Category Archives: Health Care

Expect Insanity

Posted on by

First, everyone please call 1-888-876-6242. That’s the Families USA number that will route your pro-HCR phone call to your representative. Read about the right-wing threats against Families USA here.

Also, please note that the next several hours before tomorrow’s vote are going to be insane.

The anti-abortion block in the House remains the biggest threat. Steve Benen and Brian Beutler explain the contortions Nancy Pelosi is going through to get some of the Stupak gang on board. In a nutshell, the deal may be to allow for a separate vote on putting the Stupak amendment language back into the House bill.

Note that such a vote, if it happens, is extremely unlikely to pass, but that hasn’t stopped Jane Hamsher from using the issue to rally “progressives” against the bill.

Let us all reflect on how grand it is to have purity of principles when you’ve got plenty of money and insurance to pay for your cancer treatments.

Steve Benen writes that “There are still a few liberal Dems who voted for reform in November, including Massachusetts’ Stephen Lynch, who intend to vote with right-wing Republicans because they don’t see it as liberal enough.” If the more-progressive-than-thou types would stop grandstanding and get behind the bill, Pelosi wouldn’t need any of the Stupak votes. This is a wonderful example of how grandstanding is an indulgence progressives would be better off without most of the time.

If you aren’t disgusted enough yet, check out this Kate Pickert post at Time.com, which begins:

Marcelas Owens, a young boy who’s been appearing on TV and at press conferences with Democrats who are trying to sell their health care plan, is a new fascination for some right-wing pundits, who have been saying incredibly cruel things to and about the Owens’ family and tragic history. Owens’ mother died in 2007 of pulmonary hypertension – a rare condition that requires constant expensive medical care – after she lost her fast food restaurant job and her health insurance.

Pay special attention to the discussion in the comments on What Would Jesus Do about health care reform. My favorite:

Jesus wouldn’t go around forcing people to pay for someone else’s healthcare, either. Forced charity is theft, and it is not a Christian concept.

So who cares if a couple of talk-show hosts say something “mean” when the people they’re opposed to are committing evil?

In a just universe, the person who wrote that would spend eternity copying and re-copying the Beatitudes on parchment with a bad felt-tip pen.

Finally, Dana Milbank says a true thing — running on a promise to repeal health care reform is unlikely to be a successful strategy for Republicans.

Beyond that, it’s doubtful that opposition to the measure will ever again be as high as it is now. Fox News polling found that 45 percent of voters would favor repeal, while 47 percent say leave the reforms alone or add to them. With the big insurance subsidies years away, the initial changes stemming from the legislation would be relatively modest — and that should come as a surprise to an American public told by Republican foes of the legislation to expect a socialist takeover of the United States.

What Americans would see — or at least what Democratic ad makers say they’d put on Americans’ TV screens — are the benefits that would take effect this year: tax credits that encourage small businesses to offer health coverage; a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the prescription-drug “donut hole” (the checks would start going out June 15); allowing young people up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ health policies; and, above all, a ban on refusing coverage to children with preexisting conditions.

There will certainly be ads this fall saying Republican Congressman X voted against tax breaks for small business and voted to deny Junior his life-saving treatments. These modest changes to the health system probably wouldn’t be widespread and noticeable enough to limit Democratic losses at a time of 10 percent unemployment. But, at the very least, voters would see nothing to justify the Republicans’ apocalyptic predictions.

I think that’s true, and I suspect enough of the troglodytes understand this is true, which is why they will stop at nothing to kill health care reform.

Update: I keep reading that there are something like 206 certain “yes” votes, and ten more are needed to pass. Wikipedia says there are 255 Dems in the House. If every Dem not in the Stupak gang would vote for the bill, then a compromise with Stupak would not be necessary to pass the bill. So why are people angry with Pelosi or Obama or me about Stupak? Why not get angry with the other holdouts?

Update update: It seems the Stupak attempt to use the HCR bill to further restrict abortion has been killed already. Everyone can stop hyperventilating.

Lies Lies Lies Lies Lies Lies Lies

Posted on by

You probably heard about the hoax memo the GOP circulated to scare people about Democratic intentions.

