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Why Bad Healthcare Policy Makes for Bad Politics, Too
The Democrats seem hobbled by small-scale protests that would have been quickly dispatched with teargas and mass arrests had they come from the Left. The Teabagging-Birthmen have saved some of their sharpest barbs for the Senatorial gerontocracy, issuing threats of hypothetical death under "Obamacare." The fabulous "Death Panel" lies have become the story, winning the day by virtue of being seriously considered. If only the Left's fact-based claims against disastrous, NAFTA-style trade agreements received such vigorous media attention. Investors Business Daily went so far as to use Stephen Hawking to slander the British National Health Service, saying that the physicist would have died under the socialized system. Hawking, of course, is British, and credits the NHP with keeping him alive.
But the problem here is not bad strategy -- it's crappy policy. Obama's healthcare plan -- full of odd stakeholder triangulations, backroom deals with Big Pharma, and lavish concessions to Chairman Baucus and private insurers -- is confusing and falls way short of the campaign's lofty rhetoric. Establishment pols say political infeasibility makes single-payer healthcare a non-starter, but the recent political tragicomedy unfolding in VFWs and gymnasiums across America have only left the Left dispirited and brought the Right, smelling blood, to the warpath.
The spontaneous grassroots energy of 2008 has evaporated. Only some unions and groups with built-in mobilizing capacity (and long-term relationships of institutional dependency with the Democratic Party) are confronting the Don't-Tread-On-Mees en masse. And things are only getting worse; the political stupidity of responding to a non-existent mass constituency, so-called "centrism," advances towards its perverse end: The "public option," almost the only good thing about this proposal, is going to be dropped.
But this is the bed the Administration (and the inside-the-Beltway institutional Left) made for itself. Instead of demanding what we know is best (single-payer universal healthcare) and compromising on a not so great improvement (a public option competing against the private vampires), the big Left-of-Center institutions started out with middling demands, and here we are, left with nothing.
As the teabaggers make clear, this is about a whole lot more than healthcare. For the town hall crashers, healthcare is a proxy fight in a broader war of attrition that seeks nothing short of an early hobbling -- nay, overthrow -- of Obama. Yet without a healthcare plan that's worth standing up for, I don't think I'm down for confronting the crazies, utterly terrifying though they may be. We should be willing to compromise, but the absence of a public option would be pure capitulation.
12 Comments so far
Show AllGood to see someone who can see through this. The Dems would like nothing better than to blame their failures on the evil R's rather than their own cowardice and incompetence.
Learn about natural medicine/functional medicine and start asking your doctor about these treatments. If he/she balks, find another doctor. It's the only way costs will be controlled and the monopoly broken. Oh, and push for the Access to Medical Treatment Act plus HR 3394, 3395 and 3396. All are designed to stop FDA from protecting pharmaceutical companies from competition and to protect doctors from losing their licenses for healing their patients wiht "unapproved" treatments.
It would be bad enough if the "Democrats' cowardice" was the crux of the problem. Unfortunately Obama operates in full Chicago mode, making deals with the devil and whoever else can afford to pay to play.
Change we can believe in ?
"Good to see someone who can see through this. The Dems would like nothing better than to blame their failures on the evil R's rather than their own cowardice and incompetence."
cassandra, if you have visited some of the other progressive sites lately, you might notice how distracted they are when they talk about guns and race and use those two as the scapegoats when the real culprits are Congress and the White House. I am so sick and tired when even good progressives and liberals write another "blame the gun toters" or "blame the angry white men" article.
Here's another trick I thought about on stopping Big Pharma. Import as much hemp food and medicine products as you can. Hemp is supposed to be great for health. :)
Jennifer--Hemp is great--it has omega 3 fats, altho you need much more from veg fat as animal fat. But we ought to just grow it here--It's a great opportunity for rural economies and small business entrepreneurs.
I rarely go to those other sites and when I do I often find as much mindless assent as from their counterparts on the right. The politicians and their masters have been using the "divide and conquer" strategy to great effect, at least for them.
