wait and see how that all plays out.  I keep reading that it's not necessarily a killer because the fine is way less then insurance and there is already those stating that it won't even work the way it's supposed to anyways.   There's also some sort of insurance exchange to help deal with affordability though I admit I don't really no how that is supposed to work.

Bright spots include the one thing that pisses me off no end and that I personally find morally unconsionable.  It will be against the law to deny anyone coverage who has a pre-existing condition and kick people off plans when they actually get really sick.   The removal of insurance caps is also a big one. 

These two things are huge and imo there is no way that insurance companies think these are good things.  People are already talking lawsuits over these provisions.   It's a major blow to how they do 'business' and keep their numbers(profits) flowing.   What I see as significant in passing these things is that the government now has a foot in the door of enacting some oversight in insurance business practices.  That in itself is a step forward and I can see that potentially being built upon.

KenS, in answer to your earlier question about why the Republicans were so dead set against it if it was such a conservative plan - David Frum answered it well, dog forgive me for using him to support my point.

The reason the Repugs went batshit is because, frankly, they went batshit.  They got their base all riled up in mob psychology and escalating rhetoric about Obama=Hitler and birther conspiracy theories and stupid shit like that, and then when it went spiralling out of control, they couldn't back down from it because, as Frum says, when you demonize your opponent as Hitler and death panels, you can't back down.

But Frum also made the point that, from a reasonable Republican point of view, it's a pretty good deal for them, and similar to what Republicans have been putting forward anyhow - private insurance for everyone.  It's exactly what a Republican would have put forward had they been pressured into putting forward their own plan.

And it's a total dream that the private insurance companies who have made a killing (literally!) on selling shit plans and refusing claims now have a completely captive audience - all the people who were denied or couldn't afford plans before are now being FORCED to buy private shit plans, and if they don't, they face a fine.

But you can bet that while insurance companies won't refuse to insure them (because they can't now), that they'll do their damndest to deny as many claims as possible, from routine to major surgery.

And don't get me started on the "gold-plated plan" rhetoric.  You know who that's aimed at, KenS?  Union members.  Workers are the ones whose "gold-plated plans" (or, "Cadillac plans") are being so attacked and vilified in the American media.  And Obama went with that, and decided to TAX those plans on the employer end, which will eventually erode those plans because the employer won't want to pay those taxes.  So, good job.  Destroying workers' health care plans in order to help pay for shit plans from private providers to the poorest, instead of including a public option that rivals unionized plans and letting people have a real choice about their health care.

It's a fucking scandal, is what it is.  A Republican dream.  And once the teabaggers get over their hissy fits, they'll see what a dream it is.

It's been suggested, time and again, that Obama is letting down his troops, is a sellout.  Paul Krugman has just as insistently pointed out just what forces of madness and racism that he was up against. He had to water it down to get it past some of his own bloody party.

Krugman sums it neatly today:

"Instead, the emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.

It wasn't just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor's Business Daily declaring that health reform is "affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color." It was wild claims about abortion funding. It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it, an assurance that older Americans have enjoyed ever since Lyndon Johnson - whom Mr. Gingrich considers a failed president - pushed Medicare through over the howls of conservatives.

And let's be clear: the campaign of fear hasn't been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin - who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.'s vice-presidential candidate - eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that "freedom dies a little bit today" and accused Democrats of "totalitarian tactics," which I believe means the process known as "voting."

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?"

I'll just hustle this little note over from the other thread before Ken's fatwa on the thread of the "believers" is carried out. (Or is that non-believers? Don't know where orthodoxy lies any more)  :D

"My cousin's son in Florida will now be able to get the healthcare insurance that was denied him because of insurance companies not wanting to take him on for less that $1200 per month.  And another 30,000,000 people (Canada's population) will be covered.

Strange how the empathy for those folks is swamped by invective about "corporations".  Not the corporations in which one's life savings are invested, though.  Other corporations.   What meaningless, so-20th-Century "analysis".

quote:

"He knew that his bill was more a beginning than an end. The Social Security Act, Roosevelt said, "represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete." And Bush nearly destroyed this, proposing the individual social security fund recipient be turned into an investor. Perhaps it will take more than a year to claw their way back from the madness of King George."  (That's George Bush, the reviled president preceding the current reviled president, but about whom we read diddly squat any more...opinion posing as analysis being so fickle).

And what will be covered?

Not going to happen anytime soon.  Hissy fitting is going to get worse and 'health care death of America bill' is already playing into the next thing on the agenda. Even as this bill was being passed they were segwaying and leveraging the horror of it all  into immigration reform.

