Public Option Still Breathing

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Mike Soraghan reports on The Hill:

First he was for it. Then he was against it. Now Rep. Mike Ross is back on board with a government-run healthcare plan. Sort of.

Ross (D-Ark.), who had emerged as a leader among centrist Blue Dog Democrats opposing the public health insurance option, has suggested something his colleagues consider even more drastic – opening Medicare to those under 65 without insurance. …

…His statement went on to say that he does “not support a government-run public option” and he does “not endorse this idea” of opening up Medicare.

As Steve Benen says, huh?

Making Medicare available to everybody would have been the most sensible approach, of course. There must be a catch.

On the other hand, here’s this from The Politico:

The forces in favor of a public health insurance option roared back Thursday on Capitol Hill after weeks when their cause looked bleak.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) looked closer than ever to including a robust U.S. government-run insurance program in the House bill — saying recent attempts by the health insurance industry to undercut reform prove insurers can’t be trusted.

And in the Senate, a weekly policy lunch turned into a heated debate when liberals went after the Senate Finance Committee bill and made clear they won’t roll over for legislation that doesn’t include a public option.

See also Brian Beutler, who says Harry Reid is working an “inside game” in support of the public option.

The Washington Insider gasbags keep telling us that the public option is dead and that the health care bill will pass without it. Yet it refuses to die. Paul Krugman explains how the insurance industry is helping keep progressive reform alive.

Wingnut Baiting for Fun and, Well, More Fun

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The wingnuts are in a froth that anyone objected to Rush Limbaugh becoming a St. Louis Rams owner. They are genuinely upset that anyone would accuse Rush of racism. Imagine.

And I missed Countdown last night, when Keith Olbermann made Michelle Malkin a runner-up in Worst Person in the World.

Runner up, Michelle Malkin. Maybe it‘s her. When this Obama song stupidity broke in New Jersey last month, with elementary school kids there singing about the president, author Sharice Carnie Nuenez (ph) says she got an e-mail from Malkin reading, “I understand that you uploaded the video of school children reciting a Barack Obama song/rap at Bernice Young Elementary School in June. I have a few quick questions. Did you help write the song and teach it to the children? Are you an educator or guest lecturer at the school? Did you teach about your book, “I Am Barack Obama” at the school. Your bio says you‘re a schoolmate of Obama. How well acquainted are you with the president?”

That was at 6:47 in the morning. By nighttime, Malkin and the lunatic fringe had decided Carnie Nuenez was responsible for the song and whichever plot their fevered little paranoid minds saw behind it. She received death threats and hate filled voicemails, all thanks to the total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee jerk fascistic hatred, without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed up bag of meat with lipstick on it.

Ms. Carnie Nuenez had nothing to do with the song. By the way, the fringe is out protesting at the school again, scaring the kids. Exactly the way that psychotic pastor protests at military funerals.

The wingnuts are not dealing well with calling Their Michelle a “big mashed up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” That’s unfair. I’ve seen her in photos a lot, and I don’t think she’s always wearing lipstick.

But, y’know, it’s gotten really easy to yank their chains these days, hasn’t it?

Criminalizing Abortion Dosn’t Stop Abortion

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This is a point I make just about every time I blog about reproductive rights, but here it is again. The BBC reports that a Guttmacher Institute survey of abortion in 197 countries shows clearly that making abortion illegal not only doesn’t stop abortion, it doesn’t even seem to slow it down.

The Guttmacher Institute’s survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted. …

…On some continents this is particularly pronounced: well over 90% of women in South America and Africa live in areas with strict abortion laws, proportions which have barely shifted in a decade.

Where abortions are illegal, abortions go underground. Women abort themselves or find underground networks of providers. This in turn creates all manner of bad outcomes with broad impact.

The costs of unsafe abortions, which can include inserting pouches containing arsenic to back street surgery, can be high: the healthcare bill to deal with conditions from sepsis to organ failure can be four times what it costs to provide family planning services.

Every year, an estimated 70,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortions – leaving nearly a quarter of a million children without a mother – and 5m develop complications.

