US Healthcare Reform

[Rob W 0]

hell - they elected Dubbya TWICE

[Cid_MCDP 0]

hell - they elected Dubbya TWICE

 

First time shouldn't have counted though...

[Rob W 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

[Cid_MCDP 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Cid_MCDP

[Park Life 71]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

[ChezGiven 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

I understand that the legal case does not stand up and there is precedent to dismiss it.

[Billy Castell 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

 

Fucking hell. People that stupid and irrational don't deserve universal healthcare. If they carry on like that, then I'd be tempted to introduce a bill whereby only those with an annual salary of $1,000,000 and politicans can get any healthcare- i.e. 90% have no cover whatsoever. Then they'll have a reason to be so worked up.

 

Politics over there seems so utterly polarised, and irrational it is unbelievable. It is a case of who can shout the loudest and scare the most wins. Intellectual discourse and a rational discussion on ideology is somehow snobbish. And all the while the rednecks are being fleeced by the capitalist bigwigs.

[Park Life 71]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

 

Fucking hell. People that stupid and irrational don't deserve universal healthcare. If they carry on like that, then I'd be tempted to introduce a bill whereby only those with an annual salary of $1,000,000 and politicans can get any healthcare- i.e. 90% have no cover whatsoever. Then they'll have a reason to be so worked up.

 

Politics over there seems so utterly polarised, and irrational it is unbelievable. It is a case of who can shout the loudest and scare the most wins. Intellectual discourse and a rational discussion on ideology is somehow snobbish. And all the while the rednecks are being fleeced by the capitalist bigwigs.

 

Best burgers in the world though.

 

I don't know, but I guess it is one of these things that the future of the world is tied up with this damn young and raffish country with little history. Murphy's law in action. On the other hand I have little faith in the megaEuropa beuracracy getting things right and letting people live their lives. What I do see however is that there is an ugly executive overcalss that is doing little more than exploting and holding the whole world back..These we need to throw off and I belive we will. The future of the human race I believe will be a one where everybody belongs and everybody gets a chance and that is our destiny.

[Rob W 0]

hey - they've been going for 250 years - about time they actually grew up IMHO

[Cid_MCDP 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

 

Fucking hell. People that stupid and irrational don't deserve universal healthcare. If they carry on like that, then I'd be tempted to introduce a bill whereby only those with an annual salary of $1,000,000 and politicans can get any healthcare- i.e. 90% have no cover whatsoever. Then they'll have a reason to be so worked up.

 

Politics over there seems so utterly polarised, and irrational it is unbelievable. It is a case of who can shout the loudest and scare the most wins. Intellectual discourse and a rational discussion on ideology is somehow snobbish. And all the while the rednecks are being fleeced by the capitalist bigwigs.

 

Been reading my posts, have you?

 

It's a mess, man. For reals. Worst part of it is, I don't know how you fix it. Were you to try, you'd have to fix so many things at once to make a dent in the direction this country is headed, I honestly don't think you can do it. You'd have to simultaneously figure out a way to completely reform education, instill ethics, and I might not have thought this a few years ago, but I really do think a mandatory 1 or 2 year hitch in the armed forces for all 17-year-olds would be the places I'd start if given a chance.

 

My wife's been interviewing students for nursing positions at her hospital and she's amazed at the arrogance of these kids that are fresh out of school (or about to be in a few months). She's had parents calling her asking why their kid didn't get a nursing gig there at her hospital. I mean, we're talking about people that are 20-22 years old that are still having mommy call the big, bad hospital that didn't hire them- and the worst part is, mommy fucking does it! If that's not a snapshot analogy on what's wrong with this fucking country, I don't know what is.

[Park Life 71]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

 

Fucking hell. People that stupid and irrational don't deserve universal healthcare. If they carry on like that, then I'd be tempted to introduce a bill whereby only those with an annual salary of $1,000,000 and politicans can get any healthcare- i.e. 90% have no cover whatsoever. Then they'll have a reason to be so worked up.

 

Politics over there seems so utterly polarised, and irrational it is unbelievable. It is a case of who can shout the loudest and scare the most wins. Intellectual discourse and a rational discussion on ideology is somehow snobbish. And all the while the rednecks are being fleeced by the capitalist bigwigs.

