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Public Health Before Wall Street Wealth
Wonderful. The 13 Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee get one faintly rational Republican to join them in a meaningless stab at health care reform and it throws the media into a titillated frenzy about what it all means. It means very little.
The main thrust of the proposal is to forcibly submit even more customers to the tender mercies of the insurance industry while doing nothing significant to cut costs. Insurers will now pretend that the burdens on them are onerous and will demand concessions to make this an even bigger boondoggle for the medical profiteers than George W. Bush’s prescription drug coverage initiative.
The insurers’ leverage with the few moderate Republicans and with conservative Democrats will prevent the merging of the Baucus bill with the more serious attempts at reform in other Senate and House proposals. While President Barack Obama was celebrating Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, for being “extraordinarily diligent” in working with the Democrats, she was already proclaiming the exit strategy she will use if the bill becomes worthwhile. “My vote today is my vote today,” Snowe said Tuesday. “It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.”
The health care debate has become a convenient distraction, for both political parties, from the far more pressing issues surrounding the banking meltdown. As important as health insurance is as an issue, representing 16 percent of the economy, and with so many uninsured, no sane person can deny that the current system is a sorry mess that needs to be changed. But why now and not after a growth economy has returned?
The answer is that politicians from both parties just love the health care game because it allows them to assume reflexive but irrelevant postures in that tired old debate about “socialized medicine” versus “free-market choice” although it has nothing to do with either ideological fantasy. Consumers do not have meaningful choices as it is—many have no coverage and others are frozen into some company-sponsored plan—and it is insulting to the social democracies of Western Europe to suggest that anything comparable is even under consideration in the U.S. Congress.
The health care issue should never even have been brought up at a time when the economy is reeling and we are running such immense deficits to shore up the banks. Instead of fixing the economy by saving Americans’ homes and jobs, we are preoccupied with pie-in-the-sky rhetoric on a hot issue that should have been addressed in calmer times. It came up now because, despite all the hoary partisan posturing, it is a safer subject than the more pressing issue of what to do with Citigroup, AIG and General Motors, which the taxpayers happen to own but do not control. While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plots in secret with the top bankers who got us into this mess, we are focused on the perennial circus of so-called health care reform.
There is an odd disconnect between the furious public debate over health care reform, with its emphasis on the cost of an increased government role, and the nonexistent discussion about the far more expensive and largely secretive government program to bail out Wall Street. Why the agitation over the government spending $83 billion a year on health care when at least 20 times that amount has been thrown at the creators of the ongoing financial crisis without any serious public accountability? On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that employees of the financial industry that we taxpayers saved are slated to be paid a record $140 billion this year.
If you want to know who actually runs this country, just look at the phone logs, released by court order last week, revealing Geithner’s nearly constant calls to solicit the advice of the fat cats who caused the banking implosion. It’s the same as when he was chair of the Federal Reserve in New York, before Obama appointed him to his current job. Only back then, as he blithely ignored the impending financial meltdown, it was easier to have lunch with the bankers as well as to chat by phone.
In an earlier Freedom of Information exposé, The New York Times reported in April: “An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions. His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.”
Nothing has changed since then. Meanwhile, we all get in a tizzy about fake efforts at health reform as immense decisions are being made to ensure the health of financial institutions that should have been left to die.
- Posted in
36 Comments so far
Show AllAgreed, Mr. Scheer, that the question of health care allows the Rs and Ds to appear as philosophical opponents; agreed also that the Wall Street bailout, for which funds were easily and quickly found, dwarfs the cost of a decent national health plan.
Would you agree that the US military and its increasingly privatized global bootprint also represent a significant expense, which meets no significant opposition in Congress, and which elicits only cheers from the corporate media (some of which have financial incentives to maintain the status quo)?
If, as you say, the health care debate is a distraction from a larger issue, couldn't talk about the bailout be seen as a distraction from examining the cost of ongoing military occupations, whose value is dubious at best?
Jethro T.
Excellent point as I was thinking the very same thing. The cost of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq is, I believe, approximately 500 billion dollars. That money could certainly be put to far better use here at home by providing for the basic health care needs of every one of its citizens in this country. In addition, the feasibility of a single payer system would be most viable if the military budget would be slashed by at least 20 per cent. One of my buttons and bumper stickers sums up this issue very well:
Healthcare Not Warfare.
Meanwhile, we all get in a tizzy about fake efforts at health reform ...
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It's the same reason that a $530 billion dollar defense budget for 2010 is proposed with no screaming tantrums from congress and the media about how to pay for it.
Any spending that might benefit we the people must be put under the microscope for excruciating examination.