I fully agree. As I have said before, the U.S. will get precisely the health care it wants and deserves. Its starting point is at the bottom of the "western" countries, and it will remain there after this cynical so-called "reform". Canada, notwithstanding all the pressures our economy and culture and political system undergo from the south, has quite courageously established and maintained a single-payer system which Obama didn't even dare suggest, for close to a half century now. In Québec, we have universal mandatory drug insurance - with a public option. Home care is covered in Manitoba and coming to your home soon.

Yet, as Boom Boom points out, privatization is a growing danger. We need to meet it head on. Going by the past half century, what happens in the U.S. in this regard will have little or no effect on our struggle here. So, while I lament the fate of the people of the U.S. in being unable to access public affordable health care, in the final analysis, it's as much my battle as the battle for health care in Kazakhstan. Both are important, but my sympathies will always tend more toward the weak and powerless than to those who need only to get over their own prejudices and misconceptions.

If they made the public option better than the "gold-plated Cadillac plans" you can bet that people would be leaving their plans in droves to pay into the public option.

That was an option, too, you know.  To make the public option so good that everyone would want it.

That system was just nothing in comparison to the indusrty that exists today in the US. And the private plans we have today arose as a supplement to our public system. Thats the important point, not whether or not there was private insurance before. Of course there was. I'm also old enough to remember the medical plan my family had then because my parents had union contracts- and it did not fundementally change the working class reality that going to the doctor and buying drugs cost you money you didnt have.

 It was an option and a good one at that.  It was in there at one point.  Unfortunately it didn't have the votes it needed to stay in there.

"Never had the votes" is a severe understatement. It didn't have enough support to stay in the ring even.

There has never been a possibility to leave the existing system as is, and build an equal or better public system.

There were some people who thought that proposing such a wonderful public system would be the first step to pushing the private system out. Needless to say, they didn't have a road map for that.

And you have to admit that given the reaction there was to just having the profit opportunities of the industry trimmed, its difficult to see how proposing its demise was supposed to work.

I think the next step in the battle begins one second after Obama signs it into law.   Just because insurance companies are now forbidden from dropping sick clients, and can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions doesn't actually mean that they will stop doing so.

Catalogue every case, and publicize it to the max.    For starters.

I'm sure you are right on that Tommy. Drop people anyway, fight it through the courts, get the law changed in the next Congress.

You have yet to answer the fundamental question: how could Obama's plan be a huge gift horse for the insurance industry, and they were fighting the plan tooth and nail? Like I said already:'

It would be corporate welfare if people were being forced to buy their shitty plans. But the new law means they can't do anymore what makes those plans shitty for consumers and profitable for them.

They will not be able to cherry pick who they cover and deny care.

Like Tommy said, they'll fight a rear guard action against the new law. But they are doing it because it is the opposite of the 'corporate welfare' you wave it off as... simply because you are sure it must be true.

I don't know enough about American politics to say whether Obama could have done better; from what I've read, while most leftist American critics agree that this bill was a massive capitulation to the Republicancs and to the drug companies, they don't seem to suggest that anything more radical would have made it through the house. I could be wrong on this point.

At any rate, a public option, it ain't. But it does accomplish one significant thing, indeed, the only thing of note accomplished by the election of Barack Obama in 2008: it galvanizes the will and belief of the American wide left. Not as platitudes, but as a measure of utopian thinking that the elite have been grinding out of the working classes since the late-nineteenth century. The people are happy and they believe that change is possible. That's a good thing.

States rights arguments before the courts haven't been too successfull since Dred Scott.   But then, there's no telling what those nut bars in the Supreme Court are capable of these days.

 Well it will be interesting to watch.  Just watching the news and it's not just a few filing suit when the bill is signed tomorrow.  They're saying in will be 38 states.

I'm not exactly sure your point. But Medicare is most definitely not a single payer system. The fact it would be an 'option' alone would make it not a single payer system. Single payer means that you have one player- in practice but mot necessarily the government[s]- who has control over all the main levers of the whole system.

Take out the profits of the health care industry and the US system would be 10% less than twice as expensive per capita.

The main issue is the single payer [or not] thing. [See above.] The fact Canada has am [in pronciple] single payer means that governments can exert control on costs that even the big players in the US like the big HMOs can only influence. That means doctors salaries are held down, that hospitals cannot trip over each other to offer expensive services, drug prices brought down. The US private industry would like to do all that too, but as big as they are they don't have the clout.

This is why public policy was not a real option. You can only have it in the US by taking out the existing private industry. The talk of building a parralel pubic system was predicated on simply glossing over that fact. No surprise that ducking wasn't viable.

I'm sorry for that Michelle. The words are taken out. Could you try reading again?

In my defence- that sarcasm comes out after I've asked the fundamental question nicely and you just ignore it. "You have yet to answer the fundamental question: how could Obama's plan be a huge gift horse for the insurance industry, and they were fighting the plan tooth and nail?"

Good quote from Michael Moore.