 

Been reading my posts, have you?

 

It's a mess, man. For reals. Worst part of it is, I don't know how you fix it. Were you to try, you'd have to fix so many things at once to make a dent in the direction this country is headed, I honestly don't think you can do it. You'd have to simultaneously figure out a way to completely reform education, instill ethics, and I might not have thought this a few years ago, but I really do think a mandatory 1 or 2 year hitch in the armed forces for all 17-year-olds would be the places I'd start if given a chance.

 

My wife's been interviewing students for nursing positions at her hospital and she's amazed at the arrogance of these kids that are fresh out of school (or about to be in a few months). She's had parents calling her asking why their kid didn't get a nursing gig there at her hospital. I mean, we're talking about people that are 20-22 years old that are still having mommy call the big, bad hospital that didn't hire them- and the worst part is, mommy fucking does it! If that's not a snapshot analogy on what's wrong with this fucking country, I don't know what is.

 

The 2nd American revolution will start this year. Best be getting your shooting practice in boi!! My friend in Texas reckons the sheeet will hit the fan this summer.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

Once people realize that this healthcare deal really isn't that bad and the beast doesn't rise from the lake of fire, they'll try and remember why they got all worked up about it to start with.

 

It is nuts over here though. Have you all been hearing about the people who voted for this thing getting death threats and whatnot? Some Representative got a bullet through his window because he voted for the bill. Not surprising, really though. Pitiful state of education + Fox News = stupid scared people. And stupid scared people do stupid scary things.

 

 

Fucking hell. People that stupid and irrational don't deserve universal healthcare. If they carry on like that, then I'd be tempted to introduce a bill whereby only those with an annual salary of $1,000,000 and politicans can get any healthcare- i.e. 90% have no cover whatsoever. Then they'll have a reason to be so worked up.

 

Politics over there seems so utterly polarised, and irrational it is unbelievable. It is a case of who can shout the loudest and scare the most wins. Intellectual discourse and a rational discussion on ideology is somehow snobbish. And all the while the rednecks are being fleeced by the capitalist bigwigs.

 

Been reading my posts, have you?

 

It's a mess, man. For reals. Worst part of it is, I don't know how you fix it. Were you to try, you'd have to fix so many things at once to make a dent in the direction this country is headed, I honestly don't think you can do it. You'd have to simultaneously figure out a way to completely reform education, instill ethics, and I might not have thought this a few years ago, but I really do think a mandatory 1 or 2 year hitch in the armed forces for all 17-year-olds would be the places I'd start if given a chance.

 

My wife's been interviewing students for nursing positions at her hospital and she's amazed at the arrogance of these kids that are fresh out of school (or about to be in a few months). She's had parents calling her asking why their kid didn't get a nursing gig there at her hospital. I mean, we're talking about people that are 20-22 years old that are still having mommy call the big, bad hospital that didn't hire them- and the worst part is, mommy fucking does it! If that's not a snapshot analogy on what's wrong with this fucking country, I don't know what is.

 

The 2nd American revolution will start this year. Best be getting your shooting practice in boi!! My friend in Texas reckons the sheeet will hit the fan this summer.

 

Figures. The one time we might actually advance out of our World Cup group and I won't be able to watch the fucking games because I'll be fighting for baby formula while the country burns around me.

 

What part of Texas your friend live in? I lived around Dallas and Austin back in the day, still have family north of Dallas...

[Cid_MCDP 0]

"A bunch of red states have already started drafting documents that'll allow them to sue universal health care out of existence."

 

there are already voices in the Republican Party asking if they REALLY intend to run for election on the basis that they are going to take away entitlements granted by the Obama Act.....

 

I understand that the legal case does not stand up and there is precedent to dismiss it.

 

This is from this past Monday- http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62P52020100329

 

I guess it boils down to the states that don't want the healthcare bill are trying to say the provision where everyone has to have healthcare or face fines or whatever is unconstitutional, so the whole thing ought to not apply.

 

As for whether or not that's a valid point, I guess that'll be up to the Supreme Court. The Dems say the debate over constitutionality is invalid, the Repubs say it is. Yes. No. Yes. No. Business as usual for American politics, in other words.

