I hate to play devil's advocate for VL, but... (4.00 / 4)

Is "fanatically supporting single-payer" really what you think people criticizing Lux (and to a lesser degree, Bowers) are asking for?

I think there's a large divide between say, self immolation in the name of Medicare-for-all and simply refusing to support the shit sandwich currently being debated in DC.

Cheerleading the bill, in its current form, isn't a matter of falling short of ideological purity, it's supporting a measure that will do actual harm to working persons (note I didn't say families, but that's a different argument) and that will line the coffers of the industry that created the crisis in the first place.

They didn't stop the DC Sniper by giving him a box ammo and a pat on the back.  

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by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 17:38:09 PM UTC

Look At History (4.00 / 2)

When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, it excluded most women and minorities.  Their exclusion was directly harmful to them.  But in time it was expanded to include them.

Purists could have tried to torpedo the bill at the time, and there certainly was a moral argument for doing so.  But given the makeup of Congress (lotsa racist Southern white men in the Democratic majority, for one thing) and the ideological state of the nation at the time, it's hard to see how any good could have come out of that beyond the immediate moral satisfaction.  Unfortunately, some degree of continued injustice had to be enshrined into law on the way to eventually reversing it.  Not pretty, but very much a reflection of realworld constraints.

What I meant by using the term "fanatical" encompasses the emotionally-driven refusal to even seriously reflect on such historical comparisons.  It's equally misguided, IMHO, to simply assume that a flawed bill can and will be improved upon.  We need a much more robust debate including as many factors and perspectives as possible.

What I'm arguing for is an informed and rational argument on the broadest possible grounds, rather than a narrow focus that simply and dogmatically excludes the sort of evidence and kinds of arguments that work against one's position.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 17:57:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

but this isn't just an issue of omission (4.00 / 2)

this is an issue of financial penalties for a certain population of the population, with minimal added benefit

and, as a cherry on top- if you happen to live in a state run by Republicans, you're obligated to give said money to a private corporation (who will use said money to lobby against further reform)

I appreciate the need for a broad debate but the attitude of some (not all) defenders of this awful bill seems to be "well it's not great but it's SOMETHING and maybe we'll fix it later".  To me this isn't nearly enough to justify support.

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by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:28:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

pardon my typos, btw (0.00 / 0)

I realize they weaken my position.

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by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:28:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Your typos are not the problem. (4.00 / 1)

It is your overly broad characterizations that are the functional equivalent of Fox Talking Points just coming from the opposite side. Define "minimal added benefit".

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:03:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

minimal added benefit (0.00 / 0)

I'll be forced to carry coverage that will still include hilariously high deductibles (not to mention the premiums and copays).  Thus healthcare remains a choice between eating/paying rent and being well.

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by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:09:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Hilariously high deductibles (0.00 / 0)

WEll you could define that too. For example preventive and well child care all come with no cost-sharing at all. And there is a sliding scale of out of pocket expenses overall. Can you supply numbers is income that would justify your rent vs being well assertions?

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:39:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

high deductible = anything over $100 (0.00 / 0)

the sliding scale you refer to, again, is based on the delusional federal poverty line

I mentioned the expected contribution down below.  At $24k/year you're out $1000/year on premiums (alone), which is outlandish to force people to pay.  

Like I said elsewhere, I'm just going to pay my penalties (at least for the first two years- to be honest I'm hoping nature takes its course before the penalties get too crazy).

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by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:43:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This Is Certainly The Most Noxious Part Of The Bill (4.00 / 2)

and just the sort of thing to start talking about changing, once the bill is passed.

But note that all your argument about this is an illustration of the point I was making in my diary, not a refutation of it.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:50:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's way more than $1000 if you've got a chronic illness like my (4.00 / 1)

bipolar 1 disorder which requires regular doctor visits and four different medications for treatment. $1000 would be a very low estimate for myself and others like me. Given that some of the medications I'm on are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the US even at their extraordinary prices, I'm hardly alone here.

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by: sb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:19:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I assume you mean now (0.00 / 0)

Based on TravisDisaster's description, the Senate bill would provide subsidies for any cost above $1000.  And I think it would be more generous for people with children.

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by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:25:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Those Left Out Of The Social Security Act WERE Hurt (4.00 / 2)

More recently, the 1983 agreement to save Social Security was a regressive payroll tax, passed two years after Reagan's massively regressive income tax cuts.

Yet, that agreement prevented Social Security from going bankrupt.

Would you have opposed that on the same grounds, and denounced it in the same terms?

This is a struggle--indeed, a war.  And unfortunately, in wars there are casualties.  Do I support that as a good thing?  No, of course not.  But if one rules out any potential losses in advance, then one virtually eliminates the chance of doing anything at all.

Of course there's a place in the struggle for people who take that sort of absolutist position.  No major struggle is ever won without them.

But when they train their attacks on allies with the same goal, but a different method, and attack their allies as if they were pure enemies, then those idealists are themselves crossing over to the dark side, wrapped in their own self-righteousness.

When it came to ending the Vietnam War, for example, we needed both those who were willing to go to jail to express their complete non-cooperation, as well as US Senators willing to use whatever power of law they had at their command.  If those who went to jail condemned those like Senator William Fullbright in the same exact terms as they opposed LBJ, Dean Rusk and Robest McNamara, we might still be fighting the Vietnam War.


"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:05:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't buy that analogy, Paul (4.00 / 5)

Rooservelt's social security bill, for all its flaws, created a clear progressive foundation upon which to build, a framework. The health care insurance reform bill will provide no such framework; on the contrary it reinforces a regressive and unsustainable system, the corporate insurance regime.

If we presuppose that some form of single-payer system has to be the goal, then the pertinent question, it seems, is: does this bill move us closer to the goal? If the bill contained a strong public option, then the answer would probably be yes, and that's why I generally supported the efforts here and elsewhere to fight for one. But now that we know the bill will not contain a strong PO, the answer looks like no. Can't get there from here.

This isn't a defense of the self-righteous dismissal of people who fought for something less than single-payer. A little humility is always called for, as is a little more tolerance for the, pardon my French, pragmatists among us. It's a defense of the general position of the single-payer-or-bust crowd, who, I fear, will be proven correct over time.

No one knows precisely how this will turn out, but if you consider that Big Insurance and Big Pharma are generally delighted with the "reforms," you'd have to be naive not to worry.

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by: david mizner @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:56:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Social Security Act of 1935 (4.00 / 2)

Excluded farm workers and domestic servants. I.e. black people. It didn't cover survivors. It was designed in a way that could get passage and not as some piece of progressive totalizing vision.

If the PO shows clear cost and service advantages over private insurance it will expand much as Social Security did. To argue a priori that it CAN'T is just special pleading.

There is no viable Single Payer proposal on the table. Period. HR676 is a piece of aspirational legislation that is not even scorable and so not acceptable under current rules.

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:13:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

My point exactly (4.00 / 1)

If the PO shows clear cost and service advantages over private insurance it will expand much as Social Security did.

We're not even sure that the final bill will include any kind of PO, and those under consideration aren't certain to provide "clear cost and service advantages."

In fact, given that insurers will, by numerous accounts, still be able to cherry pick; there's a good chance that if a PO exists, it'll be a dumping ground for the unhealthy, and the high cost of insurance there could actually undermine the case for single-payer.

It's your prerogative to think we should take a chance on the bill, but I'm pretty resistant to people who don't see that it's just that, a chance.  

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by: david mizner @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:20:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Numerous accounts (4.00 / 2)

Again that is the problem, argument by anecdote.

Where is the actual bill language that supports this cherry picking argument?  Are there actual loopholes in the enrollment, renewal, and barring of rescissions that would support this? Given the premium control and MLR language is there even an advantage in cherry picking?

In my reading of the various bills as they have been released in turn since July I see that the staffers drafting these bills and the Congressmen reviewing them have been very careful to block off exploitable loopholes. Yet too much language by purist opponents has seemed to operate from the assumption that these people are chumps for and/or tools of the insurance companies. Cynicism has been allowed to trump actual policy analysis, perhaps because it is so much easier to sneer than to read and think.

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:17:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

have you read the cms reports? (4.00 / 1)

this isn't a made up issue -- it's a real one that is not adequately addressed by simply enforcing guaranteed issue, community rating and preventing rescissions. wish that it was so.

and for crying out loud, just because people disagree with you does not mean they don't read or think. talk about pot-shots:

Yet too much language by purist opponents has seemed to operate from the assumption that these people are chumps for and/or tools of the insurance companies. Cynicism has been allowed to trump actual policy analysis, perhaps because it is so much easier to sneer than to read and think.

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by: selise @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:30:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think this is not the point (4.00 / 1)

I've read your posts on HR676, and I'm not sure you're right in your interpretations.  But even conceding you are, if Single Payer as a general approach were on the table, do you doubt that a practical bill would exist?  If HR676 is bad, then fix it.  I don't understand why its current state is of real interest.  Let's assume it is a piece of aspirational legislation, so what?  Single-payer supporters like me want single-payer, roughly modeled on the Canadian system, not HR676 per se.

