This was emailed to Mo’Kelly today…author unknown. It says it all and some things I’ve already said.
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed..
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you,
but helping other Americans… oh hell no.
AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !
[Stay tuned…the new mrmokelly.com website is coming to you in 2010. Set your browsers now.]
62 responses to “Dear Opponents to Health Care Reform…NOW You’re Mad?”
As much as I understand that there is an intellectual deficit to the platform of the Tea Party, at the same time I consider it somewhat unfair to dismiss the entire movement as purely anti-Obama, even to the point of blaming him for what happened under Bush.
It's important to note that the financial meltdown happened at the tail end of Bush, and that the major responses to the massive impact the meltdown had on the economy were dictated by Obama. Government has clearly expanded under Obama: The U.S. owns substantial parts of the financial and manufacturing sectors, underwriting their very existence, while the new health care law is a step in the direction of social democratic reform.
In other words, there is no question that the country is undergoing a fundamental shift which would not have been possible under Bush. Sure, Republicans can make mistakes too, but their response to those mistakes is not to expand government and increase the burden on taxpayers.
Conservative/Small Government types, which the Tea Party certainly incorporates, weren't terribly happy with Bush but they were certainly correct to believe that things would be much "worse" under a Democrat president.
If you believe yourself to be a conservative, you are having nightmares over the direction of the country. You probably believe that we are on the exact wrong course. You probably believe in the "let it burn" approach to economics: If it's weak it deserves to fail, and something stronger will grow in its place.
True conservatives hate social welfare on principle: It makes us more dependent on government and therefore weaker.
True conservatives understand that honest people believe that socialism is a cure for certain ills; they just happen to passionately believe that this is a wrong-headed, "feel good" approach that in the end kills the very things it's trying to save.
I don't get the Hitler connotations; perhaps a Tea Partier can explain that one to me.
More apropos would be Marx or Lenin, which would also be extreme but would at least be thematically correct.
Anyway, my basic point is that the anger is justifiable from a standpoint of Democrats being more of a danger to essential liberty than Republicans. No matter what happened under Bush/Cheney, they were at least answerable to those who believe in limited government. National security issues aside, conservatives approach social policy as a "less is more" situation.
Democrats do not demonstrate an understanding of that, and thus pose much more of a threat to conservative principles.
And in these times of economic meltdown, where we clearly had to do "something", it scares them to death that the people pulling the levers do not share their bedrock principles.
Those very same "feared" people wouldn't have HAD to pull the levers if it was not for the aforementioned bedrock principles, and those who abscribed to and exploited them, leaving the US economy crashing on a bed of rocks.
Conservatives holding the Obama administration responsible for aspects of the actual financial meltdown is like an arsonist blaming the firemen for damages sustained by the fire once it's extinguished. Methodology employed to bring about an acceptable resolution, after the fact, may be questioned, but culpability for initiation of the damages cannot.
Futher the contention that their "anger is justifiable from the standpoint of Democrats being more of a danger to essential liberties than Republicans" speaks to their mindset, which is specious, at best: more liberties were suppressed under the previous Republican administration to the point of usurping the Bill of Rights, disavowing the Geneva Convention and a near institution of marshal law.
"Methodology employed to bring about an acceptable resolution, after the fact, may be questioned, but culpability for initiation of the damages cannot."
That right there was beautiful Roger.
Mo, I received the same email. You're right Roger's quote was awesome.
Thanks for posting, Mo!
Mo, we belong to a mutual admiration society.
Curtis Blow you're such a troll. A predictable troll at that.
Don't worry about Curtis Katie, he's been deleted.
As I've pointed out,it's culpability for the solutions which is the agenda of the Tea Party.
You don't see them going around blaming Obama for the meltdown. It's his response to that and his other initiatives (and the record of any congressman or woman, left or right, who fails their litmus test) which is the object of their focus.
