I am Tom Freeland, a lawyer in Oxford, Mississippi. The picture in the header is my law office. I'm on Twitter as NMissC

Missing Posts: If you have a link to a post that's not here or are looking for posts from Summer of 2010, check this page.

My Twitter Feed

Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.

BlogRoll
»  
  «

The Health Care debate…

Print Friendly
August 31, 2009, 10:55 pm | Category: Politics | 19 comments

19 comments to The Health Care debate…

  • Casey Ann
    August 31, 2009 at 11:17 pm

    I saw this and absolutely loved it!

  • Ben
    August 31, 2009 at 11:37 pm

    Paul Krugman has interesting observations on this topic in today’s NYT. He writes about a health care plan drawn up during Nixon’s presidency.

    As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.

    Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to “approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.” No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.

    So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?

    Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?

    But there’s another reason health care reform is much harder now than it would have been under Nixon: the vast expansion of corporate influence.

    We tend to think of the way things are now, with a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was. But our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s.

    And now that this system exists, reform of any kind has become extremely difficult. That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.

    That spending fuels debates that otherwise seem incomprehensible. Why are “centrist” Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota so opposed to letting a public plan, in which Americans can buy their insurance directly from the government, compete with private insurers? Never mind their often incoherent arguments; what it comes down to is the money.

    Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal, even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.

    And what about other challenges? Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies.

    I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.

    $1.4 million per day. Hold that thought.

  • Chico Harris
    September 1, 2009 at 1:47 am

    I agree with Ben. I thought this was fine work from Krugman. Reminds me I haven’t read Metropolitan Diary yet.

  • pam
    September 1, 2009 at 8:31 am

    wasn’t one of Obama’s campaign promises to ban lobbyists from the building? I sort of remember something like that, long, long ago….blah

  • Hatfield
    September 1, 2009 at 9:06 am

    pam we will see a lot more of Obama’s promises go out the door before long. The approval ratings are sliding as the real person is revealed. I think people are starting to see how bad one party control really is. Remember when the republicans had total control? Nothing was accomplished. Our political system works best when there is checks and balances, including the third party libertarians.

    I offer this next issue as an example of cross party politics that will really help our country. Democrats, Republicans & Libertarians agree on this issue. The Federal reserve has to much power!

    I was pleased to see Barney Frank accept and support Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve. When voters wake up and realize that the Fed is a Private, For Profit Bank, maybe some change to the fiat system will occur. The Fed reported that they made 14 Billion dollars from the bailouts. This figure was not audited and they released the numbers. Funny since they printed the money to begin with. There is nothing backing up the money they print and its just a matter of time before the fiat system has a real melt down.

    Obama should stop focusing on the health care issue, a problem he will never fix in my opinion. The time is wasting while he chases a pipe dream. The health care lobby is like the oil lobby, VERY POWERFUL. It takes their money to get re-elected and Obama knows it. Look at the back tracking he has already done on this issue.

  • Ben
    September 1, 2009 at 10:17 am

    I hope I’m wrong. History proves that I usually am. But I fear that the president’s health care reform initiative has exceeded its angle of repose … its altitude has exceeded the circumference of its base, and the whole thing is slipping apart, settling into fairly flat bases that had to be held together for the whole thing to work. I’m probably wrong also in opining that the president wasn’t sufficiently aggressive and effective in holding the “pile” together … he appears to me to have been too hands off, too “nice” about the whole thing. I regret that. I regret that health care reform will probably fall off the table and not resurface during this administration.

    If President Obama couldn’t/can’t bring about health care reform, then it likely won’t be done, at least in my lifetime.

    Pity.

  • NotZachScruggs
    September 1, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Surely President Obama is not so insulated from views like yours, Ben, (and mine) that the “too nice/too hands off” message doesn’t trickle up to him. A slim majority of Congress is bound to see through this health insurance conglomerate scare campaign (Socialism! Death panels!) at some point, or is it really too late already? Have the health insurance lobbyists locked them down? Are the uninsured just too tired to speak up? Or too powerless? Where’s Teddy Kennedy when we need him?

  • Ben
    September 1, 2009 at 11:32 am

    NZS: I’m afraid Ted has left the coliseum, just when he could be most effective. I don’t know of anyone else who could snatch up insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals industry and shake them to death like a feist with a copperhead. The tide is ebbing, it appears. Coulda Woulda Shoulda is in the shadows at stage right and is ready to cartwheel onto stage center. Dammit.