Money for bankers, oil men and defense companies faces no scrutiny because they're entitled to it.
The insurance companies take our money and use it to bribe congress so they can take even more of our money. We're financing our own suffering, and it's not just health insurance: at every turn there is some economic vampire waiting to feed on us.
Yes null, corporate profits from this scam are far greater than they would be if the US working class were all slaves. If we were slaves, the corporations would have a vested interest in feeding, clothing, and sheltering us as well as keeping us healthy.
US fascism enables corporations and government to bleed ever more money out of each worker and tosses them aside when they are worn out.
Its not fascism my friend, its simple corruption.
"bleed ever more money out of each worker and tosses them aside when they are worn out."
Too correct. And if you think thats bad, you should see how they treat their illegal employee's when they are of no further use. Its even worse.
I believe he's basing it off of what Mussolini once said on the merging of business and government. I can't remember the quote word for word from that former Italian dictator.
You're right about the "illegal" worker. They don't get benefits and if they're let go off, virtually no payment is given to them.
I am totally opposed to illegal immigration and amnesty in any form just to be clear, but the way some of these business's and Rancher's/farmers treat these folks, throw them out on the street if they get hurt, replace them with recent illegals who work for less, abuse the ladies.......I'd cheerfully hang the bastards myself.
The fault is with our government and the business shills, not these folks.
I'm somewhat mixed on amnesty and immigration but I'm with you on the abusers which are government and those bad employers hiring illegal labor.
It amazes me that the claim is Obama needs to get a bill--any old bill that would signify success. They claim that Obama stacked the deck with Clintonistas in order not to replicate the green mistakes of the early Clinton administration (ignoring the fact that "change" included an end to the Clinton monopoly), but you would think that he would notice that Hillary wore her failed healthcare reform like a ball and chain. Obama's failure portends to be worse--worse than No-Child-Left-Behind. Who cheers for that bill?
As for the timing....In order to fund his latest scheme for his corporate masters to drum up business and profits, Obama intends to chip away at "entitlements", like Medicare. This is something not even Bush could get away with. Just like no Republican could challenge welfare Reform, it took a Democrat. A Democrat, like the ones we are now expected to pressure to do the right thing for the common good.
The timing is right on the money.
Robert Scheer has just written the defining article on this farce that they are calling Health Care Reform.
He points out first of all that whatever, if anything that comes from this posturing will be nothing to help the American citizen. Except put more money into the pockets of all the usual suspects.
His best point is that this should NEVER have come up at this time. And rightly points to it being used as cover for all players to escape dealing with the real and pressing problems we have.
Pointing out that Little Timmy is a weak knee'd tool of Wall Street who has betrayed his country and fellow citizens is a bit redundent though.
"Meanwhile, we all get in a tizzy about fake efforts at health reform as immense decisions are being made to ensure the health of financial institutions that should have been left to die."
This is the clear truth and kudo's to Robert Scheer for this truthful article. Any legislator that would vote for thios farcial and fradulent piece of trash they are calling a bill is simply dishonest and betrays the trust of the American people.
My personal disgust with this Congress/administration and some of it's un-American members is growing. May they rot.
Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds
I found this story on Bloomberg.com this morning and find it hard to believe that it is not on any of the news shows or the papers that I read.. Check it out we knew it but the fact that no one seems to care is just a statement on how dumbed down the Americans really are.
This is not a distraction. It is as the author also characterizes it, "an even bigger boondoggle for the medical profiteers than George W. Bush’s prescription drug coverage initiative." A new, improved trillion-dollar boondoggle on the backs of the slave class is hardly a distraction.
It is also relevant to remember who appointed Geithner, for Obama is no less a creature of the financial interests than Geithner. Once you can admit that Obama is as much a front as Bush was and that the American people have no representation, it is easier to see healthcare on a continuum with the financial heist and perpetual war. The root of the problem is the same: the betrayal of our country through auctioned elections and corporate controlled media.
Would Scheer be more approving if the media were discussing the latest missing blond? As pathetic as the discourse is, it is a sign of the resistance being raised that this piece of business didn't get quietly passed in August.
So despite the "shut up and sit down" implied in his characterization, - I assume he has coverage? - I still think it is an issue that has raised awareness within the public that we are not being well-served by congress and the media, both institutions having record low approval ratings. If we can win on healthcare, we may be emboldened to win on finance reform, reforming the permawar machine, and election finance. Heathcare is something many people care passionately about and understand, while they feel less empowered to opine on foreign policy, military strategy or structured finance. To make headway on any one is to make progress on identifying and chaining the elephant.