I disagree…they ARE blaming him. There is no discussion about "bankrupting America" without inclusion of the previous administration. Strangely enough, the Tea Party was non-existent prior to November 2008. There has been no mention by the Tea Party of the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans, who supposedly they side with…an egregious omission. You can't talk about government "fascism" and not talk about the Republican spearheaded Patriot Act. Rights and liberties disappeared under the previous administration, not this one. The healthcare bill was voted upon and passed in both houses. They lost…oh well. They can vote their Congress people out of office. There was no subterfuge, there was no unilateral agenda to go to war against a country who neither attacked us nor posed a threat…but the Tea Party acts like there was no planet before 2008 and that's intellectually dishonest.
They blame Obama for everything and conveniently neglect documented history…history completely unrelated to President Obama.
I think you will find that the Tea Party does in fact target Republicans who are not "conservative enough", including on spending issues.
The event which kicked off the movement seems to be the home loan bailout initiative, an Obama program:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
So you're saying…"Obama" is why the Tea Party exists? Really?
The more I think about this, Morris, I have to sincerely question what you think you can accomplish by taking the Tea Party head-on.
You can never prove racism so much as you can create a lot of dust, which will settle over time back to where it was. In the meantime, you will have given the Tea Party a platform on which to justify its existence while deftly avoiding any damage from your swipes at them.
In other words, it's ultimately you who gives them meaning. Without your reaction, there would be no action.
Allow me to anticipate your retort: We have to nip these things in the bud. We can't let this sort of behavior become acceptable. More thoughts along that line, I presume. Add any angles I didn't touch on.
But here's the problem: You are implying that the "normal" responses are inadequate. You are suggesting that there is some sort of danger to this movement which rises above "normal" levels of tension.
I think that's a mighty leap, and it must absolutely be reviewed in light of the fact that you are black, educated, racially aware and inclined toward inquiry. In other words, you go looking for things.
I know that you'll say that you don't have to look far in this case, but that's exactly wrong.
Exactly wrong. Exactly backward.
Unless you look far in this case, you miss everything. If all you see is what's on the surface you have no way of putting what you see in any meaningful context.
Over the course of the time I have been coming here, we don't always agree on how to look at something but we usually agree on how hard to look at it. In this case we couldn't be further apart.
You see a racist organization which is finding ways to infiltrate the political conversation. You see a bunch of whiteys out to blame everything on the negro. You dismiss any possible legitimate justification for this organization to exist.
I see a group of scared white folk. Why not so much black folk? Because as I've noted before, black folk tend to favor bigger government because bigger government usually works out well for them; stronger social programs, better job opportunities.
So it's mainly white folk, and why are they so scared? Because we handed the White House to a liberal in the middle of an economic crisis. You have to know that conservatives still curse the name Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He set this country on a course of social obligation to certain of its citizens, to be paid for by everybody else, and that path has been expanded upon in substantial ways since then. Conservatives would love nothing better than to go back and insist on entirely different solutions.
They see Obama as the man who was hired to finish the job. Socialized medicine was the last pillar, the last big ticket liberal program, the task which would, once completed, signify the complete capitulation of this country to European social-democratic no-growth low-productivity sleep-walkers.
It's American dynamism they believe in. A bank screws up? Let it fail! Can't sell enough cars? You're out of business! Took on too much house? Go find an apartment and file for bankruptcy.
It's this dynamism which they believe makes America great and unique, and they sincerely worry that we are fattening ourselves up and making ourselves unprepared to defend this great country from those who would tear it down.
And many of them see Obama as making it even easier to tear America down.
A stark vision to be sure. Nevertheless, grounded in principled vision.
Obama is black. He is also a liberal. He is a European-style social democrat, just as his critics said he was. He is taking this country in a starkly different direction than his predecessor, and his early success demonstrates that he will succeed in a way that Clinton never did.
He is plenty for a conservative to be afraid of, plenty.
I'm not trying to "take on" the Tea Party. They to me are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But there's nothing wrong for exposing them for what they are. They've been given far too much mainstream coverage in the sense of legitimizing who they are and what they represent.