Anti-reproductive rights activists sometimes make the argument that abortions should be illegal because they are dangerous for women, and I’ve actually seen them cite the 70,000 annual deaths figure in support of their argument without mentioning that nearly all of those deaths occur in places where abortion is illegal.

This is not really news. It’s been obvious from the data for some time that there is no correlation between abortion rate and abortion law, and that some of the highest abortion rates in the world are in nations in which abortion is banned. What is baffling to me is why pro-reproductive rights advocates are not highlighting this fact, posting it on billboards, shouting it from rooftops. If there is any one fact that ought to shut up any argument in favor of criminalizing abortion (not that the crazies will shut up, of course) it’s this.

I realize that many reproductive-rights advocates don’t want to talk about reducing abortion rates, because this amounts to an admission that abortion is something that needs to be reduced. However, I suspect the majority of people who favor keeping abortion entirely or mostly legal feel some ambivalence about it. IMO I’m not interested in arguing whether abortion is “good” or “bad,” because as a moral choice it depends on myriad factors that are unique to every woman who considers it. The question for me is purely whether there is any reason for the government stepping in and criminalizing it, in particular a reason that somehow benefits civil order and societal good. And it’s obvious that there isn’t.

Yet, for some reason, you only find the fact that criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it buried very deeply in pro-rights arguments. Instead, they favor arguments that women have rights, which is not persuasive to people who think that women are cows.

There is one thing that really does reduce the number of abortions, and that is access to birth control.

Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands – with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world’s 29 per 1,000 – is held up as the gold standard.

In the Netherlands, abortions can be performed at any point before viability in a certified hospital or clinic.

Even the UK, which has a relatively high rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies.

In much of eastern Europe, where abortion was treated as a form of birth control, abortion rates have dropped by 50% in the past decade as contraceptives have become more widely available.

The data that contraceptive use is the one factor that really does reduce abortion rates — far more so than criminalization — could not be clearer. Data is never clear enough for idiots, of course. But an overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of birth control use, and the connection between birth control use and abortion rate also needs to be broadcast far and wide.

Update: More from Lynn Harris:

In other words: Bans do nothing. Except kill women. (Making their success rate, and irony factor, analogous to that of a virginity pledge.) Specifically: about 70,000 women die each year of complications from unsafe abortion, an estimate that — should it sound familiar — has hardly changed in 10 years. An estimated 8 million women per year experience complications requiring medical treatment. (Only 5 million receive that treatment. Even when quality post-abortion care is available, the study says, “distance, cost and the stigma often associated with Abortion can discourage women from seeking treatment.”) Another new Guttmacher study also found that “the costs of treating medical complications from unsafe abortion constitute a significant financial burden on public health care systems in the developing world.” (Treating complications from unsafe abortion costs Africa and Latin America alone up to $280 million each year.)

Let’s put it this way: Because of death — wholly preventable death — by unsafe abortion, an estimated quarter million children grow up without a mother. “Restrictive abortion laws are an unacceptable infringement of women’s human rights and of medical ethics,” says the study. “Eliminating unsafe abortion and providing access to safe abortion would reduce ill health, death and lost years of productivity among women, and avert the financial burden of treating related health complications. Achieving these goals would lead to enormous individual and societal benefits — for women, their families and countries as a whole.” File all that under What More Data Could You Possibly Need? (Or, depending on your mood, under “How Dare You Call Abortion a ‘Convenience'”?)

American Exceptionalism: A Big Fat Sacred Cow

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Neal Gabler has an excellent column at the Boston Globe called “One Nation, Under Delusion.” He writes that the myth of American exceptionalism is going to be our downfall.

One of his arguments is that we’ve often had government that is better than the people. That’s kind of a tenuous point, I think. Basically, he’s saying that at times outstanding leaders have come forward who inspired America to do the right thing or make progressive change, even when politically unpopular. One could quibble those were exceptions rather than rules, but on the whole Gabler makes some good points.

