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All Politics is Local: What Healthcare Reformers Forgot
Some old adages survive because they are true. No matter how you deliver the message - email, snail mail, voice mail, text message or old-fashioned word-of-mouth - if you forget to keep it simple and keep it local, your issue or candidate will lose.
The right-wing went into high-wind to scare seniors - a huge voting block - about healthcare reform. And why not? All politics is local.
Tell a senior citizen you are going to raise property taxes for new schools and it won't matter for even a moment that the money is for their grandkids' education - those seniors will vote no. Ask any number of local or state candidates for office. Seniors, more than any other voting block, vote their pocketbooks and vote their own immediate well-being.
Don't get me wrong, I love older folks. In fact I am getting to be one. But many in the 65 years old -plus generation only hear that you are going to cut Medicare spending - sounds like you are going to cut their health benefits and what you spend on old people. Then they hear the scary, if tainted cries of the crazies saying lots of other unfriendly-to-the-older-set dribble and there you go ... a political revolution has begun. It's hard enough for many to survive on the retirement they have, so why wouldn't potential cuts be scary?
We'd be in healthcare reform heaven right now if some brainchild in Congress or the administration had sold it this way:
- We're going to close the Medicare Part D, drug-benefit donut-hole;
- We're going to end the Medicare Advantage subsidies paid to insurance companies;
- We're going to preserve and protect Medicare benefits with no increase in premiums for seniors.
Nirvana. Political gold. No matter what you put forward in the rest of the healthcare reform story would have been safer and far less worrisome to the entire nation. But you all scared the seniors, and now you are paying the price of inelegant and shifting messaging.
Political miscalculation isn't pretty to watch. And it is unfortunately going to reinforce what seniors were worried about in the first place - being lied to about health reform and being maneuvered to their detriment. Perhaps because we all watched a fairly brilliant campaign strategy pile on top of a fairly arrogant Republican collapse in 2008, we expected some political savvy to endure.
Maybe if you had been a little less sure of yourselves as the new face of politics and political strategy, maybe we'd be talking about truly getting everyone in this nation covered instead of wondering how little we can see passed and still call it reform at all. The American people deserve better - seniors and all others.
You forgot politics 101, boys and girls. All politics are local, Tip O'Neill once said. Seniors wanted to know seniors would be helped. Oops.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllI agree, Obama's arrogance and hubris and inexperience got us into this mess. Plus,it didn't help that he's has been taking the ill considered advice of Rahm E. and Co. Rahm E. is a BIG CORP. insider and ex-banker so we know where his loyalties lie. Obama has to choose who he's with here. He's come to the crossroads that every President comes to sooner or later. Does he as his predecessors BV$H 1 & 2, Reagan, Clinton etc. equate our Nat'l interest with the needs and desires of the Oligarchs that own America or does he stand with the other 99% of us?
I don't think "reformers" forgot. Reform was handed over to corporations who have long known that there is profit in confusion.
Obama was not hoodwinked by Rahm or anybody else. Obama told us "single payer is the only system that can provide univeral health care" but would only be feasible if we were "starting from scratch", and that we needed "to build upon our tradition of for-profit insurance".
What if Lincoln had taken the same approach to dealing with slavery ?
Slavery, after all, was a tradition not only in the south but also the north.
"Slavery, after all, was a tradition not only in the south but also the north."
Someone that knows a bit about real history! Amazing.
You are right. Slavery was (is) quite popular in the north.
Some great info and books on 18th century slavery, pirates and modern slavery:
http://www.counterpunch.org/rediker09032009.html
healthcare reform heaven if...? Wow. Then I suppose we'd be in finacially great shape heaven if Obama and Rahm had bailed out the common man rather than the bankers' men instead of doubling the Bushie's bailout of the incompetents.
This health care reform went south for Rahm and Axlerod when the people WITNESSED that Mr. Obama was willing to facillitate a massive cheat against the people. Plain and simple.
Personally, I find statements involving politics and economics like "Plain and simple" to often be anything but. We're all free to pretend that a rolling collapse of the world's banking system would have been an inconvenient but necessary punishment for bad business decisions. Certainly the entire episode was galling in the extreme. Can the greed of the elite and right down through the middle class be tamped down enough to avoid a future round of similar folly? Probably not.