I respect what they allegedly stand for, but I don't believe they earnestly stand for what they allege to support. If they supposedly stand for fiscal responsibility, then it's relevant to discuss why they have nothing on record in regards to the Bush administration. If they are not about racism thinly veiled by partisan politics, then their antics are worthy of debate. I don't have to "prove" anything about the Tea Party. Their hypocrisy speaks for itself, I simply give it a megaphone for it to be heard.
If Obama "scares" the Tea Party…then Bush should have scared the shit out of them…and that's pretty inarguable.
Walt, thank you for revealing the heart of the matter: you are a conservative. You have entered into this discussion cloaked in liberal garb, but you strip down to being a conservative who sees what conservatives see, sympathizes with what conservatives sympathize with, and who argues what conservatives argue.
Perhaps the greatest litmus test is your unrelenting determination to "look at both sides" of the issue while never ceding to anyone else's point of view: to see other people's opinions, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE WRONG.
The political underpinning of a party's platform or policies are justifiable to the ascribers mindset because it is within their belief system. Does that it make it right? NO. Does it stop what they believe? No.
You say that there is no racial inference in the Tea Party's avowed desire for smaller government and opposition to social reform. Doesn't that speak to the bourgeois connotation that one has gotten everything on their own. Does that not go without admission that "on my own" actually speaks to the unrelenting exploitation of others who do not share the same means and resources they were so privileged to enjoy, through no determination of their own nor fault of the equally deprived.
Think about the argument that you are advancing. Think about what you have said concerning the policies that rescued this nation from the most cataclysmic economic devastation in its history: "Consevatives would love nothing better than to go back and insist on entirely different solutions."
Had they had their way then, perhaps the United States would have been speaking an entirely different language now.
It is always easy to sit on the bench and second guess the coach when he's had to call option plays to make up for your own poor performance when you were in the game.
Conservatives always want to "go back" to the good ol' days. Back seems to be the only direction they desire to lead or offer suggestions to get to. By the way, who were those days "good" for?
Mr. Mo'Kelly, I need you to add a "share" button please. You continue to post the things I think, and I'd love to share this with friends.
Hi Zeta Woman…the "share" button is coming on the new website. Thank you for the desire to forward the discussion. One of the many reasons I'm doing a full re-design.
Roger,
I am a left-leaning independent.
On this blog that makes me a conservative.
🙂
Roger, what you should know about me by now is I lean in whatever direction everybody else is leaning against.
Things are never, if you will allow the pun, as black and white as they may seem.
I'm here to help keep that balance.
In other words, I'm quite sure that Morris knows that I have little in common with Tea Partiers, most of whom would seem unable to accurately explain the issues they are campaigning against, other than that they've been told to by Hannity, Beck and Rush.
It's likely that Hillary would have been just as much a target of their venom.
However, and it's a big however: Ignoring them or dismissing them is an act of condescension, which cannot help illuminate the differences and therefore cannot help bridge them.
I like to build bridges.
Walt and I have a very complicated and sophisticated rapport. Sometimes we take the "opposite" side to further the discussion or explore the intricacies of of nuanced debates. But I know generally where Walt stands on the core issues…I would call him an independent with his views running the gamut, just depends on the particular issue. He subscribes to no one specific ideology and acknowledges the inherent flaws in both parties.
But this I know (having read yards of both of your posts with interest and dismay).
I consider Walt an agent provocateur without malice aforethought; one who wishes to incite thoughful debate and move the dialogue in meaningful directions often by effectively brandishing the lightning rod.
"When you play with matches…If you can't stand the heat…The sword cuts…What goes up…What goes around…and he who smelt it dealt it."
Don't you two get all mushy on me now; the battle is not won.
The only malice I reserve is for those who aim to shut down discussion and force beliefs down our throats.
All others: What's your drink of choice?
Walt, I am a right-leaning (leaning toward what is RIGHT)idealist: in the Tea Party, I guess that makes me a Marxist-Leninist-Hitler loving secret muslim pinko commie socialist.
Vodka martini; shaken, not stirred (minus the vodka..and the gin…and the vermouth…Did I mention that I really like olives?)
