I Love the 90s: Bringing Back Harry and Louise

by: Matt Stoller

Fri Feb 01, 2008 at 10:19


Via Ben Smith, it appears that Obama is pushing somewhat dishonest attacks on Clinton's health care plan.  Paul Krugman explains.

Sorry, but this is just destructive - like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don't buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed.

Worse still, Obama's mailer echoes the Harry and Louise ads themselves.  Ezra Klein goes over the history, but it's a bit difficult to describe how vicious and destructive that ad campaign was.  The Republican victory in 1994 really did come after the Clinton failure on health care, which happened in part because of these ads.

Steve Clemons has more.  I'm in a weird position, where every time a candidate speaks or I hear of a candidate I am persuaded to go in the other direction.  I was leaning slightly towards Obama, but this is just not ok.

Matt Stoller :: I Love the 90s: Bringing Back Harry and Louise

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I Love the 90s: Bringing Back Harry and Louise | 52 comments
Agreed, from an Obama supporter (4.00 / 2)
Obama should pull these ads.  I understand politics is involved, but these type of dishonest attacks are unhelpful to  progressive health care reform.  This line of attack on healthcare is just as bad as Hillary's hyping of her hawk credentials as a plus against John McCain.  He should cut it out.
It is a mailer (4.00 / 6)
You cannot pull a mailer.

I swear, I was feeling really good about Obama after the debate last night, and then I wake up this morning and see this and I've been angry with him for hours.

Different kind of politics my foot.

[ Parent ]
Dishonest?!?! (0.00 / 0)
What is dishonest about these attacks?

Hillary Clinton's plan would force people to purchase health insurance.

That's a fact, an objective statement.

I can understand that many are upset because they believe that a mandate is an essential part of universal health care.  They are upset that Obama's plan does not resemble the type of plan that they not only favor, but view as essential.

But it is NOT dishonest to point out a difference between Hillary Clinton's health care plan and Barack Obama's.

Would it be dishonest for a Hillary Clinton mailer to point out that Barack Obama's plan does not mandate the purchase of health insurance?

To talk about this (4.00 / 3)
and ignore subsidies is dishonest
[ Parent ]
So Your Disagreement . . . (0.00 / 0)
Is that he focuses on the narrative of "Will force people to buy insurance they can't afford" and ignore that Hillary Clinton's proposal has subsidies.

I don't want to misrepresent your views, so I want to make sure I understand them.

[ Parent ]
I basically agree with kovie below (4.00 / 1)
The whole point of the mailer is to say that Clinton will force people who can't afford insurance to buy insurance.  But that's the point of the subsidies in Clinton's plan--to enable those who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford insurance to buy it.
[ Parent ]
Trust Us? (0.00 / 0)
I find it interesting that in another Krugman article, he points that the problem with the mandates in Mass. is that the subsidies have been insufficiently funded.  Are we to assume that Hillary's plan gets it right?
[ Parent ]
Re: (0.00 / 0)
Uh, yes, we are to assume that, since what's being criticized here is the plan and not its hypothetical implementation.

Your arguments in this thread don't make a whole lot of sense.  You're suggesting it would be fine to run an ad like "Hillary's food stamp plan allows children to starve," with the only justification being that gee, IF the program isn't funded, there's going to be starvation!  Absurd.

[ Parent ]
The Point Being (0.00 / 0)
Hillary is claiming her plan makes health insurance affordable, I think there is room for people to disagree, especially given the example in Massachusetts.
[ Parent ]
It's dishonest (4.00 / 6)
in that it claims that poor people who can't afford insurance will be forced to buy it, and then be penalized when they're unable to, which is not what Hillary's plan calls for. These people will have their health insurance subsidized, in part or whole, depending on their financial and family situation, so while they'll technically be "forced" to "buy" insurance, they won't have to pay for it, so it's dishonest to claim that they will be hurt or forced to do anything.

The mandates will mostly affect people who CAN afford insurance but choose not to get it, generally because they're young and healthy and are willing to take a chance. And for universal insurance to work, it's essential that these people pay into it. And hell yeah, they should be forced to buy insurance, in an amount that is approximately proportionate to the average expected health care cost that they represent. In the long run it'll not only be better for less healthy people, but better on average for these people as well.

