Obama Explains the "Rules of Reform"

by: Ian Welsh

Thu Sep 10, 2009 at 14:00


Obama in his speech last night:

"I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."

"...under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance"

"I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business."

" we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up" (for the public option)

"Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have."

(editor note: or allows you to, if you have insurance through an employer.)

Clearer Obama:

As Health Secretary Sebelius said, we are determined to create a health system in this country which is designed so it can never become single payer.  My mandate system, forcing you to buy insurance from insurance companies with inadequate subsidies, will preclude that possibility and save the American consumer for the American insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Rule 1: the best way to make money is to have the government force people to buy your product.

Rule 2: Any major industry with a revenue stream is entitled to that revenue stream forever, no matter how bad the service they provide is, or how much they overcharge.

Rule 3: Any failure of the system will be paid for by forcing ordinary people to pay to bail out the elites who failed.  Making the rich pay for their own mistakes is unacceptable.

Ian Welsh :: Obama Explains the "Rules of Reform"

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Obama Explains the "Rules of Reform" | 34 comments
yup...thanks, Ian (4.00 / 4)
I didn't hear a single word or phrase that should cause the HealthInsurance Parasite exec a second's worth of worry, and LOTS to send 'em capering off to buy new properties...
Lost way (3.00 / 4)
When progressive care more about punishing executives then helping people, we have truly lost our way.  Fortunately, this is still a minority view, even on the left.
Punishing killers, you mean. (4.00 / 6)
Years ago I went to business school. We had a professor who asked us, "if you kill someone, are you responsible?" We all nodded our heads.

"If you kill someone as part of a group, like say a lynch mob, are you still responsible? Are you responsible even if everyone around you thought it was a good idea at the time?" Again we nodded our heads.

"Are you responsible if you kill someone for money?" "Of course!" we all said.

"Good," he continued, "the reason I ask is, sometimes people do things as part of a group that they would never do as individuals. It is much easier to do bad things when you are in a group. But you are always responsible for your own actions. I want you to remember this when you go out into the corporate world."

It's too bad these insurance executives never had that professor.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Yes. (0.00 / 0)
I agree with you completely.  Let me reword:

When progressive care more about punishing killers then stopping those people from killing again, we have truly lost our way.  Fortunately, this is still a minority view, even on the left.

[ Parent ]
Fine, so help push for something that will stop the killing. (0.00 / 0)
But for justice to be truly brought about, those who commit murder must be made to suffer the consequences of their actions so that future, would-be felons think twice before killing people.  Never forget that punishment, when applied to justice, can and often is a good thing.  The difference is in how we mete it out.


[ Parent ]
Gotta make it illegal, first (0.00 / 0)
I agree with you morally, but legally you have to make these practices illegal, first.  But somewhere along the lines we lost our bearing and allowed these practices to be legal.

This legislation, even the bad ones, make practices like this illegal.

I also probably shouldn't have used the word "completely" in my first reply.  I do have a problem with making this personal against the CEOs (and others) in these corporations.  By making it personal, we give the impression the problem is the people who run the corporations -- just a few bad apples.

But that is false.  The problem is the system.  If a truly good person became the CEO of one of those insurance corporations they would quickly loose profits and be replaced.  That is simply the way the current system, intentional or not, is set up.

The solution is to change the system.  Again, even the bad proposals change this system enough to prevent these problems.

------

As a side question, has anyone gone after these guys for murder?  I suspect it must have come up before, if legal.  My guess is the medical industry, including insurers, are immune to all such charges, even in the extreme cases.

[ Parent ]
this sounds like the argument (0.00 / 0)
for the death penalty.  
[ Parent ]
True Progressives Are Very Pro Death Penalty (0.00 / 0)
As long as it involves a guillotine.
[ Parent ]
Or life without parole. (0.00 / 0)
Why give the murdering fiends an easy way out?


[ Parent ]
I thought the progressive view (0.00 / 0)
was that prison is a place for rehabilitation and give criminals a second chance, so wouldn't they be opposed to life without parole?

[ Parent ]
That's a false dichotomy. (4.00 / 1)
The discussion over torture should've cleared that up.

Capitulating to killers is never going to stop them.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Worked 10 years ago (4.00 / 1)
A law was passed that made using prior conditions to deny coverage illegal when insurance is purchased by large corporations.  My understanding is the law does what it is supposed to do.

Of course, not everyone works for large corporations, so it is far from perfect.  (Let's fix that!)  But you need some kind of mandate to do that to prevent people from not bothering to buy insurance until they are sick.  (Large corporations that cover everyone don't have that problem.)