Jack and diet coke…simple, classic…manly (except for the "diet" part.)
I think it's a darn shame that America is being deceived by the Republicans and the Tea Party about Healthcare Reform. This is the best thing that could have happened for tax payers. It is so simple, if everyone had affordable healthcare insurance and all Americans were insured, then there will no longer be the need for uninsured individuals to use our Emergency Rooms as primary care physicians. Do you know how much in taxes are expended for uninsured individuals? Believe me, more than it costs to have all Americans insured. The truth has been distorted and America is being deceived by the Republicans first. I can't believe that in this nation of plenty, there are individuals who would deny the rights of others.
Jaeaka, please believe there are people whose pleasure it is to pit those who have a pound against those who have a penny so as they not be perceived as the pauper who has but a pittance. Think "Trading Places". In the context of power play, they wield the power; we're getting played.
One thing to understand about politics is that the end justifies the means. Let's talk about it.
Your drinks, gentlemen. I'm chasing a shot of Jack with a club soda. (Zero carbs!)
See, Republicans howled about death panels all summer and got a lot of traction. Was there any truth to the charge? None! And what do we have in the current system? Rationing based on who has the best coverage or the most free cash. In your typical plan, you can't go to Sloan-Kettering because they won't pay for it.
So, in all ways and from all angles, a hideous distortion and somewhat cynical, that their base would not slow down enough to catch the hypocrisy.
Why would an intelligent politician deliberately mis-state facts and turn them on their heads? Because it works. Why does it work?
It works because people need to feel safe. In order to feel safe they need to feel protected. In order to feel protected they have to know who to trust.
In order to know who to trust, they find people who speak to their fears.
Politicians speak to peoples' fears. Republicans do it when they accuse Democrats of being soft on terrorism, and when they insist on broad new rights in favor of government. Democrats do it when they tell you that Grandma is going to die of a curable disease because she has no health insurance.
Which may be true enough, but to then leap forward and say that this justifies a system where all must participate?
MUST?
If that's not worth at least a conversation, then I guess nothing is. But since we're here and we've settled into our drinks, anybody want to talk about it?
No Walt…I've settled in for the night. 🙂
One drink knocks you out?
:-O
Walt, I have recovered from my non-alcohol olive martini hangover.
I agree that a system that mandates what one MUST do is an imperfect system: we must pay taxes, we must serve in the military if called, we must serve on jury duty, etc. And wherein there is considerable room for argument, it boils down to maintenance of our way of life and the quality thereof.
The economic reality catastrophic medical hardship place upon the destitute and the struggling middle to mid-upper class family attempting to pursue rights to life, liberty and happiness subrogates the ideal of free market capitalism to the obligation of a governed society to mitigate suffering and act in behalf of the greater good.
If there exist models, anywhere in the world, where such a system is effectively employed, how can we, in good conscience, deny this to our own citizens?
Here, I would venture to say, our standing as 37th world-wide in quality of medical care (#1 in cost) speaks for itself.
If voluntary compliance to provide affordable quality care would have sufficed, would this not have been a moot issue?
Roger, you start from the standpoint that access to quality health care at an affordable price is a birthright.
So do I. (At heart I am a communist, further left even than socialist.)
However, America may not. America is perceived as "center-right", which means that we're willing to talk about it but we lean in the direction of personal liberty.
Has Capitalism perfected the art of using that tool against us? Yes indeed. Are we in danger as a society of creating two classes, haves and have-nots? Certainly. Is redistribution of wealth a necessary antidote? I strongly believe that to be the case.
Which does nothing to convince America that a socialist program is the solution. And of course they may be right. This may be a bad solution. This may blow up in our faces and require a lot of new taxes or other cost recovery not in the current law. We have obligated ourselves as a society to "cover" 1/6 of the economy one way or another. If we don't restraint cost growth, we will need a WHOLE NEW PLAN.
So, that's why this is worth a conversation and that's why to be dismissive of Tea Partiers as know-nothings is not only to condescend, it is to willfully deny an opportunity to look at something more closely, especially when that something has such destructive potential and is such a clear leap in a direction – left – that tends to make this country nervous.