  • BlackBear
    September 1, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    The days of rational and reasonable debate founded in informed understandings are dying; there is no doubt America is headed for the most terrible of places, “a slump.”

  • osa canuc
    September 1, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    Ben, if health care reform does not occur, it will not be due to the so-called right wing extremism, which sounds rrrrreally scary, but is a misnomer for those who stand against ultra-liberalism. But, I digress. If it fails, it wil be due to over-reaching solutions by Obama and middle America not wanting socialized medicine.

  • mississippi gal not a lawyer tho
    September 1, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    Someone has the “cat by the tail”.
    Possibly “Insurance”?
    Big Insurance scares Dr’s into high malpratice prem. and mainsteam insurance (Humana) scares the middle class.
    It all gets back to Insurance, a big racket.

  • WantedToBeALawyer
    September 1, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    If this current healthcare reform effort fails, it will be because the majority of Americans feel that the reform is worse than the present system. We have talked, on this blog, about the 45+ million who do not have health insurance. I have argued that those 45+ million are not the poor or the near-poor, they are not the elderly, they are not qualifying veterans, they are not Native Americans, and they are not the disabled. They are people of means who can afford health insurance, but choose not to buy it. If they are illegal aliens (12-20 million?), we can determine their country of origin and send the bill there. File WTO complaints (or some other international treaty organization), alleging dumping, if they refuse to pay.

    The Democrats will have noone but themselves to blame for the failure of this current version of healthcare reform. One of our greatest strengths of being 50 united states, is that we can run 50 experiments at the same time and see what works. A non-binding bill that just encouraged each state to take a shot at universal coverage could have produced great results. One plan, dictated from on high, will not be/was not well received.

  • osa canuc
    September 2, 2009 at 9:11 am

    WTBAL nails it.

  • Natd4
    September 2, 2009 at 2:43 pm

    WTBAL: Studies show many of the the 45 + million are in transition from one job to another (unemployed) who can’t afford the COBRA payments on the insurance from their previous employer, especially now because they’re out of work. The others are too sick with pre-existing conditions. Undocumented immigrants and stingy Americans make up a small percentage.

  • BlackBear
    September 2, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    I think I posted earlier – the COBRA payments for a family of four – one of whom was a state employee – is around 1000k per month. WTABL, your gross and irrational generalization is absolutely wrong. Most people in our situation would LOVE to cover themselves and their children, they cannot afford it. However, if you cannot get COBRA because you don’t have 12k laying around to pay for it and have some serious condition, you OR YOUR CHILD are no longer insurable. Now, think about the expanding unemployment roles mainly caused by Bush-era policies and the amount of those folks that may fall into this category.

  • WantedToBeALawyer
    September 2, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    BlackBear, I respectfully have to disagree with you. I am a fed. If I don’t have the best insurance in the world, I’d like to see who does. I am grateful for it. However, my daughter turned 22 in the past year, which means she was no longer covered by my insurance. She is bi-polar, and worked as a waitress at Logan’s ($12K/yr) who offerred cheap insurance, but it was not a very good policy, not even catastophically and prohibited pre-existing conditions (her bi-polarism), so I advised her not to subscribe. Instead, she applied and was accepted to Medicaid. Later, she became pregnant. Medicaid covered everything. Ultimately, she married the father and is now covered by his insurance (he’s in Afghanistan), and it appears that everything (financially speaking) will work out OK.

    The short point is that if you fall on hard times, Medicaid is there for you, regardless of pre-existing conditions. FYI, I have previously stated my support for the elimination of pre-existing conditions as a basis for denial, along with the onset of a serious illness as a basis for dropping existing coverage. It seems to me that COBRA should be used when someone decides to start a small business (sole proprietorship), not when you have been fired or laid off. Cheap (relative term) insurance alternatives are out there, but it takes a good deal of effort to find them.

  • WantedToBeALawyer
    September 2, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    Natd4, millions of them must be in situations similar to my daughter. Discount her condition, and these are young, wage-earners (not on salary), who are healthy and decide not to get insurance. The S-CHIPS program is available up to 26 yo? Also, much has been made of illegal aliens use of the medical system. I have seen estimates ranging from 12M to 20M illegal aliens in the US. A certain persentage of these have insurance, I have seen estimates of 35%. I disagree that illegals make up a small percentage. That may be true taken nationwide, but in border cities it is significant.