WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

"In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

House Democrats want to raise income taxes on high-income individuals instead and are reluctant to abandon that approach, while recognizing that they will have to bend on that and other issues so that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can maintain his fragile 60-vote majority support for the bill."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100106/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

"Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor...."

There you go.
Yet, despite the evidence, so many will still rally to back him and instead attack progressives. Maybe it is time to lay the blame where it belongs without deflections, apologies, excuses, deflections or rationalizations.

What exactly are these "high-end health insurance plans" we keep hearing about?

Are wealthy people flocking to hospitals with De Luxe diseases?

Are the privileged opting for First Class injuries?

People who spend a lot on their health insurance might have good reasons for doing so. I doubt that they enjoy lounging around at the hospital.

The public is going to be forced to buy health insurance by the government, but penalized if the insurance is deemed too sufficient.

The term "high-end health insurance plan" is just another made-up term that becomes used and accepted without ever being defined. I believe it's what they call "framing" the issue.

Crush the Dems, Crush them good, until they are mulch for a strong meaningful progressive third party.

How can any rational progressive associate with a war mongering, populist destroying, democracy destroying, Law ignoring Demo party?

Switch your registation to third party on January 13 th.

Or just vote third party next election. Any third party even Satanists of USA makes more sense than D or R

"Maybe it is time to lay the blame where it belongs without deflections, apologies, excuses, deflections or rationalizations."

I'll try. Blame it on the venal heartless liars.

Universal Health Care is the only moral option.

Health care reform is not and never was going to happen, certainly not under Obama. Why he chose to make this his key domestic legislative focus is a mystery that will take years to unravel, since there was never the slightest intention of actually providing the American public with a decent, just or compassionate health care system.

He's been focused on this issue for one reason only: to further enable Big Insurance and Pharma to make obscene profits, at any cost to ordinary Americans, who he doesn't give a rat's ass about. As Vern notes, he's all in favor of the excise tax on health benefits Donna Smith says will ruin his and his worthless party's chances, this year and in 2012. So be it. They obviously don't give a damn, because there's no way they are so unfathomably stupid as to not realize what they've already done to their electoral chances.

Obama's purpose is to continue the destruction and neglect of areas like health care established as policy by Bush-Cheney. If that means a return to Republican majorities in Congress and the WH, he doesn't care. The highest priority is keeping the people totally subservient and dependent on the corporate mafia that has already basically destroyed the country. Their wealth is what he is protecting, exactly as Bush did. His lies about doing anything else are completely consistent with the whole dysfunctionality raging in Washington. They cannot do anything without lying. This is a function of systemic corruption, and we aren't going to see any departure from this pattern so long as we have Democrats and Republicans running the show. Without a full-scale, organized revolution and the eradication of BOTH wings of the Business Party, we are stuck with little besides outrage.

Why should they "learn" anything? They're getting exactly what they want: handouts to banks, insurance companies, Big Pharma, etc.

Reminds me of people who tsk tsked about George Bush "losing" in Iraq. What "lose"? He got the oil he wanted, with the blood of thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis.

Bush/Obama: Two sides of the same coin.

I fervently hope that Obama and the Democrats meet the same humiliating ending as George Herbert Wanker Bush.

If the Democrats push this venal piece of Bat Guano through, at least progressives and liberals will get a break from worring what to do in coming years.

Passing this will consign us to the hinterlands for the foreseeable future. Americans are going to blame Democrats first, then progressives and liberals.

Only the Pelosi's of the world will retain their seats, but they will be bypassed for everything.

I am noticing that the Progressive Caucus is remaining relatively silent on all this.

If anyone has any information, press releases etc. please post them.

In the meantime here is an action alert from PDA:

http://pdamerica.capwiz.com/pdamerica/callalert/index.tt?alertid=14518236

Every member of The Progressive Caucus needs to be lobbied HARD on this. They need to be told that if they cave on this giveaway to corporate America that we will run against them this fall.