Walt, I dismiss the Tea Party not out of denying an opportunity to examine something (i.e. a viewpoint more closely). They dismiss themselves. A prerequisite of being respected is being respectable and/or showing self-respect. Anybody can yell, scream, threaten and brow-beat. None of the aforementioned is reason enough to be taken seriously. If there is condescension, it is connected to the immature and child-like behavior associated with the Tea Party. If the views of the Tea Party are not being thoroughly analyzed, then maybe they should take a look in the mirror. Even Rupert Murdoch distanced himself from the Tea Party yesterday…so what does that tell you?
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WzM4ytF48g&feature=player_embedded” target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WzM4ytF48g&fe…
I will listen to that when I can.
The challenge is to see beyond the hot-button aspects of the issue and to get to the heart of the matter: What kind of country are we and what kind of country do we want to be?
My gut response is that there are some starkly different answers to that question, none of them "wrong".
Walt, I told you that I am an idealist.
What kind of country are we? We are country of hyperbole and platitudes, that assures every citizen the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is if you can not afford healthcare that will keep you from succumbing to preventable maladies, your RIGHT to life ends (needless to say your happiness follows suit).
Unsustainable debt is synonymous to indentured servitude. Debtor's prison in Australia, sharecroppers and "company stores" in America, and immigrants who, to this day, labor to pay for transit arrangements are examples of corruption of liberty under the burden of economic oppression.
This is the reason why the Torah, Koran and the Bible all prohibit USURY, because it piles burdens on the backs of those most unable to sustain the same.
(Ironically, only the muslims still honor this prohibition. Mention this to Goldman-Sachs, and Michael Moore would receive a more gracious welcome.)
What kind of country do we want to be? I'll leave that to your determination. But no one compared the financial gurus, the auto moguls, or the chief mortgage speculators to Hitler.
Roger, I declare your argument to be a straw man.
Or lazy.
You are jumbling several issues into one, and declaring the bundle to be "wrong."
That won't do.
Let me just peel two of them off. One peel looks like this: Greedy corporate pigs who control the levers, and rake in all the money they can. When they screw things up, the government bails them out. It doesn't bail us out, it bails them out. Government works for them, not us, and that needs to change.
The next peel looks like this: I work for everything I get and never ask anything from anybody. I've never taken a dime of government money and I never intend to. I have good health care through my work and I'm on my way to a decent pension. I'll take my Social Security because I earned that by making my contributions.
You, Roger, are trying to tell that man that he has to cover for you because, for whatever reason, you did not cover for yourself. That argument is likely to piss him off.
And you are seeking to redress the wrong of the corporate pigs by coming after your fellow man instead of insisting that the system itself be corrected.
Where is your anger that President Obama, with a Democrat majority, didn't kill off private insurance, which is the real magic bullet in health care? Why do your fellow citizens have to "opt in" to a private enterprise system by government fiat?
Perhaps you understand why that's not everybody's definition of "America."
And perhaps you'd like to peel back some layers here and see what and who it is you're really fighting.
Walt. Agreed. The robber barons didn't deserve to be bailed out, but they were anyway. You and I know they would have wound up in better shape than the rest of us regardless; their minions would have seen to that.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“ The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. ”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations Relative to the Strengthening and Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws"
So, if fascism in today's United States is a de facto reality, where do you see the concensus or the impetus coming from for President Obama to garner support to implement a 'communist' plan that would not have required "opting", but would have provided universal health care coverage?
Right.
So Joe Retiree, who has worked and is collecting his SSI, blessed with good health, and never in debt to the government is the rule and not the exception? Statistics can prove anything, but that one might be a stretch.
But, lets say that is a fact; should America remain a third world quality healthcare provider because of that? If there previously existed an incentive in the marketplace for competitive pricing alongside quality of services, don't you think we would have seen it already? What was needed here was a shift in the paradigm: the system won't correct itself.
The 'bundle' I decry is economically motivated social injustice, and that is the "straw man" that has broken the "camel's back" of America's middle class.