I'm an Obama supporter, but this is one issue on which I strongly agree with Hillary.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
What is single-payer anyway (0.00 / 0)
ultimately but a mandate?  If we ever go to single-payer, everyone will pay for it through taxes.

Mandates make me personally nervous, but I don't see any other way to get to single-payer in the end.

[ Parent ]
Why do mandates make you nervous? (0.00 / 0)
No one seems to object to mandated auto insurance, so why should it be any different with health insurance, since every uninsured person represents a certain cost risk to society, just as every uninsured driver does? Requiring that everyone be insured (which is not the same thing as requiring that everyone pay for their own insurance) seems to make a lot of sense to me, and I struggle to imagine which people would be hurt by this, other than young and healthy people who do not get insurance through work but who can afford it on their own, yet who decide to not get any. And hurt is hardly the right word in such a situtation. Everyone else benefits, as I see it--especially people who'd like it but cannot at present afford it, and/or can afford it but cannot get it because of preexisting conditions.

Ok, a subset of people and companies will end up paying somewhat more for insurance.

Tough. They'll just have to learn to deal with it, just as they've learned to deal with laws, regulations, taxes, etc. Such are the costs of living in a modern civilized society. Enough of this idiotic right-wing "free lunch" concept that has ruined our country and so many of its hard-working citizens, and of course those all over the world

And Harry and Louise are right wing concern trolls.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
Who gives a shit about dishonest? (4.00 / 7)
It's an attack from the right, and that alone is totally unacceptable.

You're free to continue to support your candidate, but if you think primary attacks from the right are ok, you're just on the same page as the rest of the "progressive" movement. Obama clearly isn't, either.

I support John McCain because children are too healthy anyway.

[ Parent ]
Thank You! (4.00 / 1)
"It's an attack from the right, and that alone is totally unacceptable."

You are 100% honest and forward with why you dislike the Obama mailer and I wish more of the blogs I have read would present it like you.

Obama's attack is not dishonest.  It is simply attacking Hillary Clinton from the right, something that a lot of people find distasteful. 

Open Left is the tenth or so blog I've seen today covering this story, and they all are taking the same approach: OMG OB4M4 IZ LY1NG!

Let's be honest, a large part of the progressive movement, including Krugman, believes that an individual mandate is ESSENTIAL for a health care plan to be progressive.  A mandate is, almost by definition, the prerequisites for a health care plan to be progressive  To lack a mandate in a plan, or worse actively oppose a mandate, is to be outside of progressivism, by definition.

[ Parent ]
Congress is going to write the health care legislation (4.00 / 1)
Unless Obama or Hillary plan to govern like George W. Bush, Congress is going to write the eventual law.  The President proposes, but that is far from the end of it; at least that's the way the gov't is supposed to function.  The position each takes on the fine points is less imortant than the fact that both want to broaden health care as much as possible. 

There is much wheeling and dealing to do before the deal is done, and I doubt the final product looks exactly like either's plan, regardless of which one wins.

Do you folks want a tough fighter or not?  Or only when its not against your own candidate?

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
how Obama fights Democrats (0.00 / 0)
This is how Obama will fight the Democratic Congress when they try to include mandates to make coverage universal. He is a tough fighter when he takes on the left, I want the tough fighter who takes on the right.
[ Parent ]
P.S. (4.00 / 1)
Also, I'm uncomfortable with the attempt to say that Obama copied the Harry and Louise ads to the point that Ezra Klein makes.  The rhetoric of the attack is similar, but to argue that Obama even picked a visual that looked like the ad is rather absurd.  Unless we're going to talk about how all white people look alike. 
Exactly (0.00 / 0)
probably 50% of all mailers use a similar photo of a white couple sitting at a kitchen table...
[ Parent ]
So do many of the medicare supplement ads (0.00 / 0)


John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
[ Parent ]
Considering how smart he is (4.00 / 4)
and that he's been around the block by now politically, it's perplexing that Obama would continue to try to pull this sort of thing when he knows full well that it's crap. I assume that he's trying to both pander to low-information indies and moderate Pubs and innoculate himself against RW attacks that accuse him of being for "socialized medicine" here. Still, this is not the way to do it, for all sorts of reasons.

