Echoes of Social Security Reform in the Health Care Debate

"60% of seniors liked (Bush's) ideas on Social Security."
.
Is that accurate? Any tampering of SS has always been unpopular with seniors, I thought.
.
That the AMA is lining up against the public plan is not shocking. The entrenched defending the status quo. It will come down to how well BHO can sell the idea.

You've spent some time creating a 'mirror-image' structure here between Pelosi resisting SS reform vs Republicans resisting Insurance reform. But there's one important way the images fail to align.
.
In both cases it's the Republicans who are selling irrational fear.
The 'calling wolf' aspect is only on one side of the divide....
.
Stated another way. Social Security was a solution without a problem, health care is a problem without a solution.

Thank you Jay for the un-biased reporting in your posting here today. It is indeed very refreshing.
.
In my mind we have the big spending Pelosi with her encouragement of more big government programs, to what end? People who know how our government works also know that these huge government run programs do not work, and are far more costly on average. There is absolutely no reason that we cannot have a government backed insurace like we have with the Medicare HMO's all around us, to provide insurance to those who have none or have a policy that is just simply not adequate.
.
With a Medicare HMO type insurance system, run by private insurance companies but the funding is primarily done through the government with oversight on cost, like CMS, then we can also keep the private insurance that those of us have which is far and superior above anything the government will ever be able to provide.
.
We have the system in place, we do not need to spend billions of dollars to find out if a "public" insurance plan would be better. We will not be over burdening the tax payer with the huge proposed Obama plan that exceeds 1 TRILLION dollars.

Stated another way. Social Security was a solution without a problem, health care is a problem without a solution.
-
Solution without a problem?
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051200252.html?wprss=rss_politics
-
Specifically, the trustees' report predicts that the trust fund from which Social Security payments are made will be unable to pay retirees full benefits by 2037, four years earlier than forecast a year ago. In particular, the trustees single out the financial weakness of the part of the program that subsidizes disabled Americans, saying that fund will run out of money in 2020.
-
Yesterday's report also said the Social Security trust fund will begin to spend more money than it takes in through tax revenue in 2016, one year sooner than predicted a year ago.

You've spent some time creating a 'mirror-image' structure here between Pelosi resisting SS reform vs Republicans resisting Insurance reform. But there's one important way the images fail to align.
.
In both cases it's the Republicans who are selling irrational fear.
The 'calling wolf' aspect is only on one side of the divide....
.
Stated another way. Social Security was a solution without a problem, health care is a problem without a solution.
_
pd, apparently, JNS thinks that the american people are as vacuous and intellectually corrupt as she is -- she's obviously incapable of understanding either social security privatization or health care reform proposals on their merits, so she has to reduce the issue to something that a garden slug could understand.

Yes yoshi, it's not a problem that cannot be easily addressed.
.
The fact that the SS trust fund looked like a big pile of collateral just sitting there like a wasted opportunity IS a problem but the fundementals are still quite sound.

The same senior citizens who have found out that we pay more for medicine than countries with a government plan?
.
Republicans need to worry about the sentiment that we have spent money on two wars, and bailouts to big business and now it is time to spend some for American citizens and voters.

"A couple of months ago over lunch in San Francisco Speaker Pelosi ...."

-

Lunch. San Francisco. Nancy Pelosi.

-

Never have so few words made me sick so quickly.

A public plan will not change all things currently wrong with the system, but it could add some sanity to the current situation especially with the awful management (yes we are already managed by the very greed that put us into a recession – corporations). The AMA is an awful arbiter of the case against a public plan, they have very profitable vested interests. The reason the doctors most fear this legislation is because they know people will take to it in droves. I have a great plan myself and know for a fact I would give the government plan a definite look when established, especially if it is as good as the one our legislators currently receive at our expense… I want some of that. Also, yes it will be expensive, but there is so much bureaucracy and BS in the system already the eliminating that and adding some sanity to the reimbursement scheme would do wonders for our overall health. Logical people know this and want a public plan, health is a public issue and it should be managed as such.

We should just let the Republicans handle these problems. Just imagine how solvent everyone's retirement funds would be if we would have had the opportunity to invest our Social Security accounts in the stock market......

Never mind.

That's funny. My doctor must not have gotten the AMA memo because he was railing against insurance companies today and he thought the public option was the only way to go.

Okay, what do people know about this so-called "co-op" option that Baucus, et al. are floating? How would these health care cooperatives work? It sounds like they are private non-profit entities . . . can someone explain, please?

John Royal--
.
it's pretty clear that the AMA doesn't represent most doctors. Every doctor I know hates the system and would enthusiastically switch to single payer.
.
"Social Security Reform"? What does that mean? There's nothing broken, nothing to be reformed. There are horror stories everyday related to this disastrous health care system, that can be largely laid to profit and revenue maximization strategies rather than a focus on best possible patient outcomes.

See: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande

The analogy with the elephant and the mice is more astute than Lamar Alexander intended. Elephants are afraid of mice.

That said, Republicans are taking advantage of widespread concern about government spending too much money.