Greg R
I think America's history is that it will not be unless major economic restructuring is done. We have had these collapses ever since Alexander Hamilton got his way.
You're presuming in your rhetorical question that (a) the massive giveaway was the only possible way to avert "a rolling collapse of the world's banking system", and (b) that said "rolling collapse" would have wiped all banking storage devices clean, destroyed the internet connections, killed everyone who knew anything about banking, and generally returned us to the 10th century.
I don't think you can support either presumption!
What if that manufactured crisis had been solved by stripping all the decision-takers of their wealth and sacking them, and then reconstituting as credit unions any still-troubled banks that seemed worth keeping around?
I wonder, when Medicare goes bankrupt as it is expected to in 10 years, if there will be a bailout for seniors' healthcare like the TARP bailout which the banksters and insurance companies immediately recieved when their overspending and excessive copensation came to light.
You already know the answer. Limits on a person's allowable lifespan will be promptly enacted by Congress!
is it not already bankrupt? And those that say it is solvent for now are probably the same liars who tell us unemployment MAY get to 10%. As for the life time allowances you mention, Congress funds research labs for those very "purposes."
Healthcare reformers?! Like who, for example? Obamacare has nothing whatever to do with reforming health care.
As a senior myself, I certainly don't see any objection to my government spending less per capita to provide universal health care than the existing system does to deny it.
The real problem, of course, is that neither seniors nor anyone else is being told the plain truth. Hardly surprising when the OMB isn't even allowed to develop relevant costing information for the only solution that actually makes sense. And that's entirely deliberate, not merely a communications strategy oversight.
Excellent comment.
Great comment. What would it take to get single payer costed out? Who decides that the OMB will or won't do this?
The CBO actually will be scoring a single-payer bill. Stay tuned. Watch for the work being done by Rep. Anthony Weiner. He's doing great things in the face of great obstacles.
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
Unfortunately, the Office of Management and Budget is a part of the "unitary executive" under the control of your imperial presidency. According to its web site, "OMB's predominant mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies."
So any OMB costing of single payer would have to be authorized by the same guy who took it "off the table" in the first place, and that seems unlikely to say the least. The Congressional Budget Office could possibly do something, but that would depend on the will of the legislators who haven't exactly been gung ho about single payer either.
Donna Smith is correct in many ways. Most seniors find themselves living with a constant bombardment of 24 TV Cable News at home, in doctor's offices, etc. Since personal security is the primary issue for most seniors they are afraid of young men and women harming them. Talk show host Dave Ramsey goes on and on about retired people having to eat "alpo."
The one change I would make is to say not just that politics are local but so is any true sense of community. Progressives would go a long way if we praticed the art of being neighbors.
Good point that last.
from http://dons-review-law-politics-science-philosophy.com
Pressure is mounting on President Barack Obama, just as it is on people like me who have been laid off for seven months and face employers who say there will be no jobs for the foreseeable future, or—if lucky--minimum wage jobs, just to feed my son and wife and keep a roof over their heads—and mine. Good News! After trying everything but selling my body to science, I MAY have a 40-hour-a-week job as a security guard at $9 per hour. That’s $1 per hour less than unemployment pays me. But, you see, unemployment will run out.
Oh! Did I mention that I’m seriously considering dropping the wonderful COBRA health insurance that my slippery union affords me since my January layoff at $374 a month. That’s just for me. Not my son or wife. I also have “prediabetes” and a heart condition in which the bottom chambers receive no nerve signal f rom the main “branch bundle” of nerves.
There are others. A group has been started on LinkedIn. It’s at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2248131
My ad reads: “Laid off 7 mos. COBRA is $374 a month. Just for me, not 8-y-o son or wife. Protest? Join me? Not pay for Sep or Oct? Get media story?” The group is “Health Insurance for the Unemployed/COBRA Protest.”
And there are others. A group is now touring this nation of corporate divisions—not states. The U.S. is one big corporation, with divisions. The group is called “Mad as Hell Doctors.” They’re on FaceBook. I’ve invited them to join the new LinkedIn site. Their website: http://www.madashelldoctors.com/
Their home page says:
This is not a campaign. In campaigns, there are spectators. This is a movement.
Everybody plays.