Sioux
FORK: Your pitch is right on! Great post!
after the healthcare reform is done we will be paying costs similar to the europeans - except that they get free health care, basically free mass transportation and free college tuition. If we added those costs to our tax bills we pay right now then we pay MORE than the europeans for less services. What a great economic system. They talk about zombies out there but it seems to me the vampire or the werewolf is more accurate - blood suckers stealing the life right out of us while we simply bare our throats and just beg that they make it quick and painless.
The democrats better get in front of the coming populist revolution or the republicans will make us the boogieman and then there goes our ruling majority. And if the baucus bill is any indication of the current democratic leadership's ability to get things done - who cares?
Insurance is just a way of spreading risk over many insured. 'Single-payer' is just a further way of spreading risk over your entire lifetime: once in you lose the choice to get out (and they lose the choice to toss you out if you get sick). This lack of choice makes single payer kinda like a public utility. You buy water or gas from this company, which has a gov't granted monopoly to sell water or gas in your municipality. In return for its monopoly status, it is required not to rip you off. Which, in the case of health insurance, would make the rates so much lower it's a win-win for most people.
I'm calling on people to STRIKE, until the gov't gives them the chance to choose a single-payer plan (like Medicare, but not, since Medicare has problems of its own). This is a one time choice: if you choose in, you are stuck with it for the rest of your life. If you choose OUT, ditto. Many Americans won't go for it: but then they are stuck with the current private system, which will dump them the moment they get sick. How screwed up are Americans? HALF THE COUNTRY WOULD STILL CHOOSE THE PRIVATE SYSTEM IF GIVEN THE CHANCE. That dumb half of America DESERVES to be ripped off by private insurance corporations. But the smart half of America DESERVES better. There is nothing in single payer that REQUIRES universal healthcare; that is a separate issue. (single payer offers so many savings that universal healthcare is actually possible, however, but again that is a separate issue).
We need to just NOT show up for work on Jan 15, 2010. And, if we don't get our opportunity to buy into a single-payer plan, NOT show up for work Feb 15. And so on, once a month, until the gov't breaks down and offers us this eminently sensible alternative (let the stupid half of America figure it out on their own, usually by getting sick and going bankrupt). Since HALF of America actually wants access to a single payer plan, we wouldn't have to lose many days of work before the gov't gave us what we want: a choice. There's a great deal of power in our numbers. 'Make me do the right thing', said FDR. This is one of those moments.
Sioux Rose
UBREW: Interesting date you "randomly" chose, my friend! Eclipses are real shaker uppers to the status quo, and a big one occurs on January 15, 2010 in Capricorn, the sign OF the whole business ethos and its infrastructure, as in, THE establishment. As I learned at a talk based on eclipses, these actually recur on a l9 year cycle, and this next one is the same one that took place on January 15, 1991 when Bush-the-elder began the original Iraqi debacle. It will be interesting to see what dreams, or nightmares, this portent sends as echo.
How come nobody talks about the health care crisis coming from people stressed out traveling to and from work? Fixing traffic congestion and paving way for public transportation in the suburbs and cities would enormously cut down health care costs. Did you know that a lot of drivers choose to stop by a fast food joint simply because it feels like a break point between sitting through traffic jams? I can tolerate 1 hour traffic jam on I-64 (it is worse in Northern VA on I-95 and I-66 in and around the Beltway) but how many can do that? Do the oil companies care? Do the insurance companies care? Do the drug companies care? Certainly not for your health but for their money. More than talking about insurance, let's talk about fighting for preventive care on matters like this.
I don't believe that we will come close to getting a single payer plan because there's no money to pay for it until we cut down Wall Street and military pork. I do support single payer but our deficits are way too high with all that war spending and feeding Corporate America endless amounts of money from us or borrowed from China.
The next time you call your representatives to stop spending for Wall street or the military, tell them to replace that with spending for transportation reform for healthy workers and basic health care coverage for everyone and leave the middle punks for supplemental stuff.
Interesting that you bring up transportation and its relation to health care costs. I couldn't agree more as I myself have long trips to work and back once again. However, insurance still matters and transportation will have not have any connection to health care for people who are unemployed, working from home, or traveling to and from work outside rush hours when the traffic is rather low. Basic coverage for health care for all deserves to be changed from privilege to a basic human right.
I disagree with you that we don't have enough money to pay for single payer. We are already paying more money for privatized health care. I agree that reining in military spending and Wall $treet bailouts will provide more room for single payer but so too will changing from privatized money care to health care for all. Right now, we are indirectly paying for Big Insurance to rob us and the current bill being passed will mandate more of that kind of theft. Even the Republicans are not sure what to make of it even though Big Insurance gives them the most money. Think of it this way. Single payer health care means borrowing less from China.