Do you have proof that people outside Versailles are worried about this right now?

what do people know about this so-called "co-op" option that Baucus, et al. are floating?
.
No matter what they call it (and the more incomprehensible the name and description, the more this will be true), it is a plan to preserve the status quo, perhaps forcing healthy young people to participate in exchange for govt subsidy of "preexisting condition" premiums.
.
The arguments to be made that explain the benefits of either a public option or a path to a single payer are easy arguments to make. Refuting the lies the GOP is telling is equally easy to do.
.
Either nobody is making them, or the tradmed is not covering them.

That said, Republicans are taking advantage of widespread concern about government spending too much money.
.
Then why aren't they proposing money-saving solutions? Why are they only screeching this nonsense and not proposing methods for reversing the enormous Bush deficits? Why do we get this constant stenography that is 1) based in lies and 2) not actually supported by people.
.
Why can't you say what they are really doing? They are trying to scare people into thinking the lady at the DMV is going to telling them what doctor they has to go to. Boehner's post yesterday was a complete tissue of lies. There was nothing true in it. How can you justify not pointing this out?

Private insurers cover nearly 70% of Americans. And the other 30+%? How is having 3 out of 10 Americans denied a basic necessity a positive?

Hmmm..."AMA"..."AMA"...
.
Where have I heard of that organization before?

If I was Pelosi, I would put a bill on the floor that proposes getting rid of "government run healthcare" such as the VA system, DOD system, Medicare, and Medicaid. Then let's see if the Republicans are for or against "government run healthcare" and just get everyone on the record.

Jay Newton-Small:
.
The question for journalists will be whether or not they can include the AMA's well-documented opposition to Medicare when it was proposed in the discussion of its opposition to a public plan now.
.
Will "the AMA says" be allowed by the mediators of this debate to be used by Republicans, laissez-faire ideologues and profit-driven interests synonymously with "Doctors prescribe"?
.
Again, political journalists will be the deciding factor, because their facile acceptance or clarifying contextualization of "the AMA says" will make the difference in ordinary people believing that they will or won't be allowed to see their doctors when they need to.
.
Good luck with that responsibility, Jay Newton-Small...am I wrong?

...And another thing, Jay Newton-Small:
.
Have you by any chance read this amazing article in Time Magazine online called "The A.M.A. & Medicare"?
.
It turns out that, at least according to Time Magazine, the AMA opposes Medicare...vehemently!
.
It's so interesting to read that

the American Medical Association said: “The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs.

, when the AMA has such an anti-Medicare position:

The American Medical Association's 115th annual convention in Chicago last week wound up just in time for the doctors to go home to deal with the consequences of Medicare, the social security-administered medical insurance that so many of them had fought against so vehemently and so long.
.
...the new president [of the AMA], Dr. Charles Hudson, a Cleveland internist, counseled moderation. "There are people who think doom is going to fall in on us," he said. "I think this opinion is not justified. We are not stepping off the brink into a bottomless pit of professional destruction and despair." He proposed that doctors "make the most of this new program." If they do, he suggested, they may help "prevent its extension toward a national health service."
.
The delegates' stance on billing was strong evidence that the majority of A.M.A. policymakers are not yet ready to adjust to the new program. The delegates obviously thought that the fight should and will go on. and to prepare for the future they elected Dr. Milford Rouse by acclamation as the next A.M.A. president. Rouse, who will take office in June 1967, is a Dallas gastroenterologist and a former director of H. L. Hunt's ultra-right Life Line Foundation. As speaker of the house of delegates, he has already made it clear that he will take a far harder line on Medicare than moderate Dr. Hudson.

.
So how about that, Jay Newton-Small?
.
Before discussing the AMA's position on a public insurance option being made available to every American, journalists probably need to ask the AMA about their position with respect to Medicare, since it looks like they're almost fanatically opposed to it.
.
Has anything changed, Jay Newton-Small?

The fact that the SS trust fund looked like a big pile of collateral just sitting there like a wasted opportunity IS a problem but the fundementals are still quite sound.
-
Aw come on PD...I have no idea why you wanted to present an enormous target to me, but suffice to say, wasn't it one of the greatest moments of the 08 campaign where one of the candidates said something like "the fundamentals of _______ are strong?"

Well yoshi, Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason McCain was wrong is telling. It's called leverage and the economy he referred to had way to much of it unsecured by actual asset value. The reason Conservatives are panicked over SS is that they've been issuing bonds against the trust fund in order to keep paying for their tax-cuts uber alles theory of governance. The SS trust fund is a big pile of green in an otherwise endless sea of red.
.
Pointing at Social Security as a big problem is just a distraction from the real problem.
.
Note that Obama isn't doing anything in particular to solve the problem either. But at least he's promising he'll get around to it as soon as the recession is over....

Yoshi:
.
The fundamentals of Social Security are strong.
.
The problem with Social Security is that the trust fund has been raided by the big-spending (on 12b per month wars, billions in foreign aid to countries that screw us) government, especially in the last eight years.
.
Remember Al Gore's "Lockbox"? That was all about keeping SS funds from turning into a bunch of IOUs. It's not that the Social Security program itself is fundamentally flawed, it's that it's been borrowed from by an increasingly profligate Republican Congress for the past ten years.