Tom Daschle and Health Care Reform

keeping notebooks on Daschle speeches to small groups from 15 years ago can be considered two ways. It’s either a testament to your prudence, or you need more of a social life KT. I am not sure which.
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All jokes aside, Daschle on board, and Rahm’s tone from this week lead me to believe that Obama is serious about this. He actually may mean what he says for the most part.

KT –

Excellent piece. We’re not likely to get this sort of thorough background from the “Opinion first – facts later” branches of political reporting, whether in new media or old.

KT I am in awe.

KT here–

Actually, Dee, I don’t hang onto ALL of them, and have no system for knowing what’s actually IN most of the ones I do keep. But I knew where that one was. It was a really enlightening trip. Plus, when we had to fly in a tiny plane at one point, Daschle flew it himself. I later found out that was sort of his hazing ritual for reporters from DC who came to SD. He seemed to love the horrified look on their faces when he got in the pilot’s seat.

Excellent piece KT. And so fast!
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“There is some speculation that health care reform in the Obama Administration will have to take a back seat to fixing the economy. Daschle has argued that one can’t happen without the other”
And Daschle is right.

KT – Did you save your correspondence with Mr. Luce? “Dearest Henry, I am starting to feel as if you will never leave Clare …”

I am getting a wee bit excited that policy is going to be important again. Policy is so much more fun than ideology, except to ideologues of course.

coffee –

Imho, in the recent unpleasantness KT almost singlehandedly corrected the historical image of Time. You may recall the old line that Luce’s major accomplishment was the creation of two magazines: Life, for those who couldn’t read, and Time, for those who couldn’t think.

Having had the pleasure (and I am truly being facetious here) of riding in a small plane once! I can understand why this trip stuck in your mind. And the fact that you flew with him given the general sense of congressional incompetence I am still in awe.

“Small plane” sounds so dangerous – that’s why we like to refer to it as “general aviation.”

” But unlike the Clinton plan, it would not require Americans who now have coverage (and are satisfied with it) to give that up.”

um, Karen, this is so deceptive as to be false.

The 1993 Clinton plan did not force anyone to give up coverage. What it did do was force employers to provide at minimum, an “affordable” managed/care/HMO type of plan — and set standards for what constituted “health insurance”.

In other words, if you were getting ripped off by a company that claimed to be providing health insurance, but wouldn’t cover most costs, and you didn’t know you were getting ripped off (“satisfied with your coverage”) yes, you’d have to switch. But the only people who would have to switch were those who were enrolled in really crappy programs anyway….

KT here–

Pluk: The 1993 Clinton plan, as Hillary Clinton has acknowledged, would have set up big purchasing alliances (known as HIPCs) that everyone would have had to be a part of. There would have been options within that system, but everyone would have been in a new kind of system. She herself says that was the big mistake she made, politically. That’s why, this time around, she stressed that her plan would let people who currently have coverage keep EXACTLY the coverage they have, if they like it.