Roger, you're getting closer. You wrote:
"
What was needed here was a shift in the paradigm: the system won’t correct itself.
"
The new law utterly fails to accomplish that task. In fact it solidifies the paradigm in cement. If this bill as currently constructed actually accomplishes all its aims without needing additional funding or cutbacks, which we won't know for another decade, that will be an insane achievement.
Forcing people into a for-profit system is, to me, an abomination of both far-right and far-left tendencies.
And as you might imagine, such a marriage makes for one ugly baby.
Yes, I'm cherry-picking quotes here…
"What was needed here was a shift in the paradigm: the system won’t correct itself.
”
"The new law utterly fails to accomplish that task."
"And as you might imagine, such a marriage makes for one ugly baby."
__________
I would both agree and disagree. And the best way for me to demonstrate where I agree and disagree is to point to the recent bill championed by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) which would reduce the sentencing disparity of crack and powdered cocaine from 100 to 1, down to 18-1.
The original bill which put the 100-1 disparity into law (thanks to Bill Clinton) was originally intended to "shift the paradigm" as the system wouldn't correct itself. In theory that was absolutely correct as something needed to be done in regards to the influx of crack on urban streets and in urban communities. Crime in general was at an all-time high in the 80s.
"If this bill as currently constructed actually accomplishes all its aims without needing additional funding or cutbacks, which we won’t know for another decade, that will be an insane achievement."
Using Clinton's crime bill as the petri dish experiment…looking back over its 15+ years of existence, it DID accomplish all of its aims without needing additional funding or cutbacks. But…but…also created other tremendous problems in the process from the explosion of the prison industrial complex to the widening economic gap between urban and suburban communities. And that's not including the obvious racial disparities of such a bill because powder was the drug of choice in the suburban communities and crack was the economical option of those in the inner city. But in the final analysis, the bill accomplished its aims. Crack was under control and crime ostensibly decreased in a statistical sense. There's both good news and bad news, meaning I both agree and disagree.
Moving forward, in an effort to help right the ship, the bill was written in 2010 to decrease the sentencing disparity from 100, down to 18-1. It's a bill that "doesn't go far enough." But still it's moving in the right direction and that's more acceptable than the non-movement of the past 10 years. The constitution didn't go far enough, that's why we've had amendments, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Title IX for starters.
Why am I mentioning all this?
You don't analyze marriages today on the prospect of the baby's looks tomorrow. You can't necessarily dismiss making the right choice today out of fear of tomorrow. A lot of marriages between "beautiful people" have led to "ugly babies" and vice versa…to carry the metaphor to its conclusion. In this moment, the moral imperative is clear and clearly there will never be a consensus as to the "best" way in which to move forward in a health care sense. The moral imperative during FDR's time was the labor movement and unions…i.e. the New Deal. That too had unintended consequences, but the moral imperative did not change. LBJ's moral imperative of the 60s was Civil Rights…its unintended consequences for future generations notwithstanding. Of course there will be future, unforeseen eventualities, which has been true since the beginning of time. But we should also avoid the paralysis by analysis which has prevented in part, ANY health care reform in decades. I'd rather deal with the prospect of sentencing disparities in 2010 than the crack explosion of 1987…the lesser of evils. Yes, the Crime Bill and today's Health Care bill may not avoid certain icebergs in the future and may not fully and fundamentally address the root issues but we should still move forward because MOVING forward is the only means of measuring progress.
The general point is that you can oppose this law on principle and still be what I would call a "good American."
In fact, count me among them. From the left, of course. This bill did not go nearly far enough, nor soon enough.
Walt, we've reached the mecca; we stand on common ground! And I have always believed that good Americans have not only a duty to speak out against what they perceive to be wrong, but an obligation to preserve their right to do so. They just must do it in a manner that is not synonymous with entering a theater and yelling "FIRE" or other such dangerous provocations.
I like Steve Martin's take on that:
"Is it immoral to yell "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse?"
