All Life Is Problem Solving

This week many of us are recalling and quoting Teddy Kennedy’s words “. . . the work goes on. The cause endures. The hope still lives. And the Dream shall never die.” But, in all the focus on these words, I think Teddy’s cause is getting lost. From earlier in his speech, here are his words about the cause.

”The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political Party in this republic and the longest lasting political Party on this planet. [Read more →]

Yesterday afternoon, My wife and I, who live in Alexandria, and my daughter, who lives not far away in Arlington, drove to Reston, VA, to attend the Jim Moran/Howard Dean Town Hall. Jim’s been our Congressman since we moved to Alexandria in 1991 and Reston is familiar territory to us because we lived there for 6 years from the Mid-’70s to early ’80s. We’ve always liked Reston, and didn’t mind at all that the Town Hall was at South Lakes High School, because it seemed like familiar territory to us. We wanted seats in front, so we got there at about 3:50 PM, and then waited until the doors opened at 6 PM, and the event started at 7. This gave us plenty of time to talk to others who were close to us in line.

When we arrived, among the first things we saw were some health care opponents we mistook for tea baggers, beginning to set up their demonstrations outside the school. Later it became clear that they were members of Randall Terry’s anti-choice group beginning to display some of their costumes, which included one guy in a robe or cover-all with an AK-47 painted on the back of it. Once we got in line, things were friendly enough. The OFA were organized and handing out signs, we all took some and signed some paper registering with them (I think this is a duplication of earlier registrations, because I’m continuously getting e-mails from them). While we were standing in line, a lot of cordial conversation went on for some time among pro-reform people including a former missionary of the Mormon persuasion, who had become a Democrat because of the suffering he had seen in Mexico while on a mission, and another Navy veteran who had access to Tricare, and because of that experience was a strong supporter of public plans. [Read more →]

The tributes to Edward Moore Kennedy are appearing everywhere today and I do not know if I can say anything meaningful that others have not already said or will say in the next few hours, other than what Teddy meant to me. [Read more →]

Tomorrow evening is Congressman Jim Moran’s (D-VA) Town Hall at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA. This is the only Town Hall Jim has scheduled during the current recess. Governor (and Dr.) Howard Dean will be joining Jim to answer questions, and it promises to be a very interesting meeting. During the past few weeks, Jim has moved from being relatively silent on his support for a PO, to more explicit support for one. He has appeared on MSNBC supporting the PO and saying how important its presence is in any reform, and he has sent letters to his constituents, including myself, thanking them for visiting him and explaining HR 3200, the House version of Health Care Reform emerging from various committees, and its public option among other features of the bill. What he has not done however, is to explain why he no longer supports HR 676, a Medicare for All bill, even though he co-sponsored it in the past, except to say that it is “off the table,” and also why he will commit neither to voting “no” on any bill that does not provide for the “Medicare for All” solution he supported in the past, nor, at least, to voting “no”on any bill that does not provide for a strong public option plan that can provide meaningful competition for private insurance companies. Without such a commitment, which by the way, would not be satisfied by a commitment to HR 3200, which according to CBO, will not provide such competition, Jim Moran’s support for the PO is mere lip service, since he leaves himself entirely free to sign on to any “reform” measure that the Administration, in its infinite wisdom, asks him to support. [Read more →]

In the past few weeks we’ve begun to see e-mails, face book groups, and other communications calling for a March on Washington to support health care reform. Yesterday, sTiVo at Firedog Lake called for one, and one facebook group is trying to get one going for September 13th. I also think that a March for health care reform would be a good idea. The reason for it is that the dynamic of internal Washington legislative processes has grabbed health care reform by the scruff of the neck and dragged its dynamic sharply to the right. The undemocratic power structure comprised of industry lobbyists and embedded congressional caudillos from small and unrepresentative rural states, the “rotten boroughs” of American politics, is blocking reform with a significant public component designed to evolve toward Medicare for All, and is threatening to substitute for such an outcome a series of changes that will end some of the worst insurance abuses, but retain the structure of abuse and accelerating cost inflation, while extracting the price of a giveaway of an expanded market for the insurance companies backed by mandates and subsidies at the cost of at least $1 Trillion. [Read more →]