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by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:22:40 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Then reintroduce Kennedy-Dingell (4.00 / 1)

Howard Dean has a similar proposal .But people on the Single Payer Now! side are demanding an up or down vote on the Weiner Amendment without any clear understanding of what that would actually entail.

If I am not right on my interpretation of HR676 there is a simple way to demonstrate that. Read the bill language and show where I have misconstrued it. It is only 30 pages and since it doesn't actually attempt to rewrite actual U.S. Code (i.e. 'Deleted Sec 1234 and insert new language ---) is quite readable.

Show me. It is not just a motto for the State of Missouri.

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:48:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Again, I don't think HR676 is the point (4.00 / 1)

It can't pass and everyone knows this.  The up or down vote is for the principle of single payer (which equally can't pass) and HR676 is just the symbolic vehicle.  Even if you're right, and HR676 bans private pharmacies, etc., those provisions would be changed if/when single payer actually had a chance to pass.

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by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:22:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Symbolic Vehicle (4.00 / 1)

This is something I have had difficulty understanding.  What is the value of getting a vote on this bill (leaving aside the question of what the bill actually does)?  It would give people that need to  burnish their progressive cred a chance to do so, even if those people have stood in the way of single payer or lesser progressive reforms.  It would not give us a real picture of who "actually" supports single payer. And there is no way anyone is going to launch primary challenges to the large swath of the caucus who would vote against it. (See, again, chairman Barney Frank's flip on the Fed audit once it looked like it would actually pass.)  A united netroots has the ability to launch some challenges - but how many, realistically? Ten? Thirty?  

On the other hand, the Kucinich Amendment might have actually paved the way for single payer, and its absence from either bill could pose a significant barrier. We know that Canada started off with single payer at the province level. That can show people how it works, legitimize it, and create a constituency in support of it.

Sometimes the response has been 'we can do both' but it seems as though the focus for single payer advocates has been on getting the vote on 676, while Kucinich has fallen by the wayside with little fanfare.

Maybe this has all been explained somewhere and I have missed it, but I can't see the point of this symbolic vote.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

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by: David Kaib @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:49:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

debating you is like debating a brick wall (4.00 / 1)

i've done that in your hr676 diary here already, and you just want to keep repeating your points, not look at anyone else's.

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by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:45:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's A Deeply Flawed Plan (4.00 / 3)

but the simple fact that it's being fought so viciously is indicative of the threat it posses.

You have to realize that objectively we're starting from a much weaker political position than FDR and the Dems in 1935.  Of course Obama made it an order of magnitude worse than it had to be, but set that aside for a moment.  Given how much stronger a position FDR & the Dems were in 1935, what chances are there that we can get anything accomplished if we turn against health care reform now?

My argument is that we have to first start changing the larger political landscape and the political dynamic before any real progress will become possible.  In the short run, even deeply flawed laws that are more of a lateral movement than an advance, but that show that bills can be passed, are a net plus, since they break us out of the deepest pattern we have been stuck in.

But even more fundamentally than that, I am arguing that failure to distinguish between foes and allies on basic substance is both a recipe for disaster strategically, and an act of profound bad faith morally.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:18:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I certainly agree with last graph (4.00 / 1)

And I think it's probably worth passing a bill, but I'm not convinced that most people will come to see this bill as a success, and if they don't, what will that do to the cause of activist government?

As we've discussed before, "liberal" bills that aren't really liberal pose a threat to liberalism. So do "liberal" presidents who aren't really liberal.

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by: david mizner @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:25:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

We Definitely Need To Be Talking In Terms of Followup (4.00 / 2)

How good the bill is taken to be will depend not just on what's in it, but on other factors as well--such as how much people blame the GOP for making it worse, and how much they hope and demand that the Dems follow up to improve it.

This, in turn, will be influenced by how people feel about the Dems overall.  And that's almost certain to be dominated by what the Dems manage to do to produce a jobs bill and take other steps to move in a more effective and more populist direction on the economic front.

And, if we do kill health care reform, it's far more likely that the Dems will do nothing, or virtually nothing on the jobs front, putting us even farther into reverse.

This gets back to my underlying point about hegemonic struggle.  There is no such thing as an issue that stands alone.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:42:17 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

bad faith? marginalization and exclusion wasn't enough? (4.00 / 1)

last week i asked you:

there are lots of people who tell me they are my allies, and yet again and again act like they are not. at some point i start listening to their actions. if you think i'm wrong about this, how do you suggest i discern the difference? serious question. i'm someone who wants to see, and looks for, allies among the tea baggers... and i want 1000x to see allies here. but where there is never any intellectual engagement to my serious questions other than occasionally lecturing me because apparently i'm so stupid it's not worth it to ever even make the case or explain it to me, what am i supposed to think?

it was a serious question. i don't know the answer. but if you think my lack of discernment is bad faith, then i don't know what to say.

this has been the most profoundly depressing thread i've ever read at OL.

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by: selise @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 01:26:49 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Are they really delighted with these reforms? (4.00 / 1)

Or are Big Insurance and Big Pharma strongly opposed to a bill in a form similar to what passed the House?

I'm going to go with Howard Dean, who said he would be willing to vote for a public option with states having the ability to opt out if he were a Senator.  (I also favor an approach like his 2004 health care plan.)  The whole point is to get a foot in the door with the concept of a public option.  The goal is to get more and more people invested in an admitted flawed system in order to build up the number of people who have a direct interest in improving the system.  Expand access first, then change the system.  

The current plan, with a public option that isn't very strong, still helps people.  I'd be willing to accept the bill that passed the House as a positive step forward.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

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by: Anthony de Jesus @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:56:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Medicare is a single-payer system (4.00 / 7)

which is partial in its extent, covering the aged and disabled.

Taking this point of view, then, Medicare was the incremental reform that was intended to be the first step on the way to universal single-payer healthcare. And therefore the task of reform should logically be to complete this process by extending this existing single-payer to cover more people instead of trying to reinvent the wheel via a "public option".

Yet no Democrat--not even those most supportive of single-payer--make the argument in quite that way. They talk about social justice and how other countries have figured out health care, but they fail to make the most straightforward argument using the most familiar example.

Any smart politician understands that the Medicare brand is gold. The GOP certainly does--they exploited the power of that brand to partially break Medicare in the guise of reform (Medicare Advantage, Part D).

Yet despite some scattered mutterings about letting more people "buy into" Medicare (which is misleading), no one on the Democratic side is exploiting the power of the Medicare brand.

The solution isn't to allow people to voluntarily "buy into" Medicare (that would vitiate its single-payer nature and make it noncompetitive), but to simply lower the age of eligibility from 65.

Yet this simple solution is the one thing that we cannot do.

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by: limpidglass @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:05:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good point (4.00 / 4)

And now we're faced the spectacle of Republicans opposing the health care bills on the grounds that it would hurt Medicare!

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by: david mizner @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:09:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Untill Democrats can be cajoled into (4.00 / 4)

incessantly extolling social insurance (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, progressive taxation) as central to the mission of the Democratic Party, as the great divide between the two major parties, and as the signature political achievements of the last century, there is simply no way to have a coherent and appealing argument at the national level for most progressive policies like HCR.

I'm less concerned with whether officials believe in social insurance, than making them fear the consequences for not going out of their way to say these things (repeatedly.)

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

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by: David Kaib @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:20:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

But We Also Need To Alter The Political Culture (4.00 / 4)

We need to make it necessary, required, and expected that Democratic politicians will talk about what the party stands for in terms of values as a simple matter of course.

It needs to be as unthinkable to do otherwise as it is unthinkable to forget to tell people to vote on election day.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:35:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yep. No Democrat thought of mining gold. (4.00 / 2)

Except two obscure guys who in April 2007 introduced a bill they called 'Medicare for All'.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/...

Kennedy/Dingell Medicare for All Act
The time is now: Medicare for all

By Senator Edward M. Kennedy
The Politico
April 24, 2007

If there is ever a time to solve our national crisis, it is now. I believe that the best plan for the nation is to build on a program that all Americans know and respect by creating Medicare for All. Medicare administrative costs are low. Patient satisfaction is high. Patients can choose their doctors and hospitals. And all Americans will be free from the fear of medical expenses and able to seek the best possible care when illness strikes.

Today, House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and I are introducing legislation to extend Medicare to all Americans, from birth to the end of life. In addition, our plan will reduce costs and improve quality, including more effective use of health information technology. It also puts a new emphasis on preventive care, because preventing illness before it occurs is always better and less expensive than treating patients after they become ill.

If it was as easy as saying 'Medicare!' and waving a golden wand President Bush would have been forced into a signing ceremony in July 2007.

Look in Spring 2009 Kennedy and Dingell were tasked to take the lead on a Health Care Reform bill. In doing so they didn't start from Kennedy-Dingell Medicare for All. And it wasn't because gold had lost its luster. Or that they had just forgotten the magic powers of 'Medicare!'

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by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:25:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

not what I'm talking about (4.00 / 2)

They put the cart before the horse, introducing the bill before public support was sufficient.

First you have to educate people. Then you can pass legislation.

