Category: Politics

Pretty much everybody has been focused on the Baucus Plan, announced this morning. Despite the fact that a public option is supported by the majority of the public and doctors, it has no public option. Instead, it has a watered down co-op provision. The CBO says that a public option would reduce premiums for everybody — and the average family health insurance policy now costs $13,375 annually! That’s more than double what it was in 2000 — the co-ops are only available to employees if the plan at work is not “affordable” (meaning 10-13% of income depending how you calculate it). No word on whether the co-ops are available to the self-employed. And for all that it has been pitched as something that can get bi-partisan support, not a single Republican supports it. It’s just another mandatory insurance plan with bells, whistles, and gifts to insurance companies.

So why exactly is anybody willing to compromise and support this?

If we can’t have real health insurance reform, let’s just get the few things everybody can agree needs to happen: make rescission illegal; make “pre-existing conditions” a thing of the past. I bet they could get that written up into a 3 page bill tomorrow and pass it by the weekend if they wanted. In an ideal world, give states the right to regulate rate increases (or just cap them at the rate of inflation) and let everybody deduct health insurance on their taxes. But please, let’s stop pretending that the crock of **** being stirred on Capitol Hill is good for any of us regular people.

In closing: One drug bust every 18 seconds, and that’s a decrease; former CNBC anchor complains that Americans are held hostage by Wall Street; on independent contractors, the DOL, and the IRS; Americans agree on how to fix Social Security (but will Congress do what needs to be done?); humans still evolving; Does Kanye have Asperger’s Syndrome?; and hiking safety tips.

Uh, What the heck is Harry Reid thinking?

In closing: Ornery but right; on the economy; and everything you really need to know about swine flu.

Susie Amdrak has been so kind as to give us this list of things the bloody socialists the Federal Government has given us. It includes such things as the 40 hour work week, Interstate highways (I wonder what percentage of deathers had to use the interstate to get to the townhalls they are crashing), public sewers (trust me you don’t want to do without those), and public schools (they aren’t perfect, but if you like the fact that most people can read signs thank a school).

So why is it again that Medicare For All would be such a bad thing? The 66% of us — the real “center” that they call “left of the left” — wants at the very minimum the option to buy into such a program. In an environment where insurance companies are doubling their profits while covering fewer people, We The People need to be able to choose to do business with somebody else! At least if these companies were forced to be mutuals, the excess premiums (e.g., profits) would be returned to the consumer.

Need more convincing? Here’s 4 great links from MahaBarbara.

In closing: no you can’t sell all the personal data you collected; courtesy of Make, a handtool museum; if we make sure soldiers are mentally stable enough for more tours of duty, will we have no choice but to get out of Iraq for lack of soldiers?(just a reminder, over 4000 dead American service men and women); high price of cheap food; yes, apologize to Dr. Dean!; thanks to Dr. Dinosaur, free medical info wallet card; things won’t be back to “normal” in this country until the stock market returns to “normal” levels — far below where they are today; and a little late with this idea, cash for fridges. Many local electric and water companies have had programs like this for years. It’s nice to get a little money back on something that’s going to save you money in the long run. And at the time, we  needed the appliances in question. Oh, and 5 stupidest terrorism tricks. I still can’t imagine how 6 guys thought they were going to take on a whole base.

Several news sources are reporting that the White House may be ready to give up the idea of a “public option” for health insurance.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: mandatory insurance without a public option is far worse than what we have today. It would reduce “reform” to “you must pay the profitable companies that got us into this mess whatever they want.” It would be preferable to do nothing and allow the system to collapse on its own.

It is now clear to me why Howard Dean left the leadership of the Democratic* party and did not take any position within the Obama Administration, despite his long list of qualifications when it comes to health insurance and health care. He is wisely distancing himself from this coming shit-storm.

Go make sure your elected officials know how you feel at WhiteHouse.gov, Senate.gov, and House.gov.

* Oops, at first I wrote “Democraptic”. My Freudian slip is showing!

