Howard Dean’s warning for Obama
Howard Dean on ABC This Week:
If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform.
Should Obama take this seriously, or will the Democratic left accept whatever Obama prescribes? In the roundtable discussion after the interview, Peggy Noonan observed,
Maybe it would be good for the president if the left got absolutely furious about something.
It would be good from the perspective of building Obama’s image as a centrist, but will it cost too many votes in the House?
I guess it depends on whether one thinks that Dean has much influence on the Hill. Some people might dismiss Dean’s opposition as sour grapes. As Dean told the HuffPo, he wanted to be Obama’s Secretary for Health and Human Services, but Obama “decided to go in a different direction.” Call me a cynic, but I have a sense that if Dean were the head of HHS, he would be defending Obama’s ambivalence about a public option.
Cross-posted at Conventional Folly
Share This
Related Posts
-
NSA Surveillance Coverage from Germany, France, Switzerland, Brazil and Colombia
Posted on Jun 13, 2013
-
Obama’s Data Nightmare is Europe’s (Handelsblatt, Germany)
Posted on Jun 10, 2013
-
‘Hypnotized’ Western Public Wakes Up to Obama Abuses (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany)
Posted on May 25, 2013
-
Like the Brits and Americans, Europeans Must Re-Embrace Keynes (Die Welt, Germany)
Posted on May 21, 2013
I got news for you, the democratic left ain't the only one who will backlash. WE ALL want the public option, far left, near left, barely left, center, just right of center, midway right of center, A-L-L of us.
The only people who don't are a very vocal M-I-N-O-R-I-T-Y, on the extreme lunatic right who are subject to being herded by GOP spindoctors. Understand that the polls are largely BS, nearly everything you hear about the middle is BS. We want it, the public option. Let private insurance stay and compete with Uncle Sam. We aren't willing to literally sacrafice life and limb so that a super-industry like MedMob can stay fat. Time for them to slim down or perish.
The issue is largely moot at this point…….let's start some threads on Obama's immigration reform.
Whether Obama acts as Ahab (when not acting like Napolean) for the public option or for the whole legislative mess, he discredits himself.
We all know the “public option” is the latest incrementalist move toward federal health care takeover (the result being universal federal health care), despite the dishonesty and disturbed behavior by so many of the effort's remaining adherents. Well, all of us who can think, at least, which doesn't include many of the adherents.
We (who can think) also know there have been numerous problems with this effort (beginning with the deliberate evasion of the cost issue, an immediate disqualifier and obvious serious concern and defect) as there have been with earlier efforts by the Dems, and that there is no need to rush to pass anything like it.
I got news for your, you 'aint a middle grounder.
“let's start some threads on Obama's immigration reform”
Beginning with the gall and hypocrisy of Obama's expressed current position on it, that it has to be put off because we can't do everything all at once? OK.
Given his and the Congressional Dems' track record (notably the lib House Dems), what reform is sought is going to be unpalatable to the reasoned public. A good question will be, will it or won't it be rushed to pass sometime next year in order for its effects to occur prior to the 2010 US Census?
“Maybe it would be good for the president if the left got absolutely furious about something.”
And if the sun rose today…
… again.
If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform.
In the past two days, I've posted twice that I'm no longer in favor of passing a health care bill. The incredibly superficial, logically inconsistent, and patently false representations being batted around by both sides finally has convinced me. More people will have to lose their insurance, 14k a day, and more people will have to go bankrupt, second most prevalent reason, and insurance rates must again increase before people understand what's at stake.
As it is now, the “debate” we are seeing starts with the public option off the table. The real discussion and ensuing negotiation was over before it started because lobbyist's money rigged the table.
If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform.
I fully agree with this statement from Dean. The public option, as I've written here before, is a compromise in the first place. Eliminating it is a cave-in to the right. If that's the plan now, then HemmD is absolutely right –there should be no health care reform legislation at all. Because it *isn't* reform w/o a public option, and a strong public option.
I stand by what I say and know about the iceberg. Captains beware. Saying I ain't a middle-grounder is like saying Obama will have death panels. The distractive BS doesn't even graze the surface of We-The-Jaded in the middle and far out either way of the middle spectrum left or right.
We know who we are, and we know what to think of ourselves. The last thing we'll do is cave to someone else's definition of us. That's why we're in the middle…duh…
Color me naive but I – unlike DLS – do not see the public option as the Trojan horse for universal, government-sponsored health care. I know that many, many folks on the Left – including most likely Obama himself – see the public option as the first incremental step toward government takeover of health care. And to be honest, I WISH it were the first step.
But I don't think that's how it will actually happen. First of all, I don't think the public option will reduce usage of the private health insurance market. Even the most “robust” proposals for the public option only target the smallest group of consumers – those without insurance at all or in rural areas with few options. The notion that somehow the public option will ratchet down costs on a NATIONAL scale enough to drive the private insurers out of business is not supportable – unless the public option were much, much greater than is being proposed.
We keep forgetting here in the din of the public option debate that the crux of health insurance reform is the health exchange. The point of the exchange is to break localized monopolies and give consumers more choice among private health insurers. The public option is only one small player on the exchange and would be limited to certain groups. Moreover, the public option might not be all that attractive, even to those on it.
There's a reason the private health insurance industry supports this bill. And PHaRMa too. And the AMA. They even cut ads in favor it! Why? Because the plans on the table will lead to more private insurance customers, not the destruction of the private market.
Remember that many other countries have a hybrid public-private system too. The Netherlands, for example, covers everybody through either private or public plans.
The notion that we will have either a Canadian-style single-payer or the status quo is a straw man.
“If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform.”
This statement is incorrect, of course, and if still used, dishonest.
