Underplayed Story of the Day

And the point of this is what exactly? Am I supposed to be upset about a tade association having buyers remorse. If there was a misunderstanding they should have manned up at the press conference or they can just continue on their current course and we can get a public system. It’s not as if a person can’t keep their doctor and plan and have it paid by a different source, a non-profit source.

While we’re discussing ‘underplayed’, how about a brief primer on second derivatives?
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That way we can understand just how silly the phrase “cut the rate of growth of spending” actually is.

What happened here, Dee, is that the Obama White House and the industry associations used each other for a mutually beneficial day of good PR. But–as I noted in my initial post on this–there was a lot less to that pledge than met the eye.
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/11/health-care-industry-steps-up-maybe/
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So where do we lay the blame or this? On the health care industry for deciding to stab the president in the back over costs? Nooo…

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Matt: Let’s hope they are not that naive, or we are all sunk. It was pretty clear that the White House was trying to make a lot out of a little, given the complete lack of specifics and enforcement in this pledge. They also tried to maximize the news cycle, by holding a rare briefing for reporters on a Sunday afternoon (slowest point of the news cycle), which is how they got the lead story position in the Washington Post on Monday morning.

I hear you KT and my question stands am I supposed to get upset over tactics? The profiteers want to use this move to prevent a public option and the administration wants to use this so that Congress continues to move forward in the face of moderate and conservative democrats weakening backbone. I’m losing my health care in 15 days I couldn’t care less how they get there I just want to be able to buy something from someone and the rest of it is just entertainment without popcorn.

Good god, Dee. I’m so sorry. What are you going to do? I wish I knew more about what Maryland has to offer, but please, if you are thinking of buying on the individual market, be very, very careful.
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As for the public option, I’m getting pretty clear signals that the White House is not going to fight for it, except perhaps in the watered-down version that Schumer proposed.

The opposite of underplayed is overplayed. To that end JNS has a new article up. It’s all Pelosi all the Time.
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http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1898706,00.html
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I know that Time is obsessed about the ‘baseball’ aspects of any political debate but as I’ve said many times, the torture debate has no business being treated as if it were mere partisan sniping.
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And everyone owes it to themselves to explore this link:
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http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_113C.html
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So that they can see for themselves just how convoluted the OLC reasoning needed to be.

The seems like the Stimulus Bill with the health care INDUSTRY playing the part of congressional republicans. At this point I have zero illusions that they are negotiating in good faith.

Dee, did you get a chance to check out the new COBRA rules and see if they would help?

Yeah, Thanks KT. I guess I should be grateful that Maryland has a high risk pool. Its almost twice as expensive as my cobra and complicated as all get out. You think someone would have just figured out by now that in this economy the first step might have been to freeze these arbitrary deadlines for eligibility and let people keep their insurance for as long as the can continue to pay.

PNNO – Yes thanks unfortunately they put all these little devils in the details to limit help to those who can prove disability through the social security system, which is like the hardest thing to do in this country.

Another underplayed story of the day.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/graham-cia-gave-me-false_n_203683.html
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When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ’02 and two in September ’02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”
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As for the one briefing he did attend, the Florida Democrat said that he had “no recollection that issues such as waterboarding were discussed.” He was not, per the sensitive nature of the matters discussed, allowed to take notes at the time. But he did highlight what he considered to be pretty strong proof that the controversial technique was not discussed.

SG–why would they want to talk about this when the media can help their favorite Republican bullies to beat up the girl.

Dee
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Its much easier to ignore any evidence that Pelosi is telling the truth. Notice one thing, in all of this time there hasn’t been even one story that explores the constraints placed on the Gang of 4 or the Gang of 8 when it comes to oversight. That is a failure to inform the public because as it stands right now with the rules we have in place the same thing could happen again because of our secrecy rules. So whether its President Obama which I doubt or another President later they can still technically “inform” the Congress and yet not face any impediment to carrying out illegal actions because those few members of Congress can’t discuss what happens in the briefings with anybody else.

Unfortunately, it seems we are doomed to repeat our history repeatedly. The media, the one institution that is constitutionally, traditionally, culturally, and socially capable of getting to the bottom of this through investigation and rallying the citizenry is inhabited by too many individuals with the maturity of 15 year old boys.

Ugh, sorry to read that Dee.

KT:
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As interesting and important these developements are, I would like to see some information on how UHC* might affect businesses, big and small. There was at one time talk about how UHC would be a great benefit to Chrysler, GM and others as a very large overhead would be removed.
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My own personal experience tells me that an employer is currently shelling out 10 to 12k per year per employee for health insurance. It seems to me that if that were even close to the real numbers, the business community, realizing that their share of the tax burden for it won’t even approach that level, might be very supportive of UHC.
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I would appreciate comment on this, or better yet, if one of you would research this and write a peice on it.
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*Whatever the exact form is, I’m using this to denote whatever system replaces the current one

Here’s a bit on just how useful torture is, according to a Powell aid:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/14/iraq.torture/index.html
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I might point out that the Bush Admin was already predisposed and had been floating balloons about attacking Iraq even before 9/11. The now mothballed (but still accessible) http://www.newamericancentury.org website has plenty of documentation on that.