[Renton 18049]

Editorial in this week's BMJ. Haven't really been following this in detail but it sounds like a mess.

 

Observations

US Health Reform

Obama’s reform: no cure for what ails us

David U Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine, co-founder1,2, Steffie Woolhandler, professor of medicine, co-founder1,2

 

1 Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Hospital, Massachusetts, 2 Physicians for a National Health Program

 

david_himmelstein@hms.harvard.edu

 

As the applause fades for President Obama’s health reform, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler fear that the new law will simply pump funds into a dysfunctional, market driven system

 

 

It was a stirring scene: President Obama signing the new health reform law before a cheering crowd, and a beaming vice president whispering in his ear, "This is a big fucking deal." As doctors who have laboured for universal health care we’d like to join the celebration, but we can’t. Morphine has been dispensed for the treatment of cancer—the reform may offer a bit of temporary relief, but it is certainly no cure.

 

The new law will pump additional funds into the currently dysfunctional, market driven system, pushing up health costs that are already twice those in most other wealthy nations. The Medicaid public insurance programme for poor people will expand to cover an additional 16 million poor Americans, while a similar number of uninsured people with higher incomes will be forced to buy private policies. For the "near poor" the government will pay part of these private premiums, channelling $447bn (£300bn; 330bn) in taxpayer funds to private insurers over the next decade.

 

Unfortunately, private insurers win in the marketplace not through efficiency or quality but by maximising revenues from premiums while minimising outlays. They pursue this goal by avoiding the sick and forcing doctors and patients to navigate a byzantine payment bureaucracy that currently consumes 31% of total health spending.1 The health reform bill’s requirement that uninsured people buy insurers’ defective products will fortify these firms financially and politically.

 

Meanwhile insurers will exploit loopholes to dodge the law’s restrictions on their misbehaviours. For instance, the limit on administrative overheads will predictably elicit accounting gimmickry, for example by relabelling some insurance personnel as "clinical care managers." While insurers are prohibited from "cherry picking"—selectively enrolling healthy, profitable patients—they’ve circumvented similar prohibitions in the Medicare health maintenance organisations (HMOs).2 The ban on revoking policies after an individual falls ill similarly replicates existing but ineffective state bans.

 

Sadly, even if the reform works as planned, 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019. Meanwhile the public and other safety net hospitals that uninsured people rely on will have to endure a $36bn cut in federal government funding.

 

Moreover, many Americans will be left with coverage so skimpy that a serious illness could lead to financial ruin. At present, illness and medical bills contribute to 62% of all bankruptcies, with three quarters of the medically bankrupt being insured.3 The reform does little to upgrade this inadequate coverage; it mandates that private policies need cover only 70% of expected medical costs. The president has often promised that "if you like your current coverage you can keep it." Yet Americans who now get job based insurance will be required to keep it—whether they like it or not. And many who receive full coverage from an employer will face a steep tax on their health benefits from 2018.

 

Soaring costs and rising financial strains seem inevitable, despite claims that the reform will "bend the cost curve."4 Computer vendors have trumpeted imminent cost savings for half a century (see, for instance, a video made by IBM in the 1960s, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aiKlIc6uk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2Fvideosearch%3Fq%3D1961%2Belectronic%2Bmedical%2Brecords%26hl%3Den%26emb%3D0%26aq%3Df&feature=player_embedded). Prevention, though laudable, does not generally reduce costs.5 Windfalls from prosecuting fraud and abuse have been promised before.6 The new Medicare advisory board merely tweaks an existing panel. Without an enforcement mechanism, stepping up comparative effectiveness research cannot overcome drug and equipment makers’ promotion of profligate care. Existing insurance exchanges where patients can compare and shop among private plans haven’t slowed growth in costs for public workers nationally or in California.7 And the mandated experiments with capitated payment systems are warmed-over versions of President Nixon’s pro-HMO policies and subsequent failed initiatives to fix America’s health cost crisis through managed care.

 

Experience with reforms in Massachusetts in 2006—the template for the national bill—is instructive. Our state’s costs, already the highest of any state, grew by 15% in the first two years after reform,8 twice the national rate. Moreover, capitated physician groups had costs at least as high as those who were paid on a fee for service basis.9 Meanwhile, after initial improvements in the state, access to care has begun to deteriorate,10 and the state has begun to cut back coverage.