Obviously “reform” is not defined as, nor does it compel or require, government provision. (That there is a distinction to be made as well between the federal government and state and local governments is too much to ask of those who are already too heavily challenged in the intellectual or logical realms.)
DLS,
Of course there is all sorts of reform without the public option. Even though I really do want something like a Canadian-style single payer system, I think there will be plenty of reform with a public option. I suspect the heath exchange will open up more competition among private insurers than exists now.
Elrod, you are naive, all right. (“I don't think the public option will reduce usage of the private health insurance market.”) Simply managing the insurers as a heavily regulated and government-ridden kind of cartel would have been sufficient if the Dems did not want to see the private sector start to shrink.
“There's a reason the private health insurance industry supports this bill. And PHaRMa too. And the AMA.”
The AMA nowadays is far from the AMA of the nineteen-fifties.
The pharmaceutical firms stand to gain for the same reason why some providers were eventually led to support Medicare. It's less payment than on the free market, but it's fairly well guaranteed. (Plus, in the real world, sometimes the providers can get a sop given to them even though in practice they're normally underpaid, and the lib Dems like Pelosi are already saying they could “do more” in the way of sacrifices.)
The insurers stand to gain at least for now because the alternative is loss of the market altogether, which stands a large chance of happening, eventually, sometime. The public does not want complete, fast conversion to public (government) health care in place of private care, hence they can stay in the game.
* * *
“The public option, as I've written here before, is a compromise in the first place. [...] it *isn't* reform w/o a public option, and a strong public option.”
Untrue, of course, but revealing (if not surprising).
It is only a “compromise” to the hard-core extremist few who _demand_ 100% government health care (they don't even care or are able to grasp the finer points such as having state and local rather than the federal government do this).
We who are in the real world know what it _obviously_ is: the current incrementalist (as well as indirect, if only on a higher intellectual plane, insofar as the nomenclature and appeal made) approach of choice.
* * *
Good reasons for the rejection of it (or rather, the House bill, if one must be more specific) is not only if its content is defective, and because its proponents and defenders (of _junk_) have behaved so badly so far, but because of how sloppy as well as stupidly rushed this effort has been, which continues a progressive, ever-worse pattern of behavior by Obama and the Democrats, notably the liberal Democrats in the House.
Of course, some of you may actually _approve_ of their misconduct, or wish for even _worse_ things.
“Of course there is all sorts of reform without the public option. Even though I really do want something like a Canadian-style single payer system, I think there will be plenty of reform with a public option. I suspect the heath exchange will open up more competition among private insurers than exists now.”
Well, at least you understand that incrementalism (toward 100% government health care) is not the definition of reform, unlike the more revealing, more mistaken claims by others. You have to realize, O naive one, that there is not going to be “fair competition” with the public plan versus private insurance plans, and it won't (nor was it ever intended to) “keep the private companies honest.” (Facing rigged, obviously unfair competition which itself is dishonest doesn't merit further dishonest descriptions instead!)
It would have been better had the Dems tried something that might have been more bold but at least more honest (and possibly less slipshod than what they've done since January), such as folding Medicare into Medicaid, even being clever and taking some credit for this as a “stimulus” economic relief measure for the states (state governments) in the process. (This would be a bit much, but at least rational, if only in a cynical sense.)
Better still would have been for Obama to keep his word on entitlement reform and repair Medicare before trying to expand the public sector. But the Dems have been not only hurried but, once again, slipshod and often irrational. (I still wonder if it's really a rush to do as much before the year ends viewed as the moving of a “ratchet” that won't be pushed backward later, or if it's misreading the public that is ever more offended by what they are doing, or if it's really due largely and simply to silliness and ineptitude.)
“there is all sorts of reform without the public option”
If the problem largely is one with health insurance now, how about _insurance_ reform?
As I've written before:
* State-wide, region-wide, or nation-wide “community rating” as federal law
* Inter-state and multi-state insurance provision and purchasing availability
* Uniformity of minimum benefit packages (at odds with preventive and “Cadillac” typical Dem goals)
* Pre-existing and other restriction bans
Why has that (in addition to the completely ignored reform of Medicare) been subsumed by the _junk_?
“The notion that we will have either a Canadian-style single-payer or the status quo is a straw man.”
The false dichotomy is real, though it is reworded in the current debate somewhat, in mischaracterizing the current Democratic effort as going “forward” and an alternative to government takeover (it is merely a partial, incrementalist takeover rather than the complete takeover the term implies in its normal usage). The straw man in reality is the routine misstatement that those with concerns or objections insist on the status quo; in fact, that is one of the most frequently known misstatements, actual lies, being told now.
I should add that I had noticed earlier, but didn't bother to address, this obvious misstatement:
“will the Democratic left accept whatever Obama prescribes”
First with the agitated insistence on passing the climate bill, then with this health care effort, Obama is showing that there is no distinction; Obama is one of those members of the Democratic Left (i.e., one of the liberal Democrats).
When the dust settles, we'll have some sort of a public option, in addition to private insurance. That will be a good thing. My brother pastors in the inner-city. Too many of his churchgoers are without insurance, because in this terrible economy, they're unemployed. Medicare is far from perfect, but at least it's something for those who are retired and no longer employed. Why should those who would prefer to be employed – but for various reasons are not – have to face bankruptcy over medical bills just because they're younger?
Well said, Redbus.
Redbus if those your bother pastors to are unemployed why would this matter? They already qualify for free health care? The funny thing is that cost for the poor is really not an issue today even though Manny would like to pretend it is. If you live in a city you can find cheep or no cost health care. Something that is much greater concern should be the lack of access in rural areas to medical care. insurance wont help if you can't get to the health care.