Category: Politics

Dear Doctor:

Or, do you prefer Governor? Mr. Chairman?

On last year’s Election Day, we elected our first African American President, and validated your strategy for the Democratic party — the 50 state strategy. My husband and myself were two of the people out there on the ground, giving what little money we could, literally knocking on doors asking people to vote for Mr. Obama, and turning a “red state” blue.

Frankly, now we’re not sure we got a good deal.

Our troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, with “support” from profiteering corporations instead of fellow servicemen. Guantanamo is still open for business, and few of the men there are seeing anything that might approach “due process.” The Obama Administration is defending the use of warrantless wiretaps. The GLBT community has a list of grievances and what they see as broken promises.

The government pleads poverty when it comes to helping ordinary citizens weather the biggest recession ever, yet there always seems to be plenty of money for bankrupt banks and poorly run auto makers. We’ve got long term, possibly structural unemployment, and we are being told that private industry is going to have to pick up the slack and hire people. Few companies are hiring, and the combination of a banking mess and a health insurance mess means that few new companies will be opening their doors anytime soon. This is no longer a land of opportunity for anybody willing to work for it. Too much depends on luck, knowing the right people, and having the money up front. Instead, it’s a land where half of all kids will at some point receive food stamps.

And lets talk about this health insurance reform thing for a minute, can we? I’m really sick of writing about health insurance reform, but there are things that must be said. To be honest, I knew we were in trouble when Rahm Emanuel arrived and you weren’t offered any position in the Administration. Let’s face it, Doctor: nobody has experienced the insurance industry from more angles than you. You’ve been insured, bought insurance for your employees, bought COBRA (you mentioned that in the debates, remember?), negotiated contracts and received reimbursement from insurance companies, and helped regulate insurance on the state level. You managed to get coverage for every kid in your state, no questions asked!

Fixing the health insurance mess is critical to getting people back to work — which is in turn critical to getting our economy moving again, fixing the housing market, and getting long term stability for our banking sector. Most Americans want a public option (preferably Medicare For All) that is going to bring prices down, they want “pre-existing conditions” to go away, they want insurance companies to pay what is owed promptly and without argument. Instead, Congress has argued and cut back-room deals with the insurance companies and drug companies that, in the eyes of Joe and Jane Average, are screwing us.

Once they finally put together legislation that looked like it might not be horrible, they set right back to work messing it up with junk like coverage for prayer treatments and separate coverage riders for abortion — which like it or loath it is sometimes a life-saving surgery that shouldn’t require an extra fee to be covered! These are only 2 items that have come to light today; who knows what other junk is in there to turn this franken-bill into a real monster?

I’ve stopped giving money to the Democratic Party in all its forms for the reasons outlined above. Every time they call, I send money to Democracy for America or Move On. And that, Doctor Dean, is where you come in.

It is clear to me that for the most part my [former] party is hopeless: hopelessly corrupt, stupid, spineless, and generally worthless. You were clearly right to leave when you did, while you still had a reputation as a winning political tactician. I think that with your guidance, DFA and MoveOn could and should form a new political party, reclaiming “liberal” as a good word, and based firmly on the principles of the Bill of Rights. I feel certain there are a number of Democratic figures that would want to be part of such a movement (Dennis Kucinich and Ed Schultz come to mind), and if you truly embrace civil liberties right, there might even be some “moderate” Republicans who might at least be friendly.

Please just consider it. Let’s be real here, if you thought there was hope for the party, you’d still be Chairman.

Thank you for your time. I hope all is well for you and your family.

— Bridget Magnus, AKA the ShortWoman, Realtor, former Democrat, and proud American

Sorry, comments closed due to too much spam.

Over the weekend, I happened to hear a piece on NPR about young adults without health insurance. Why didn’t they have coverage? Because they couldn’t afford it. One young lady explained that it was a simple choice between paying for insurance or paying the rent. One Democratic Senator they interviewed agreed that this was a problem, and the answer was the individual mandate, or as I prefer to call it mandatory insurance. How exactly forcing people to buy something they can’t afford solves anything, I don’t know.

And that’s where the public option comes in. The insurance companies have proven that given the chance, they will raise prices and deny coverage whenever possible, or offer “affordable” plans so spartan that they don’t actually cover anything. A public option that anybody can buy into keeps the insurance companies honest, because We The People can say “enough of enriching my **** insurance company!”

We The People understand this. Alas, our Senators do not. They are so beholden to special interests that they have killed the public option, or threatened to load it up with nonsense and requirements and triggers and abortion bans and only lobbyists know what else. Our healthcare debate has become so tortured that other world leaders are asking our President what the heck is going on.

If they pass nothing more than mandatory insurance and a few cosmetic reforms, Howard Dean correctly predicts a backlash.

Not everyone agrees that the public option is dead, but it sure looks to be in critical condition.

If this is what we are left with, let’s just scrap it all. Let’s put together 5 pages of legislation that does the most critical things we need out of health insurance reform:

1. Outlaw pre-existing conditions in all forms and for every purpose including pricing, coverage, and claims.
2. Regulate rate increases, perhaps indexed to inflation (CPI increase + 5%?).
3. Put doctors, not insurance clerks, in charge of making medical decisions.
4. Change the tax code so that everybody can deduct health insurance premiums even if they don’t itemize and even if they aren’t self-employed.

I think everybody except insurance companies and their purchased members of Congress can agree that these things are essential. If we can’t agree on anything else, let’s not make things worse.

I’m going to start by pointing out that not only are real wages down to levels not seen since 1997, not only is the poverty rate up to a level not seen since 1997, health coverage is down. One in every 20 people who had coverage from their employers last year don’t have it anymore. The only coverage gains were for government insurance programs such as Medicare (hrm, pesky socialism!) Moreover, income hasn’t kept up with reality for the last 40 years. No wonder things seem tight!

So despite the fact that We the People are  being squeezed, we get “reforms” that protect the profits of insurance companies, and helpful advice to not need coverage. Nothing is being done to make sure that “coverage” actually “covers” us. Nobody is offering to let Joe and Jane Average buy into government coverage programs that are actually known to work (and work pretty well for the most part).

Open Left is a little behind me on this one: the Democratic Party and its candidates don’t get a dime from me until they start to deliver on some of their promises. In the meantime, every time the Party calls me, I will be sending money to organizations that actually campaign for my interests. Don’t tell me the party has to be “centrist” to get “bipartisan support,” because the majority of people support a very progressive agenda by their standards, and bipartisanship once again means “do it the Republicans’ way.” Don’t tell me to be reasonable, because there is no reason we can’t do this right. And finally, don’t tell me that we can’t get it done in Congress, because they have majorities in both houses.

The party ran on hope and change. It’s time to deliver

In closing: VW’s 240 MPG car will go into production; wouldn’t it be nice if employers followed the law?; a follow-up on different ways to measure unemployment; Levi’s got it together; heart attack rates fall 17% after public smoking bans; the paradox of thrift; send the crooks to prison; scumbag banks; safety tips; and finally, Happy Equinox.

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.