 

Overall, President Obama’s is a conservative bill, drafted in close consultation with the drug and insurance industries. Its modest salutary provisions—such as an extra $1bn a year for community health centres and the expansion of Medicaid—mirror measures that have been passed even under Republican regimes. Its central tenet, that the government should force citizens to buy coverage from a for-profit firm, was first proposed by Richard Nixon when faced with the seeming inevitability of national health insurance in 1972. Similarly, Mitt Romney, a favourite of conservatives, embraced the Nixon approach as Massachusetts governor in 2006, a stance he has now abandoned. Democrats, having retreated from their traditional push for national health insurance, freed Republicans to move still further to the right.

 

Throughout the reform debate we, and the 17 000 others who’ve joined Physicians for a National Health Program, advocated for a far more thoroughgoing reform: a non-profit, single payer national health insurance programme. We will continue to do so. Our healthcare system has not been cured or even stabilised. For now, we will continue to practise under a financing system that obstructs good patient care and squanders vast resources on profit and bureaucracy.

 

Passage of the health reform law was a major political event. But for most doctors and patients it’s no "big fucking deal."

 

Cite this as: BMJ 2010;340:c1778

 

 

References

 

Woolhandler S, Campbell T, Himmelstein DU. Health care administration costs in the US and Canada. N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-75.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Morgan RO, Virnig BA, DeVito CA, Persily NA. The Medicare-HMO revolving door: the healthy go in and the sick go out. N Engl J Med 1997;337:169-75.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Himmelstein DU, Wright A, Woolhandler S. Hospital computing and the costs and quality of care: a national study. Am J Med 2010;123:40-6.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]

Cutler DM. Health reform passes the cost test. Wall Street Journal 9 Mar 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...0266520738.html.

Russell LB. Preventing chronic disease: an important investment, but don’t count on cost savings. Health Affairs 2009;28:42-5.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Johnson C. US targets health-care fraud, abuse. Washington Post 19 Jul 2007. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/18/AR2007071802461.html.

Kaiser Family Foundation. Annual change premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance, FEHBP, and CalPers, 2000-2009. http://facts.kff.org/chart.aspx?ch=169.

Kowlaczyk L. Call to cap medical payments is likely. Boston Globe 17 Mar 2010. www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/17/call_to_cap_medical_payments_is_likely/.

Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley. Examination of health care cost trends and cost drivers: report for annual public hearing March 16, 2010. www.mass.gov/Cago/docs/healthcare/Final%20Report%20w%20cover,%20appendices,%20glossary.pdf.

Long SK, Masi PB. Access and affordability: an update on health reform in Massachusetts, fall 2008. Health Affairs 2009;28:w578-87.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

[ChezGiven 0]

To be honest, i'd wait for the economists to analyse the cost implications, not the docs.

 

"This is just like what happened in Massachussets and look what happened there" isnt an analysis, its polemic. They could be right though.

[Billy Castell 0]

Any healthcare system that treats people like 'consumers' and 'customers' rather than patients is barmy in my opinion. Labour always bang on about 'consumer choice' and other such management nonsense, but when you have a scaffold pole sticking out your chest, you're not really thinking "Hmmm, I think I'd like to go to St. Jimmy's in Leicester as they have sky sports and the food is pretty good." You don't choose to be ill, or have an accident, so market forces are some silly ideological game.

Edited April 1, 2010 by Billy Castell

[Park Life 71]

Any healthcare system that treats people like 'consumers' and 'customers' rather than patients is barmy in my opinion. Labour always bang on about 'consumer choice' and other such management nonsense, but when you have a scaffold pole sticking out your chest, you're not really thinking "Hmmm, I think I'd like to go to St. Jimmy's in Leicester as they have sky sports and the food is pretty good." You don't choose to be ill, or have an accident, so market forces are some silly ideological game.

 

I know mate. But our society is actually now totally mad, infused as they are with hypnotised buying descisions and all that shit.

