Healthcare victory party
What does victory mean for the Democrats?
Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents.
Drum:
Even if this is [Obama's] high point, then, his presidency will have been pretty successful based just on his first year. But if he manages to grow in office and accomplish even more? Then he’ll be the most successful president of the past half century.
Although I’m skeptical about the workability of healthcare reform, there seems to be a pretty good case to be made that this was the biggest legislative victory for liberal Democrats since LBJ was president. It may sound strange, but there were only two Democrats in the White House after Johnson and before Obama. Did Carter or Clinton pass anything of this magnitude? Nothing comes to mind (although I’m no expert on their presidencies.)
Aside from the workability question, my gut says that it’s too early to celebrate Obama’s greatness because the fight has just begun. In contrast, Matt thinks that things will only get easier for the Democrats from here on out:
Coverage of the actual content of the bill is by necessity more favorable to the bill than the hokum that’s dominated the conversation thus far. After all, most of what people have been talking about is either straight-up lies—death panels—or hystical mewling about the death of freedom and the gulag. Any time you have medical doctors on television talking about new insurance rules, or newspaper writers drawing up charts showing what kinds of people will be impacted in which ways, you’re into the universe of sober-minded discussion.
I’m not so sure. Given how cynical Matt is about Republicans, shouldn’t he expect them to raise hell about the healthcare bill’s new taxes and Medicare cuts? Then again, perhaps the Democrats’ victory will usher in a new era of Light and Reason, in which the GOP forces of Lying and Hysteria will find themselves marginalized.
Cross-posted at Conventional Folly
18 Responses to “Healthcare victory party”
We are only a year in….and this bill needs serious tweaking.
Not to mention the economy…the economy and jobs…
You can't pay for any of this unless we get the economy in order.
Lets not start worshiping again…he is only a man. A good one, but only a man.
Aside from the workability question, my gut says that it’s too early to celebrate Obama’s greatness because the fight has just begun.
Not only that, the actual bill has to play out as well. Despite Yglesias' implications that most criticisms of the bill have been lies or hysteria, there are significant potential problems with the bill. It does little to hold down costs. It doesn't fix Medicare but rather steals funds from it. It will increase the deficit. Taxes will have to be raised to support it.
Just passing a landmark bill is not enough, it has to be a good bill. Obama's place in history won't be decided for decades.
Yeah, it's far too centrist/Right Wing/Free Market to work… It's going to keep creeping to the left until it works… I can already visualize an Insurance Board to standardize insurance policies so that customers can do some real comparison shopping… I can also see the Insurance companies remake themselves into not for profit corporations, in that Health Insurance is not going to be a profitable business if you can't screw over your customers…
Don Q.,
I wouldn't write a eulogy for the health insurance industry just yet. Thus far, they have managed to curry (extort, bribe, lobby) favor from every administration under which they have existed. They have more power than God, and I firmly believe that they use a great percentage of their profits to keep it that way. I think that there is a good chance that they will emerge from this “experience” stronger and less accountable than ever.
Remember: for every crooked corporation, there is a phalanx of crooked politicians willing to accommodate them.
By the way, I am considerable to the right of your views. But, unlike some expat conservatives, I am willing to admit that if it looks/walks/quacks like a duck, then . . .
Jeff Dreibus
The ability to comparison shop for insurance is nowhere near as important as the ability to comparison shop for medical care (95% of which is non-emergency, to cut you off at the pass). It's the insurance model that the government has pushed that is preventing anything resembling a free market out there. But then again, I'm assuming that you approve of the government messing up private medical care, so that it can justify its “fixes” later on.
The fun has only started. A number of states are suing, and we await the rise in insurance premiums, etc.
I seriously doubt we've seen the last of that.
While not into the celebratory thing, I believe the dems can at least proceed will a greater degree of confidence. As for the suing states, I don't think anyone puts much stock in that, mostly just residual posturing.
Make a list of countries that use a free market system to provide health-care…
If you can't think of any, start asking yourself why? could it be that health-care and capitalism are just not compatible?
Most of which are Southern States which have the worst health-care system in the US, I hope they win… It'll save me a small fortune in taxes…
insurance premiums are going up already. the industry could not have been more foolish to level huge jumps just before this thing passed. Next year you'll be saying insurance just went up 15% and i'll be saying, yawn, beats the 39% before the bill passed.
That issue will be a political ping pong til the system collapses. DLS, there's no way premiums were ever going to go down, and nothing with or without the bill would keep it from being unaffordable within the decade.
No. It used to work quite nicely until a few decades ago, when all sorts of government “regulations” (written by special interests) started messing it up. This is one of the ugly side effects of the hole created by New Deal legislation and the successful bullying of the Supreme Court.
Really? Was that when the word cancer was a death sentence and before the triple bypass and other such goodies were invented ?
Then I am sure that in this whole wide world there has to be a country that uses the “Free Market” to provide health care, but I know for a fact that it isn't in Western Europe, nor is it Canada, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, or Australia…
So please tell me where the “Free Market” is used to supply health-care today… And if you can't think of any place where it is, there may be a reason…
“insurance premiums are going up already”
Well, Anthem was hit with rising costs, it's not just greedy, but the timing was awfully poor.
I wrote a remark about this some weeks ago. Will the insurers cut their own throats, PR-wise?
(To me the real killer is if they are caught paying big bonues, with the jets, cruises, etc., but many who face rising bills won't waste the time to care.)
If they have no choice but to raise rates because their own costs are too high, the limits to what people will pay or tolerate will be reached sooner.
I'm having trouble with what I've read about chemotherapy being worth the cost. Surgeries could definitely be done cheaper. There's no reason that having a baby should cost the same as a small house. And many of those “single payer” systems, are having the same financial troubles that we are. You're also assuming that what other people have done is proof that it can't be done. Sorry, it doesn't. We've had a lot of interference from the political-industrial union, which won't be solved by giving the entirety over the government. As things stand in this country, they'd just do an even better job of feeding the leeches while giving them cover than they do right now.
No they are not… If your base cost is $3000 a year and is growing at a 10% rate, you have a problem, if your base cost is $8000 a year and is growing at a 15% rate, you have a way bigger problem…
I am assuming that other people are at least as smart as we are, and if none of them have successfully managed tho provide health care to their entire population using the “Free Market”, it's probably not possible…
Germany has universal coverage (not single payer) in a free market system, much more free market than our own, in which over 50% is now paid directly from the government — in other words, the real single payer.
So, now I get to ask you: why is it that our prices started soaring out of control when single payer was introduced in this country?
While I am no expert on the German Health-Care System, I imagine that they have price controls
BTW, we don't have a single payer system, nor do we have universal health care/insurance…
Single (1) payer (the guy who pays). Medicare and Medicaid are paid through the government, although there have been a few supplemental policies which are now being eliminated. For those groups (over 50% of spending now), they are on government-run health insurance. We have an equivalent to the German board over here, the RBRVS. It sets 95% of its reimbursement rates from the RBRVS usage board of the AMA, according to AMA's website. So we have price controls also — they're just set by the people representing those getting paid. In other words, the government system in the US is much more corrupt than the more intelligently designed German system. And you want to give the US government's system even more power because. . .?