Rookie stupidity, and very poor judgement that I hope doesn't also reflect too much on his character. Obama needs to stop being afraid of being tagged as a progressive and feeling the need to say sweet nothings to the other side to win it over. He's trying to be an "ober chochem" (Yiddish for wise guy who's trying to be too clever by half).

Simple rule: don't lie.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

I think, unfortunately, (4.00 / 6)
that this ad may appeal to the under 30 demographic, who can't personally remember how destructive the Harry and Louise ads were to the cause of health care reform.  I've long been concerned that Obama's health care position is a way to pander to the young voters.  After all, his plan does have mandates for children, and, let's face it, pretty much everyone over 30 or so knows that they need health insurance anyway.  But by crafting his policy the way he did, he asks for no personal economic sacrifices from his base. 

Politically astute, I suppose, but not representative of someone who really takes universal healthcare seriously. 

[ Parent ]
yes yes yes (4.00 / 2)
It's not right, and it's also terrible politics in a Democratic primary.

Attacking Clinton from the right on health care is suicidal. Assuming he actually wants to talk about health care (which I don't understand - it plays right into a Clinton strength), he needs to blur instead of distinguish. 

[ Parent ]
This Could Jeopardize Getting Any Universal Plan Passed (0.00 / 0)
By repeating the language and the rationale used by the insurance companies to defeat past attempts at Universal Coverage, this mailer could jeopardize getting anything passed in the future. Even Obama's plan requires some mandates. All the Republicans and the insurance companies have to do is use this mailer as proof that no matter what the Dems say now, Universal Health Care is a bad idea. Even Barack Obama says so.


[ Parent ]
When Is a Democrat Not a Democrat II (4.00 / 5)
Obama's Harry and Louise flyer is proof positive of what many of us have been arguing all along.

It's not only an attack from the right. But it's part and parcel of his long-standing strategy of trying to run on the Democratic ticket while pandering to Independent and Republican voters to get the winning votes he thinks he needs in the general election for president.

He is so afraid of appearing to be embracing the progressive liberal core of the Democratic party, lest he lose the support of his corporate campaign financiers, as well as Independents and Republicans, that he keeps running over to the enemy camp. The real audience for his flyer is clear for all to see. It is mainly outside the Democratic Party.

His lame explanation of his controversial Reagan statement is a similarly ominous example of his outside-the-party vote grabbing that could seriously thwart progressive trends. What he originally said was that Reagan and the Republican party were the source of better ideas to counter the excesses of the 60's, for which he implicitly blamed the Democrats.

Clearly he was trying to get Independent and Republican votes in primaries where they could vote for him. After he was taken to task for the statement, he changed his story and said he was merely suggesting that the Democratic Party should now make a play to create a majority coalition by wooing Republicans, Independents and Democrats who voted for Reagan.

He opportunistically changed his Reagan story after these primaries were over and he was attacked in the press and by Clinton in order to backtrack into looking like a loyal Democrat.

This shameless attack on Clinton's current health plan, which is a far better plan than his, is a repeat of his out-of-party vote grab with his appeal to Reaganites.

What these two episodes demonstrate about his campaign is that aside from his rhetoric, there is no change going in how he does business compared to the political hypocrites to whom we have become accustomed. He is as duplicitous a politician as we have ever seen, bar none. In this case, he is actually undermining the whole movement towards universal single-payer health insurance not dominated by private insurers.

That he has the audacity to launch a flyer that could actually disrupt the momentum towards universal health care by opposing a proposal like Clinton's, which would eventually enable most if not all Americans to migrate towards a Medicare-like system, shows that Obama is a right-wing pro-corporate sympathizer who will do anything to get elected.

When you add this to his equally off-the-wall statements about Social Security needing to be "fixed", there is no doubt where he is coming from, where he is headed and how status quo economic and financial interests will fare under an Obama presidency.