You have to build grassroots support and go around persuading voters on the issue. You have to work with labor leaders and economists and get them on TV talking about it. Every Democratic work who is dispatched to MSNBC and CNN to talk about health care has to be armed with this talking point.

And in all this, you have to emphasize that single-payer is a natural extension of a popular American program, not some Canadian import that smacks of "socialism".

Kennedy and Dingell didn't do that, they're career legislators who naturally had a blind spot when it came to anything happening outside Washington. They thought putting forward a bill was enough.

There was a bill for single-payer floating around Congress during the Clinton attempt to fix health care. It got no traction, I'm guessing for the same reason as the Kennedy-Dingell bill--no one did the legwork.

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by: limpidglass @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:14:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

this is a totally stupid analogy (4.00 / 2)

social security was a public program and it covered about half of its eventual recipients right away. nor did it, by law, force people to buy a privately-run 401k while waiting for the law to be 'fixed later'.

the public option is going to happen, if it does, several years from now, it's only going to be available to a very small portion of its intended population, and while waiting to see if they can get that public option, people are going to be forced to buy private insurance.

a jacob hacker style public option, open to all next year, with taxpayer subsidies available only to those who would be opting for the public plan, and no 'individual mandates' to buy private insurance would be closer to social security in its infancy but what's working its way through congress now is nowhere near that.

public option advocates have become totally untrustworthy because they may have some inkling of political process but they seem to be totally clueless about actual policy.

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by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 02:43:16 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

What You're Overlooking (0.00 / 0)

is the substantial difference in the political environment between now and 1935.  I truly wish that it were a politically analogous situation, but it's not.  And so we've got to work against a much more hostile political environment.  The problem we face is that there's an even bigger downside for failure, despite such a limited upside for success.  But that's only for this legislative go-round--and so our task is to be thinking in terms of followup, because we've got a long-term challenge before us--and not just with regard to health care, but on virtually every policy front you can imagine.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 03:42:43 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

what you're overlooking (4.00 / 2)

is that the economic environment is much closer to 1935 than it is to the early 1990s, the clinton years being the health care war that the progressives are refighting right now. while you've been narrowly focused on political process and the 536 people in the white house and congress, you've been completely overlooking the other 300 million of us.

economic populism isn't quite [yet] the tiger it was in the 1930s but it's not as tame as progressives think it is, and because of this out-of-touchness on the part of progressives, the right is far more likely to harness that, and shortly. if that happens, you're going to long for the halcyon days of being 'demonized' by single payer advocates.

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by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:34:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not At All (0.00 / 0)

In fact, my whole point in taking a larger perspective is that Dems need to shift into populist job-creation mode, big time, in order to avoid losing ground in 2010, and progressives need to fight like hell to make the most of that shift, and build on it to move the party leftwards.  That will be the crucial battle in the year ahead.  And if we win it, then we will be in good shape to come back and start fixing this health care bill.

Once again, this is a comment that misses the whole point of the diary.  You aren't demonizing me, true.  But you are attacking me for positions I don't hold, because it's so much easier than doing the hard work of trying to work out a forward-looking strategy together.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 12:22:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

you can keep shooting the messengers (4.00 / 4)

but the progressives' advocacy for the wimpy public option was, has been, will continue to be 'looking for the keys under the light'. taking the action that LOOKS politically feasible is looking under the light. MAKING single payer, or at the very least a huge public option available on day one, into a politically feasible reality is doing the hard work of looking in the dark,

no, i'm not demonizing you and i'm not missing the point of the diary either. the proposed legislation is not going to help enough real people out in the real world to avoid the backlash that progressives are going to get FROM THE PUBLIC. this is going to dwarf the pushback that progressive bloggers who advocate the public option have been getting on their blogs from those of us who are more rabid single payer advocates.

there's a lot of other policy stuff in the proposed legislation that's really crappy. because y'all were (1) late to the healthcare game and (2) so focused on the public option, any public option, i'm not at all convinced that open left can be depended on to spot all the things that we need to 'come back later and work on'.

i don't mind doing the hard work of strategizing going forward, but you have a lot of work to do to convince me [at a minimum]:

(1) that you can recognize both good and bad policy,

(2) that you can recognize the true mood of the people, not just what poorly worded polls say,

(3) that you are both willing and able get your message across to those citizens whom you have been deriding as teabaggers,

(4) that you can recognize early on in a process when you need to [or are able to] change strategies, and

(5) that you can recognize that your opponents' screaming louder about something is NOT a measure of how much that something hurts them, but is a measure of how much pressure they think they need to apply to win a concession [or may even be just a tactic to divert attention from something else they don't want you to look at].

['you' being the generic 'you the progressive bloggers/strategists/organizers']

---

by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 22:50:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree (4.00 / 1)

I found the Social Security analogy ludicrous when Paul Begala first floated it in the Washington Post. I was surprised at its mention here.

I find it ludicrous because, while the various exclusions in the original Social Security legislation were, apparently, necessary to getting that legislation passed, they weren't viewed as part of the inherent design of Social Security.

In contrast, the firewalls of the public option are designed to keep it from "dominating" in the health insurance market; Obama used its small size-"we believe less than 5% of Americans would sign up"-as a selling point in his disingenuous health care speech in September (which Paul Begala "loved"). A handcuffed public option is a feature, not a bug-and the antithesis of a universal, not-for-profit health care system.

I very much doubt that President Roosevelt was touting exclusions of agricultural workers, domestic workers, the self-employed, etc. as an essential and desirable component of Social Security itself, however necessary those exclusions might have been in getting the legislation passed.

Can the public option expand beyond its current cramped beginnings, as Social Security expanded beyond its original constraints? It's possible. I just think the Social Security analogy is facile and inapt at best.

---

by: jeffweinberg @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:09:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

paul begala! (4.00 / 1)

i've wondered who first floated the analogy.

yep, way too many differences between social security and the 'public option'.

and progressives' selling the public option as simply a way to make the insurance industry 2% less evil isn't going to win the kind of widespread and undying popular support that they're going to need if they want to get anywhere politically.

---

by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:42:14 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I would agree with you, except... (4.00 / 1)

There's a difference between supporting something that will do actual harm to (some) working persons while (they believe) helping others, and being indifferent to that harm.  I don't accuse you of demonizing the house bloggers here, but others have, accusing them of being sell-outs and dishonestly pulling a "bait and switch," when they simply disagree about means to common goals.

This is a shitty world, with miserable, brutal choices forced on us all the time.  We can't possibly make it better by consigning the likes of Bowers and Lux and the House Progressive Caucus (and me) to the dark side.  There simply won't be enough of us left in the light.  There aren't enough even with those people.  This works in the other direction too, of course.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:08:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I've yet to see any of this bill's supporters decry the insufficient subsidies (4.00 / 2)

I've seen a lot of them try to tell me that the premiums/penalties are "not that much money"

By the way- Lux is proud of having worked in the Clinton administration...so if any "consigning to the dark side" took place, it wasn't my doing.

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:30:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Clinton was on the dark side (4.00 / 2)

Not everyone who worked in the Clinton administration was.  Lots of good progressives did.  I would think Lux is proud of what he did, not everything Clinton did.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:34:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

How is it possible for someone not to know these things. (0.00 / 0)

*I am incredibly of a great deal of the people working for the Democrats in the Administration and the congress. Much good work was done many people where helped, lots of jobs were created, many families were kept from harm.,

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:35:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

or the medicare cuts n/t (4.00 / 1)

---

by: selise @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:42:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Go Travis GO (1.33 / 3)

If anyone thinks that this bill will improve things health-care wise has truly been in the basement too long.  

This bill will do actual damage to working persons.  To keep costs down, it will cut medicare/medicade payments.  Congress/administration claims it will reduce medical care costs by rooting out fraud and waste.  That statement is a fraudulent lie.  If it were true then the mismanagement and cheats should be removed now.  The cuts in medicare funding are coming and that is "rationing care."  To call it anything different is lying to yourselves and others.

Conservative......CNN news:Nopenhagen: US PRES 2 WKS LATE ATTEND 1 DAY, GORE JOURNEY BY TRAIN.

---

by: Money Man @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:12:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Right-wing pig in sheep's clothing (2.67 / 3)

Are you even in favor of Medicare and Medicaid?

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:17:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Dedelist is correct "Right-wing pig in sheep's clothing " (4.00 / 1)

 Money Man is a fraud

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:36:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Dedelist is correct "Right-wing pig in sheep's clothing " (0.00 / 0)

 Money Man is a fraud

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:36:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Travis, do you know who this guy is, what he stands for? (0.00 / 0)

You'll take him as an ally?

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:37:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

it helps nothing to call someone "pig" (0.00 / 0)

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:46:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

OK (4.00 / 2)

He's trolling and pretending to be an ally, and I got pissed off.  You are right.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:48:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I* am sure he is a Repig, is that better? (2.00 / 2)

An agent working under cover as if in inside the organization is what? What name is ok for a fifth columnist?