And I would suggest that unlike you, he gave a nuanced answer to the question.

You completely dismissed it as nothing more than corporate welfare. It cannot be passed off as perhaps an exxageration to say that its a gift to the private insurers.

Yes, the private insurance companies were not totally slapped down. That isn't news. But more to the point: if you had quoted Michael Moore I wouldn't have taken exception. I took exception to what you said. [And you still didn't answer how the bill is a big gift for the private insurers. Nor of how to account for how that could be true when they fought it so hard. Moore didn't make such a claim.]

I think that Obama could've pushed a lot harder, I think the Senate leadership should've pushed a lot harder, and I think more could have gotten into this bill.

But, while it's not perfect, it seems like there are definitely good things.  32 million people will get coverage who didn't have it before.  Companies will not be able to deny coverage for pre existing conditions (this will take time to kick in) and investments are being made in community health clinics.

Moveon members voted overwhelmingly to support the bill.  Kucinich voted for it even, saying that it's better than nothing.  An overwhelming majority of Americans supported the passage of this bill, saying that it is better than nothing.

Are progressives here really saying that this bill is worse than nothing?  That it would've been better not to deal with health care at all?

I think that the recent rash of 40% or more premium increases should pretty well cover the cost of fines and fighting the odd court case.

KenS - per your comments about squaring the Insurance Industry's attack against the bill with it being a sell out to the Industry .... I've found a link to a leaked insurance industry strategy document outlining the plan for making people think the bill was bad for the Industry that you might want to take a look at  .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH6fu1AF0R4&feature=related

Obama supporters are just happy that their guy managed to do something since being elected.

I think you're right to some extent.  Rather than setting things up as the government public option, they should've pitched it as, optional buy in to Medicare.

Now that this bill has passed though, with many changes to regulations, medicare buy in could be introduced much more easily as a simple bill.  Progressives in congress are definitely planning this, although who knows how it will go.

Quebec isn't the empire, doesn't have the red fear, doesn't have teabaggers.

I think he didn't do this for pragmatic, political reasons.  I agree with you that I think he could have gotten more for the people if he had done things differently.

But, I think the USA is a strange place.  The Republicans whipped up fear of and opposition to this plan in part by saying it would cut medicare benefits.  That's what some people were really upset about.  Never mind that that the Republican plan made huge cuts to medicare way beyond anything in the Obama plan.  The media there is pretty fully owned i'd say.

So I agree, I strongly suspect that a lot more could have been achieved if Obama had pushed harder.

I still think this is a win.  And if progressives in Congress are interested, they can take this further.

ETA: While I am saying, with qualifications, that this is a win, Obama did promise a public option while campaigning.  Since they're touting this as health care reform, Obama's campaign promise should be treated as broken.  That should be clear.  Until there is a public option, Obama has not delivered on health care.

josh, do you think that Obama could have passed a public option through the house?

I believe the house did pass a public option at one point that was later removed after "negoiations" with the senate ... didn't they? I know at least at one point Pelosi announced very firmly that the house would NOT pass a bill without a public option.

It was the Senate where the problems really came from.

Yes it did. I talked about that up thread. The senate was a sticking point and most of the furor over the public option occurred there. It came really close to killing any reform altogether because at the end of the fighting no one was budging. Then when the Repubs brought up the abortion funding diversion it set everything into a furor. Even though what they were saying was BS it did enough to put the house bill and support from the majority of the house to support the senate bill regardless of the PO issue in question. Brilliant but absolutely disgusting maneuver on their part.

Yes - just as Harper's "$100 a month" cynical substitute for child care was worse than nothing. It effectively shut down the movement for child care for the last 4 years, because no party was willing to stand up and say: "Not one child-care penny to parents - direct subsidy to the providers!".

I think what people here are saying is that it would have been better to deal with health care effectively, and not through some cynical entrenchment of the power of the private insurers.

And yes, it would have been better if Harper hadn't "dealt with" child care at all. At least it would still be on someone's agenda.

Violate my own rules with one mostly information point.

The industry lobby did not get what it wanted. It wanted complete defeat of the bill because of the parts about being forced to cover people and not deny care.

Their Plan B is to fight a rear guard action and get it all undone. The concessions they got in the bill via the blue dog Democrats is not in itself even Plan B.... it just contributes to it.

They still plan to put the boots to this 'gift horse'.

I just watched an analysis of ObamaCare on CNN and while they confirmed that if you do not purchase a health care plan you will be financially penalized, they did also confirm the following:

- the worse abuses of the health care inusurers will be eliminated

- for those at the lower income scale who have difficulty getting insurance, a government-provided Group Purchasing Plan will find the cheapest and best plans for those at low income levels

- no one will be refused coverage

- insurers can not refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Also: the thing is, Obama could've tried.  I mean really TRIED on the public option.