[ Parent ]
Really Good Points (0.00 / 0)
In addition to Obama's opposition to health care mandates, we can add that he believes there is a crisis with Social Security.

That are at least two issues to define progressivism, beyond "Not Bush."

[ Parent ]
Social Security (0.00 / 0)
I'm 33. I don't believe that it's going to be there in any recognizable form when I retire, the money simply won't be available.

I consider this a crisis.

[ Parent ]
If (0.00 / 0)
You believe that there is a crisis in Social Security, you are not a progressive, or at least not in the opinion of who I'd say are the main movers and shakers of the progressive movement
[ Parent ]
better educate yourself before you vote (0.00 / 0)
If SS is gone by the time you retire, it will be because out-of-control health care costs will have swallowed up everything else in the federal budget.

There are many potential crises in the federal financies.  SS is a potential casualty of these, not a cause.

SS itself is fine.  The Greenspan Commission (bipartisan!) took care of that in the 1980s.  Their bipartisan solution was to raise a highly regressive tax in order to invest in the future of SS.  Unfortunately successive presidents (most egregiously Reagan and Bush II) have plundered that trust fund to pay for defence spending and tax cuts for the rich.

Please explain why Obama is not talking about this, but instead talking about further raises in regressive taxes, which if history is our guide will just enable further tax cuts for the rich.

If he had any integrity on SS, he'd be reminding people of Gore's lock box, which our wretched media had such fun ridiculing in 2000.

[ Parent ]
Totally disagreement (0.00 / 0)
I do not define progressivism by individual policy issues and I don't think we should either.
[ Parent ]
Defensive Overreach Here (4.00 / 3)
I completely disagree with Matt on this one.  Hillary has spent nearly a week on defense now, ever since the "Bill is out of control" theme broke out before South Carolina.  They showed severe desperation when they began angling for Florida and Michigan's Delegates to be seated.  Then they started to reach back to the "their ganging up on me" theme by promoting the handshake snub story.  Everything they have done to stop Obama's momentum has failed since South Carolina.  And it is clear that the debate did nothing to change the dynamic either.  So what do the Clinton's do?  Team up with Krugman, and then call a Presser to lodge outrage against a health care mailer.  A health care mailer?  Seriously, you can complain that the image looks a little bit Harry and Luoise-ish, but people seem to be confusing severe opposition to the policy point being made with the somewhat questionable visual imagery being used.  One can not make the argument that the claims in the add are misleading or not factual while mainly impugning the fact that the pictures looked like Harry and Louise.  The imagery and the claims are separate issues.  If you want to argue that the ad is dirty because of the imagery, fine.  Just don't argue that it is not factual or policy-difference based.  We can debate about how problematic the imagery is, but I see no plausible argument that the policy claims are problematic.

Seth

good points all (4.00 / 1)
I still think, even as an Obama supporter, that the ad just isn't a great tack to take and the imagery is problematic to say the least. But your point of overreaction here is well-taken.
[ Parent ]
Seriously, you've never seen other (4.00 / 1)
political mailers with a white couple sitting at a kitchen table?!?!

Obviously, you don't have a mailing address...HAHAHA.

[ Parent ]
It Distorts The Facts (0.00 / 0)
Clinton's plan does include tax credits to offset the costs for people who need it. Also, as state by Ezra Klein premiums are based on a percentage of income.

But what a mandate does is, additionally, force you to think about affordability. Clinton campaign does that, with a plan limits total expenditures to a percentage of income. Not a dollar amount, a percentage. If you make very little, your total expenditure, by law, can't be very much. Obama's plan has a more traditional subsidy mechanism that simply goes on a sliding scale by income, and given how much money goes towards his reinsurance plan, he's actually got less in there for subsidies than Clinton. So while he's warning that she'll make you pay even if you can't afford it, she's actually got the right affordability mechanisms in there -- she keeps it to a small percentage of income.By pretending her plan lacks those and is just a mandate, he's misrepresenting its fundamental premise, in much the way the Clinton campaign misrepresented his arguments on Social Security taxes.