[Happy Face 29]

The run-off between Democratic Senate incumbent Blanche Lincoln and challenger Bill Halter, which culminated on Tuesday night in Lincoln's narrow victory, brightly illuminates what the Democratic Party establishment is. Lincoln is supposedly one of those "centrist"/conservative/corporatist Senators who thwarts the good-hearted progressive agenda of the President and the Party. She repeatedly joined with Republicans to support the extremist Bush/Cheney Terrorism agenda (from the the Protect America Act to the Iraq War and virtually everything in between), serves the corporate interests that run Washington as loyally as any member of Congress, and even threatened to join the GOP in filibustering health care reform if it contained the public option which Obama claimed he wanted. Obama loyalists constantly point to the Blanche Lincolns of the world to justify why the Party scorns the values of their voters: Obama can't do anything about these bad Democratic Senators; it's not his fault if he doesn't have the votes, they insist.

 

Lincoln's 12-year record in the Senate is so awful that she has severely alienated virtually every important Democratic constituency group -- other than the large corporate interests that fund and control the Party. That record, along with her extreme unpopularity in Arkansas, is the reason Accountability Now -- the group I co-founded and run in order, among other things, to recruit primary challengers against corporatist incumbents -- targeted Lincoln and why it expended so much effort and resources to recruit Halter into the race. We knew that most key progressive factions -- grass-roots organizations, progressive blogs, civil liberties groups, and unions -- would want to see Lincoln removed from the Senate, and that's the type of formidable coalition needed to persuade a credible challenger that a 2-term Senate incumbent can be defeated.

 

So what did the Democratic Party establishment do when a Senator who allegedly impedes their agenda faced a primary challenger who would be more supportive of that agenda? They engaged in full-scale efforts to support Blanche Lincoln. Bill Clinton traveled to Arkansas to urge loyal Democrats to vote for her, bashing liberal groups for good measure. Obama recorded ads for Lincoln which, among other things, were used to tell African-American primary voters that they should vote for her because she works for their interests. The entire Party infrastructure lent its support and resources to Lincoln -- a Senator who supposedly prevents Democrats from doing all sorts of Wonderful, Progressive Things which they so wish they could do but just don't have the votes for.

 

Ordinarily, when Party leaders support horrible incumbents in primaries, they use the "electability" excuse: this is a conservative state, the incumbent has the best chance to win, and the progressive challenger is out-of-step with voters. That excuse is clearly unavailable here. As Public Policy Polling explained yesterday, Lincoln has virtually no chance of winning in November against GOP challenger John Boozman. And while it would have also been difficult for Halter to beat Boozman, polls consistently showed that he had a better chance than Lincoln did. That's unsurprising, given how much better non-Washington candidates are doing in this incumbent-hating climate than long-term Washington insiders. And it's rather difficult to claim that Halter is out-of-step with Arkansas given that they elected him their Lt. Governor. Whatever the reasons Washington Democrats had for supporting the deeply unpopular Lincoln, it had nothing whatsoever to do with electability.

 

What happened in this race also gives the lie to the insufferable excuse we've been hearing for the last 18 months from countless Obama defenders: namely, if the Senate doesn't have 60 votes to pass good legislation, it's not Obama's fault because he has no leverage over these conservative Senators. It was always obvious what an absurd joke that claim was; the very idea of The Impotent, Helpless President, presiding over a vast government and party apparatus, was laughable. But now, in light of Arkansas, nobody should ever be willing to utter that again with a straight face. Back when Lincoln was threatening to filibuster health care if it included a public option, the White House could obviously have said to her: if you don't support a public option, not only will we not support your re-election bid, but we'll support a primary challenger against you. Obama's support for Lincoln did not merely help; it was arguably decisive, as The Washington Post documented today:

 

 

LITTLE ROCK -- For all the millions that both sides spent on the bruising Arkansas Senate Democratic primary race, Yvonne Thomas admits she went to the polls not having much of a sense about the candidates.

 

What she did know, and what turned out to be the only thing that mattered in her decision to cast her ballot for the embattled incumbent Blanche Lincoln, was this: "Obama wanted us to vote for her," said Thomas, who is African American. . . .

 

The black vote "was definitely something we had to pay close attention to," said campaign manager Steve Patterson the day after Lincoln's victory.