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:38:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

if that's the case, resorting to name-calling isn't going to prove him wrong (0.00 / 0)

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:12:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

here's the thing, I don't call people names, but I cant write rethuglican without my fingers (4.00 / 2)

being more honest than my heart is polite. I didnt actually intend to write repig, my heart was going to write Repudiate, no I mean Repukington, Repugnants,

I give up.

There is nothing I can do. My fingers are too honest. There is little in the leadership, or even worse the ascendant crazies that is admirable enough to describe without revulsion.

This is not voters I am talking about, it is the activists who sell their evil wares. Then to find one or more lurking, prentending to be progressive? Hard to not call for his ban, but my fingers will always be honest.

OK I have changed my mind, I call for the banning of Money Man.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:31:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That's a point. We should ban him instead. (4.00 / 1)

I recently looked into his "contributions". He's constantly disrupting our discussions, without providing anything of value. It's all just lame rethuglican talking points, long debunked. It would be ok to discuss things with an honest conservative who does his own independent thinking, but MM is only a nuisance. Let's get rid of him.

---

by: Gray @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 23:55:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Keeping the offense visible Id rather bann than hide this one (0.00 / 0)

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 13:49:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well that is the problem right there (4.00 / 1)

Many people participating in this argument simply start from the position that this is a "measure that will do actual harm to working persons" without actually explaining why that is based on a clearly informed reading of the bill language. Plus many of them follow up with defenses of a bill/amendment that they seemingly never read. And then accusing people who may have done both of simply being blind to reality and/or dedicated to the cause of feeding everyone shit sandwiches.

I have read HR 676. And I can explain in detail why it is simply aspirational and not a serious piece of legislation. For one thing it simply cannot be scored. It lays out three different sources of revenue: income tax boost on the upper 5%, payroll tax increase, transaction tax on stock and bond sales without bothering to specify a level for any one of them. It proposes to extend long-term care coverage to everyone in America, eliminates any cost-sharing for that, and prohibits any kind of supplemental insurance. And does the same for dentistry. And optometry. Under HR676 Payless Drugs would be an illegal operation as would be any in-store pharmacy. And the optical shop at the mall. Yet supporters will blandly insist that anyone who opposes the Weiner Amendment is actively anti "working persons".

Anyone who suggests that supporting the bills actually in play as opposed to some fantasy bill that exists only in their own imagination is on a par with buying ammo for the DC sniper is living in a opposite but equally unreal dimension with the tea-baggers.

HR676 proposes extending unlimited, free medical, dental, vision, chiropractic and long term care to every resident of the United States regardless of legal condition or work status. HR676 makes private investment in any part of the medical sector illegal and forces existing investors to divest their interest for "reasonable compensation" as determined by the government with zero allowance for lost profits. HR676 makes all forms of supplemental insurance for medical, dental or long term care illegal. HR676 makes it illegal for any licensed provider to charge more than another for the same procedure from brain surgery to setting a bone, no skill differential allowed.

There is a case to be made for an American National Health Service that is even more nationalized and  socialized than the British NHS and with less room for any kind of profit motive. And people are free to bring it on. But suggesting that people who are advocating something less sweeping are self-evident class traitors just shows a jaw-dropping combination of arrogance and ignorance.

There actually is an existing piece of legislative language that would have been a good start for Single Payer. It was introduced in April 2007 and was popularly known as Kennedy-Dingell: Medicare for All. Sen. Kennedy described it in his own words here: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/...
Yet when the time came to craft legislation in Senate HELP and House Energy and Commerce in Spring 2009 neither Kennedy or Dingell started from their own existing legislative language. Not because they were overnight converts to the cause of lining "the coffers of the industry" but because they had learned from decades of experience the outlines of the possible.

HR676 is magnitudes beyond Kennedy-Dingell in its socialistic vision. Even if its ends were desirable (which I would dispute-the whole thing is an exercise in unintended consequences) it was miles beyond what was politically accomplishable. Yet people who want to be treated seriously insist that progressives should go to the wall insisting on an up or down vote while totally mischaracterizing existing legislation showing clearly they have read neither bill.

Read it. I have. http://www.pnhp.org/nhibill/nh...
And then figure out how you would sell this to America.

---

by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:58:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

where did I bring up HR 676? (4.00 / 1)

Was it a coded message, perhaps?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:06:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Bad Faith Response Par Excellence (4.00 / 1)

You're making a sweeping argument, and Bruce is trying to make it more specific, more concrete, and hence more amenable to rational debate.

You have no way to respond to him, so you pretend that what he's doing is somehow illegitimate.  But you can't even explain what's wrong with him going, much less answer him head on.  That's because there's nothing wrong with him doing that.  It's just the sort of reality-based shifting of the discussion that we need much more of, if we're to get beyond moralistic posturing and get down to actually getting something done.

In trying to further a fact-based discussion, he's looking for the keys where they were lost, and you're attacking him for doing so.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:30:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

no, I'm making a broad argument and he's narrowing down to refer to a single bill (4.00 / 2)

which apparently he reads every night before he goes to bed

I'm arguing against supporting the Senate HCR bill, he's arguing against 676 (which I never made an argument for, per se).

He's not looking for lost keys, he's just trying to use intense wonkery to shout me down.

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:38:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

If That's Your Objection (4.00 / 1)

Then you should have said so in the first place and then proceeded to making a broad argument against the points he was making with his specific example.

"I'm ignorant" is never a sufficient argument in itself.

"I'm ignorant and it's your fault" is never a winning argument, ever.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:55:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I never claimed ignorance, I noted that he was addressing a specific bill (4.00 / 1)

One which I did not bring up, nor try to advocate for.  Unless, of course, you're trying to paint me as ignorant...?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:57:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Travis oddly not everything is about you (4.00 / 2)

In the overall debate as it as unfolded opponents of the bills that are actually advancing have pushed two arguments. One is a variation of "Nothing is better than a something that is not perfect", often accompanied by a subtext of 'Heighten the Contradictions', the other is the assertion that there actually is a piece of acceptable legislation on the table which in practice means HR676/Weiner Amendment which is generally mischacterized as 'Medicare for All' when it is nothing of the sort.

Doing nothing is not an option. Doing something based on HR676 is impossible. Either you are a nihilist intent on denying millions of Americans access to coverage just on purist principles or an idealist pursuing an impossible dream. Sorry if I stuck you in the wrong camp.

---

by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:04:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

correction: nothing is better than something that makes things worse (4.00 / 1)

being concerned with my own situation (and having awareness that there are definitely others with whom I share the same lot) makes me neither self-centered nor a nihilist

I'm not against the bill because it's not single-payer, I'm against it because it will make life more difficult for some people- why is that so hard to grasp?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:10:34 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think your analysis is faulty (2.00 / 2)

That someone earning $24,000 might be out of pocket $1000 to insure himself against sickness or accident does not make me believe that some huge injustice has been done anymore than knowing that person needs to pay $500-$1000 a month to keep himself in a heated covered space.

I was rushed to the Emergency Room and then hopitalized for three days all without insurance. The ambulance ride alone was $800. For a 20 block ride.

Being middle-aged and uninsured sucks, because by that point just about everyone has a pre-existing condition. It is nice to be invulnerable and determined to pay a fine rather than provide yourself with insurance and so making your care a total externality if and when, or alternately putting you into bankruptcy because  some car came over a curb and hit you. But it is kind of selfish to demand that several tens of millions join you in what for us is an involuntary bet.

Compared to being uninsured this bill is a great deal for almost everyone except some self-centered young singles that bitch because it cuts into their Red Bull and concert ticket budget.

---

by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:37:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Walk in his shoes? (4.00 / 2)

I don't know your personal situation, but $1000 is a lot of money for someone earning $24,000 a year.  And $1000 is just the premiums, deductibles and copays make it a lot more if you actually use your insurance.  It's one thing to say these bills are better than nothing, a whole other to pretend that they will make the health care system actually humane, or even human.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:55:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's a lot of money, but there are people who have much less than 24k... (0.00 / 0)

..and who would have no problem with spending 1k for healthcare if they had those 24k. They would still be able to afford lots of things that are total luxuries for them now.

So, the question should be: Is healthcare insurance something that is worth paying 1k for for people earning 24k/year? I guess most folks in that salary group would say yes. It's a tremendous improvement of their situation now.

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:06:15 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

see you're speaking in the theoretical (0.00 / 0)

as a person who has been in that bracket, I can promise you that $1000 is a lot of money to pony up for

a) something you may not even use
b) the privilege of then proceeding to pay copays and co-insurance
c) an involuntary contribution to Universal Health Care's lobbying efforts

also the concept of anyone within 100 miles of a major city paying $500 a month in rent is baffling

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:09:24 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

$6000 for rent at a 24k income is 25%. That's reasonable. (0.00 / 0)

This leaves 17k for the rest. Hmm, do you have high commute costs, or something?