The Plan: Mad Doctors Hit the Road
On September 8, 2009 a group of dedicated Oregon physicians will take the message of Universal Health Care "on the road" in a wrapped and branded Motor Home headed for Washington D.C. Our cross-country mission: to stop in big cities and whistle stops alike, conducting pre-booked, local and national media appearances for a curious press. Every move we make along the way will be recorded on camera and then edited and uploaded to the internet that same day.
Our message to the President and Congress is clear:
Single Payer is the Solution. We Demand it Now.
Ahhh! But the corporations, the bailed-out corporations have it rough too—but their employees still have health insurance—the best in the country—and huge homes in the Westchester suburbs and food to feed their five kids.
Citigroup, also, has gone through its own kind of “hell” since the meltdown of 2008 and still is. One of its tax managers involved with the melee of saving the bank and making sense of the input of common folk’s tax dollars from the U.S. government, since the subprime mortgage housing bubble burst last summer, says: “Everyone has had it hard here. I work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and weekends!”
Now facing the “Audacity of Dopes,” the dopes who got laid off and have no health insurance—because that’s what they are in our great Corporation of United Divisions aren’t they? Dopes? If they got laid off, they must have deserved it. Didn’t plan for it. Were too stupid to get $50,000 starting accountants’ pay WITH a $35,000 bonus at Citi.
FINALLY, with the Greats of Wrath prepping to visit his house in D.C., Mr. Obama, writes the Associated Press (Fawning Corporate Media, FCM), will deliver a major prime-time health care address to Congress next week, opening a push to gain control of the debate that has been slipping from his grasp under withering Republican-led attacks. The Stupids. The new lager-minders of the new Auschwitzes.
Obama's speech likely will have NO single-payor (government-payor). Hear that Mad as Hell Doctors?
Mr. Obama those doctors coming to your town are already MAD AS HELL. This might get them a bit more riled—as riled as a coma patient waking up with half-inch oozing bedsores on his buttocks, ankles and head. Your bedside manner--an eloquent, beautiful speech delivered with supreme confidence followed by a weak-kneed compromise to the United Stupids of America, the Republicans, won’t cut it. Or rather it will be like lying in a hospital bed at 3 a.m. suffocating on your own mucous and saliva because you have no call bell to summon a nurse to suction your trach tube and allow you to breath.
Several lawmakers say Obama must convincingly show that he can reduce the cost of pending health care plans. Nonpartisan budget officials have said Obama's proposals could increase the federal deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. So WHAT!? Maybe we could stop maiming innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq and letting our own women and children die in our so-called nation, if we took $1 trillion from the defense budget, which is 20 times the rest of the world’s put together.
Did I mention that “I MAY have a 40-hour-a-week job as a security guard at $9 per hour. That’s $1 per hour less than unemployment pays me. But, you see, unemployment will run out. And, did I mention that I’m seriously considering dropping the wonderful COBRA health insurance that my slippery union affords me since my January layoff at $374 a month (unemployment is $405 a week). That’s just for me. Not my son or wife.” But, you’re right. I made mistakes at my last job. “A long list of gaffes” as one of my annual reviews read during my nine years there. Why did they keep me there for nine years? You’re right. I don’t have the smarts to get $85,000 a year my first year at the Citi tax department, fixing a blowout caused by others paid millions more in the years going back to Mr. Reagan.
Excellent summary of the real world impact of institutionalized greed and callous neglect of a decent security net by our Corporatocracy.
Congress needs to get off their ass and attend to the war against Americans by corporate goons right here and stop the fucking wars for war profiteering crooks. I hope the congress people are polishing their resumes. If they haven't radically moved to help those like you, they will ALL be replaced.
You and your family should not be going through your current economic distress while these bank crooks are laughing at us with their taxpayer funded bonuses. Bernake should be in a cell with a REAL cobra. We can tell him it's a government provided health care net for the unemployed so he should be grateful. We won't even bill him for each bite the cobra "dispenses" to improve his health through neurotoxic sedation.
~ WHEN THE LAUGH OF $ATAN WA$ HEARD IN THE PEOPLE$ HALLS OF U$ CONGRE$$ ~
THIS OLD WORLD ORDER OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT OF OUR POORER AMERICANS NEEDS ENLIGHTENED POLITICAL MINDS AND HEARTS TO VIEW GOD DIFFERENTLY THEN $$$…. NO MATTER WHAT THEIR POLITICAL PARTY AFFILIATION ???
