Senate Health Care Vote

“Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Aetna”
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“Ben Nelson, the Senator from Omaha Mutual”
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Thanks, Joe.

just for the sake of it, even though i totally agree with you on a gut level, im just gonna pick your suggestions apart.
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1.It would make good politics, but lousy policy. Adding about 635 new members isn't really gonna help the exchanges. Merging the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan with the exchanges (which ought to be national and sliding in large corporations progressively over 10-15 years until all health insurance is traded within the exchange would be much better.
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2. Killing the anti-trust agreement would make for brilliant politics, absolutely. And might even make marginal sense in terms of bringing real competition. But at some point, we have to realize that the reason health care inflation is growing so rapidly is mostly because of provider networks. Meaning, we can juice insurance prices only so much (which we ought/need to), but there's a reason we'd prefer to link the PO to medicare. It would make us stronger vs the providers. If you weaken insurers too much without taking providers down with you, you're only making the problem that much worse.
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3. I can't argue against the Wyden amendment It's the best we could get besides actually getting his bill.
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But yes, the PO's premiums will be higher. It prolly will not engage in adverse risk selection (hope i got that right) which means the sickest people will just shift onto it first of all because they expect the gov't option to be cheaper and because qualification will be less of a hassle. If your pool of customers will be sicker, your premiums will be higher. And unfortunately, that's even with the fact that CBO says it will be more efficiently managed than private insurance. Stronger risk adjustment would go a long way toward leveling the playing field.

Joe Klein:

3. Thanks to Oregon's Ron Wyden, the Senate bill contains a provision that will allow employees of companies that offer health care plans to go to a public exchange, if the exchange offers a plan they like better than the benefits they're getting on the job. That's an excellent idea...and it should be expanded. Any company that wants to offer its employees health benefits via the Exchange route should be allowed to do so. The more people involved in the Exchange system, the better the rates are likely to be and the more choices offered.

Wait a second...what?
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Are you sure about that?
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That's gigantic, if true. Yes, it is an amazingly good idea.
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That claim needs to be fact-checked, which I (and hopefully others) will do.
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This was Matt Yglesias explaining in September how Wyden's plan couldn't make it into the bill( Link to Yglesias ):

...the reason opening the Exchange will violate the pledge to prevent anyone from losing their current coverage is that existing employer-based pools will be destabilized if people are allowed to leave them.
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A lot of companies that currently offer group insurance would find themselves unable to continue to do so if half their employees left the plan to join an Exchange plan. They would find themselves with no choice but to stop offering insurance coverage, start offering higher wages, and send all their employees into the Exchange.
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This isn't a "problem" with Wyden's idea. It's a good idea. Severing the link between employment and insurance would be a good idea. Giving people more choice between insurance plans would be a good idea. Giving people more control over what proportion of their total compensation comes in the form of health insurance would be a good idea. But even though it's a good idea, it's a good idea precisely because it would destabilize current arrangements and there's very little political support for doing that.
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...there's a totally non-mysterious reason why it's not included in any of the health reform packages approved by five different congressional committees—it's totally at odds with Barack Obama's repeated promise to avoid forcing anyone who currently has insurance to change their coverage. You just can't square Wyden's idea with Obama's promise. And though Obama's promise is substantively not a great concession to make, it's absolutely central to the White House's political strategy.

If you are correct about this, Joe Klein, then it could turn a lot of sinking liberal opinion around about the value of this reform legislation. I hope that you are completely accurate in your characterization.

Would you mind citing the page which substantiates your claim, Joe:
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"My favorite provision requires that all members of Congress give up their federally-funded health care benefits and join the health care exchanges that will be set up by this bill".

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Also, praise be to Allah. Finally a TIME journalist who says this...
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"The question David Gregory should have asked next was: So if you want more competition, as you say, are you in favor of lifting the anti-trust exemption that health insurers now enjoy?"

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Would you want to also give credit to the many Republicans who have been calling for this from the beginning too?

Joe Klein the journalist from Dumber than Rocks Daaily

Maybe the MSM could pull some of the fact checkers off Sarah Palin's book and begin to look at the health care bill and maybe try to report what will really happen. Not likely since as much as liberals claim Republicans want to kill the bill, liberals want to pass it at all costs regardless of service, coverage, premium costs and increased deficit.

The bill is , to put it politely, smoke and mirrors. To put it in context of folks here it is one lie after another.

More than one liberal source has admitted that taxing for 5 years before putting out the benefits is kicking the can down the road. Harvard's Dean of the Medical School has stated it does not address costs.