Also, Obama's plan does have mandates that require parents provide insurance coverage for their children. Seems he doesn't worry too much about whether they can afford it.

[ Parent ]
Don't see the distortion (0.00 / 0)
Obama has made a substantive case, in debates and elsewhere, that his subsidies are greater than hers.  Experts may debate this, but he is strongly making the claim and publicly defending it.  Additionally, I don't think Ezra's take is definitive on the matter.  He gives no reason to think that a percentage of income is any more generous than a sliding scale.  It depends on how the percentages and the scales are constructed.  What is more, I don't see how that is an important distinction anyway.  If you have to pay a certain amount, based on your income and other factors, this is essentially the same as paying a flat percentage.  Perhaps I'm missing something here - if someone can correct me here, please do - but it doesn't seem like the income formula is the big distinction.  It's the size of the subsidy and whether it is targeted or general.  MO Blue, he does not pretend that her plan has no subsidies.  He simply says that if you must buy in, even if you can't afford it.  That is an absolutely true statement.  His plan does not do that for adults, hers does.  This is a fact.  I agree that it's possible Obama constructed his plan in this manner with politics in mind.  But for people to act as if a universal plan with mandates is the "true progressive position," and then hold everyone to that dogmatic position, is in my opinion highly disingenuous.  This "true progressive position," is itself a capitulation to the right, and a recognition of political realities facing any effort to enact a plan.  The true progressive position is single payer, is it not?  How can you criticize Obama for moving slighlty more to the right than you?  What's further to the right, the difference between Hillary and Single payer, or the difference between Obama and Hillary?  Think about it.

[ Parent ]
Obama should pull this (0.00 / 0)
I don't attach a TON of significance to this in terms of looking at Obama, though I'm obviously already long decided in his favor. His staff, after all, does have a serious habit of going more agressively than even he would. But this is bad form and moreover a bad argument, and it should go away.

I was talking just before seeing this with my boss, who is also an Obama supporter, regarding the debate last night...and we both did agree that, while he did well explaining himself, Obama still has yet to make a firm case for why his plan is better than Hillary's. Its out there if he wants, and he assuredly has experts of his own to cite in critiquing Hillary's plan (after all, prominent liberal economists and bloggers like Brad DeLong and Robert Reich have gone on record saying both his plan and approach are better). I love Krugman and admit he's got some points in all this back-and-forth, but he's not a deity, and some of his shots at Obama have been cheap and petty.

But Obama hasn't gotten his message across. His focus on the who-pays aspect, while rightly hinting that a mandate-based approach is not necessarily going to translate into what its advocates make it out to be, has been meandering. And now its obviously given way to his campaign deciding to go a bit further and frame this in a simplistic way that's just wrong. They're playing petty politics on this count rather than just rebutting the question, and they should stop.

Obama's substantive attack on mandates, (4.00 / 3)
which has persuasively been argued is damaging to the progressive cause, should be the issue. The ONLY issue.

The Harry and Louise crap is a total freaking canard. For 20 years HMOs and traditional insurance companies have been using young and old married couples to sell their programs. State-focused attack ads on one governor or another have also used this imagery, which Axelrod accurately described today as "standard."

Take Obama to task on his policy. His hardball politics are well within bounds.

Exactly (4.00 / 1)
1- The Harry and Louise claim is total crap.

2- The description of the Hillary Clinton health care plan is largely accurate, it does have mandates.

3- The point of controversy MUST be the fact that Obama disagrees with mandates. 

Imagine a Democratic primary in which one candidate sends out a mailer attacking the other Democrat for proposing "millions in subsidies for wind farms."  The controversy is the policy disagreement, period.  Progressives have to decide if a mandate is a litmus test for being a progressive, and then act accordingly.

[ Parent ]
You Should Vote For Edwards, Matt (4.00 / 1)
I'm in a weird position, where every time a candidate speaks or I hear of a candidate I am persuaded to go in the other direction.  I was leaning slightly towards Obama, but this is just not ok.

Now that he's not campaigning, there's nothing to drive you away!