Seems this experience should be reason for the prez to insist on a public plan. Plainly the claims of the industry are written on water.

Karen, with regard to your post on the White House’s position on the public option, have you heard anything both in Congress or the White House about the public option proposal that Politico discussed in this article:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22556.html
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Grassley said they discussed several scenarios, including one not listed in the committee’s white paper released Monday: a public fallback option modeled on the Medicare Part D program. If there is not enough private competition in local market, the government can create a public alternative. The concept was raised during a meeting Wednesday between President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, according to a source familiar with the discussion.
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ademption: could you get more details about this public fallback option for us Karen and who supports it?

thanks….

Thanks for the inside baseball on the politics of this, KT.
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I’ll note without comment that it took “the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it,” for the players to realize that “President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week.”

Via Digby, Obama on single payer at his town hall meeting, with an update from TNR on what’s going on in Congress.
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http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/little-single-payer-by-digby-obama-had.html

53_3, just for info, the maximum cost of the government regulated health insurance here in Germany is just over EUR 300 (about USD 405) per month for the employee deducted straight from payroll. The employer’s compulsory contribution equates to about EUR 270. This is the maximum that anyone will pay, unless they decide to take additional private insurance on top, which barely anyone does.
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For that you get continuous cover for you and your dependents, even if you are made redundant and are no longer contributing directly.
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Not saying the system here’s perfect, but it does strike a reasonable balance between cost and cover.

Karen Tumulty Says:
Friday, May 15, 2009 at 8:07 am
Matt: Let’s hope they are not that naive, or we are all sunk. It was pretty clear that the White House was trying to make a lot out of a little, given the complete lack of specifics and enforcement in this pledge
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Do you really think it naivety Karen? Sounds more like Obama realizes the true cost of his proposals, and that it is not feasible. The cost alone will bankrupt our country, I have no doubt about that at all. Somewhere, someplace some programs will suffer. The “do it all” mentality we have now in power is completely off base.
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We are a rich county, but placing this burden, and yes it is a burden on the American taxpayer is absurd, and quite frankly not fair at all. I feel sorry for those who do not have the means to provide for themselves, but there are also times when we cannot save every struggling whale. Call me crass or un-caring, but those just happen to be facts of life. If we want to cut spending in other programs to afford universal healthcare for everyone, so be it. But we also cannot provide all of the other entitlement programs as well. Look at California as the example but on a State level. Taxes in California have hit an all time high, and the State is ready to go bankrupt. The only possible salvation for California is to legalize marijuana. That will also bring its own share of problems if Swartzenegger follows up with legalization. But, maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea. If people are all strung out on drugs they may not give a damn or not if they have healthcare.
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Just saying.

That will also bring its own share of problems if Swartzenegger follows up with legalization.
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Take a look at Portugal. It decriminalized drug use and now has some of the lowest drug use rates in Europe – the exact opposite of having an entire population strung out on drugs.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/116883.php
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9302447
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“Despite the encouraging results, Mr. Costa said there was a powerful consensus among governments and public opinion at large that the “current levels of illicit drug use, together with the health consequences and criminal activities associated with it, are clearly unacceptable. Stronger prevention and treatment policies are needed, throughout society.”
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http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2004/unisnar849.html
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As regards the trends of cannabis use over time, the rate in the Netherlands rose during the 1960′s & early 70′s, decreased for a few years just after decriminalisation in 1976, rose again in the mid-to-late 80′s and then stabilised by the end of the 90′s. This pattern is similar to that observed across most of Europe and North America. In fact, the rates of increase were broadly similar across these countries regardless of drug policy, even though the relative rates of use have not varied by much.
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/stats.htm
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But, go ahead I truly could give a rat’s ass what people do behind closed doors. They will do it anyways, so if we can get a few bucks out of their wallets and into the public coffers so be it instead of fueling the drug Cartels.

“In fact, the rates of increase were broadly similar across these countries regardless of drug policy, even though the relative rates of use have not varied by much.”
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Translation: drug policy doesn’t have much effect on drug use – that tends to find its own mean based upon other factors – it just creates new social ills if it’s bad (criminal prohibition) or ameliorates drug abuse if it’s rational (education and addiction treatment).

Dee, best of luck with your health care coverage.
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And isn’t it terrible that this anything anything to do with “luck”?

Paul Dirks, I agree that torture is a very important issue, but there are discussions about torture, health care, and SCOTUS going on between Swamplanders in this very blog.
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I think the public can follow along on multiple issues. I think that Scarborough and Mika are incorrect when they argue that Pelosi is draining the rest of the media oxygen. That posture is one reason that MSM lags behid the internet as a source of information for many people.

flacidcasual:
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It seems then that at least there in Germany, the average cost to the employer is maybe a third of what it is here.
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I wonder why business is not very vocal in their support? It seems that this is one way of lifting a significant overhead expense from their shoulders*.
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Having the option of buying additional insurance is OK with me, as there has to be some sort of way the higher income brackets can drive the high end aspect of health care, and everyone can be happy. High income people get their perks, and the rest of us don’t have to worry so much about health care.
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*I think they will pay some taxes toward UHC, but overall, I think the total expenses would be far lower than it is now.