Congress will be part of the "public option" Until it happens, then they will exempt themselves. These are the same guys that passed reduced payments for doctors from medicare then void it every year.

So it doesn't address costs, it doesn't cover everybody, coverage will fall and rationing will begin in earnest. Hey but everybody should feel good about passing a bill that offers nothing but third world status to this country.

When someone had the actual temerity to call Lieberman out for lying (Brian Beutler of TPM-none of David Gregory style, weak sauce, news celebrities would ever do anything so uncouth) and claiming that no one ever talked about any public option back during the presidential campaign, he brushed it off with a "whatever...I don't like it anyway". The man is probably the most dishonest person in a Senate full of some really dishonest and despicable characters. I see red whenever I hear other Democratic Senators just throw their arms up and do the whole "what can we do" routine when pretty much every single one of them supported him when he lost his primary.

[...] this article: Senate Health Care Vote – Swampland – TIME.com Uncategorized all-members, and-join, care-benefits, care-exchanges, congress, deserve-notice, [...]

[...] link: Senate Health Care Vote – Swampland – TIME.com all-members , and-join , care-benefits , care-exchanges , congress , deserve-notice , federally , [...]

And irony of ironies, Patrick Kennedy has been banned from receiving communion in Rhode Island because of his position. This is truly outrageous. Blasphemous, even (misusing the name of God).

So wouldn't it be nice if all those who were worried 49 years ago about a Catholic becoming President because the Catholic Church would dictate policy would now rise up and demand that their elected representatives kick the representatives of the Catholic Church out of the capitol, and embrace Patrick Kennedy for standing up to the Church the way Jack promised to do.

I'd agree with this: "It's really bad theology," said Winters, who opposes abortion. "You're turning the altar rail into a battle field, a political battlefield no less, and it does a disservice to the Eucharist."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34091312/ns/us_news-faith/

...I still consider the public option a relatively small bit of business...
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If only the giant insurance corporations were as wise as you, Joe. They could have saved hundreds of $millions trying to defeat that "relatively small bit of business".
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And do share your wisdom on the politics of forcing young, healthy, progressives and libertarian independents to buy insurance form the same corporations who have been caught abusing (and killing) their customers for years, when they manage to buy-off the people's elected representatives, lie about the likely effects of reform measures and deny the public real competition and reform.

[...] From Swampland: [...]

Wyden doesn't unfortunately do what you say it does. if it meant that every currently insured American could shop around and opt out of the plan their employer offered in exchange for something better that'd be great. But it doesn't. Very few people will have a choice. As I read it, if your employer plan qualifies under some very loose standards you have to use it.

JK -- When are you going to get it, the media framing is as much a part of the problem as the lies told by opponents of reform. The media is the major impetus for driving public opinion so when the public is confused, or concerned that reform will have an adverse aspect, there's little doubt that negative framing by the mainstream press is partly to blame. Even now the conversation is all about what 60 Senate Democrats will do. The media narrative being, if Democrats, with a 60 seat majority can't get this done then they must be useless. Of course, that's not even close to the truth, nor is it even the most Dramatic representation, so it begs the question why the media has chosen to ignore the unprecedented role of the GOP obstruction?

When are you going to insist that your brethren be honest and stop only covering the political fallout of Democratic failure and also cover the potential fallout of Republican obstruction. You do realize there would be a fallout if someone other than just EJ Dionne would write about GOP political tactics that directly causing thousands of Americans already hanging by a thread to lose their life line of unemployment because the GOP decided to play games passing the extension. Sure the GOP finally got around to passing the bill but not until after thousands of Americans missed meals and missed rents ending up hungry, homeless and utterly devastated despite it being totally avoidable. I mean one good story with some quotes of say a family who had a member commit suicide from the pressure of being at their wits end and having their life-line ripped from their grasp for no other purpose than to make Democratic governance that much more difficult. Now that's what I call real government death panels.

Where is the balance? You have both sides commenting on what Democrats should do, What the President should do, when you and your brethren know full well that the degree of GOP obstruction is unprecedented. At this critical juncture, with everything riding on our ability as a nation to reinvent ourselves, you half the country taking their ball and going home, as a result of the GOP abdicating their responsibility to participate in fixing our problems and making a difficult job that much harder.