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:39:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

too bad the average studio in most metro areas goes for closer to $1000 a month (0.00 / 0)

which leaves $12k for "the rest"

and of course in America salaries are measure pre-taxes, so really it's closer to 8 or 9k for "the rest"

car insurance is around $60 a month (for coverage that just meets the legal requirements but doesn't cover anything)...say you spend $100 a month on fuel and $200 on food (hope you're not too into protein)...throw in another $100 for utilities (hope you don't live in a major city)

if you're a rebel and don't have cable you're now down to $4k "for the rest"...and of course that is assuming nothing goes wrong with your car at any point...

see where this is going?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:43:54 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I see where this is going, but this still allows you to spend 1k... (0.00 / 0)

on healthcare insurance. Well, I would rather reduce my lifestyle even more than take the risk. But, ok, that's a decision everyone has to make for himself...

Have to go now, it's already in the wee small hours over here. I hope I wasn't too much of a nuissance? Peace.

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:54:46 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

"self-centered young singles that bitch because it cuts into their Red Bull and concert ticket budget." (4.00 / 2)

I was able to tolerate the pedantic tone, but now you're just being insulting.  Also your view of young people is hilarious.  Red Bull- those nutty kids can't get enough!

I'll get off your lawn now.

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:05:34 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, are you a single, Travis? (0.00 / 0)

And what do you spend your 24k on? I know lots of people who have less and manage to get around (but, ok, they are here in Germany). Hmm, do you live in NYC, maybe (then that would make sense)?

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:09:17 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

wait, you live in GERMANY? (0.00 / 0)

what would you possibly know about the current realities of being underpaid in America?

btw this makes you the second non-American to defend this legislation as "good enough" in this thread

I will gladly change places with either of you, I can fly out tomorrow.

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:10:53 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sure. But I won't apply for a green card until... (0.00 / 0)

... the healthcare reform is passed. However, then I would take your 24k, even if it comes with 1k for insurance. Would be a good deal for me, I guess (even though I should better calculate this because the living expenses in the US are higher, afaik).

As for "what would you possibly know about the current realities of being underpaid in America?"
What the eff is the internet good for? I read a lot, stories about people who become homeless or lose their job, comments, statistics. And then, an apratment is an aprtment, energy is energy, heating is heating, food is food. Prices may differ a but, but Germany still isn't that much different from the US. At least that's what I thought when visting the states.

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:35:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I wish this were a serious comment/ we could really switch places (0.00 / 0)

if it was, I'd say "danke" and wish you best of luck with your newfound complete lack of social safety net as I flew off into the sunset to enjoy my delicious EU citizenship

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:56:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, the social safety net isn't exactly what it once was anymore... (0.00 / 0)

...and that's the rpoblem here. This ole NYT story may be of interest of you:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f...

What isn't mentioned there is that under Hartz IV the jobcenter pays about $185 directly to the insurance, additional to the about $1050 a single receives for living (in typical German bureaucratic fashion, all basic necesssities have been calculated down to single cents). Actually, there's no big difference for the long term jobless, it's just that you get pushed down into this group much faster. But I don't think anyone can "enjoy" the  "delicious EU citizenship" very much this way.  

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 01:15:20 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Travis (0.00 / 1)

Housesofprogress is probably a Canadian.  In one of our exchanges he recalled the operation he had in Vancouver.

Conservative......CNN news:Nopenhagen: US PRES 2 WKS LATE ATTEND 1 DAY, GORE JOURNEY BY TRAIN.

---

by: Money Man @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:26:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

This may interest you, MM (0.00 / 0)

"Canada has entered the medical tourism field. In comparison to US health costs, medical tourism patients can save 30 to 60 percent on health costs in Canada.[51] Canada's quality of healthcare is cited by the World Health Organization as equal to if not better than that of the US in most categories"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 10:27:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks for the tip. (0.00 / 0)

Costa Rica is also getting into the medical tourism.  There is at least one insurance company offering complete packages (including rooms and meals) to clients that have their operations done there.

I have one client that told me that international airline personnel often schedule themselves to Thiland for dentistry.

Conservative......CNN news:Nopenhagen: US PRES 2 WKS LATE ATTEND 1 DAY, GORE JOURNEY BY TRAIN.

---

by: Money Man @ Mon Nov 23, 2009 at 07:22:20 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Happens in Germany, too. (0.00 / 0)

Under German healthcare, the material used for dental treatment (gold, extras like ceramic blends) has to be paid out of pocket. This leads to people travelling to Poland or east European nations for treatments, and also to the import of coronas and bridges from China.

---

by: Gray @ Mon Nov 23, 2009 at 10:14:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

socialistic vision! (4.00 / 4)

get a grip.

HR676 proposes extending unlimited, free medical, dental, vision, chiropractic and long term care to every resident of the United States regardless of legal condition or work status.

yep, petty much. what's wrong with that? you do know that a substantial portion of 'illegal aliens' are already paying into medicare and social security via fake social security numbers don't you? they aren't getting any of the benefits right now.

HR676 makes private investment in any part of the medical sector illegal and forces existing investors to divest their interest for "reasonable compensation" as determined by the government with zero allowance for lost profits.

big deal. medical care was basically all non-profit until the ascendancy of the free marketeers.

HR676 makes all forms of supplemental insurance for medical, dental or long term care illegal.

wrong.

HR676 makes it illegal for any licensed provider to charge more than another for the same procedure from brain surgery to setting a bone, no skill differential allowed.

i think you're misreading that part of the bill, but i also don't think there's the huge 'skill differential' that you do.

Yet people who want to be treated seriously insist that progressives should go to the wall insisting on an up or down vote while totally mischaracterizing existing legislation showing clearly they have read neither bill.

i've read ALL the bills. more than once [well, still working my way through the latest out of the senate]. and no, it would not have hurt you in the least to advocate calling for a vote on single payer.

---

by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 04:58:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And you're going to strengthen... (0.00 / 0)

and unify the progressive movement by selling out to corporatists and booting anyone who disagrees with you.

I don't think the progressive movement is crying out for a dKos clone Paul.

Good luck with your new business model.

---

by: ek hornbeck @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:12:00 PM UTC

Evidence much? (4.00 / 1)

Don't think so.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:54:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

lol (4.00 / 2)

"selling out to corporatists" LOL
omg

Yes when openleft was bought by FOXNEWS I was afraid this would happen, but when it became a TRUMP Casino I was angry. Now that Paul is covered in gold and LIMOS arrive daily to take the (important) staff to sip Champagne with the NEWSMAX hosts I was surprised.

lol

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:47:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Practical questions (0.00 / 0)

Travis, do you know the answers to:

1) What is the income limit for subsidies for single individuals under the House and Senate bills?

2) Would the "hardship" exemptions I've heard about possibly allow someone such as yourself to get out of the mandate?

I know I haven't been following the details of this closely enough.  I'm sure some of this has to do with the fact that I am now safely in Canada, although I had a bad tendency to avoid looking at the ugly even when I was in the States, and it personally affected me.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 18:15:21 PM UTC

the poverty line is at $10k/year for a single adult (4.00 / 1)

How many working people do you think will qualify for "hardship"?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:02:14 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't know (0.00 / 0)

That's why I asked.

What is the subsidy limit relative to the poverty line for a single adult?

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:05:48 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

a person making $24k/yr will be expected to pay (roughly) $1000/year (4.00 / 1)

with "credits" offsetting the remainder of the premium

to a person making that little, a $1000 isn't just pocket change

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:15:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Medicare, Single Payer Taxes (4.00 / 2)

Currently that same person pays $1836 for Medicare, $3672 if you include the employer contribution, which you should.  Single payer would have some addition to this, in all likelyhood, of a similar amount or more.

Among other things, this makes all checkups and preventive care "free".

I'm not trying to say this is a good as single payer or the subsidies are high enough.  What I am saying is almost any solution is going to cost someone making $24,000 some real money.

---

by: Mark Matson @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:10:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think this is too low a bar (4.00 / 3)

I do not think it describes proof this is a bad bill, so far its a whole lot of real reform that millions are going benefit from, and its far easier to make this bill better, than it is to make a new bill.

No one is going to threaten cloture defeat to raise that cutoff to a real number, like $36,000/ year.

To cite this as proof that the bill harms more than it helps is either delusion or purposeful misinformation.


--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:52:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

your math is wrong (4.00 / 1)

you pay into medicare 1.45% of your salary/wages, and your employer pays another 1.45% of your wages/salary. 1.45% of $24,000 is $348, so a person making $24,000/year is paying about $29/month into medicare.

under what would have been anthony weiner's substitute amendment, an employee would have paid 6% of their wages/salary and employers would pay 8%. 6% of $24,000 = $1440/year or $120/month and there would be no additional copays, deductibles, or other out of pocket expenses [except for dental and vision for adults].

nb: large employers currently pay about 8% of their payroll for healthcare benefits and smaller employers pay anywhere from 12-25% of their payroll for healthcare benefits. an 8% payroll tax instead would be in line with what large employers spend now and would help small employers terrifically.

the $1836 you cite is the total for medicare and social security.

---

by: hipparchia @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 03:04:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And what would private insurance cost now? (0.00 / 0)

With the same benefits? $1000/year, that is 84 bucks per month? Prolly not, but much more, right?

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:13:33 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

except I'm not being forced to spend whatever that amount is (0.00 / 0)

get it?

