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Baucus Committee OKs a Health Bill, But Not Reform
If every kid in class finishes their homework except for one, guess which kid will get the most attention. That's right, the slacker.
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA.It is Harkin, not Baucus, who has consistently promoted the public option and who continues to argue that it can and will be a part of any final legislation. "Look," says Harkin, "five committees have reported a bill out on healthcare. Four of them have a public option. One doesn't. So you would think the weight would be on the side of having a public option in the bill - and that's where it is." (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
And, when the slacker finally does turn in the assignment, it is invariably a slapdash job that fails to meet minimum standards.
So it is in the U.S. Senate, where the Finance Committee finally got around to finishing its health care reform assignment.
The vote on the measure -- which does not include a public option to hold insurance companies to account -- was 14-9, with all Democrats on the committee and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe voting Tuesday to toss the measure into the legislative sausage-grinder that will eventually produce final legislation for the Senate to consider.
The important thing to remember is that for all of Tuesday's attention to the finance committee vote, the full Senate will never vote on this particular measure.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chair Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has said throughout the process that "the bill that (the Finance Committee) proposes is just that - a proposal."
Harkin is too polite to state the obvious: The Finance Committee proposal is no more likely to become law than the slacker student's last-to-be-handed-in homework assignment is to be awarded academic honors.
That's a good thing because the Finance Committee bill falls far short of real health care reform. It steers billions of taxpayer dollars into the accounts of insurance companies while failing to provide a realistic, humane or fiscally-responsible alternative to their profiteering.
Of course, that embarrassing omission did not prevent the committee's chairman, Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat whose campaign accounts are overflowing with insurance-industry contributions, from hailing his "accomplishment."
Baucus has always fancied himself as the man who would define the parameters of reform. On the committee, he set up an elaborate process for achieving bipartisan "buy-in." He assured everyone that he would get all the warring camps of the Senate Democratic Caucus behind one bill. And he promised that it would be a good bill.
Baucus failed on all three counts:
1. He blew deadline after deadline, delaying action for so long that the entire reform initiative was put in jeopardy.
Baucus patted himself on the back at the start of Tuesday's final finance committee session for puttering away on the project "for 2 years now," as if that was some kind of accomplishment. It wasn't.
Instead of making it possible for the Congress to craft comprehensive legislation before the August break - and giving Americans something real to consider - Baucus delayed for so long and created so much confusion that extremists were able to take advantage of the recess to spin fantasies about "death panels," "massive tax increases" and "creeping socialism."
2. He never achieved meaningful consensus - between Democrats and Republicans and even on some issues among Democrats.
Comically, the chairman bragged on Tuesday that, "Six Members of the Committee - three Republicans and three Democrats -- held 31 meetings to try to come to consensus. We held exhaustive meetings. We met for more than 61 hours. We went the extra mile."
What Baucus did not mention was that the Democrats and Republicans who went through the "exhaustive" and time-consuming exercise did not come to any kind of consensus. (Only Snowe, a regular renegade from the Republican camp, sided with the Democrats on the committee.) In other words, it was a waste of time.
3. He produced a bill that satisfies no one and should infuriate everyone.
Even Snowe, in announcing she would vote for the measure, said: "Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it..."
The ranking Republican on the committee, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, said that "What this mark up has shown is that there is a clear and significant philosophical difference between the two sides."
Grassley's right, up to a point.
The point that the Iowan misses is that neither side - Republicans who oppose real reform and Democrats who favor it - look kindly on the Baucus bill. There's been every bit as much criticism of it from the Congressional Progressive Caucus members as from Grassley's "party of no" colleagues.
Even some key members of the Finance Committee -- such as West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller -- did so over their own strong objections to the absence of a public option.
The problems with the Finance Committee's proposal extend far beyond the fact that it fails to establish a government-run alternative to compete with the private insurers that will be ridiculously enriched by it.
But the lack of a "public option" should make the Baucus bill a nonstarter. As insurance-industry insider turned whistleblower Wendell Potter explained in an advertisement produced by MoveOn.org, the Baucus bill would, if enacted effectively, "kill health reform."
"Take it from me," argues Potter, "the Senate Finance bill is a dream come true of the health insurance industry. If there is no public option insurance companies aren't going to change. The choice of a public health insurance option is the only way to keep insurance companies honest."
Potter's right.
And a lot of senators know that he is right.
That's why 30 senators have signed a letter declaring their steadfast support for a robust public option. Many senators who did not sign the letter have indicated that they will back the public option that Baucus has sought to block.
There is even broader support for a public option in the House.
Perhaps that is why the other four congressional committees that produced health-care reform bills - three in the House and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee -- have included far more robust language with regard to alternatives to for-profit insurance companies.
HELP Committee chair Harkin has not gotten as much attention as Baucus.
But Harkin got his homework done on time - his committee got its work done in July and earned compliments from the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who said: "I could not be prouder of our committee. We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do."