The guy is practically god-like when it comes to his oratory skills.  He could have done presidential messages, come up with extremely persuasive arguments in favour of the public option and really communicated them to the American people.  I mean, during his campaign, he was pretty short on substance, but damn, he was long long long on personality and persuasiveness and charisma.  Combine that with a killer argument in favour of a public option, along with a few stories of people who have been fucked over by private insurers, and I'll bet he'd have had a fighting chance. 

At least, he would have had a fighting chance at getting the right-wing Democratic senators in line, if he'd really spurred his base and the swing voters who voted Democrat in the last election because of his promise of universal health care.

It would have been worth fighting for.  It would have even have been worth a one-term presidency.

Unionist - thank you for your analogy in line 70!  I completely agree. 

I agree that it would have ben worth fighting for, and he didn't.  Disagree completely that it would have been worth a one term presidency.

Wrong question. That bill should never have been proposed.

Similar reasons that progressives in our House of Commons couldn't bring themselves to boldly oppose Harper's $100 child-care substitute: Lack of confidence in their principles, in their ability to explain things to people, and in the prospect of winning something worthwhile - so, they retreat to political expediency.

ps: in addition to the points I mentioned in my post #74, CNN also reported that significant tax breaks are going to small businesses and lower-income-earners to allow them to afford compulsory health care insurance.

ETA: I have been living on a disability allowance since 2002, and I have no choice but to spend over $2,000 per year on a Blue Cross Group Plan for prescription, dental, eyeglasses, and hearing aid extendicare package. I live in Quebec, btw.

See link below.

Oh, I'm just listening to what U.S. progressives say about each other:

The health-care Hindenburg has landed

MoveOn surveyed their membership and 83% supported passing this bill.  Kucinich voted in favour.  Michael Moore, not even a politician (ie who need to worry about fundraising through the party machine), gave his (reluctant) support to the bill.

As far as the argument that this brings the USA further away from single payer, because now health care is off the agenda, I think we'll have to wait and see.  I see more people (online, so take it with a grain of salt) arguing that this is an empowering victory for progressives that will lead to more.

I don't really know what will happen, but I can certainly see that American progressives are responding far more positively to this news than Canadian socialists.

Because "Canadian socialists" know what real universal health care is like.

Absolutely.  So from our perspective it's ridiculous.  They call this health care reform?  It's a joke.  Their system is based on private insurance companies, which is why they pay more per capita for health care than anyone else.  The way they have their system set up is dumb by design, because the corporations run the country.  And the way the teabaggers get controlled like puppets and spout all kinds of ridiculous bs would be hilarious if what they were saying weren't so hateful.

So from that sense, without being smug about it, you're right.  There's no reason to expect any critical Canadian to get caught up in all the celebration of this super amazing wonderful victory that compares so inadequately with our own health care system.  Definitely some of the people crowing about how historic this just don't know any better.  They don't know much about health care in other countries.

But we know far less about the political reality on the ground.  Here's a video from anti HCR rally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFOnG9a1Pzw

The sense I get, solely from online activity, is that health care activists in the states are behind this bill, and while they're aware it isn't real reform it is most definitely a step in the right direction.

32 million people is the USA will have health care who didn't.  That's 1/10 of their population.

I have a small request:

Would everyone please, please start using the bloody [ quote] function? Many of these posts are incomprehensible, composition-wise. (That is, in addition to and above the usual incomprehensible Obama worship.)

Where is the Obama  worship in this thread?

ObamaCare may not sound progressive to some, but the United States is not Canada, and they have an extreme independent streak, and that streak extends down to being proud of whatever private health care they can afford. Of course that overlooks the 30-million-plus without basic health care other than welfare-provided, but that leaves more than 300 million under private health care plans, so ObamaCare has an enormous hurdle to overcome just getting out of the gate. I think we should be encouraging Obama, because he's made a start towards universality, which is probably more than presidents all the way up to Bush ever did.

I understand your sentiments, but according to the CNN analysis I heard earlier today,  those 32 million are able to choose which plan they want, and also have access to a new government-sponsored Group Purchase Plan to help them get adequate coverage, in addition to tax breaks that make it more affordable. No one has said this is perfect, it's just a tiny baby-step towards something better.

The fact is that people are still left to fend for themselves in social reproduction. It is still about the individual making market choices for their health, and the ability for insurers to profit from individuals paying into the system. This is about as forced as paying for shelter and being castigated by the state for being homeless. The state will treat them with punitive measures for failing to make good market-choices. The poor are left to pay for services for profit, unless they qualify. In that case they get subsidies it will be like renting a slum house on a Section 8 voucher. The landlord (or insurance company, if you're still following me) still makes a profit off the state's subsidy, regardless of whether they provide a quality service to the tenant who deserves nothing more than a slum house.

Over here.