WHEN WILL OUR WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS ABATE THEIR ASSAULT ON POORER AMERICANS WITH THEIR MONETARY CONTROL OF OUR IVORY TOWER U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER ???
THERE ARE NOT MANY MORE DISTRACTIONS LEFT WHICH ARE AVAILABLE FOR OUR WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS TO HIDE BEHIND IN NOT TAKING PROPER CARE OF ALL OUR AMERICANS IN A HUMANE FASHION !!!
RALPH NADER ATTEMPTED TO EDUCATE AMERICAN VOTERS ABOUT U.S. CORPORATE POWER IN AMERICA AND HOW THEY CONTROL OUR CONGRESSIONAL PEOPLE THROUGH THEIR POCKET BOOK (POLITICAL DONATIONS). * WITHOUT THE DOUGH $$$ THESE U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD DO NOT GET RE~ELECTED TO CONGRESS.*TO STAY IN POLITICAL OFFICE IN AMERICA,ONE HAS TO BARTER YOUR VOTES IN CONGRESS AND REPRESENT POWER INTERESTS IN RETURN FOR THE BUCK$.
POORER AMERICANS HAVE NEVER HAD THE $$$ LOBBY TO INFLUENCE THIS CORRUPT POLITICAL CONCEPT (of horse trading political votes for political contributions) TO ACHIEVE PROPER HEALTH ~CARE OR LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR ALL OUR MIDDLE ~ CLASS AND WORKING POOR AMERICANS.
AMERICAN IVORY TOWER U.S.CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD HAVE PASSED FEDERAL LEGISLATION IN WASHINGTON DC TO SPEND 50 BILLION AMERICAN TAX $$$ ON THE INTERNATIONAL FIGHT AGAINST AIDS OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS WHILE THEIR OWN AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING TOLD BY THIS SAME U.S.CONGRESS THAT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE AND PROPER LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR MIDDLE CLASS AND WORKING POOR CITIZENS IS UNAFFORDABLE.
*** WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS (WHO ARE ONLY 1% OF OUR USA POPULATION) SADLY ALSO CONTROL HOW OUR U.S.CONGRESS SPENDS THEIR BUDGET TRILLION$ AND HAVE OBVIOUSLY FOUND MORE WORTHY INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS THEN OUR OWN DESPERATE AND NEEDY POOR TO ASSIST !!!
~Poorer Americans Nationwide only get 400 million $$$ per year for legal representation allocated them by CONGRESS~
Middle Class and Working Poor Americans are unable to afford proper legal representation in their Civil, Criminal and Family Courts of law all across America causing tremendous hardships nationwide,but these great minds and callous hearts in our American Congress have found others Worldwide more needy then their own citizens who are being falsely incarcerated,wrongfuly executed,losing their homes or apartments,losing child custody or visitation with their children etc�
Not being afforded proper legal representation by our U.S. Congress has created a total breakdown of the American judicial system for our poorer Americans because the our U.S. Courts punish all of us little people if we are not assisted with proprer legal counsel.*It is a known fact that our average Middle Class and Working Poor Americans without proper legal representation in all of our American Courts of law lose their legal cases to the better financed who are able to afford lawyers.
Lawyers For Poor Americans is now actively in the hunt for International Countries and Leaders Worldwide to help raise 5 Billion Dollar$ for our slighted poorer Americans who have had their own American Congress turn their backs on their desperate needs in not affording them proper legal representation.
Troy Davis and Mumia Abu ~ Jamal are 2 perfect examples of American citizens who never had proper legal representation or defense investigations afforded them by our U.S. Congressional Leaders Of The Free World in their initial criminal trials in (Georgia and Pennsylvania) who might very well have to pay the ultimate price of possibly being completely innocent and falsely executed in the near future.
These two poorer Americans are among tens of thousands of legal cases nationwide that never were afforded proper legal representation or proper defense investigations at their initial trials……**We the public really have no idea if these men are innocent or guilty until they both are given fair legal representation at their new future trials.
Improper murder trials take place in Third World Countries all the time. *** Why should average Middle~Class and Working Poor Americans in the Wealthiest Country Of The World be treated as if they are living a Third World Life Style ??