Interestingly, the rise in health-care costs slowed down markedly during the Clinton Administration.
I mention this because it confutes the oft-heard contention that Clinton was a corporate shill.
If Clinton had been a corporate shill, the health-insurance companies would have been making a killing--as they are under Obama. This is how logic can help us.
From the New York Times, 11/27/1994:
"President Clinton spent much of the past two years campaigning for sweeping changes in the health care system. Last year he and his wife, Hillary, contended that drug companies and insurance companies were profiteers.
"While the Clinton proposal to overhaul the health care system failed to be considered by Congress, the health industry has been under heavy pressure to restrain prices...."
The article goes on to cite a 1994 report by actuaries from the health financing agency, writing in the Health Care Financing Review:
The 7.8 percent increase [in health care costs] was the smallest since 1986, when health expenditures rose 7.2 percent. The only smaller increase in recent decades was in 1961, when medical spending rose 7.1 percent....
The actuaries found that from 1990 to 1993:
*Growth in costs slowed in every personal health care category except dental services. The latter grew faster as "concerns over the spread of AIDS increased purchases of supplies" and pushed up prices.
*The increase in hospital expenditures slowed to 6.7 percent from 10.7 percent.
*The increase in doctor bills slowed to 5.8 percent from 10.3 percent.
*Inflation in retail drug purchases slowed to 6.8 percent from 14.5 percent. Americans bought $49 billion worth of prescription drugs and spent $26 billion on over-the-counter drugs and medical sundries in 1993.
*The Federal Government shouldered 32 percent of the nation's health bill, up from 28 percent.
Federal and state spending on Medicaid rose 9.2 percent in 1993, down from 15 percent in 1992 and almost 25 percent in 1991.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/27/us/cost-of-health-care-in-the-united-states-is-continuing-to-grow.html
"The health care debate has become a convenient distraction, for both political parties..."
And I hear next they'll be playing up the energy issue.
Also, Scheer is right, the banking is a much bigger issue than the health insurance and military issues. The dollar amounts are much larger and the theft is much more blatent.
Pitchfork writes:
"So despite the "shut up and sit down" implied in his characterization, - I assume he has coverage? - I still think it is an issue that has raised awareness within the public that we are not being well-served by congress and the media, both institutions having record low approval ratings. If we can win on healthcare, we may be emboldened to win on finance reform, reforming the permawar machine, and election finance."
Uh ... "win" WHAT on "healthcare"?? Seriously -- four more years of simpering and corporate flim-flam from the birthday suit in chief? What the former Democrats are going to bring about -- maybe it's high time -- is a "left"-teabagger alliance.
Pitch Fork replies:
Sorry for any confusion, Dem-dat-dare. I did not I agree with current legislation. I meant a win such as SINGLE PAYER could lead to real reform in banking, defense and the all-important reform of how our elections are conducted. A win, like HR 676.
"is a "left"-teabagger alliance."
Not a bad idea considering what the right wing tea baggers are doing now.
"A left teabagger alliance...:
Exactly! We need to make some friends. It may not be an overnight success but it has to be done. I think we'll be surprised, on many issues, how similar we are - especially in comparison to the corporate greedheads and their pet politicians.
Don't we all know one of the strongest tools the oligarchs have against We the People is divisions among us? "Divide and conquer!" I see it everyday.
Especially with those who "hate Obama," this is our opportunity to build a bridge: "Yeah, I think Obama is doing a lousy job, too, and here's why." and then you share information, your hopes, your dreams, your ideas about democracy, community, etc.
"...financial institutions that should have been left to die." Is that really enough? I say get the ill gotten money back. Just as in any crime. Retroactively go after the bank bonuses, every dollar of hedge fund money, dismantle the health insurance industry. Imprison for life, those who breached the public's trust. Strip the felons of every penny of their wealth. There are a list of thousands, including our current and past presidents who must go to jail. Sound radical? It wouldn't, if we actually followed the rule of law and didn't just pay it lip service. Looking forward, not backward, are fool's words, not a constitutional lawyer's. Until we get serious about punishing very bad behavior, we will continue to steep in the ever present and multiplying neocon filth and moral decline.