The conclusion:

The Greeks understood that the gods punished mortals for their hubris – for feeling that they were godlike. They knew that overweening pride preceded a fall. One suspects that nations are no more immune to punishment than individuals. A nation that brooks no criticism, a nation that feels it is always better than any other, a nation that has to be endlessly flattered and won’t face the truth, a nation whose people think they possess some special moral exemption and wisdom, a nation without humility is a nation spoiling for calamity.

We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. The result may be a government that is as good as the American people, which is something that should concern everyone.

Stop Catering to Teh Crazy

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E.J. Dionne is talking about the angry white men again. It seems every few years we find ourselves acknowledging the angry white men and analyzing what they’re angry about. He says,

No doubt some who despise Obama will see the judges in Norway as part of that latte-sipping crowd and will hold their esteem for the president against him. He can’t do much about this. What he can do — and perhaps then deserve the domestic equivalent of a peace prize — is reach out to the angry white men with policies that address their grievances, and do so with an understanding that what matters to them is not status but simply a chance to make a decent living again.

To which I say, nuts. I think if E.J. were paying closer attention, he’d notice the white people (of both genders) who are really, really angry and who are so vocally opposing everything Barack Obama is trying to do are not, for the most part, the same people who are out of work and facing foreclosures. They’re people who still have jobs and homes and health insurance (or Medicare), and who somehow have been persuaded that Somebody — minorities, liberal elites, the government, whatever — wants to take those things away from them.

And it’s about time we acnowledged that the angry white men have always been with us. The seething resentments, the well-nurtured victimhood, the paranoia, the absolute intolerance for any point of view but theirs were also the hallmark of the antebellum southerners who drove us into the Civil War.

I mean, who else but a proto-wingnut could talk about the “War of Northern Aggression” when it was the South’s aggression that started the war? As Digby pointed out about mid-way through the Bush Administration, the last half of Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech could almost have been addressed to Bush supporters, especially if you substitute “opposition to slavery” with “liberalism.” For example, “The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery liberalism, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.”

Dionne suggests that we must acknowledge the angry white men have real grievances. Oh, please. What grievances do they have that the rest of us don’t have also? And, more to the point, what problems beset them that they didn’t help bring upon themselves?

The fact is, there’s been a big, fat stain of irrational paranoia that runs through American history and which has tripped us up over and over. And there is no placating it. You can give the irrational paranoids everything they want, cater to their every whim, and they will still hate you and blame you for every cloud in the sky. Why? Because it’s part of our culture. And ignorance and stupidity are factors, also.

I’m not sure what’s to be done about it, but I do know that you don’t make crazy go away by catering to it.

No Surprises in Health Insurance Stats

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From the New York Times, “The Divided States of Health Care”

“Those who lack health insurance now are far more likely to live in states that usually vote Republican — the states whose senators and representatives are least likely to support a law to extend coverage.”

“The figures show that residents of blue states are far more likely to have health insurance than are residents of red states, with residents of purple states in the middle.”

“Children in Texas, the state with the least health insurance, are more than eight times as likely not to have it than children in Massachusetts, the state with the broadest coverage.”

“Another way of looking at the figures is to imagine two Senates — one chosen by the 25 states where residents are more likely to have health insurance, and the other chosen by the 25 states where there is less insurance.

“The Senate from the states with less insurance would have 30 Republicans and 20 Democrats. But the one from the states with more health insurance would have a 40-to-10 Democratic majority.”

Within “red” states, the districts with the least insured people tend to be minority districts that vote Democratic. However, many of the red states still have worse numbers for health insurance even with those districts excluded.

Tells you something.

Prize for Not Being George W. Bush?

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I admit that when I first heard the Nobel Prize news I assumed it was a hoax. And my second thought was, really? Is this because he’s not George W. Bush?

I don’t have to tell you how the Right is reacting to this. Feelings seem to be mixed on the Left. To tell you the truth, what with the continued drone attacks and confusion over Afghanistan policy, I’m not sure I would have voted for him myself. The Committee is giving him props for his work toward nuclear disarmament (which began while he was still in the Senate).

From the Prize Committee (emphasis added):

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

In short, he’s not George W. Bush. Works for me.

BTW, here’s some background on President Obama’s non-meeting with another Nobel Prize Winner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.