Here’s another example of gross dishonesty — at Weekly Standard, a column by John McCormack titled “Read the Bill: Senate Plan Would Pay for Abortions at Community Health Centers.” So I waded into this thing expecting McCormack to explain where he found this in the bill, since he wants us to read the bill. But he doesn’t source the bill. He sources two memos, one from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the other from National Right to Life.

In fact, federal dollars can’t be used to pay for elective abortions now, and there is all kinds of language in the bill that makes it crystal clear federal policy on funding abortion will not be changed by the bill. And I can prove it — read the bill. Here’s the Senate bill; the section regarding abortion begins on page 2077.

Instead of reading the bill, McCormack cites propaganda screeds about the bill so that he can lie about what’s in the bill. Classy. You can read the memos he sites, but the arguments in them are refuted by the bill itself. For that matter, most of the arguments in the memos are refuted by the National Catholic Reporter. See also Timothy Noah.

No one at National Right to Life has ever been the least bit squeamish about making up nonsense to support the cause, but I want to make special note of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. At a time when sexual predation by Catholic clergy has become an international scandal, and when it’s become public that the institutional church has been covering it up and allowing it to continue for decades, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has some cojones producing a deceitful memo to attempt to insert their influence over U.S. health care law.

I’m saying that if the lot of them had a shred of conscience, they’d be very quietly doing penance someplace, not brazenly bearing false witness in order to control the sexual behavior of American women. It’s good to see American nuns and other Catholic organizations coming forward to say the Bishops don’t speak for all Catholics.

Stay Classy, Tea Baggers

Posted on by

Some Ohio anti-health care reform demonstrators berate a pro-HCR demonstrator whose sign says he has Parkinson’s.

You can see the expanded cut of the video at Think Progress. At one point, a tea bagger is caught on camera yelling No health care! No health care! Wow, heaven forbid that anyone would get health care!

In other wingnut news — the attorney general of Virginia declared that Virginia will file suit against the federal government if health care reform passes. The last time I know of that a state tried to nullify a federal law, Andy Jackson sent a man-of-war to one of its seaports.

Yesterday a portion of wingnut media, including Fox News, seized on a “survey” attributed to the New England Journal of Medicine that claimed 46 percent of primary care physicians would leave medicine if health care reform passes. It turns out that the New England Journal of Medicine had nothing to do with this. The “survey” was concocted by a physician recruiting firm as a promotional gimmick. The wingnuts have yet to acknowledge they were snookered.

Pigs Are Flying

Posted on by

Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said this:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

The difference is that when Dems do it, Republicans hit news media screaming about “Slaughter House Rules” (named after Rep. Louise Slaughter, chair of the Rules Committee). When Republicans did it, Dems were not all over media screaming about the “Dreier Dodge,” or whatever.

And mass media repeats whatever Republicans say.

Steve Benen:

Indeed, hearing Republicans whine incessantly yesterday about the need for an “up-or-down vote” on the Senate bill was especially amusing yesterday. If GOP lawmakers wouldPer allow both chambers to vote up or down on important legislation, procedural alternatives wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

Per Greg Sargent, way back when the public was divided over Medicare about the same way it is divided now over HCR. But once it went into effect, people liked it.

Also: Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year. If you look at people aged 18 to 65, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance last year.

About a Bill

Posted on by

Bill the BillAccording to Jonathan Cohn, the House Budget Committee will convene this afternoon to hold a hearing and write reconciliation instructions so the HCR bill doesn’t need a 60-vote majority when it goes back to the Senate. Also, the House Rules Committee has to finalize amendments, and the House probably won’t act on the bill until it is sure the Senate will pass the amendments, and that won’t happen until Harry Reid presents the reconciliation package to his caucus.

When the House acts, there’s no certainty there will be enough votes in the Hous. Smart people are saying there will be, but that it will be close.

The House Budget Committee has posted a bill online that Ezra Klein says is the bill that will become the reconciliation bill.