This is the first of many www International pleas by Lawyers For Poor Americans for other leaders and countries to help raise the needed monie$ to correct these blatant injustices that have been inflicted on poorer Americans for the last few decades.
Lawyers For Poor Americans has many other written articles that can be viewed with any www search engine by our name or our telephone number.
Lawyers For Poor Americans is a www lobby group of volunteers that sing out about the decades old neglect,abuse and injustices being inflicted on our poorer Americans that have become Crimes Against Humanity issues for the International World Court to investigate.
lawyersforpooreramericans@yahoo.com
(424-247-2013)
The economist Michael Hudson has shown that the U.S. has successfully completed the transition from democracy (however imperfect) to oligarchy, and what he calls debt-peonage or simply, slavery. What is more, in a time of real scarcity, in the win/lose American world, the losers must be allowed to die. Blinded by the false sense of available oil based abundance, we become blinded to the real increasing scarcity brought about by that very oil-based false abundance. Nature is naturally abundant, but we are murdering her....To quote Heart of Darkness: "the horror, the horror!"
Close the donut hole for prescription drugs without demanding negotiated prices and encouraging off patent alternatives?!!!
Sorry, that is not a benefit to anyone. It is more subsidy to Big Pharma.
Wake up. Until the FDA is under control and free speech is permitted for low cost real alternatives to the current range of medical choices nothing will be cost effective.
Start with Medical Savings Accounts for all, not just those with insurance and including Medicare recipients. Give them to people on Medicaid. Let everyone pay cash for primary care without approval from anyone. Administrative costs would fall for the gov't and insurance companies. Gov't would certainly have the right to audit Medicaid accounts for appropriate expenditures, but these would extend to alternative practitioners. In medical practices where they have moved to cash only, their prices have fallen 30-50% while they made as much, or more, money. No, this doesn't solve everything but, with this and the FDA under control prices would fall and quality would increase. And just think, no more "which doctors take Medicaid?" Medicaid recipients could go to whatever docs they wanted to, or chiropractors, or naturopaths or dentist (so many dentists do not take Medicaid that some people can't get their teeth fixed) and pay cash just like everyone else.
You are right -- of course -- we should negotiate the prices for meds, and I should have included in the first step. Thank you for reminding me...
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
We need to rebrand Private Health Insurance into "CORPORATECARE"
Cold corporatecare will do you in.
Cold corporatecare will put a corporation between you and your doctor
Cold corporatecare will make you wait for APPROVALS and AUTHORIZATIONS from overseas operators who now see your personal information and know more about you than your spouse.
Cold corporatecare worries about no one except their SHAREHOLDERS
Cold corporatecare wants you dead AFTER you pay your premium for the month
Cold corporatecare could care less about you as a human, it is a COPORATION, what do you expect?
I like your idea for reframing the issue.
Donna, at age 69, I "vote my pocket" because it's now so shallow. The social-security pension does not leave much room for error, and the stock shares (Microsoft, mutual funds) that I purchased long ago for my IRA had lost 2/3 of their value by the time I wised up and sold them last year.
I lead a very frugal life --I'm a vegetarian, I cycle rather than drive my car, my internet connection is my sole extravagance-- but I really have no idea whether my small fixed income + my meager savings will last me the rest of my natural life, given the relentless increase in the cost of living. So yes, I do indeed vote my pocket, and must.
Precisely my point -- you must do so and so too do millions of other seniors. My mom too. To not reassure you that your healthcare benefits would be safe has been a grand error.
Donna Smith, American SiCKO
I believe linking the word 'reform' to health care was a major blunder on the part of reform advocates, allowing the insurance industry and other opponents of reform to successfully tap into the inherent fear of the unknown of a great number of Americans.
The phrase, 'Medical Security,' brings to mind two of the most familiar and successful (and sacred) government programs: Medicare and Social Security.
Perhaps some of the fear can be alleviated by referring to 'Medical Security' instead of 'Health Care Reform' in future discussions.
Y'know, you make an *excellent* point here. I definitely think you're onto something - the very *sound* of "Medical Security" is reassuring.
Now, how in hell do we make it go viral? Can you post your suggestion and argument as a main article here for a start?
Very, very well caught. I'm envious!
I'm glad you see merit to my idea, however I am not a writer. Please feel free to expand on the idea and submit your own article here and to other blogs and websites. Just help me get the idea out there.