Morris,
Most of us will accept the above analysis as "the best we can do", but there will always be two problems with that, and I do mean in the PRESENT tense:
1. What does it say about a society that it is forced to live with less than ideal solutions? That it is forced to carry on in an impaired way simply to satisfy all those with enough power to disrupt any OTHER solution?
2. There is no paradigm shift here, merely a burden shift. The burden will be shifted onto healthy individuals who until now had chosen not to buy health insurance. Those who "need" it and "can't afford" it will have their premiums subsidized by those who "can".
Today that means new taxes annual incomes above $250,000 and it means new taxes on "cadillac" (i.e., comprehensive) health insurance plans.
In other words, inching in the direction of flattening costs, but on the backs of the PEOPLE! Of those who either MAKE TOO MUCH (not that much, really) or HAVE TOO NICE A PLAN!
In other words, punishing the successful.
Is that America?
When instead we could all be on Medicare, rich folk could still buy whatever other comforts they crave, and it would all be covered by taxes, apportioned similarly to how they are today. Sliding scale, in other words.
Cheaper by far than any other approach, in fact as I said the magic bullet. Doesn't put private health care out of business but greatly reduces its impact on the economy. The yacht set would have their own elevated standard of care, but so what? They already do.
The rest of us would get what we all deserve, freedom from worry that an illness won't be covered or could bankrupt us.
Instead we have this, this thing. This amalgamation with three heads and about three hundred fingers and toes.
And the fact that we described it, accurately, as an awesome political achievement tells you everything you need to know about the true impotence of modern government.
And goes a long way toward justifying protest movements of ALL stripes.
"1. What does it say about a society that it is forced to live with less than ideal solutions? That it is forced to carry on in an impaired way simply to satisfy all those with enough power to disrupt any OTHER solution?"
And therein lies the inherent flaws in our political process. I'm not sure of the last time we had an ideal solution, if only because each and every bill is subject to the constraints of the partisan two-party political system and bills rife with special interest pork. The system is dysfunctional, meaning there is no such thing as an ideal solution because the solutions presented are an amalgam (to use your word) of interests both related and unrelated to the core issue. The only way you get around the partisan bickering ostensibly is to institute a dictatorship/monarchy and remove all dissent. Obviously that isn't the way to go, but the constitution has been co-opted, corrupted and confused in such a way that it is a spectacular event to pass ANYTHING much less the ideal thing.
I absolutely agree, the government as we know it is impotent. But I will not discount the importance of "semi-erections" either as we try to birth this future "ugly" baby…twisting each and every one of your metaphors at my evil whim. 🙂
I still maintain that degrees of progress are to be appreciated. Ideal? No…important though, yes. Yes, sometimes degrees of progress also gets passed off as real progress when it isn't…but in this case, I had no illusions about what was possible. President Obama would have had the same opposition (and will eventually) if/when he takes on immigration. The tea baggers would have been out there with the same signs and rhetoric just in regards to immigration. The obstructionism overcome makes me surprised anything happened at all. I don't expect the government to solve problems, but I do expect them to approach reaching solutions.
And to be clear: we are moving forward, we just aren't sure into what.
The exact point is that there was going to be virulent opposition to ANY solution, so why fear that?
And with majorities in both houses, if that's not the time to get something substantive done, when is?
And when we cross-check with global warming do-nothingism, we see quite clearly that we have erected the apparatus of our doom as a species.
And that's what I've faulted Obama for this far…you have both houses, do what needs to be done. And this speaks to the LIE that the Tea Party and Fox News has been forwarding that Obama has "rammed this bill" through Congress. To the contrary. He actually said to the House and Senate to create a bill "that would pass" instead of (which in my opinion he SHOULD have done) taking the lead and setting the tone. I, to your point wish he was more aggressive in this endeavor, but when you measure what he's done relative to his predecessors…it's hard to argue with his success, if we show any deference to history.
And if you say "We DID get something substantive done!" I would retort "Yes, but for WHOM?"
You will notice that the Dow is elated with this bill. Hmm…why?