Yesterday CNN broadcast a panel discussion moderated by Anderson Cooper called “Extreme Challenges” featuring one of Washington’s most bi-partisan icons, David Gergen, among others. There were many things during the discussion that didn’t compute from where I sit. One of them was the reporting and commentary on some recent CNN poll results. Another was a comment by Gergen to the effect that there’s no way the American people will ever accept a single-payer system in which there’s Government run health care for all. First to the poll results.

CNN found that 83% of Americans are satisfied with their health care while 16% are unsatisfied. They also found that 77% think that major changes in health insurance are necessary, while 21% think that such changes are unnecessary. Now, it’s often difficult to interpret poll results, and there’s a great tendency to over-interpret them by pundits who aren’t necessarily trained in survey research. However, CNN’s commentators seemed to think that these results somehow involved a contradiction, rather than simply a badly constructed poll, or perhaps their own inability to make sense of poll results. [Read more →]

In President Obama’s weekly radio address yesterday he said:

“Now, the source of a lot of these fears about government-run health care is confusion over what’s called the public option. This is one idea among many to provide more competition and choice, especially in the many places around the country where just one insurer thoroughly dominates the marketplace. This alternative would have to operate as any other insurer, on the basis of the premiums it collects. And let me repeat – it would be just an option; those who prefer their private insurer would be under no obligation to shift to a public plan.” [Read more →]

Today, in an editorial, WaPo continued its campaign against the public option, asserting that it must, as a practical matter, be abandoned. Here’s the heart of its argument:

”This is not a matter of ideology but of political nose-counting. The kind of comprehensive health reform that the president rightly wants — changes that would extend affordable coverage to millions of people and help slow the growth of health-care costs — requires 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats could muscle through some provisions with 50 votes, but a Senate rule limits how much can be done through that route. Measures such as establishing insurance exchanges or imposing new coverage requirements on insurance companies, as President Obama has been emphasizing, might be vulnerable to being stricken. And there’s no way to amass 60 votes with a public option in the bill.” [Read more →]

The strategy I outlined in my last post may not work out. There may be no HCR bill resulting from it. In that case, progressives ought to introduce a back-up plan offered just yesterday by Scarecrow at Firedog Lake, based in part on an analysis of Dean Baker’s.

Scarecrow’s proposal has the following steps. First, use reconciliation in the Senate to get by the filibuster and to expand eligibility for Medicare/Medicaid, which would be paid for by increasing progressive taxes and ending Medicare Advantage subsidies. Second, move as many of the uninsured as politically feasible into these programs. Third, fully fund Medicaid and give Medicaid recipients the same basic coverage as Medicare recipients. Fourth, fill in the gaps and doughnut holes in Medicare. Fifth, “reform Medicare provider payment practices, including adequate funding for rural areas, better allocations to primary care etc, and reforms of provider payment incentives using a stronger MedPAC.” Scarecrow points out that all of these can be part of reconciliation which requires only 50 votes, plus Joe Biden’s for passage. [Read more →]

The MSM commentators are now practically hysterical with joy. After months of giving a voice to the most ridiculous fictional stories about proposals for health care reform using the public option idea, they, along with the President’s incredibly inept messaging, have helped to move public opinion to the point where in some, though very misleading polls, more people oppose than favor a reform bill with a public option. So, now the President seems to be walking back his preference for it while telling everyone that his position is the same as it always was. This, of course, has stimulated a strong counter-reaction among progressives in Congress who are now saying that at least 60 and perhaps as many as 100 House progressives will not vote for a reform bill without a public option. [Read more →]