Here’s the latest news out of our elected whores Senators. Some sell-out DINOs have come to an agreement with some Repugs. The short version:

1. Employers don’t have to buy coverage
2. You still have to get coverage somewhere, but where is not their problem
3. No public option
4. No such thing as a pre-existing condition

Seriously, the only good point is the last one, and they could have handled that in a 2 page item tacked on the end of any random bit of legislation. It’s not a “reform”, its just how things need to be.

Get real, DINOs, the Republicans want to kill reform, and they will do whatever it takes to do so. They have said this in public! Are you not listening? Do I have to tear up my membership card in the Democratic Party and start sending all my donations to Democracy for America? So help me I will  do just that if this Congress with its elected filibuster-proof majority of Democrats screws We The People.

Insurance companies are doing everything they can to keep from having a real reform go through. They are providing distortions of data to Congressmice, they are running a huge PR campaign, and there will be no sleep for lobbyists on any side of the issue before Christmas. Gee, Big Tobacco and Big Insurance have lobbyists, and feminists want to focus on how porn and prostitution exploit people.

The fact of the matter is that normal people can’t afford coverage — the cost of which sometimes exceeds their paycheck. When they do have coverage, their out of pocket health care costs still often exceed 10% of their annual income. Low wage individuals are unlikely to have access to employer provided coverage, and unlikely to be able to afford individual coverage. The result is kids without coverage ending up with chronic problems, people dying because they can’t afford coverage, people going bankrupt over medical bills, people being sued over the medical bills of relatives in other states.

Businesses can’t afford coverage, and this is making American products and services uncompetitive on a price basis. Because of a combination of health insurance issues and financing issues, it is almost impossible to start a new business right now. And that means no new jobs out of small business, of the kind we saw in decades past. It used to be that unemployment could be an opportunity to take a flier on the next big thing, but who can afford to do that now?

Doctors can’t afford to do business with insurance companies, who often arbitrarily determine what they will pay and what they will cover. A new study says that medical facilities spend “at least $23 billion to $31 billion each year” just in the amount of salary they pay while employees deal with the insurance people. That’s $23-31 thousand million that doesn’t provide any care whatsoever. And it doesn’t even count what it costs the insurance company on the other end to process the claim.

Meanwhile, insurance companies are making obscene profits — which again provides no care whatsoever — doing morally reprehensible things, and Congress fiddles while our system drowns. We keep talking and talking, and those in power keep trying to move the discussion on out to Right Field, which is the only place it makes sense that the for-profit model of health insurance that got us here can somehow get us out. Health care is really too important to be profitable.

The center — the real center, not the made up one they seem to worship in Washington — wants real reform. They want it now. Our Senators need to get up off their worthless rumps and do what the people sent them to do instead of what a few wildly profitable businesses want.

Remember this when the primaries come around.

In closing: externalities; Anti-Abortion Terrorist links himself with Operation Rescue and can’t honestly imagine why they would distance themselves from a bona-fide “hero” like himself; let your fingers do the walking through the state of the economy (what the yellow pages can tell you); I wonder what the Dalai Lama was trying to show President Bush; CSI meets reality; and using unpaid interns to do the work of people who were laid off.

House DemocRATS have rolled out a Mandatory Insurance Plan, which does not appear to have a public option. Oh, it does have an “exchange” with a public plan among the options, for those few who qualify to get into the “exchange” in the first place.

The legislation calls for a 5.4% tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals. Employers who don’t provide coverage would be hit with a penalty equal to 8% of workers’ wages with an exemption for small businesses. Individuals who decline an offer of affordable coverage would pay 2.5% of their incomes as a penalty, up to the average cost of a health insurance plan.

The nicest thing I can say about it is that insurance companies aren’t wild about it either.

Here’s what happens when we have mandatory coverage: crap policies; real policies still unaffordable by anybody except large businesses that are insuring hundreds of people; denied and cancelled policies leaving people scrambling for coverage; insurance bureaucrats sentencing people to death; personal bankruptcy caused by medical debt.