I see no reason why better laws now can't work.

[ Parent ]
Even if we had the best and most efficient single payer system (0.00 / 0)
some people would still die. Would that system then be responsible for killing them?

(I'm not trying to be flippant).

Or is it a matter of intent?


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

[ Parent ]
Rule 4: (4.00 / 6)
Liberal cynics are not required to examine proposed legislation to see if their fears are actually warranted.

HR3200 has profit controls built in. In my view very strong ones. People can disagree or suggest that the liklihood is that they will be bargained away but this prevalent belief that somehow Kennedy, Dodd, Pelosi, Waxman, Dingell, Rangell and Brown are in some deep conspiracy with Obama to turn us over to the mercies of the insurance companies to do with us what they will is fundamentally lazy, cynical crap.

HR3200 and the HELP Bill if implemented as is totally gut the insurance companies current model which is built on predation and denial of care to one where profits can only be achieved through providing care. No one can guarantee that these provisions won't be weakened but this weird assumption that they don't even exist and that as a result we are all fucked is ridiculous.

I want single payer. I am not going to get it. So I am examining the public option to see if it could be an adequate substitute. But all too many people are stuck on step two and so resorting to stupid "rules" that have little relation to reality.

HR3200 has strong profit controls. And there are very good reasons to not let individuals opt out of employer plans. But we will never get to either discussion as long as people's dials are stuck on WATB/Obama sold us out.

do these bills limit the size of deductibles? (4.00 / 3)
I have a friend who pays $800 a month but has a $6K deductible. In most years she pays for all of her medical care out of pocket.

Does HR 3200 or the HELP bill stop private insurers from lowering the premiums to make the policies seem affordable while jacking up the deductibles?

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

[ Parent ]
axelrod said not everyone will be forced to buy insurance (0.00 / 0)
and mentioned a 'hardship exemption'

any idea what this 'hardship exemption' is?

I think it means (4.00 / 4)
that if the cheapest policy available to you would cost more than 10 percent of your income, you are exempt from the mandate.

But I wonder what's stopping insurers from lowering the premiums just enough and then putting sky-high deductibles on the cheapest policies. We would be forcing people to buy insurance that forces them to pay out of pocket for most routine care.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

[ Parent ]
Brilliaant! (0.00 / 0)
But I wonder what's stopping insurers from lowering the premiums just enough and then putting sky-high deductibles on the cheapest policies. We would be forcing people to buy insurance that forces them to pay out of pocket for most routine care.

I bet you could get a job at Aetna, or one of 'em, with an imagination like that...

I also suspect that the HIP (Health Insurance Parasites) will devise ways to (unnecessarily, but economically) delay needed treatments...

[ Parent ]
Yes, the CCC (corporate power, conservatives, and centrists) (4.00 / 4)
are feeling quite cozy after his speech.

Sen. Claire McCaskill is happy that Obama...

...talked about handcuffing the public option, which is essential...for a moderate like me. Without handcuffing it, it could morph into a comprehensive government plan, which I think most moderates can't support
.

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpoin...

and today floated co-ops (4.00 / 2)
[ Parent ]
Jeez (4.00 / 1)
I remember when she, Tester, and Webb came in and they were referred to as a group of economic populists. Ugh.
[ Parent ]
They were? (0.00 / 0)
by who?
[ Parent ]
This Is What I Meant (4.00 / 6)
when I referred to this the American version of the "conservative welfare state", as originally described in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism by Gosta Esping-Andersen.

In the classic European version of the conservative welfare state, the rationale is to strengthen elite rule--which means the state, the church, and the national industrial base. Esping-Andersen classified the US--along with the UK and Canada, for example--as a "liberal" welfare state, whose purpose was primarily to facilitate the market by dealing with market failures with a minimum of impact on the market system itself.

In my view, one can best understand the conservative movement as wanting to destroy the welfare state, but finding it far too popular (even with their own base), and so turning to co-optation instead--turning it into a means of social control (even more than parts of it already were) as well as a profit center for conservatives' corporate allies.  This produces a distinctively American version of the conservative welfare state--it just has a different mix of elite institutions it exists to empower.

Now enter the Obama neoliberals--much like their earlier UK Tony Blair counterparts--offering, in effect, to do a better job of managing the conservative's handiwork than the conservatives themselves could do.  That's precisely where the set of Obama priorities you've identified fits in.  And it concludes my short history of welfare state policy in the US over the past 40 years.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Which is the correct first step (0.00 / 0)
This is exactly what one would expect when trying to turn a large, heavy ship leftward.  You have to start where you are, you can't just magically teleport to where you want to be.  Look at how much institutional opposition there is to just a mediocre public option.
[ Parent ]
Which gives me a chance (4.00 / 6)
to break out what Chris Floyd said about Obama and foreign policy.