Then we need to stay true to our word and run against them if necessary.

Even if we have no chance of winning, they need to be publicly humiliated and being on the ballot gives us the best platform from which to do so.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting this: "[Obama] favors a tax on *insurance companies* offering more expensive health care plans as a means of extending health insurance to millions of people who are not covered, according to a person familiar with the meeting." But it then goes on to say: "Powerful labor unions at the core of the Democratic base are opposed to the Cadillac tax, saying that union members gave up wage increases in some cases in return for richer health care benefits," which implies that the tax will be on individuals NOT insurance companies as noted above. meanwhile, the WaPost provides what is likely the correct info: "The Senate health-care legislation includes a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans worth more than $23,000 per year for a family of four. When the legislation would go into effect in 2014, only a small fraction of all plans would be taxed, but more would be captured over time: roughly a quarter by 2019, collecting about $150 billion over 10 years."

Not noted above: "California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the latest in the long line of Republicans to assail the special deal Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., received for his support of the Senate health care bill. Under the deal crafted behind closed doors, Nelson's home state would be exempt from $100 million in Medicaid payments that have been imposed to pay for the costly bill.

"While I enthusiastically support health care reform, it is not reform to push more costs onto states that are already struggling while other states get sweetheart deals," Schwarzenegger said in his annual "State of the State" Wednesday, adding that California's congressional leadership should "either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk."

This presents a golden opportunity to get rid of this bill as for once the governator is correct; it's not just California that gets the "husk," it's all the states except Nebraska.

The WaPost item notes at least one Dem congressman has challenged Obama's campaign promise: "Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) notes that Obama pledged not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $250,000 and that he attacked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the campaign trail in 2008 over his plan to do away with the tax-free treatment of employer-provided benefits. Pro-Republican groups are already turning the tables by running ads accusing Democrats of wanting to tax benefits.

"It's a plan that has great political risk for the Democrats," Courtney said."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010604931.html

I wonder how close we are to the day when the Dims and Rips meet in some back room with representatives of Diebold and other providers of "vote-counting" technology in order to agree on who wins what and when. Since they appear to have all joined the same team, it would make things a lot simpler. Obomber already acts as if a deal is in place.

Who do you despise more. The Republican who says he wants to take away your health care benefits by taxing them at a rate which will ensure that you or your employer can not continue to afford to offer these benefits and then sticks you with much higher deductible, lesser benefit insurance or the Democrats who say they will not allow it but then bend and betray their promise. I know who I despise more-- it's the one who says he is on my side and then betrays me. We are at the present helpless. They are showing their true colors. The Dems will betray us. Our only option is to never vote for them again. They have to learn that they have just committed political suicide and it will not sink in until they are humiliated in the 2010 elections. In 2012 they can ask us what it would take to get our vote back. By then we should be on our way to a third party that is viable and we can decide whether we would let any of them into our tent. Probably not.

Single-payer: FugDEMaboudit!

Donna,
Obama specifically said on several ocasions that he wanted to ELIMINATE income taxes on persons making less than $50,000 a year.

At this point, the only option left is a national strike by nurses for MONTHS where rich people die from lack of care. Some nurses would go to prison but I can assure you that public opiniion would back the nurses all the way regardless of the polished fcrap that the post and the times would spew to defend the criminals in government. Yes, the poor and middle class would experience more death from lack of health care but what else is new? What do we want, a slow asphyxiation or an Alamo? They've got us either way. At least we can help future generations with an "Alamo" approach.
I have a medtronic cardiac pace-maker and if I can't have this dual chamber thing checked every six months for a couple of years so the rich pigs can be brought to their knees, I'll do it willingly and support striking nurses all the way. If I die from lack of health care, it will be for a good cause.
It's time for people to understand that the rich are really out to kill us and respond accordingly. This IS NOT about taxes, health care or pensions. This is about slow strangulation to cull most of us "useless eaters". It's time to take this threat to freedom and human respect seriously. The rich have totally lost it. We need to stop them even if most of us die in the process.