Sure, something must be done, and done now. But this is the wrong thing to do. Think about it.

In Closing: businesses only pay taxes on profits; inflation and the fear thereof; 9th Circuit says pharmacists can have consciences, but pharmacies must fill prescriptions; job losses will trickle down through our economy in a bad way; how to disappear; Geeky Monticello; job offer scams (my tip, employers don’t ask you for money, they pay you money); whatchoo talkin bout Willis Tower?; immigration and crime; living on borrowed money; tax cuts don’t create jobs; and homeless in the suburbs.

At this point, there is a mysterious “agreement” between Senator Baucus, the White House, and hospitals. The fact that so little is known about a plan from someone who has historically been against any real public option is, in my opinion, suspicious. Since health insurance reform is the big topic for Congress this week, the timing is interesting to say the least.

Remember last week I said that Wal-Mart supporting an employer insurance mandate was suspicious? Well Greg Swann figured it out: an employer mandate for health insurance makes it harder for small businesses to compete with the behemoth. Small businesses are already being crushed under the cost of health care, being driven out of business at a time when our country desperately needs the innovation and jobs that entrepreneurs create.

Senator Schumer — wearing a green tie I might point out — says there will be “some sort” of public option available, but others point out it may be so hard to get into that it may as well not exist.

Thankfully, various groups are keeping pressure on the elected officials who have forgotten that they need our votes as much as industry’s money. They are continuing to pound despite friendly requests to shut the **** up by the Obama Administration.

There are a lot of problems with employer mandated coverage — or simply, mandatory coverage as I have called it for some years. The first problem is that coverage being purchased by employers is the root cause of our current mess! If costs hadn’t been invisible to Joe and Jane Average, change would have been forced years ago.

The second problem is that “we’ll pass a law making employers buy it” doesn’t solve the fact that coverage is too expensive for most small businesses. Fine them all you like, you’ll just put more small businesses — that our economy desperately needs — out of business. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say that while the banking crisis (caused in part by the foreclosure mess) is the first cause of our current economic woes, the health insurance crisis is the clear second cause. Not only are we spending too much of our GDP on too little care for too few people, it’s making it almost impossible for entrepreneurship to lead us out of this mess.

How does that work, you may ask. It works because small businesses can’t afford to hire the people they need, because the people they need require quality coverage. And unfortunately, Senator Grassley was both tone-deaf and correct when he pointed out that the best way to get good coverage was to get a job with a big company like Deere or the United States Government. If our economy is to be run by a few hundred large companies, that’s viable. However, our economy runs on innovation and growth of small business.

And I haven’t even mentioned the third and most tragic problem with mandatory insurance: children don’t have employers.

However, instead of trying to put together a plan that is what the American people want, we are still hearing scare stories about Canadians — but oddly enough not the French — falling through the cracks (apparently none of these people have tried to make an appointment with a gynecologist lately, that will be 6-8 weeks minimum, dear), we are still arguing about what needs to be done, and we have somehow or another turned this most important issue into an argument about abortion. Sorry, wingnuts, there are still situations where women — as in wives and mothers —  will die — as in become dead and not living anymore — without an abortion. The very idea that life-saving surgery shouldn’t be covered is a travesty. Stuff that in your so-called-pro-life pipe and smoke it.

Tell your Senators and your Congressman. Tell the President too. We need a public option, we don’t need mandated coverage, and we can afford Medicare For All. Heck, I don’t think we can afford not to have a public option that is open to everyone. If it drives our overpriced, for profit health insurance companies out of business, oh well. America’s children certainly can’t afford to maintain the status quo. Remind your elected officials that insurance companies, drug companies, and hospital groups don’t vote, but we do vote.