I do, sometimes, go to lewrockwell.com (libertarian) and today there was an article by Paul Craig Roberts who was once Ass't Sec of Treasury under Reagan and associate editor of the WSJ. He wrote a really good summary assessment of what's been going on in the financial and political world. Don't know if he's recanted suppply side stuff but I do wish both sides would put aside their differences and work on consensus issues. We'd be a lot closer to peace and prosperity if we'd been doing that all along.
cassandra, on a bright note, Ron Paul is trying again to legalize industrial hemp federally. HR1866. I was surprised that even Dana Rorbacher supports the bill. I'm guessing that most Democrats might support HR1866 but I would be tickled if more Republicans actually joined to support it. But then again, in North Dakota, liberals and conservatives put aside their differences and supported legalizing the plant for industrial purposes and CA was there except for Arnold's veto similar to Gray Davis's veto. That's kind of weird given that I would normally expect conservatives to be for the drug war and liberals against it. Sigh, glad I'm indie. :)
Its been legal to grow Hemp in Canada under licence for some years now. The North Dakota farmers know a good thing when they see it.
Obama is going down the tubes and taking health care with him because he is stupid, in spite of all his grand education. The verbal left has a communication problem. Palin speaks and people listen and the left screams lies, lies, and more lies. Palin does not lie; she breaks every thing down into its simplest format, good and bad. The adjectives she uses, whether they are true or false, are irrelevant. The people that listen to her hear only good and bad, and all the left can do is talk about the adjectives. Now no matter how you slice it that is stupid, to lose the issue debate arguing adjectives. The young that supported Obama see him as a failed leader, the independents see him as a debt monger with no benefit, and the left see him as a sell out. If Obama wants to salvage his one term presidency, and that is where he is at because he would have a hard time getting elected dog catcher right now, he needs to improve his communication skills and lead. Obama should stop playing the “I’m ok you’re ok” game and start playing “the good the bad and the ugly” game. Learn how to speak to we the people. Make the healthcare debate about us and not about healthcare. If you were one of us then you would know the adjectives, do not argue define. Unfortunately Obama and the people he has surrounded himself with are just too stupid.
Don't worry Daniel Denvir. What do you want to bet that Obama won't give the insurance companies an extra trillion dollars of public money and call this a "public option".
Since the Dems have never defined it, they can pass any bill, declare victory, and call it a "public option" can't they?
i'm pasting this post in other similar topics too:
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below is an excerpted paragraph from the NY Times article today. the salient point is the quote from that world-respected bastion of Capitalism...the ECONOMIST magazine..
when THE capitalist journal of the world gets to that point of a "stern editorial" against americans criticizing and misleading about what Britons OPENLY acknowledge as a SOCIALIST system and DEFEND it despite imperfections -- that means it's the USA and americans who are out of the loop!!
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Arguments against the health service by Republicans overlook the fact that while it costs half as much per person as the American system costs, “it delivers results which are on some plausible measures actually superior,” The Economist said in a stern editorial. “And it does this while avoiding the disgrace that so shames America, of leaving around 46 million people, some 15 percent of its population, without any form of health insurance.”
how much will national health care cost us????
NOTHING.......ZERO......ZIP
in fact it will save us
RIGHT NOW
the OUR GOVERNMENT spends $3300.00 dollars per person per year on health care.........then the rest of us pay thousands more
in ENGLAND where they have national health care....their GOVERNMENT spends $2900.00 per person on healthcare
and THEY have universal coverage
so we ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE..... we just are not receiving it.....
why not???
how much will national health care cost us????
NOTHING.......ZERO......ZIP
in fact it will save us
RIGHT NOW
the OUR GOVERNMENT spends $3300.00 dollars per person per year on health care.........then the rest of us pay thousands more
in ENGLAND where they have national health care....their GOVERNMENT spends $2900.00 per person on healthcare
and THEY have universal coverage
so we ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE..... we just are not receiving it.....
why not???