"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

I suppose I could be convinced by this (0.00 / 0)
if Hillary Clinton said anything about her mandates.  She spoke for what seemed like minutes yesterday without answering the question at all.  If it is true that she has less subsidies than Obama, yet achieves "university" through mandates that did not work in Massachusetts, then I'm inclined to continue to view this as a totally bogus issue.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
Re: (4.00 / 1)
Ezra Klein convincingly argues that Hillary has more subsidies than Obama:

Obama is, of course, right that affordability is an issue, and needs to be in place before a mandate. But what a mandate does is, additionally, force you to think about affordability. The Clinton campaign does that, with a plan that limits total expenditures to a percentage of income. Not a dollar amount, a percentage. If you make very little, your total expenditure, by law, can't be very much. Obama's plan has a more traditional subsidy mechanism that simply goes on a sliding scale by income, and given how much money goes towards his reinsurance plan, he's actually got less in there for subsidies than Clinton. So while he's warning that she'll make you pay even if you can't afford it, she's actually got the right affordability mechanisms in there -- she keeps it to a small percentage of income. By pretending her plan lacks those and is just a mandate, he's misrepresenting its fundamental premise, in much the way the Clinton campaign misrepresented his arguments on Social Security taxes.

[ Parent ]
Not the Point (0.00 / 0)
I don't see why subsidies should even be part of the discussion.  It is too easy to get bogged down into detail.  For instance, does Klein take into consider Obama's support for a more generous generic tax credit, while most of Hillary Clinton's proposals focus on more specific tax credits?  So on every single individual issue, Hillary Clinton looks more generous, because her entire economic policy is focused on targeted tax breaks, while Obama tries a more broad approach.
[ Parent ]
Uh (0.00 / 0)
The question was whether Hillary has less subsidies than Obama.  That is why my answer is about subsidies.
[ Parent ]
Yeah! bud -- but she doesn't factor in the fed income (0.00 / 0)
A biggie -- coz taxpayers will be covering the shortfall...  sorry to burst the bubble... especially when we are in a recession and when she wants to spend a gob load of our taxpayer $$ on the military...

The Health Issue is complex == no doubt about it... but Hillary's republican snow-job talkingpoints aren't the way to sell her candidancy.

[ Parent ]
Nothing wrong with it (4.00 / 1)
If Clinton can counter the message she will dispel one of the concerns about her presidency.

If she can't counter it she shouldn't be president.

Good point. If she cannot effectively refute this and make hay out of it then (0.00 / 0)
you know she won't or cannot do that against the sure GOP attacks against her plan next January.

Let's see if she can pass this test.  My bet is no.

For some reason, it seems that Obama has some pathological and deep-seated psychological need for Republicans to like him.  Seriously.  It's weird.

[ Parent ]
Yeah but it's February 1. (4.00 / 1)
Clinton can and will counter this attack but possibly may not have enough time to do so effectively before the Super Tuesday primaries.

I suspect that this is why Obama waited until the last minute to send out the flyer.

He planned it to be a low blow.

He timed it out in advance and put the flyer in the mail at a date so close to the Super Tuesday primaries that it would not arrive in voters' mailboxes until the Friday preceding the Tuesday primaries.

Is this dirty pool or what?

It has been observed that Obama learned the ropes of electoral politics in the political trenches of Chicao.

Maybe I should have said gutters.

Could this be an example of gutter politics practiced by Mr. Change himself?

[ Parent ]
It does remind me (4.00 / 1)
Of the "Not 100% pro-choice" mailer Clinton sent out, only in terms of inaccuracy, not in terms of damage to the agenda. So when talking gutter politics, it seems he did learn early on, but he's learning more and more now. Maybe no one can win without gender-baiting or race-baiting or complete lying or twisting words. Sure seems that way.
[ Parent ]
So Obama's staff is more aggressive than he is (0.00 / 0)
but Hillary sent out the choice email in New Hampshire?

Do you folks ever stop for a minute and think about what you're actually saying?

The NH email wasn't even from her campaign staff, it was from a collection of minor NH pols.