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:16:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yeah, you're a gambler who doesn't have a problem with freeriding.. (0.00 / 0)

Sry, Travis, I not I exaggerate, and I know that's harsh, but your position simply isn't reasonable. Something can happen to you TOMORROW. My brother once accidentally rammed a rusty iron spike into his belly, at age 19. A good friend had his balls removed because of cancer at age 34. A girl that shared my apartment (during my university years, we were four in a four room loft) had to be treated because of bone cancer in her jawbone when she was 18. All those are urgent medical complications that require immediate treatment and the costs would vastly exvceed anything you can pay for out of paocket. How the eff do you want to handle this without insurance?

Sry, but again, this isn't reasonable.

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:26:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'm unemployed, actually! (0.00 / 0)

and no matter how hard I clap my hands I don't have the money to pay for individual insurance

It's not useful in these sorts of discussions to make assumptions about the situation(s) that others are experiencing

Also, the last time I DID have insurance, my deductible was $1000, with $100 emergency copays.

Also, you seem to be under the impression that people with insurance don't go bankrupt from medical bills.  Completely untrue.  In America, if you get sick, you had better be rich.  End of story.

---

by: TravisDisaster @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:39:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, I know it's not easy,... (0.00 / 0)

...I have been in very hard times myself. But fact is, statistics show there are lots of people who have less (so, there should be some potential for savings for you). What do they do differently? Live in Hoovervilles?

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:45:01 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

it's NOT about positions - people disagree. a lot. big fracking deal. (4.00 / 2)

But it's not reasonable to criticize the latter group by ignoring their actual position and pretending that they are one and the same as the former.  And it's even less reasonable to move from criticism to demonization

.

i don't think i've been demonizing anyone - at least you, paul, said i wasn't. my big criticism wasn't even about the positions people take.

here's what i wrote last week:

my beef is not the policy positions various people take. i have no problem with that whatsoever. it's the exclusion of the grass roots and how the grass roots continues to be treated (and let's face it, the grass roots was exclusively sp, po was a dem party elite position -- that's not saying anything about the relative merits of either policy position, just about who had them at a year or two ago).

my core objection, from which my other objections flow, is not about the policy that wasn't included, it's about the people who weren't included, and in fact were actively marginalized, and to this day are still treated like stupid people who should either stfu and get with the program or else go away... and what that says about who are we (are we even progressive?).

it should be no surprise the kind of reactions that elicits from those who have been marginalized.

---

by: selise @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:41:23 PM UTC

And My Problem Isn't You (4.00 / 1)

You raise very good points, almost all of which I agree with, though I might put them together somewhat differently.

But others have piggy-backed on your reasonable criticisms to start taking pot-shots at anyone who doesn't agree with them--directly contradicting your top-line point about disagreements.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 19:47:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Knowing who is a : (4.00 / 3)

1)burn the damn thing down trot, or a 2)
republican supporting wolf in lambs clothing, or

is instead new to recognizing this is a hallucinatory cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs, and want it to end right NOW! RIGHT NOW! DID YOU HEAR ME RIGHT NOW!

or just an ordinary Jack or Sarah who hasn't doesn't care about studying the history of social change in Democracies,

is a hard one.

And we should try and find some rules that make it easy to work with almost everyone, to get stuff done, so we don't have to worry about feeding the feces storm the first two examples want, without pushing the various On the Road to Damascus Pauls, Jacks and Sarahs away.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:05:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ageed (4.00 / 1)

And not demonizing folks you don't agree with is a pretty good first approximation rule of thumb, I would think.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:42:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yes, exactly. (4.00 / 2)

I do reserve my eyepatch, blunderbus and cutlass for scurvy dogs however.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:36:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

But we should still be allowed to call a rethuglican... (0.00 / 0)

..a rethuglican. And we have at least one participating in this discussion.

---

by: Gray @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:16:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

time line confusion? (0.00 / 0)

i think the marginalization and exclusion came before the pot-shots. so, while i may agree with you that pot-shots are problematic, or even destructive, maybe the solution isn't to outlaw the pot-shots but rather to do something about the marginalization and exclusion?

at least that is what i'm asking from you. and have from the beginning.

have you considered that maybe the pot-shots are a clumsy attempt to intensify the tensions in order to force a dialogue?

...it is very hard to see how this monologue can be broken through, and turned into a dialogue without following the same logic that King lays out: we must intensify the tensions in order to force a genuine dialogue.

Without confrontation, there will be no dialogue.

in so many ways, this issue has continued to remind me of one of my favorite blog posts of all time, Martin Luther King and The Moral Imperative For Polarization.  i'm sure you remember it, as you wrote it in dec 2007.

---

by: selise @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:24:27 PM UTC

Ho Boy! (4.00 / 1)

One of my main points was that folks are confusing enemies and allies.

If you think that MLK approached his allies the same way he approached the Birmingham white power structure, then I'm not sure there's anything I can say to you.

Fortunately, I don't think that's the case.  I think you're just getting a bit carried away.  And it's that process of people getting carried away that I'm trying to speak out against.

Bottom line: it really doesn't matter who you think "started it."  It wasn't anyone in the blogosphere who "started it." The blogosphere had no part in "starting it" in any way shape or form.

We were always in the position of playing catch-up with a game that started without us, that started behind closed doors, and to which none of us was invited in the first place.  And to lose sight of that fact is to lose the most elementary knowledge of all.

It's to lose sight of where you lost your keys.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:10:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

this is where i really disagree with you (4.00 / 2)

i don't know who my allies are any more and you are saying that's my fault?

all i've been asking is that the progressive grass roots (the people who have been working as volunteers on this issue: people at pnhp, cna,etc for example) be heard for over a year (you personally only since june) --  just to be able to be part of the conversation, i've not asked you to change your policy position. i have asked you to stop excluding mine. it shouldn't matter that it's mine, but it should matter that this was the position of the progressive grass roots.

here's what i wrote last june:

there's a problem though -- one that rosen describes perfectly re establishment media:

And I think this involves one of the subtler things that journalists do in our public life, Bill. Which is they set the terms of what a legitimate debate is. They marginalize certain people as not a part of it.

i see this happening in the progressive blogosphere now too.

for example the area of health care reform, where in our current discussion is single payer? at most of the progressive blogs i read it's all in the comments, but not in the main posts. this didn't use to be the case -- it is most certainly a new development.

i'm pretty sure that some form of single payer is: 1) the most popular with progressives and probably readers/supporters of progressive blogs 2) will save the most lives and 3) the most cost efficient. if i'm right about tha,  why is single payer not only off front pages, why are the questions & criticisms pro-single payer activists have of public plan policies not being engaged and discussed in any detail (other than to say it's not "politically acceptable")?

this isn't a criticism of any individual, because different people have different views and not everyone favors single payer. but i think there is something institutional wrong and i hope we are not in the process of replicating one of the establishment media's institutional problems we so rightly criticize.

here's what i think is owed an ally. first of all, i don't think it's right to decide to marginalize and exclude the thousands of grass roots activists (not just their voices, but their policy analysis too - which means excluding our best experts) in favor of only talking about the dem party elite position (btw, did you really believe them?), as if that is the only legitimate position. maybe i'm wrong, but i think the dem party elite are not my natural allies.

like i said maybe i'm wrong about that. but here's what i do know. if you are going to make that decision and to make it in a closed and unaccountable way, then at the very least i think you have a responsibility to your allies to make the case publicly for that choice when you make it -- both policy-wise and politics-wise to explain yourself. and i think you have a responsibility to listen to the responses you get.

that was never done. questions weren't even  answered (see here and here for small examples). this doesn't count. just the opposite.

i'm not saying it's wrong that you have a different position from me -- even though i disagree strongly with the position you have taken, i think it's wrong both policy-wise and pragmatically. but people disagree about that stuff all the time.

i'm saying it's wrong that you excluded and marginalized the grass roots. exclusion, marginalization and mocking are not how one treats an ally.

---

by: selise @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 01:16:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I Feel Like You And I Are Talking Right Past One Another (0.00 / 0)

I don't have a problem with you, but apparently you have a really big problem with me.  But what that problem is seems to me very hard for you to specify--at least in a way that makes any sense to me.  (Identifying yourself with the grassroots vs. me as not only adds to the confusion.  When, exactly did I get my BMW & my membership in the Bohemian Grove?  Cause apparently all the paperwork got lost in the mail!)

Should I be writing diaries about how great single payer is?  For what purpose?  If I had a shot to write an op-ed for the NY Times, the purpose would be obvious, and I would jump at it.  But given the audience here, what exactly do you think that would accomplish?  Is there anyone I would convince that isn't already convinced?  Seriously?

And conversely, why do you think that since I don't write such diaries, it means that I don't share your view that single payer is clearly superior? In short, it seems that your complaint is that I and Open Left have the wrong purpose, rather than that we have the wrong position (since it is our poisiton that single payer is best).

I tried writing a lot more in response, but the more I wrote the more I felt that it would only add to the misunderstanding.  At bottom, it seems to me (I could be wrong) that you have expectations that are simply quite at odds with what we see ourselves doing here.  It's not a question of who's right or wrong.  It's simply a question of having different sorts of conversations.