Of course, I don't expect you to actually answer the question. It's clear that the media is fully engaged in their favorite past time, trying to dismantle a Democratic administration or at least render it incapable of doing anything. I guess destroying the Clinton administration wasn't enough, y

I read today about a Senator being willing to lose his seat to vote for the health-insurance reform. "Integrity," you might say, or "betrayal" (of his constituents). But I think this misses the point--meaning the role of the US Senate as a check on the House (and us).
See: http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/integrity-in-the-job-description-of-a-us-senator/

On the subject of trying to not be biased, I am going to post Joe's last paragraph, without comment:
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"This, most health insurance experts believe, is the best way to rebuild the U.S. health care system--through regional public exchanges or one big national exchange that will offer a range of health insurance options. Such a system will make it easier to regulate the health insurers and monitor the system. I'd like to see an Exchange system that includes all Medicaid and Medicare recipients as well. True fairness demands that every American receives the same choice of benefits at the same choice of rates."

Off topic but im kinda shaken by bill moyers' documentary pulling all those old LBJ NSA phone calls. (NSA used loosely. More like his national security apparatus)
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I mean the similarities to afghanistan and to obama's deliberative approach are just stunning. Question is, if it ever becomes clear to Obama that the war becomes unwinnable, does he have the strength and resolve to end it?
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I posted this on this thread because im kinda hoping Joe Klein will be tempted to see the tapes and kinda let us know if they have any impact on his appraisal of our war efforts.

[...] Joe Klein at Swampland at Time: There are a couple of aspects of this historic vote that deserve notice here: [...]

Demos business as usual!

Louisiana purchase of $300 million (Bribery)

Jesse Jackson: 'You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man' (race card)

But even some of the old faithful are having a bout of conscience.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112002618_pf.html

One aspect of the health plan for federal employees seems not to have seen much discussion around here: employees pay a significant portion of the cost of whatever plan they choose. Uncle Sam pays more than half the premium, but the employee covers the rest. Also, there are copays and deductibles in most of them, and many are HMOs that considerably limit access outside the plan.
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I'm not all that typical,but just so we can have a rough order of magnitude here, I estimate that I'm paying more than five grand a year for medical care even though I have Blue Cross and Blue Shield through the federal plan. And that doesn't include such off-the-plan items as optometrists and dentists (with rare exceptions that never seem to apply to me).
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This is the same plan that Congress has. It's not gold-plated, but it's pretty good despite its defects. I may pay several thousand dollars a year for all health care, but what I get is in the aggregate worth far more than that (at least at today's prices).
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The obvious questions for anyone looking about for health care are: How much coverage, and at what price? With so many different plans still in play, and with major changes still likely, how can anyone know whether they will be better off under the new regime? Ideology aside, what's good about the legislation and what's bad? SZ seems closer to the truth than anyone else whose commentary I've seen. Maybe the High Sheriffs should hire him to blog here.
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Meanwhile, it's not a bad idea to put Congress under the same plan as everyone else. Not that the federal plan is gold-plated, but it's pretty good, and I'm certainly not complaining about it, considering the alternatives. Congresspeople who remember how the federal plan works will indeed try to get similar benefits out of the new exchanges if they're lumped in with millions of ordinary folk. It's amazing how concerned they get when their ox is the one being gored. I've seen traffic lights in DC adjusted because some Congressperson didn't like their timing. Imagine what they could do if they decided they didn't like the medical exchange they were assigned to.
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Single-payer remains the only way to tackle all (well, most) of the vices of our current health care system. I just don't know how we can get there from here.

Joe Klein:
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Still looking for that correction...

[...] Senate Health Care Vote – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

[...] Senate Health Care Vote – Swampland – TIME.com [...]

Had to laugh at this, Joe:

The question David Gregory should have asked next was: So if you want more competition, as you say, are you in favor of lifting the anti-trust exemption that health insurers now enjoy?

Expecting Gregory to be any more than a head-nodder to whatever pablum spews forth on his program is expecting far too much from him. He's the lightest of lightweights.

Hell, he was peddling the mammogram and pap smear lies this morning as if he had just received the publicity release from Karl Rove, himself.

Pathetic.

If it takes this level of debate and discussion and still leave one puzzled by the way HCR has been discussed and reported on thus far how can one expect the folks who have little time to spend on this issue to resist the lies and distortions spread by the insurance scammers..

The whole Sunday talk show game is replete with guests delivering platitudes and hosts who absorb the lies and deceits of the "Leibermans" without demur.

The Senate's "Democratic plus one Independent" Gang of Four is a curse on our body politic. To say I am very disappointed is putting it mildly.

Health care reform is now an inevitability, but do Republicans scar the accomplishment so much with their rhetoric that the public buys their argument and reform becomes a dud?

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