It is Harkin, not Baucus, who is the serious health-care reformer in the Senate.
It is Harkin, not Baucus, who has consistently promoted the public option and who continues to argue that it can and will be a part of any final legislation. "Look," says Harkin, "five committees have reported a bill out on healthcare. Four of them have a public option. One doesn't. So you would think the weight would be on the side of having a public option in the bill - and that's where it is."
And it is Harkin, the chairman who gets his work done on time and right, that we should be paying attention to now that Baucus has finally finished his silly sideshow.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllThree problems to healthcare reform: the process (having reform hijacked by a Senate committee); the players (Republicans and most Democrats); and the leader (Obama is too passive to lead).
Now check out the lede by David Espo on an AP wire report:
Oct 13th, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- Historic legislation to expand U.S. health care and control costs won its first Republican supporter Tuesday and cleared a key Senate hurdle, a double-barreled triumph that propelled President Barack Obama's signature issue toward votes this fall in both houses of Congress.
____________________________________
It's the latest in an endless example of how corporate media spins politics, and reduces it to a two-dimensional, high-contrast comic book.
John Nichols is no I.F. Stone, but compare his straightforward analysis with the ludicrous description of this backwards step disguised as a sideways step as "a double-barreled triumph".
We can look forward to infinite permutations of this shallow and atrocious horse-race dysporting (as opposed to reporting) as the plot thickens.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Here is one: At one point today, the Huffington Post was reporting on its website that this legislative breakthrough is the biggest thing for healthcare reform since Truman. 'Talk about being starry-eyed!
Yep, that's what I'm ON about; thanks for the catch.
It's entirely predictable, but I dread and deplore the usual dumbed-down, simple-minded, comic-book, two-dimensional, horse-race reporting on the "progress" of the No Insurer Left Behind debacle popping up today.
As political peristalsis moves this rancid bolus through the large and small intestines of our bicameral Congress, we'll get increasingly frantic and excited play-by-play.
When Obama's Big Win finally poops out of the Oval Orifice, signed with a flourish, it will be conceded that no, it doesn't smell like roses. But it's a respectable stinkweed!
That's how politics WORKS, dontcha know.
· Yr Obd't Servant
The Baucus bill will become law, because the slugs that are supposed to represent us in Congress know where their bread is buttered.
Three years from now, remember what happened when the Prince of Change and the dogs who call themselves democrats make more empty promises.
The Propaganda Dance.
Obama is getting exactly what he wants.
( Fake health care reform so he can run in his re-election ads as real.)
Insurance lobbyist getting what they want.
Big Phara getting what they want.
Screwing the American people who are really powerless.
Its call porpaganda...
Lets do the propaganda dance again...
and again...
and again...
Included in the Baucus Bill:
Insurance companies can charge Senior Citizens 4x the amount that non-Seniors are charged. Any Seniors out there happy about this???? Here's one who isn't. What a bunch of CRAP. Why was something like this included in the bill? Is this the "Change we can believe in"????
Nichols is right about the hollow bill spewed forth by the Senate Finance Gang, but he's wrong if he still insists that a "public option" has any more meaning than the present idiotic mountain of crap Baucus has labored over. Harkin's bill is just another way to forestall or forever cancel any possibility of single-payer, the ONLY healthcare reform worthy of the name. Call it Medicare for All or whatever sounds best, but the "public option" is just more obfuscating drivel meant to mollify Big Insurance. Why else would they endorse it? Because they're ALL endorsing it now. Because it won't affect their obscene profits and total control of the whole byzantine, fractured process as we now know it.
The public option will guarantee insurance company domination of ALL health care forever. Nichols reveals his stupidity once again. He should know better by now, God knows he's had plenty of time to learn, if only he'd do his OWN homework!
Give me a break!
As I've read all over the place, Obomba’s "Publick Option" (which was surgically spliced out of Bacchus' onerous bill as was discussed above) was naught but a thinly-veiled attempt to make all Amurkans purchase private for-profit insurance. There wouldn’t be any govt-run health care (or health insurance), all there would be is taxpayer-subsidized assistance for those who can’t afford the premiums. The "publick option" would have been naught but a massive boon to the for-profit health insurance system anyway.
What we NEED is Single-Payer HEALTHCARE system (NOT health INSURANCE, health CARE.)
So many of the developed nations of the world already have single payer healthcare in place. Canada, UK, France, etc. etc. etc.
This is the ONLY humane way to administer healthcare. Any other system sends the message that only those with money should be allowed to live should they become ill.
Egalitarian treatment for the poor, working class, and middle class NOW! SINGLE PAYER is the only way.
Skavolutionary78
Single payer means the government finances healthcare through taxes and can negotiate for lower costs from the private providers. It also streamlines administration. There's abundant evidence that this system cuts costs by half compared to the US privateer system. It also ensures everyone coverage, and cleans up massive corruption that demoralizes the society.