I'm not saying that yours are wrong.  Not by any means.  But you are wrong if you think that our sort of conversation is a failed form or failed version of yours.  It's just something different, that's all.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 03:33:41 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Petard! well no really it isnt (4.00 / 2)

The thought that fighting tooth and nail with the people you live with, screaming arguments in the kitchen dorm, is the same thing as being on the front outside Amiens heading to Saint-Quentin is called romantic conceit.

If all you do as a "leftist" is attack other leftists, you need to get out more.


--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:15:14 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'd like to think you're better than this defensive, tribal smallness (4.00 / 1)

So much of your writing suggests a genuinely smart, progressive guy. Yet defending your tribe draws you into appalling illogic, dishonesty, and abusiveness. And ironically under the guise of shunning "demonization."

Open Left was, plainly, a key player in the career-liberal agenda to push "public option" to the near-complete exclusion of:

* Dignifying other, more substantive change (and the advocates for same), except to ratify the idea that it was out-of-reach in the foreseeable future -- despite broad public support for single payer (and "change" in general), a silver-tongued president, and an economy that cries out for us not to pay more than twice what other countries do for less coverage and poorer outcomes
* Admitting how much of a bait-and-switch "public option" is, including constantly dodging simple questions like how many people would have access to it (and repeatedly trashing those who raised such concerns)
* Holding the Obama administration and Congress accountable for their outright lies about a transparent process that considered all options

Note that none of these things would require, for amelioration, any or all bloggers at Open Left to "fanatically support single-payer." But since you don't have good answers to my actual questions, it's necessary (if one believes it's necessary to abuse and marginalize critics) to put both thumbs and more on the scale while trying (unsuccessfully, it seems) to drum up a two-minutes hate on a heretic.

Since I'm not on the insider listservs with top bloggers and administration staffers, perhaps you can explain to the rest of us how it was that leading career liberals made the determination that "public option" and only "public option" was acceptable to defend -- and at all costs -- during the health-care reform debate these past many months. And why there could be no real debate about your collective wisdom that it represented the outer edge of possibility, and how an ultimate "public option" compromise wouldn't have been improved by welcoming the Overton Window momentum of supporters of a more-aggressive reform agenda.

Perhaps you can explain why people who continually state things like "single-payer is the ultimate end" gave nothing but STFU to those who tried to promote single-payer advantages and inspiring advocacy stories and who dared criticize the substantial flaws in the plans that Congress and Big Insurance have been working up.

I don't have time just now to unwrap every dishonest tactic in your post, so I'll just tackle the part where you first try to shame me (somehow -- it doesn't seem to follow, but it's a popular, insulting trope so, heck, why not try to make it stick to me?) as the guy looking for his keys under the street lamp.

Vastleft did his best to hijack a comment thread in a global warming diary to once again bash Open Left for not fanatically supporting single-payer--even though all of us feel that it's the only practicable solution in the long run.

I've previously made the point that claiming I demanded "fantatical" support of single-payer was a straw man -- though a degree of support for "the only practicable solution in the long run" doesn't seem like such a wacky thing to ask for.

And, of course, I didn't "hijack" a "global warming diary," I responded to your comment that said:

"Much as I would like to wave a magic wand, and put single-payer front and center, I'd even more like to wave a magic wand and solve the underlying problems."

It's pleasing to your cause to claim that I introduced a left-field rant amid a global-warming discussion. And it's plainly dishonest. Whatever. Any stick to beat a dog.

You raised the question -- and the wish -- that "underlying problems" would be solved. You described it as a "magic wand" impossibility. I must say, you've amply demonstrated that any solution that would require progressive opinion-leaders to rethink how they create and enforce consensus looks utterly fantastical at this point.

---

by: vastleft @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 20:49:52 PM UTC

I cannot speak for Paul (4.00 / 3)

Nor have I followed enough of your posts to know where you stand generally.

As a strong single-payer advocate, who unhappily has chosen to support the process (by which I mean the general range of bills pushed by Dem leaders) this year, including the bills produced so far, I can speak for myself.

My problem with many single-payer only advocates I have heard this year include the following:

1. I'm all for advocacy pushing the Overton window.  But there was not a chance that Obama was ever going to support single-payer, nor of it passing in this Congress.  Pretending otherwise, to me, is more dishonesty than I can handle.  Maybe my bad.

2. I've frequently seen people on this site rip into supporters of the process as acting in bad faith, moronic, or outright evil, without themselves having been attacked, at least in that thread.

3. We're making a compromise that's painful, and trying to do good as we see it, but you tell us we're just supporting "Big Insurance," something I would rather slit my throat than do.  I don't expect you to help us, and I would never tell you to STFU, but you can hardly expect us to cheer you on either, certainly not in your attacks on us, you're opposition to our goals, or even in your inspiring stories, given your hostility.

It does seem to me to come down to seeing a difference between those that disagree with you over tactics and actual enemies.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:24:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'm Sorry, But You're Quite Mistaken (4.00 / 1)

You did an excellent job of speaking for me!

Thanks!

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:48:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Another example of your discernment Paul. (0.00 / 0)

And I would be honored to take dedelste's description as mine as well.

Let me just say that I aspire to it, and would feel bad with examples of my failure to achieve it.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:41:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Responses... (0.00 / 0)

1. "there was not a chance that Obama was ever going to support single-payer, nor of it passing in this Congress."

Since we don't live in the movie "Sliding Doors," we just don't know what would have happened in the alternate reality where progressives rallied behind solid policy instead of a wafty one, to see if it could have galvanized support from our elected officials. In any case, allowing -- and insisting -- that single payer got a seat at the table would have created pressure for the plan in Congress to be more "robust" and "strong."

2. This is too vague and anecdotal to reply to meaningfully.

3. Here's how I started advocating for "single payer" on Open Left. Pretty damn hostile, eh? And certainly deserving of one weird "talk to the hand" response after another, no doubt.

As to:

It does seem to me to come down to seeing a difference between those that disagree with you over tactics and actual enemies.

I came here for a discussion with people interested in health care reform. What I experienced was hostile groupthink if one dared question insider conventional wisdom.

Sorry, but continuing to paint me as y'all do does not answer my questions/criticisms, nor does it disqualify them.

---

by: vastleft @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:45:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Here's what I think (4.00 / 2)

I went to the thread you linked to and you certainly weren't hostile, but neither were the responses to you. Not totally sure what you mean by "talk to the hand," but I gather you mean evasive, changing the subject, something like that, which I grant was somewhat true of Chris Bowers' response.

But there's a tension here.  Once people have committed to activism in a certain direction, in this case pro-public option rather than single-payer, and are absorbed in that activism, it's perfectly normal, if not ideal, for them not to want to argue with people on the same side who have a different tactical approach.  Possibly you've been on the other side yourself?  We all have limited resources of time and energy, both physical and psychological.  What your "side" in this has basically been doing is telling us over and over again "you're wrong, you're wrong."  At some point I might even be convinced I was, but we have to act on what we think is right.  You deserve respect, but you can't expect repeated reasoned argument from people who simply aren't interested in arguing with you at the moment, because they're committed to a different course.  Sometimes this may seem like, or even be, "hostile groupthink."  That sometimes happens with people involved in collective action.  Sometimes your "side" has seemed the same to me.

I myself am not hostile to you.  You seem like an intelligent, decent person who is on the same side as me.  I hope you can see me in the same light.  I'd like nothing better than to share a drink (or six) with you when single-payer (Medicare for All) is signed into law.

---

by: dedelste @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 23:54:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That's It Precisely (0.00 / 0)

Any successful political issue campaign needs advocates of all different sorts.  Working together to gain success doesn't require tactical or strategic agreement.  All it requires is a sense of context, seeing that everyone has their role to play, and respecting different people's choices.

It's really valuable to read movement histories in this regard--abolitionist, women's suffrage, civil rights, anti-war, etc.    Again and again you will see the same things played out in different variations, but usually within a similar broad dynamic--insiders and outsiders, militants and conciliators will sometimes clash with or undercut one another, but in general this doesn't have to be, and the opposite generally happens at a much more profound level--the militants strengthen the hands of the conciliators, and the conciliators legitimate the moral stands of the militants.  Both are more effective than either could ever be alone.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:27:02 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Everyone has their role to play" (4.00 / 1)

So...

The role of A-list bloggers and big activist groups is to tightly control the progressive discussion in favor of "conciliation," and to portray people who advocate for "the only practicable solution in the long run" as "militants" and "purists."

And the role of rank-and-file progressives is to hop on any bandwagon that progressive elites are driving, to ask no questions about the direction, and for God's sakes to STFU about any broken wheels or ditches.

A marginalized few will do the dirty work of pushing for policy that actually would work.

Is that it?

Anyway, what Arthur Silber said about abolition, coalitions, and our modern-day policy challenges:

[T]he goal must be very clearly defined, and the members of the coalition must be fully committed to it. I would go still further: provided the goal is defined in a way that is not subject to compromise and equivocation, even the reasons which inform the participants' commitment to that goal need not be the same. Provided they agree on the goal itself -- as here, that slavery be ended -- that is all that is needed.