 

And while the campaign has not yet broken down the results by precinct, the effort appears to have paid off.

 

On Tuesday, Lincoln beat Halter in all but one of the Arkansas counties with the largest African American populations, said Janine A. Parry, director of the Arkansas Poll; by comparison, in the May 18 primary, he took two.

 

"Lincoln did very well in those counties, despite the efforts by Halter and the unions to really court black voters," Parry said. "In a race this tight, that kind of activity makes a difference."

 

 

In other words, Obama exploited the trust that African-American voters place in him to tell them something that is just absurd: that Blanche Lincoln, one of the most corporatist members of Congress, works for their interests. Bill Clinton did the same with the Arkansas voters who still trust him. In light of all this, the next time some "conservative" Democrat such as Lincoln plays the Villain Rotation game and opposes some Good, Progressive Bill which the White House pretends to support -- but, gosh darn it, just can't get the 60 votes for -- are we going to have to endure the excuse from Obama loyalists that Obama has no leverage over Democratic members of Congress?

 

What's going on here couldn't be clearer if the DNC produced neon signs explaining it. Blanche Lincoln and her corporatist/centrist Senate-friends aren't some unfortunate outliers in the Democratic Party. They are the Democratic Party. The outliers are the progressives. The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn't because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked. It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted. The same is true when she voted for Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, serves every corporate interest around, and impedes progressive legislation. Lincoln doesn't prevent the Democratic Party from doing and being what it wishes it could do and be. She enables the Party to do and be exactly what it is, what it wants to be, what serves its interests most. That's why they support her so vigorously and ensured her victory: the Blanche Lincolns of the world are the heart, soul and face of the national Democratic Party.

 

In case that wasn't clear enough, the White House -- yet again -- expressed its contempt for progressives when a cowardly "senior White House official" hid behind Politico's blanket of anonymity to mock unions for having "just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise." That comment was far more serious than mere derision. It was an attempt to exacerbate the tensions which unions have with their members over union spending on political races -- a rather ironic sore for the White House to try to pick at given that without massive union spending for Obama, he would not be President. What the White House is really angry about is that the unions did not spend that money in order to help vulnerable Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats, whose agenda could not be more adverse to union members. In other words, the White House wants unions and other progressive groups to be nothing more than Democratic Party apparatchiks, whereby they help Democrats get elected purely for the sake of preserving Democratic power, regardless of the policy outcomes that are achieved, and regardless of how hostile those outcomes are to progressives. The sooner that realization is pervasive, the better.

 

I'm glad Accountability Now worked so hard to recruit Halter into the race, and am also glad that the coalition of grass-roots and advocacy groups, blogs, and unions which we helped bring together back in December, 2008, expended so much effort to defeat her. As I wrote when AN first announced its project to recruit primary challengers in mid-2008, the purpose was to:

 

 

impose a real political price that [incumbents] must pay when they capitulate to -- or actively embrace -- the right's agenda and ignore the political values of their base. . . . Right now, when it comes time to decide whether to capitulate to the demands of the right, Beltway Democrats think: "If we capitulate, that is one less issue the GOP can use to harm our Blue Dogs." And they have no countervailing consideration to weigh against that, because they perceive -- accurately -- that there is no cost to capitulating, only benefits from doing so, because progressives will blindly support their candidates no matter what they do. That is the strategic calculus that must change if the behavior of Democrats in Congress is to change.

 

 

Forcing Blanche Lincoln and the Democratic Party to spend its money on a bitter, draining two-step primary fight obviously makes it much harder for her -- or any other Democratic incumbent who triggers a future primary challenge -- to win the general election.

 

The point here, speaking just for myself, was not to put Bill Halter in the Senate. While I am convinced Halter would have at least been marginally better than Lincoln (he certainly couldn't have been worse), I don't know if he would have been substantially better. Nor was the point an ideological one -- the real conflict in politics is not Left v. Right or liberal v. conservative, but rather, insider v. outsider. Lincoln's sin isn't an ideological one, but the fact that she's a corporatist servant of the permanent factions that rule Washington. The purpose here was to remove Lincoln from the Senate, or, failing that, at least impose a meaningful cost on her for her past behavior. That goal was accomplished, and as a result, Democratic incumbents at least know there is a willing, formidable coalition that now exists which can and will make any primary challenge credible, expensive and potentially crippling -- even if it doesn't ultimately succeed. That makes it just a bit more difficult for Democratic incumbents to faithfully serve corporate interests at the expense of their constituents, or at least to do so with total impunity.