In Closing: I love this sign; most “crazy cat ladies” don’t have cheetahs, lions, and tigers (no bears, oh my); bank failures week by week (Friday and more takeovers will be here before you know it); speaking of which, why aren’t the Canadian banks having a crisis?; urban farming; more on modern victory gardens; h/t to Susie, real unemployment — when you count everybody instead of just the people taking an unemployment check — is up to 18.7% (um yeah, what was that people were saying about how you can’t possibly compare this to the Great Depression?); h/t to John, could you pass the Citizenship Test (yes, 95%, and congrats to a certain client of mine who recently passed it!!!); thank [diety], the possible end of “too big to fail”; Bank of America makes a mistake, resulting in them banning a customer for life because he had an “irregularity” in his accounts; and not the way you want to meet.

Sorry taking so long to post. It’s been nuts, and I hope to develop a more regular schedule.

Sometimes I wonder about Chuck Schumer. Today’s great quote is this:

“I’m sure the civil libertarians will object to some kind of biometric card — although . . . there’ll be all kinds of protections — but we’re going to have to do it. It’s the only way,” Schumer said. “The American people will never accept immigration reform unless they truly believe their government is committed to ending future illegal immigration.”

Now let me get this straight. The only way Americans will accept reform is if it looks like Congress will actually give it to them, and therefore we need a national ID card with fingerprints on it? What? I’m not terribly concerned since it looks like immigration reform is already a dead issue to this session of Congress.  However, the depth of this stupidity is breathtaking. Real immigration reform will need to have these components:

1. Severe penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. And those penalties should go far enough up the corporate ladder that executives will make sure that supervisors and managers follow the law. Some will complain that making employers follow the law will cause a shortage of workers who will work for very low pay. With our current unemployment levels, that’s not a valid argument.

2. A clear and understandable path to legal status for immigrants, coupled with sufficient INS staff to work through any existing backlog within 1 year. It should be simple enough that even a citizen can understand it. If people know they way it has to be and we have the means to make it work that way, there will be no excuse for illegal immigration.

That’s it. We don’t need a high-tech way to verify identity and work eligibility. Actually using the I-9 form as it is supposed to be used does that nicely. We don’t need fallible biometric identification that will leave many eligible workers unable to work. We don’t need a government database that will function as an expensive and error-prone green list of people who are allowed to have jobs. All we  need to do is enforce the law, and make it easier to follow the law.

In Closing: Penn Jillette (oh, and Teller too) asks “if two goofball magicians can slip this stuff by with full lights shining on them and the full attention of the audience, then what could a really bad person do?”; volcano punches hole in clouds; Supreme Court rules in favor of common sense; cracks in the Massachusetts Plan (do you remember I said it would fail and be used as “proof” that universal care doesn’t work?); why we need a public option; and Farrah Fawcett, RIP.

We’ve been reading for weeks about politicians and health execs resisting true reform of the way we pay for health care. Remember, relatively few of us want care itself reformed, but most of us want the way we pay for things reformed.

Businesses are experiencing a 9% rise in health insurance costs alone. In these hard times they have no choice but to either pass along the gouge or reduce the level of insurance they purchase. We’ve had people try to scare us with “rationing” of care, which we already do with money. We’ve had people try to scare us by telling us that the government wants to tell your doctor what to do, when insurance companies already do that by telling them what they’ll cover — and the government plan they fear merely wants to figure out what works and stop your doctor from doing stuff that doesn’t work (too scientific, I suppose). We’ve had the Republicans try to dress up the same old nonsense in new clothes with no details and call it “reform”. We’ve been reading about how insurance companies actively try to cut people who need services — and have the gall to say it’s the only way they can be profitable.

But now it looks bad. Ezra warned us of trouble, and then he delivered it. The Senate has been negotiating themselves right out into the cornfield. It’s a stinking political deal that lets Senators prenend they are helping, but it’s nothing more than a mandatory insurance plan with some fancy ribbons to give the illusion that everybody can afford it.

How can you have mandatory coverage when insurance companies can cancel your policy for no reason?

How can you have mandatory coverage in a time of high unemployment, high foreclosures, high bankruptcies, and high credit card defaults? Don’t you suppose that these things indicate that there is no money to buy insurance?

How can you have mandatory coverage of children in a system where most coverage is still through employers? Don’t they know there are child labor laws?