What was the fundamental, uncompromisable goal of the "public option" gang?

It seems to have been to score the political points of getting something enacted that could be called "public option," without regard to who could access it and how it may or may not solve the major problems in America's health-care system.

If there was, in fact, an irreducible, non-negotiable goal that was loftier than that, please do correct me.

---

by: vastleft @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 12:54:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I appreciate the concilatory tone (4.00 / 1)

Yet the message is still that questioning and criticizing opinion leaders is unpleasant and undesirable.

Let's consider just two topics, and whether it was well and good that they were kept off the table:

1. The lack of transparency. We progressives used to care passionately about transparency in government. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, improving on that was one of the central claims of the Obama campaign.

Obama (along with Daschle, Baucus, et al.) claimed the process for choosing a health-care reform agenda would be open and transparent and would consider all options. This proved to be a blatant lie.

Since so many of the big bloggers say they support single-payer long-term, why wasn't this opportunity to shame the administration and Congress into at least dignifying discussion of it even mildly interesting to them?

If anything, there was even less transparency in the process by which elite bloggers and activists decided that "public option" and only "public option" was fit for progressives to rally for.

There was simply never a window in which a fair, open, and honest debate could be had about whether "public option" was the right rallying point for progressives. Anyone who got in the way had to be marginalized, and their issues fully ignored.

The big wheels decided it was the One True Path, and that was that.

Backdoor policy-making and unquestioning tribalism, just like the Bushies practiced... but with hopes that our tribal elders are wiser and kinder than theirs.

At least our policies won't deliver more Americans into the clutches of exploitative corporations! Oh....

As the country song goes, did I shave my legs for this?

2. How many people will have access to the vaunted public option?

Obama bragged that it would be less than 5% of Americans, David Swanson pegs it at 2%. And Open Left bloggers dodged any and all questions about it.

I submit that the "go, team" approach that turned a blind eye to the most fundamental of concerns (and access was but one of many) was not a healthy one, not one that helped maximize this generational opportunity to reform health care. YMMV.

---

by: vastleft @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 12:05:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I admire your willingness to take up this discussion (4.00 / 1)

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:19:22 PM UTC

the left has a weakness (4.00 / 3)

They think that their good intentions justify any amount of concessions. Even if those concessions totally get rid of any benefits.

There's a disturbing tendency among proponents of the compromise to take full credit for the good things while sloughing off any responsibility for the bad.

I'm reminded of that episode of The Simpsons where the town tries to rebuild Ned Flanders' house and screws it up. Ned loses it and Marge says defensively "Ned, we meant well and everyone here tried their best."

Ned snaps back, "Well my family and I can't live on good intentions Marge! Oh, your family's out of control but we can't blame you because you have GOOOOOOD INTENTIONS!"

We will own the responsibility for any damage resulting from this legislation. We can't worm out of it and say "it's not our fault" because we think our intentions were nobler and purer than the GOP's.

Take the Iraq war, for instance. The world's probably a better place without Saddam Hussein.  

So why don't we give the supporters of the Iraq war the benefit of the doubt? Leaving aside the masterminds like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz who clearly had ulterior motives, weren't there plenty of people who sincerely believed that it was a good and just war to rid the world of an evil tyrant? So why don't we absolve them of the responsibility for their support of the war? Just an honest mistake, right?

No, of course not. We may acknowledge their good intentions, but we still hold them responsible for all the millions dead and dispossessed as a result of the war. The point is the horrendous consequences of removing him were far outweighed the benefit, and we bear responsibility for those consequences.

So when the health care bill comes out, and people find they're not eligible for the PO, and they find they have to buy junk insurance or pay a penalty, and they find out the bill makes it much harder for them to get coverage for abortion, we don't get to pout about how our good intentions and moral superiority make us exempt from responsibility. We will have to take the blame for all that bad shit.

So we'd better make sure the bill is a good one.

---

by: limpidglass @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 21:51:27 PM UTC

Not So Much "The Left" (4.00 / 2)

It's more the Versailles version of it.

From my POV, as soon as the bill's passed, we have to start work on fixing what's most broken about it.  And we should do that from a very non-defensive posture.  "Yes, that was a really bad compromise made there.  Fortunately, we can go back and fix it.  Will you join us?"

Responsibility is not limited to a single legislative session.

"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

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:37:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Responsibility is not limited to a single legislative session." (4.00 / 1)

And we have to defend even the stuff we have won in the past at the same time. Gee this is fun. And its going to be this much fun for the rest of our lives.

The fun house mirror of "rights." So many people forget that when you were handed your rights as a citizen (I think you were asleep, but it happened) you were also given an even bigger set of responsibilities.

Because if this country is, at its base, a Democracy that is governed by its people, then Jack, you have a lot of work to do, and so do all your classmates, your grandpa, your mother and all your sisters. It isnt over after you penned, (keyboarded?) the lefty-est P0wnage evah! It hasn't even begun. Its our country, we have a responsibility to govern, all of it. Those are your sea walls threatening citizens in Louisiana, those are your boots kicking doors down and this is your medical system denying healthcare to that 7 year old girl with liver cancer.

Rights/Responsibilities.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

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by: HousesofProgress @ Sat Nov 21, 2009 at 22:50:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

the public won't see it that way (4.00 / 2)

The average person doesn't understand the rift between conservative and progressive Democrats. To the electorate, Democrats are all alike, and Evan Bayh might as well be Russ Feingold for all they know.

Once the bill's flaws become apparent, the GOP will immediately begin demagoguing against the horrors of "socialist medicine" and tar all Democrats with the brush of evil socialism. Everyone with a "D" after his/her name will own the failures of this bill; the media and the GOP will see to that. And the administration will make sure that if it has to take the heat, everyone in the Democratic party will.

At that point, it will be very difficult for the progressive wing to step in and say "Wait! We're not all the same, we were aware of the flaws in this bill but stayed quiet up till now, please give us a chance."

Because the answer to that will be "Bullshit! You voted for it! If you were serious you would have opposed this disaster from the start! All you're doing is flip-flopping, trying to weasel out of taking the blame!"

The same way Kerry's vote for the AUMF was twisted into "He was for the war before he was against it! Flip-flopper!"

That worked pretty well. And it will work again.

The only way the progressive wing can truly distinguish itself from the conservative faction in the public's mind is to draw a line in the sand and threaten to kill the bill if it doesn't meet those standards.

Otherwise these nice distinctions of "I wanted to use the bill as a starting point for reform, and felt that a flawed bill was better than no bill" will all blend together into an indistinguishable mass of talk that no one will care enough about to bother parsing.

Any more than people cared about Kerry's rationale for voting for AUMF.

If the bill fails, people will demand to know who fucked up. And all Democrats will have to bear the brunt of their anger, whether progressive or conservative or whatever stripe.

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by: limpidglass @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:28:03 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Versailles Is Tone Deaf (0.00 / 0)

You've hit at what seems to be IMHO the BIG DISCONNECT in the progressive movement.  What DC views as politically possible  seems to be about ten years behind what everyone else on the left views as politically possible.

As mentioned above, why wasn't there a coordinated effort to really sell the public on any form of Medicare for all type expansion?  It amazes me that the were several legislative efforts put forward, but the MSM only seemed to be reporting that the Republicans were "protecting" Medicare from funding and quality cuts - all big lies, but where was the Democratic response?  This leads me to believe that the Democrats both 1) never seriously supported Medicare for all (which I can believe) but 2) were not willing to use any populist marketing to move the Overton window on health care reform.  Where were the Democrats on TV (other than the progressives) saying we want Medicare for all and the Republicans have opposed Medicare from the very beginning?

I see the same problem on economic reform.  Increasingly the Democrats are being linked with bailing out Wall St and maintaining the economic status quo thus allowing the Republicans to grab onto the populist anger over the Wall St bailouts.  Does DC not realize the extent of blow back that the Democrats will incur as a result?  It would not have taken much effort on the part of the Democrats to have put a big fat stake through this Republican gambit right from the start especially since the Democrats have a long history of supporting the little guy and unions.

I want a lively and detailed discussion about progressive policy, legislation, and people.  I probably can sometimes go overboard and make it a little too personal and if that's that case, well, that's a mistake because I do recognize that it's only through some compromise that things get better.

But frankly, I view complaints from DC that progressives are "being unhelpful" as an extremely positive sign, and that significant progress is being made - the DC wise men called PO dead on arrival from the beginning, but it's still in play.  We're not going to make any progress in DC by laying down and letting the bus drive repeatedly drive over us.  So for those in DC complaining to the progressives - go whine at the Blue Dogs.

I know most of what the progressive want are supported by the majority of Americans, but the Democrats in DC ignore this fact, refuse to use their majorities and bully pulpit to move the country in the direction which would solidify their political position.  It's not like they have an unlimited amount of time to do this.  The voting in 2010 and 2012 will be all about our economic recovery - or lack of it, and the Democrats are running out of time to make a difference.

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by: glenjo @ Sun Nov 22, 2009 at 00:52:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]