This is truly sad. I just hope as more things like this happen, more of the Democratic party's base will realize what a sham the whole organization is. Then, perhaps, we can go to work on repairing the damage that has been done.

Donna,
You are talking to a predator that pretends to be a wall. The president is listening but for nefarious reasons only.

This is what our elite are trained to do:

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum01072010.html

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Obama has lied about just about everything in the deform. Even for a politician, the number of lies Obama and his spokesmen tell is staggering.

Look what I found just now by sheer accident: an article reporting that physicians are more and more quitting and/or closing their private practices and instead becoming salaried physicians working directly for the government. The article reports that they are doing so due to too many hassles from the insurance companies and due to excessive malpractice insurance premiums (it seems that they are victims of a "one-two knockout punch" by the insurance industry as a whole.):

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/23/news/economy/healthcare_doctors_in_prison/
index.htm

So whether or not these doctors are too right wing to understand that single payer is the only way to go, at least they are smart enough to remove themselves from the huge burdens imposed on them by the useless insurance industry.

Other articles with similar themes at CNN:

Doctors quitting the profession completely: http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/14/news/economy/health_care_doctors_quitting/
index.htm

Doctors refusing to accept insurance payments:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/17/news/economy/healthcare_retainer_doctors/
index.htm

(The related article website application is a nice one, isn't it?)

Finally, there is this one warning about how Medicare cuts could be devastating in 2010:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/27/news/economy/healthcare_medicare_doctors/
index.htm

(You know, actually it is an overstatement to say that the mainstream media never has anything useful to read.)

Economy in the dumps! High unemployment! Rising health care needs!

Why not a national initiative to train Americans to work in the health care industry?

Sioux Rose

Thinking outside the box, this idea came to me. If anyone would like to add feedback, it would be appreciated.

Years ago when I read, "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans" the book made clear that people with about $100,000 in assets could start their own savings and loans knowing it would be federally insured. (Lots of unscrupulous sorts in fact did so and that led to the S & L Debacle.)

My question is what makes for a legitimate insurance company? What parameters must be hypothetically met?

The reason I raise that question is, what is to stop a large group of conscientious persons from creating their own insurance company/pool?

Today I enjoyed the once-a-month massage I treat myself to as part of MY health care plan. I've always felt that not smoking, eating a light diet with fish and no meat, getting exercise would constitute MY health plan. I know there are thousands, if not millions, who work to maintain good health and would NOT want the types of options this FORCED insurance would entail.

So the next thought that came to me was could some kind of umbrella group form consisting of: massage therapists, acupuncturists, nutritional therapists (particularly those oriented towards whole foods), natural-cure oriented doctors, chiropractors, etc and FOUND a holistic INSURANCE company. People would pay monthly dues and receive reduced costs on regularly scheduled "tune-ups." And then perhaps their insurance would also include an OPTIONAL tier that paid for catastrophic events.

I wonder if thousands or maybe millions would be interested in such a plan, more or less one that was based on "preventative strategies" with benefits? And I wonder what would make it a legitimate "insurer," one that offered treatment options outside the typical slash and burn that defines much of modern medicine as practiced in America today (given it also follows the Mars rules orientation).

I read that there were thousands of health insurance companies, and I also read that many people would be forced to purchase policies through them that would be essentially worthless. Is the government going to monitor each one and stamp it for viability or quality control in a business environment that already chases profit at the expense of allocating legitimate access to medical treatments for far too many?

There is a sizable portion of the US population that shops at holistic markets, eat organic/whole foods, takes preventative health care very seriously, and probably could constitute a large enough pool for such a creative, cutting edge form of insurance.

Anyone have any ideas? Heck, maybe OUR forum could provide the launch pad...