 

Beyond that benefit, the very significant divisions within the Party become a bit more crystallized as a result of this episode. In response to the White House's complaint that unions did not spend their money to help Democratic incumbents, an AFL-CIO official angrily replied: "Labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party." Of course, that's exactly what much of labor has been up to this point, but the realization that the interests of the Party and these unions are wildly divergent will hopefully change that. There's clearly a growing recognition among many progressives generally that devotion to the Democratic Party not only fails to promote, but actively undermines, their agenda (ACLU Executive Directory Anthony Romero yesterday began his speech to a progressive conference with this proclamation: "I'm going to start provocatively . . . I'm disgusted with this president"). Anything that helps foster that realization -- and I believe this Lincoln/Halter primary did so -- is beneficial.

 

That is really the key point: it should be apparent to any rational observer that confining oneself to the two-party system -- meaning devoting oneself loyally to one of the two parties' establishments without regard to what it does -- is a ticket to inevitable irrelevance. The same factions rule Washington no matter which of the two parties control the various branches of government (see this excellent new article from Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson on the Obama administration's role in the BP oil spill, and specifically how virtually nothing changed in the oil-industry-controlled Interior Department once Ken Salazar took over [as was quite predictable and predicted]; Interior employees even refer to it as "the third Bush term"). There is clearly a need for new strategies and approaches that involve things other than unconditional fealty to the Democratic Party, which weigh not only the short-term political fears that are exploited to keep Democrats blindly loyal (hey, look over there! It's Sarah Palin!) but also longer-term considerations (the need to truly change the political process and the stranglehold the two parties exert). In sum, any Party whose leaders are this desperate to keep someone like Blanche Lincoln in the Senate is not one that merits any loyalty.

 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...coln/index.html

 

It's a damn shame

[Billy Castell 0]

The Democrats are crap at ruling. Bush Jnr. and his cabal of crooks were a sack of cunts, and almost all their policies were wrong, but they knew how to keep people onside and run a tight ship. They knew how to play the game, whereas the Democrats seem scared by power, and don't want to be too 'progressive' in case Fox News goes totally insane. Or in Glenn Beck's case, sitting in a tent wearing nothing but a tinfoil hat and a pork chop talking to a magic purple fish called Kevin.

[Happy Face 29]

The Democrats are crap at ruling. Bush Jnr. and his cabal of crooks were a sack of cunts, and almost all their policies were wrong, but they knew how to keep people onside and run a tight ship. They knew how to play the game, whereas the Democrats seem scared by power, and don't want to be too 'progressive' in case Fox News goes totally insane. Or in Glenn Beck's case, sitting in a tent wearing nothing but a tinfoil hat and a pork chop talking to a magic purple fish called Kevin.

 

That's what they want you to think. There's just no distinction between the ethos of the two parties.

 

As Bill Hicks played it out....

 

"I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs"

"I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking"

"Hey, wait! There's one guy holding up both puppets"

Edited June 10, 2010 by Happy Face

[Cid_MCDP 0]

The Democrats are crap at ruling. Bush Jnr. and his cabal of crooks were a sack of cunts, and almost all their policies were wrong, but they knew how to keep people onside and run a tight ship. They knew how to play the game, whereas the Democrats seem scared by power, and don't want to be too 'progressive' in case Fox News goes totally insane. Or in Glenn Beck's case, sitting in a tent wearing nothing but a tinfoil hat and a pork chop talking to a magic purple fish called Kevin.

 

That's what they want you to think. There's just no distinction between the ethos of the two parties.

 

As Bill Hicks played it out....

 

"I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs"

"I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking"

"Hey, wait! There's one guy holding up both puppets"

 

True 'dat.

 

When I was growing up, people always said that democrats were for the unions and minority rights, while the republicans were for less government and pro-business interests, but Clinton signed NAFTA, Bush 2 made the government bigger than ever before, etc. etc. It's been spelled out for people at least as long as I've been voting.