[ Parent ]
Agreed on the ads (0.00 / 0)
This is a venomous attack that if it came from John McCain, wouldn't be acceptable. Just as Clinton's race-baiting was a conservative-style smear from a supposed progressive, Obama's policy dogwhistle equally offends me as someone who believes that the preservation of our health as citizens is a mandate of our government. I tenuously support Obama but it's beyond apologism for this crap.
Great Mailer (0.00 / 0)
You must understand how pernicious the "individual mandate" is.  It is a forced market of billions of patient care dollars and public subsidies to the very insurance corporations who are wrecking the healthcare system already.  This is akin to privatizing social security, the great risk shift from society to individuals.  People would go bankrupt and healthcare reform would get that much harder.  

Obama has to warn about this scammy insurance proposal in a soundbite world, and this mailer does a decent job.  Kudos for standing up to the insurers on this.

Please also note that a coalition of caregivers and patients worked to defeat the California individual mandate plan cooked up by Governor Arnold and the Democratic Speaker, and patients are better off as a result.  

Join the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee in the fight for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model at www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org/blog

Please stop making shit up (0.00 / 0)
You have no idea what impact a subsidized mandate based on income would have as an impact, and to pretend you do since it's not been treid in the US is dishonest.
[ Parent ]
Hey, no one is "making things up" about the harm of an individual mandate (0.00 / 0)
I'm a nurse and health reform activist here in MA huge numbers of the uninsured cannot afford the insurance and do not qualify for a mandate waiver. How twisted is that, anyway, under an individual mandate approach you must get state permission to remain uninsured. These people who need help are instead being intimidated with threatening mailings from the state. - talk about mailings that ought to be condemned!

For these reasons I feel that the Obama mailer was needed. What is says is accurate.  Weeks ago I started encouraging some of these people to call Obama's campaign staff in NH and here in MA to reinfoce how important it is that he oppose and individual mandate and explain why. A few people did call and talked at length to inform Obama's campaign.

I could tell you so many really sad and infuriating things about the history of health system reform here in MA from the past 10 years, things that are both insidious and pathetic, such as "advocacy groups" that take huge sums from the insurance industry and the large hospital systems and then these "advocates and health policy experts" give back in the way of providing the much needed political cover for these lousy fake reform laws. And I am sure this sh-t exists on the national level and to a much scarier degree...

Here in MA, yes, it's good that in the short term the MA law insures many more, but we cannot conveniently ignore the fact that it also leaves many (~50% of the uninsured) behind and then punishes them for being uninsured. Yes, the state is insuring more but at what cost? At a cost that is totally unsustainable. The funding mechanism for this insurance expansion is wasteful in many ways, including the use of public funds to purchase private insurance with no cap on admin. spending or price increases (just as the insurance industry and Romney/Bush wanted it). Our Gov't should be creating a national health plan that "Guarantees" good coverage and care for all, not a plan that builds on the wasteful market-driven model of individual purchase of insurance.  

Please read Merrill Goozner over at GoozNews (www.gooznews.com) and look for Feb 1 2008, "Unfair and Unbalanced Wonkery on Mandates"

   

After California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health insurance plan went down in flames earlier this week, I made it a point to listen in to the Kaiser Family Foundation online forum yesterday discussing the role of individual mandates in guaranteeing health insurance for all. The failing Massachusetts plan has a mandate, as did the California plan. It was the number one reason why liberal legislators in the nation's most liberal state turned thumbs down on the proposal, claiming it would penalize low- and moderate-income Californians by putting a gun to their heads to buy insurance plans they couldn't afford...

   For the record: I'm opposed to mandates for two reasons. First and foremost, they're bad politics... There will not be a national individual mandate of the sort in Clinton's plan...

Instead of having an argument about the individual mandate, wouldn't it be more constructive to coalesce around the fact that serious planning had better be going on among progressives about how to be ready in 2009 to fight this protracted David vs. Goliath/ People vs. Profits battle of health system reform. It seems to me that Obama would welcome this country's people to demand that he move the reform process directly toward a program of Improved American Medicare For All. I think that's why Obama sent the mailer out.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.  --Gandhi

I Love the 90s: Bringing Back Harry and Louise | 52 comments
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