The original reconciliation instructions require Democrats to use a bill written before 10/15/09, and this bill fits, well, the bill. What’ll happen next is that the legislation will head to the Rules Committee, who’ll erase what’s currently on the page and replace it with the real reconciliation package. It’s a bit like how painters will reuse a canvas they’ve already painted on, though they’re doing it to save money and the House and Senate do it because their rulebooks are confusing.

OK.

The White House is pushing for the health care effort to finish this week.

Stuff to Read

Posted on by

Via Ezra Klein, the Republican argument against Democrats passing health care reform.

Paul Krugman has a good column on the lies people have come to believe about HCR. The biggest lie is that HCR would be too expensive, when in fact it would save money, especially compared to doing nothing at all.

Example, from Krugman:

The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.

Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent, while extending coverage to 34 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured. That’s a large expansion in coverage at an essentially trivial cost.

Kevin Drum: “Yes, the Health Care Bill Really Does Pay for Itself.”

Anything else worth reading today?

I’m So Confused

Posted on by

About every half hour there’s more news from Congress about what’s going on with health care reform. Recent developments:

Harry Reid sent a letter scorching letter to Mitch McConnell. Do read.

Alex Koppelman wonders if the Dems will get the votes.

The Senate parliamentarian may have just thrown Dems a curve ball. President Obama must sign the health reform bill into law before Congress can go ahead with reconciliation.

Ezra Klein explains that the biggest barrier to getting HRC done is the “corrosive mistrust” between the House and the Senate.

Reconciliation, Here We Come

Posted on by

The word is that Senate Dems have agreed to go ahead with reconciliation to pass health care reform, as explained by Steve Benen —

By agreeing to pursue reconciliation, the Senate leadership almost certainly believes it will have the 51 votes needed to approve the budget fix. This makes sense — even center-right Dems have been coming around on this procedural question in recent weeks, frustrated by Republican obstinacy.

I should emphasize, for any lawmakers or reporters who may be reading, that by agreeing to the majority-rule route, Dems aren’t talking about passing health care reform through reconciliation. Health care reform was already approved by the Senate in December, and it passed 60 to 39 through the regular ol’ legislative process. No tricks, no abuses, nothing unusual at all.

Rather, reconciliation will now be used — if all goes according to plan — to approve a modest budget fix that will improve the final reform bill.

More good news — some Senators are determined to continue to push for the public option, in a separate bill.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Posted on by

One of the biggest frustrations of the way the health care reform “debate” is played out in media is that Republicans have been able to frighten people with the claim of rising premium rates and rising taxes as a result of the Dem program. The reality is that the Dem program, flawed as it is, is a lot more cost-effective than the current mess of a “system.” And there are lots of reasons why an incremental approach won’t work.

Good explanation: Reed Abelson, “The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care.” See also Steve Benen.

And then there’s the GOP approach to controlling health care cost, so well summarized as “die faster.”

I’m Not Sure I Can Watch This

Posted on by

Sen. Lamar Alexander is delivering the Republicans’ opening remarks, and I already want to hurl big, heavy objects at the TeeVee screen. Here are his basic themes:

  • What’s really important is controlling cost.
  • The Democratic bill cost too much.
  • The People have said they don’t like the Democratic bill, so the Dems should scrap it.
  • Reconciliation is bad.
  • Beware of the “tyranny of the majority,” which I take it means that the party that the people elected into the majority in Congress should not be allowed to pass bills.

Update: The lies are beginning already, and I turned off the TeeVee because, frankly, I’ve got work to do and I won’t get it done if I’ve got that nonsense droning on in front of me.

Lamar Alexander said in his opening remarks that the Congressional Budget Office had said the Democratic plan would raise premiums. I believe I know what he’s talking about. Some versions of the bills (notably without the public option) would cause some individual insurance premiums to go up, mostly because the insurance industry would no longer be able to sell junk policies to individuals but would have to sell them policies that actually cover their health care needs. So in some states individual policies would become more expensive, but they would also be real insurance policies and not ripoffs.

However (as I remember) the same CBO analysis said that the same plan would cause the cost of employee-benefit insurance to go down a bit.

Update: Daily Kos is liveblogging. See also the TPM Health Care Summit Wire.