 

It's all a massive scam, but most people still think that if a talking head with a news crawl below their image says it, it must be true- actual actions be damned!

[Happy Face 29]

Beginning in 2001, Liz Fowler was the Chief Counsel for the Senate Finance Committee in charge of health and entitlement issues, i.e., legislation that primarily affected the health care industry. As her own biography boasts:

 

In this capacity, she was responsible for overseeing health policy issues within the Committee's jurisdiction, including Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, health tax issues and initiatives to provide health coverage for the uninsured. She played a key role in the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA).

 

Her work in that government position on health care was apparently quite pleasing to the health care industry because, in 2006, she was hired by the health care giant WellPoint to serve as its Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs -- in other words, overseeing WellPoint's lobbying and other government-influencing activities. Then, in 2008, once it was likely that there would be a Democratic President and thus a new, massive health care bill enacted, Fowler left WellPoint and returned to the Senate, as top aide to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee Chairman who would oversee the drafting of the health care bill (Baucus's previous top health care aide, Michelle Easton, a former PhRMA official, left to become a lobbyist for the health care industry). Now, as David Sirota noted last night, Fowler has a brand new job, as reported by The Billings Gazette:

 

Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law.

 

Fowler, chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, which Baucus chairs, will become deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

 

In other words, implementation of the massive health care bill just enacted by the Congress will be overseen by a former high-level executive of the nation's largest private health insurer. As Marcy Wheeler writes: "It’s a nice trick: send your VP to write a law mandating that the middle class buy shitty products like yours, then watch that VP move into the executive branch to 'oversee' the implementation of the law." Indeed, Fowler played a crucial role in shaping the health care bill to ensure there was no public option and to compel every single American to purchase the products of the private health care industry (including those of her former employer). As Politico put it last year: "If you drew an organizational chart of major players in the Senate health care negotiations, Fowler would be the chief operating officer." It was Fowler who was literally writing the health care bills for Baucus which, at least at the time, progressives found so objectionable.

 

Fowler is the very embodiment of the sleazy Revolving Door and lobbyist-dominated politics which candidate Barack Obama endlessly vowed to subvert.

 

What makes this hiring particularly ironic is that Max Baucus was the Chief Health Care Villain for most progressive health care reform advocates throughout last year. Apparently, the Obama White House didn't agree, since they just hired his chief aide who coordinated everything he did. Perhaps Russ Feingold was right when he said that the public-option-less, drug-importation-free, captive-customer-to-private-insurers bill which Fowler helped to engineer "appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place."

 

Needless to say, the hardest-core and blindest Obama loyalists are hard at work defending this hiring and smearing those who criticize it. Watch here as they viciously attack David Sirota for highlighting this story by hilariously insisting that Fowler's work at WellPoint makes her "well-qualified" to implement the health care bill. One of them accused me last night of using "guilt by association" in noting this hiring: behold as what were once (during the Obama candidacy) noble and inspiring objections to "Revolving Door Politics" have now magically morphed (during the Obama presidency) into unfair and pernicious McCarthyite tactics (how dare you think someone should be disqualified from a high-level government position just because they recently worked as a high-level executive at the very industry they're about to regulate!). Still other reflexive Obama defenders (including one who writes at Crooks & Liars) are engaged in their standard, false smear tactics spat at anyone who writes critically about their leader's actions, while -- most notably -- one former PhRMA official, John Michael O'Brien, echoed these Obama defenders by attacking Sirota for writing about the story and insisting that the noble former WellPoint VP is an ideal choice to implement the health care law.

 

In fairness, though, what else are they going to say? This is an administration that almost employs more Goldman Sachs officials in financial and regulatory positions than Goldman Sachs itself does. One of the first acts of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to hire a BP executive to serve as a deputy administrator for land and minerals management. And now they've just hired to implement the new health care law someone who was just recently in charge of the lobbying and government activities of the nation's largest private insurer. With a record like that, it's not really possible for them to pretend any longer that they oppose the "Revolving Door Politics" which the Obama campaign so vehemently scorned.

 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...wler/index.html

Edited July 15, 2010 by Happy Face