Tag: Health Insurance Reform

Also available in Orange

From one of my comments in buhddydarma’s most excellent diary:

I’d liken it to a vicious dog behind a fence. Given access to the fence, he will worry it and try to dig under it, or hang out by the gate and eventually get out. Like a group of corporation with massive profits locked behind a regulatory wall, who will eventually find a way to get a loophole put into the wall.

Tie the dog up in the yard so he can’t get at the fence, the combination is more effective than either alone.

A robust public option works like the leash tying the dog up. The corporate insurance companies cannot squeeze too much harder than the public choice without losing market share, so it will be much harder for them to organize to break the regulations in the health care exchanges.

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution

crossposted from The Hillbilly Report, also available in orange

From some online dictionary somewhere:

Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance

So: (1) Public Choice

“No Taxation without Representation”. Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing UHC into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.

crossposted from The Hillbilly Report, now up at Agent Orange

David Axelrod made the case for insisting on the public option if there is an individual mandate to buy from health insurance exchanges, on the Rachel Maddow show last night (segment page). Of course, he thought he was making a different case:

And there is an incentive for the insurance industry to go along and not try to fight these, and that is that there is going to be a larger insurance market, and they have to make that calculation, but we are prepared to do it easy or do it hard, we want to make it work for consumers.

One reading of Axelrod is:

“M’lords, the peasants are getting restive, and if you want to avoid a revolt or other crisis – say, a majority of the House of Representatives elected without being beholden to your largesses – you have to make concessions. However, make the calculation – in some versions of this reform, because of the greater number of peasants you will be taxing in your domains, you will be better off.”

Update: Also see: crossposts at ProgressiveBlue and MyLeftWing, and a response to Nicholas Beaudrot drinking the Axelrod cool-aid that the Public Option will “the Public Option will only affect a small number of people”, in a comment at Donkelylicious.

     NO CAPTIVE MARKETS!

   WE ARE NO CORPORATE PLAYING FIELD:
      LEVEL US AT YOUR PERIL

   NO GOVERNMENT MANDATED
      CORPORATE MURDER BY SPREADSHEET

     HEALTH INSURANCE BOARDS ARE THE REAL DEATH PANELS

     NO WELFARE FOR INSURANCE CORPORATIONS

     NO CAPTIVE MARKETS!

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution

The White House has said it will do anything to “get a win”.

Clearly, there are several Democratic Senators who will vote no, even if they vote for cloture.

Which means that with 50+ Congressmen willing to stand firm for the Public Option, it only requires 10 Senators willing to stand firm for the public option to force the President to go all in for the Public Option.

My Senator Sherrod Brown sounds like he’s close.

All right.  Anastasia P requested that I repost an earlier diary detailing my hopes and suspicions about “health care reform.”  I don’t do reposts; however, I am interested in an investigation of the central theme of that earlier diary, which was to look at health care in the context of a (these days) booming industry: “getting those who can’t pay to pay.”  In this stage of capitalism, it would seem, the big growth industry is in “squeezing blood from turnips,” in which it is imagined that the poor and indebted will pay their creditors whatever is owed them if only the laws requiring them to do so are tough enough, and if the collection agencies are firm and resolute enough in their intentions.

Health insurance reform enters into it.  More below.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Burning the Midnight Oil for Progressive Populism, xposted from My Left Wing

OK say, just hypothetically, that you are an administration looking to get one of your two signature policies passed. And the Senate, deeply entrenched in the pockets of the affected industry, looked like it will gut your legislation so badly that getting the result passed will stink of failure almost as much as the stench of failure if it is defeated.

Suppose its so bad that the Senate action is the most likely way for your party to lose the Majority in the House is for the disappointed Democratic supporters of so-called “Blue Dogs” to stay home in the midterms while fire up Republican opponents turn out in large numbers.

That would be the time to bring out the “nuclear option” … the threat to radically change the Senate Filibuster rule so it can no longer be used as a roadblock to reform.