How can we support mandatory coverage from the same people who brought us the most expensive care without bringing us the most effective care?

How can they offer We The People a mandatory plan when there is increasing support for true universal coverage or at the very least a “public option“?

How can anyone support this plan when we can’t even have Senate discourse about the idea of Medicare for All? Are they that completely 0wned by the insurance companies that are bleeding America dry?

And the question the 100 Senators should really ask themselves: how can we send them back to Washington if they sell their voters down the financial river?

Let them know what you think. Do it today. Feel free to use any points you like from above.

It’s ridiculous.

In Closing: unseen Chapter 11 wave; anti-stab knives (how British); Will high speed rail kill the airlines? (answer — not if the TSA does it first); “get used to tighter credit“; highest unemployment rate since 1983 (say, you don’t suppose that true universal healthcare might make it easier to hire people, do you?) including record unemployment in my state, and many are too discouraged to even look for work; I would have gotten fired and probably fined by the feds if I had sent this from my office email account; essentials of financial freedom probably should be applied to the health insurance industry too; recession tracks Great Depression; Boomers rethinking [the existence of] retirement (my favorite part is the guy with 35 years IT experience going back for a degree in IT so he can be even more completely priced out of IT jobs); “new” financial regulation program has support of the ******* who brought us the current crisis so it must be good, right?; on double-standards and really good mascara; The American Tribe; and Zach the Cat.

As the health insurance reform debate rages on, it seems clear that We The People are at risk of being scammed.

You see, a lot of “experts” — insurance company lobbyists/executives and the politicians they have purchased — think that the way to make sure everybody has access to health care is to simply pass a law saying everybody has to buy it! Make a penalty for anyone who for whatever reason can’t participate. I call this system Mandatory Health Care, because that’s the most accurate description. It’s delightfully simple, except for this:

1) Nobody is forcing the insurance companies to charge reasonable rates, nor preventing them for making it difficult for people with pre-existing conditions to get/afford insurance.

2) Nobody is making insurance companies actually pay for needed treatment in a timely fashion.

3) Nobody is doing anything about bloated insurance company profits, marketing budgets, and executive pay scales that cost consumers money without providing any care.

4) This does nothing to help entrepreneurs who must find a way to afford insurance for his/her family and employees while running a small company in a difficult economy. I would love to see a small business study for Massachusetts: I bet the number of active small businesses has shrunk more than the recession alone would account for in the last few years. The closest any of the available plans get to equalizing the playing field for small businesses is to make insurance benefits taxable for everyone! I’m not sure who that’s supposed to help other than big businesses that are already wildly profitable.

5) Mandatory insurance has resulted in a shortage of providers in Massachusetts, despite the fact that in countries where they actually have universal health care, there is a similar number of providers per thousand patients and no shortage.

6) It doesn’t magically make anybody able to afford premiums — the single biggest reason people don’t have coverage. (And how exactly will a homeless person get the bill, let alone pay it?)

Our system of paying for health care is broken, and the people who brought it to us want to scare us into being a captive audience. This issue is too important to be turned into nothing more than a political football. Let’s not make things worse by forcing every citizen to participate in a broken system. Susie’s right: if the powers that be really wanted reform, they would call the one guy who knows more about how health insurance really works in this country than anybody else, Howard Dean.

Insist on a true, universal public option. Do not let Congress settle for Mandatory Health Insurance.

Don’t take the heat off anti-abortion terror groups either: Tiller’s assassin has warned of more violence unless his viewpoint is immediately adopted  and abortion outlawed (textbook definition of terrorism). There is nothing to be said between the points of view until the anti-abortion movement completely renounces and expels the terrorists within.

In Closing: stick a fork in Norm Coleman, he’s done (seat Senator Franken already!); why did the British press have to tell us that American banks are lobbying to not be held to any rules?;  it turns out that rural areas have homeless people too; even if the recession ends tomorrow, the unemployment rate may rise for another year or two, and it’s a pretty awful trend now; mindfulness is a good thing; maybe Scholastic Books should stick to selling books.