I've never been a starry-eyed idealist. I've never preached the counsel of seeking the perfect at the expense of the good. And I've never believed that any single politician or administration could take office and magically transform the nature of the American empire overnight. I acknowledge the aptness of the metaphor used by many of Obama's defenders: the image of a sea captain, beset by virulent opponents on the bridge, struggling to turn a vast ocean liner in the opposite direction, in the midst of a raging storm. That would indeed take a long time, and tremendous effort, and require stoic patience from the passengers.

But that is not what is happening. The long, hard, thankless effort that it would take to roll back the bloated global empire of bases and curtail the power of the oligarchy (for you can't do one without the other) has not even begun. Obama is not trying to wrest the ship of state toward a new direction; he is deliberately and willingly continuing on the same disastrous, destructive course as before. Every day carries us further and further away from the shore, and makes any effort to reverse course that much harder -- if indeed, it is still possible at all.

http://www.counterpunch.org/fl...

He a softer, more careful ship captain, but the damn boat is still going in the same direction.


[ Parent ]
Afghanistan (4.00 / 1)
I agree completely on Afghanistan.  I think Obama is doing a pretty good job on foreign policy outside of the AfPak region, but you'll get no counterpoint from me inside that region.

There are other places in Obama's policy I also think he isn't changing very well.  But health care is not one of them.  I have some quibbles here and there, but overall I think he is doing a really good job.  I think he will honestly improve the system and make millions of lives better.  I appears he will squeeze out of congress more or less the best bill that it can pass.

As a side note, I find it extremely ironic that many liberals (say, David) complain about the lionization of the office of the president, yet simultaneously grant him all these miraculous powers to mind control congress -- if only he would use them!

[ Parent ]
Believe me, I don't (4.00 / 4)
exaggerate Obama's powers. In fact, I think it's entirely possible that if Obama has taken a populist tack in the health care debate, then corporate power would've have squashed him like a bug.

What I'm saying is from where I sit I don't see him pushing back, either with rhetoric or policy or appointments or strategy, against the fundamental, underlying problems facing this country. On the contrary, he's usually reinforcing them.  

[ Parent ]
If He Hadn't Gone All In With His Team of Rubins (4.00 / 2)
He could have had him some space to play the populist card in spades.

But since he didn't, he put himself in the hole.

No one else to blame on that one.

But he seemed entirely pleased to have put himself in that situation.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Wrong David (0.00 / 0)
I forgot I was responding to someone named David when I wrote that.  I was talking about David Sirota, at least about the Lionization part.

Personally, I see Obama going for the low hanging fruit -- which really isn't all that low.  In health care there is a great deal of consensus on the left on how health care can be improved.  That would be the 80% he talked about last night.  All he is trying to do is pass that consensus.  But even that is really hard.

If we had a parliamentary system and all he needed to do was get the House to vote, he'd be done by now with a strong bill.  But we don't have that system.  We have a system where he has to get through five committees and two chambers, one of which insists on using a supermajority for everything.

As I've stated before, Obama is our Nixon, not our Reagan.  Just like Nixon was a New Deal conservative, Obama is a Reagan Revolution liberal.  While I still hold out hope that a second term Obama will morph into our Reagan, I suspect it will take another person to play that role.

[ Parent ]
Like David Says Just Above (4.00 / 2)
That's not what Obama's doing.

Any more than that was what Tony Blair was up to--as was strikingly revealed by how easily he segued from being Bill Clinton's BFF to being Bush's.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Partially (0.00 / 0)
It isn't what Obama is doing in Afghanistan, it is what he is doing in Israel.  It isn't what he is doing with executive power, it is what he is doing in health care.
[ Parent ]
Not Quite (4.00 / 1)
It provably isn't what Obama is doing Afganistan.  You can still pretend it is what he is doing in Israel.

It provably isn't what he is doing with executive power, it remains to be seen what he is doing in health care.

But I hope you're right.  Even though I don't think so.

(This time, I think it's pretty clear that you're the optimist.)

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
single payer (4.00 / 1)
is the only way to go, therefore obama is short changing america and capitulating to the special interests and the gop thugs that hate america and all average citizens that are not in the elite class.
By that rationale... (4.00 / 1)
Then most of the House and Senate are as well, because Single payer enjoys little support in either chamber.
[ Parent ]
Obama Explains the "Rules of Reform" | 34 comments
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