Public option means the government joins the private insurers to compete to finance healthcare through premiums. The negotiating power to lower costs isn't there, and neither is the admin streamlining. Still, the government could offer a premium at a lower cost than the privateers, picking up some of the current uninsured and some of those with private policies. But the privateers will respond by lowering premiums for the healthy, to keep them, and raising premiums for the sick to purge them. The result is that more healthy people will be insured but they won't be subsidizing the sick/poor. And the privateers will experience some pressure to cut costs but there is no assurance they will have to cut costs by much at all. The public plan will be forced to pick up the sick/poor, and the imbalance of sick/poor and healthy in the public plan will force it to be subsidized with taxes. The rightwing will then have a field day claiming that the public option can only compete through public subsidy.
The only way for the public option to work is with strong regulations to prevent privateers from cherry-picking. But this is extremely unlikely in the current anti-regulatory environment and this financing scheme would still lack negotiating power and admin streamlining. Single payer is very likely to be implemented correctly and achieve universal coverage and best value.
Bill Clinton gave us the same crap when he gave us Nafta, and
outsourced our industrial base to China. Hillary ended up
on the Chinese farm club as a director at Walmart.
If we the working classes get sold out once more, Obama and
the rest of his gang can kiss the next elections good-bye.
What a Crock of S**t these "leaders" have served up to America.
Reform, my ass!!
The American people, accustomed to being led around by the nose by a blatantly fake, toxic, intoxicated MSM, will probably accept the whole stinking pile, happily, and 'all-the-way-dumbed-down,' like some pig in a filthy, crap-heap....joyfully....
just like anti-Muslim-warfare, world-banker controlled, trip/wire-rigged, organized/crime-economies, campaign finance non-reform, the cut-throat, Republican-propaganda/slander/machine, corporate-media/sewage/regurgitant/news..stinking to high heaven, and making everyone sick,etc.,etc.,etc.......artificial poverty, CEO trillionaire, billions of starving poor, no end to the miserable system of predatory, incurable capitalism. Mother Earth just got raped and murdered...again...greedy matricide?
There something wrong with this picture....I think....
Duuuuuhhhhhhh, health care reform ?--- duuuuuuhhhhhhhh.
The rest of the world is rolling on the ground, laughing at us....
The beacon to the world...AMERICA??????? what the hey???
America ----sleep on, sleep on, sleep on.....snorrrrr
dumb and dumber and dumbest.....
Single Payer Is The Solution, Health Insurance Companies The Problem
"Why?"
"Only through a single payer system such as Medicare for all can enough savings be generated to provide universal health care."
"Generated how?"
"The insurance companies profit + overhead of 30% minus nonprofit Medicare overhead of 5% = at least a 25% savings."
"Otherwise?"
"Just like now, thousands of Americans will die every year from having no or insufficient health coverage.*"
"Cause of death?"
"Insurance company greed."
*Harvard University online report last month
CBS Evening News reported on the health plan enjoyed by Members of Congress. It requires no reform. It is the most lush, least expensive (to them) health care plan in the nation.
Voted to toss the American Public into the Corporate sausage-grinder is more like it.
THE question.
How much money has Harkin accepted from the insurance industry?
Des Moines is a city dominated by insurance companies.
Harkin has been a very good progressive, but what is his relationship with these companies?
Obama must dissolve the Finance Committee immediately, replace it with progressive Liberals and Republicans (if there are any!) and make Dennis Kucinich the head of the new committee. Obama must then declare war against the health insurance companies and simultaneously educate the general population about the only legitimate alternative, single-payer.
Explain via national TV, mass emails and grass root organizations how difficult it will be for the vast majority of Americans to fight the well-heeled and well trenched, right-wing, corporate elite along with their control over our air waves, Supreme Court and politicians.
Direct Americans to a website where real debates are waged about where we are, how we got here and where we should be going.
Motivate the public by explaining that we have a substantial majority that won't let our corporate masters to dictate policy anymore.
Alas, we will just have to pray that we don't get sick and lose everything. Our dreams are put on hold yet again.
Your moniker is apt, space cadet. Brush up on your high school level civics: The President can't dissolve committees in the Congress. He's the head of the Executive branch of government, and has no authority over the Legislative Branch.
Plus Mr. Obama already went on TV, addressing a joint session of said Legislative Branch. He didn't mention anything about single-payer. In fact he bent over and grabbed his ankles to the extent that he indicated that he'd even accept a bill without the public option.
Baucus and his crew really earned their money from Big Insurance...every prostitute on the street is green with envy.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Its the plan Obama suggested when he said any new health care bill must be "uniquely American".
The only good thing is that the proposal is finally out of committee. And out of Baucus's (and Snowe's) hands.
Now we will see if Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama (Rahm Emanuel) will step up or screw up.
No reform, no bill: Kill it.