A new world order is indeed called for. It could begin in the U.S. from the grassroots up. It could be used to finance our Single Payer Medical Care. Globalization at its finest. I'd call the proposal Enhanced Incarceration. Imagine, Cheney in a cage in the public square. People pay big bucks for 5 minutes with a pointed stick. People could come from a truly globalized world bringing hard cash back into our country. Don't make it cheap. Fill up the cages. There's no shortage of treasonous criminals in the U.S., if only for a fair judicial system. Would anyone argue that this would not be an incredible revenue stream for our country? What are you thinking, dear reader? Savage? Unthinkable? If you are a U.S. taxpayer, you directly pay for worse. Forget about Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, a million dead Iraqi innocents, Afghanis, Pakistanis, drones, depleted uranium? Americans are hypocrites. We act as if we are civilized while we cheer on torture, illegal wars, occupations, the bully's approach to force, crushing people's movements, a bloated and putrid military mentality. See, this way, at least we could punish the guilty, even if they were American citizens, instead of killing foreign innocents. All we'd want are fair trials. Let the people handle the rest. Get the dollar rolling again. Ahh, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Addington, Yoo, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Geithner, Summers, Paulson, Greenspan. See, it's no problem getting a really long list together of clear cut criminals. I would go $10,000 for that sharp stick, for Cheney and Bush alone. And don't forget about the advertising money. Are you kidding me? We'd have the highest ratings in the world. But,if we were really sticklers about the rule of law, Obama's in jail, too, and we'd have no congresspeople.
Health care before warfare, too.
Charlie Jackson
Texans for Peace
http://www.texansforpeace.org
Here's what We The Screwed People should do right away:
All 50 million uninsured - flood the ERs!
No matter what the problem is - a pimple, a sniffle, hell - make some shit up, it doesn't matter - the point is to overwhelm the system consistently until 'our' government is forced to take action.
And, of course, pay nothing, and ignore the bills when they arrive. (I'm up to over $2,000 and counting!)
Sure, your credit will take a hit - so what? Chances are, if you're like the rest of us, that doesn't matter much anymore.
Also: any of 'us' who still have money in one of the Big Banksters, or own stock in one or more of the 'bad' corporations - close the account, sell all stocks.
Or, we can always continue with Plan B: you know, zero action but lots more whining from the comfort of the recliner... I mean, it's working sooooo well so far...
Health care most definitely should be on the agenda in these times of worst income inequalities in US history, when it so clear the richest one to five per cent live like royalty and the rest even when it comes to the basic human right of health care, live like stray dogs.
Furthermore, if that 2 or 3 trillion dollars the Wall Street gang robbed the people in the USA got taxed at the rate of 90 or more per cent for all of it over one billion per person as a tax on criminal gain we could easily be moving toward having funds available to do a lot of things we need to do. Then single payer could save another trillion, and cutting out endless war could save another trillion. Do the math, neo cons!
AD
It's The Moment We've Been Waiting For & Conditions Are Just Right
"Based on?"
"Everything's going wrong at one and the same time, what with the health care crisis, ten percent or more unemployment, record numbers of foreclosures, public education under attack and pensions soon to follow, not to mention time's running out on account of perpetual wars + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday."
"Anything else?"
"The banks own our government."
"Shouldn't we just try harder and look towards supporting better candidates in the coming elections?"
"Been there, done that, but, alas, those we elect invariably sell us out, not just last year but time after time, and what've we got to show for it?"
"Steadily worsening and more precarious lives for most of us."
"The answer being?"
"We rise up en masse."
"Who'll lead?"
"In mass uprisings everyone's a leader."
"Initial goal?"
"Our seeing to it that President Obama and Congress establish a single payer health system such as Medicare for all, whereupon, empowered by our victory over the powers that be, it'll be up to us, the what sort of wor
"Do we have any option other than rising up en masse?"
"There is no alternative."
I do know there'll be a Poor People's march next June...from New Orleans to Detroit.... no details yet though but keep it on your radar screen because it sounds like it might be big.
The Baucus health care bill is a gigantic disappointment. No public health insurance plan. No universal coverage. No real price controls. Billions of taxpayer dollars for insurance companies.
It's time for health care reform advocates to move on and push for the best and simplest reform plan there is: Medicare for all.
Tell your members of Congress that unless they support Medicare for all, you won't support them:
http://bit.ly/medicareforallpledge
Please listen to Leonard Cohen...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHoOTXEfUNo&feature=related
States, or towns should start their own health insurance companies, and compete against the private insurance companies.
If enough states and towns join together they can put most of the private insurance companies out of business.
That's a great idea. Decentralization of insurance could certainly pave the way. The state and local pols need to stop going to bed with Big Insurance.
if given enough rope, maybe we'll see these entities hang themselves, or at least make it apparent to all Americans where their true interests lie, and it's not with the wellness of the population..financially or medically...