All Life Is Problem Solving

Watching Alan Grayson defend himself against the likes of Alex Castellanos, Wolf Blitzer, Joe Johns, and Gloria Borger, with only an occasional assist from James Carville, who can’t exactly call his wife “a nut job,” I was struck by how Alan defended himself from the false equivalence attack of the punditocracy. When these folks tried to establish a false equivalence narrative and attempted to characterize Alan as a “nut job” behaving the same way as Joe Wilson and the birther and death panel types, Alan defended himself by saying that unlike these folks he was telling the truth and “truth is an absolute defense.” And every time that attack came up he just wrapped himself in the truth again, and refused to give an inch to the media mavens. [Read more →]

Bill Egnor blogs about whether or not we’ve been expecting too much from President Obama. He says:

“If you look at the Presidency from the point of view of the Constitution, it really is not a powerful office except in terms of what it prevents. It is really and primarily a check on the powers of other areas of our government and military. The president proposes no legislation, none. He can only do one of two things with a piece of legislation; he can sign it and make it law, or he can veto it. This is intended to be the final check to prevent the Congress from making a big mistake. They can override a veto, it is true, but when a veto happens it requires a reexamination of the bill by both Houses and a two thirds majority in each in order to overrule the President.”

I don’t think we’ve been expecting too much from the President, and I do think he’s been letting us down. Bill’s contrary view is based on the idea that the written constitution makes the Presidency a relatively weak office, and that, under it, it is not the President’s job to legislate or to take the lead in helping us to meet America’s social, economic other problems. But, I think this is a very anachronistic interpretation of the constitution which the United States has left far behind long years ago. [Read more →]

The President has been hiding behind bipartisanship, Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, and various MSM types, whose framing of the health insurance reform issues has constantly emphasized all of the obstacles making it unlikely that a robust public option would ever make it through the Congress. During the campaign the President told us all that he favored a robust public option. And since his inauguration, he has told us, from time-to-time, that his preference is for a reform bill with a public option, and on various occasions his statements in favor of a public option have been stronger than that. On the other hand, the Administration hasn’t introduced a reform bill of its own. It also hasn’t said which of the bills “on the table” in Congress are favored by the President. During the Senate Finance Committee amendment process, the Administration apparently did nothing to support Senators Rockefeller and Schumer in their attempts to include a public option in the bill. An Administration that favored a public option would have called various Senators and called in favors to get that Amendment passed. But this Administration went AWOL on its previous supporters. [Read more →]

Mike Lux thinks that the tide is turning on health insurance reform legislation and that “political common sense” is beginning to set in, and make an outcome with a robust public option much more likely. Mike says that Democrats are starting to look at the Senate Finance Committee bill and that it is making them very nervous because they know that voters won’t like it, and they also don’t know how they’ll be able to defend a vote for it. He then gets pretty specific: [Read more →]

The Mad As Hell Doctors arrived in DC Wednesday and held a program in Lafayette Park, just across the way from the White House, calling for the passage of a single-payer, Medicare for All plan by the Congress. The event started off auspiciously, when my wife, Bonnie, and I “met up” with follow Firedog Lake/Seminal bloggers and supporters of Medicare for All, montanamaven, and ralphbon. mm traveled from Montana to get to the event, and ralphbon drove from New York. We greeted one another, started to get to know each other, as people do who have exchanged online but not really met, and received from some of the organizers what we later learned were “white ribbons of hope” to wear.

Within minutes of our meeting in McPherson Square, however, a surprise downpour hit downtown DC, and we found ourselves scrambling into a CVS for mini-umbrellas, and from there to a nearby Starbucks to await a let-up. About 20 minutes later, we emerged to find that the rest of the demonstrators congregating in McPherson Square had left for Lafayette Park about three blocks away. Chatting vigorously (especially mm) all the way, we hot-footed it over there and arrived well before the beginning of the program. [Read more →]

As everyone now knows, a reassessment of America’s strategy in the Afghan War is now underway. Last Sunday, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, in the WaPo, conveniently summarized the options under consideration. There are five. First, is General Stanley McChrystal’s proposal for a major expansion of counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts, including the addition of 40,000 more troops, extensive civilian reconstruction personnel, and expanded and accelerated training for Afghan forces. Second, there is the option, said to be favored by Vice President Biden, of scaling back our effort there, and reducing it to targeted attacks by Special Forces and combat aircraft on al-Qaeda to try to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” them, and to do the same to any other groups of international terrorists trying to operate out of Afghanistan. Third, keep current force levels, but have a broad counterinsurgency focus. Fourth, “limit the mission of any new troops to training the Afghan security forces.” And fifth, reduce troop levels while concentrating “on training Afghan forces and targeting terrorists.” [Read more →]

In the last couple of days, my thoughts have turned to the question of how much Medicare for All legislation could save compared to the present non-system of health insurance. One estimate of the savings we often see in articles on Medicare for All is $350-400 billion annually. This a substantial amount and over 10 years might amount to over $4 trillion. However, I think it may reflect a serious underestimate. In this post, I’ll discuss five categories of savings and talk about the difficulties involved on pinning down good estimates. I’ll also come up with some wild-assed guesses (WAGs). I don’t think these will are very reliable, but they may be better than ignoring a category of savings entirely and arriving at a total savings estimate that’s a gross under-estimate. Also, I’m asking Firedogs who read this post to critique my estimates and contribute whatever they can to refining them. I’d like a real community effort here, to get as close as we can to the truth about this issue. In particular, I ask Scarecrow, hipparchia, ralphbon, Hugh, wesgpc, libbyliberal, masslib, selise, kip sullivan, Valley Girl, NathanAschbacher, HealthSustainomics, blub, lambertsrether, Ian Welsh, jon walker, and montanamaven, along with anyone else who’s been reading and writing about the issue of savings that might be expected from Medicare for All, or who sees a flaw in the estimates we’re coming up with, for help with this. [Read more →]

On September 19, Katherine Q. Seelye, a New York Times “reporter” provided one of the most biased “hit pieces” I’ve seen yet on Medicare for All. The piece is called “Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,” implying that Seelye thinks it’s all three. But what does she say to support her implied characterization. Well, “crazy” is mainly supported by a reference to a scene in the West Wing where Alan Alda, playing a right-wing Republican Presidential candidate refers to extending Medicare to every American as “crazy.”Just as scenes from the television series “24” are often cited by Republicans as an authoritative justification for torture, Seelye, too, appears to believe that right-wing opinions expressed by a fictional character, played by a Liberal, also deliver authoritative verdicts on a policy proposal like Medicare for All. Alan Alda must have gotten really annoyed when he read her piece. Right after her reference to Alda’s comment on Medicare for All, she says: [Read more →]

On September 19, Ezra Klein favored us with an analysis on health care reform in the WaPo. Coming off the results of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2009 Employer Benefits Survey, Ezra makes the following points:

”The truth is we all pay, and much more than we recognize, for health care. . . .”

” . . . Employers pay some, and so do individuals, and taxpayers. And some even hides [sic] behind the deficit. As such, few of us see the full picture. . . . ”

So, we, the people, don’t have a clear idea of the true cost of health care and the true magnitude of the national problem that faces us. But what is that cost? Ezra continues: [Read more →]

There’s a Medicare for All sub-community at Firedog Lake. I’m not sure how many bloggers and commenters are in it, but I think it includes at least: [Read more →]