And I wouldn't read anything in to the Dow being up…it is and always has been speculatory and a reflection of the country's mood…not necessarily a graph of a specific industry. I don't think a smile on the face of the private health care insurance industry can make all of the Dow go up.
Morris,
If you had asked Rush what the Dow would do upon passage, he would have predicted calamity (and probably did).
It is QUITE telling that the market has been steadily up since passage.
The Inscos LOVE THIS BILL!!!!
Rush Limbaugh also stated that if this bill passed he would leave the country: it is time to hold HIM to his campaign promises!
There in lies the pitfall to real substantive social progress via partisan political apparati. Pundits (particularly those of obstructionist beliefs such as Limbaugh, Palin and Fox's Calvacade of Foolish Friends) don't have a dog in this fight: they ARE the dogs in this fight.
Having a dog in the fight (and I only metaphorically use this analogy; I abhor senseless cruelty) connotes a certain detachment. Of course you have a vested interest. Of course you are desirous of victory. Stil you liberally apply cerebral considerations to your assessment of advantage as the battle rages, adjust expectation as to the ultimate outcome as it merits, maybe even change your alligence; all with measured rationalized justification and unbloodied brow.
Conversely, the dog IN the fight knows but one thing: ATTACK, and then attack again. The dog in the pit knows that it must kill the other dog or be killed; ere go dog eat dog. Thus they despise their opponent, and they ATTACK.
One asks who baited them into the standoff? Who stands to profit from the deathmatch? For whose 'sport' is their blood-letting? If you follow the gold, you will learn who rules.
And if the dogs, themselves, ultimately wind up broken, torn, battered, diseased, shelterless, abandoned or incapacitated, who will truely care? They can buy more where those came from.
BigPharma/Inscos has a bet on both dogs in this fight*: the house always wins.
(*Including the pitbull with lipstick)
Roger, I think you're confused.
The dogs in the fight are you and me and our fellow citizens.
Including those in the Tea Party.
From Jack Shepard (Posted on wrong thread)
Jack Shepard
2010/04/16 at 11:51am
OFF topic:
You asked that the Tea Party let the racists know they are not welcome. Now they are (or perhaps he was a plant. Either way. Doesn’t matter):
http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/04/16/racist-…
From Jack Shepard
2010/04/16 at 11:53am
And:
http://www.breitbart.tv/tea-party-crasher-gets-he…
I'm not convinced that the first link isn't parody.
Walt,
Most people sit back and complain about things rather than offer viable solutions. What would your fix be for "affordable healthcare?" What would your solution be for making sure that all Americans were insured or assured that they can be treated for catystrophic illnesses? What would your solution be to assist the "have nots" in our America that was founded on a promise of liberty for all? Where are the solutions to your many answers that seemingly are complaints and your why nots?
Jaeeka:
Medicare for all.
If you can afford to pay for private care above and beyond that, be my guest.
What we have here is a sop to the insurance companies paid for by increased taxes on people making more than $250,000 per year which as I said is not a hell of a lot of money these days, that's upper middle class; and by taxing "cadillac" insurance plans, meaning insurance plans with great benefits which in many cases has been earned through collective bargaining.
All to pay the insurance companies whatever they choose to charge.
The term for what I want to see is "single payer." We have a unified Democrat government and we didn't even push for it.
Obscene.
New York Offers Costly Lessons on Insurance
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/nyregion/18insure.html?ref=nyregion
When her small executive search firm in New York City canceled its health insurance policy last year because of the recession and rising premiums, April Welles was able to buy her own plan and still be covered for her cancer and multiple sclerosis.
She was lucky to live in New York, one of the first states to require insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage to all people regardless of pre-existing conditions. But Ms. Welles, 58, also pays dearly: Her premium is $17,876 a year.
“That’s a lot of groceries,” she said.
New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net for people like Ms. Welles is falling apart.
The problem stems in part from the state’s high medical costs and in part from its stringent requirements for insurance companies in the individual and small group market. In 1993, motivated by stories of suffering AIDS patients, the state became one of the first to require insurers to extend individual or small group coverage to anyone with pre-existing illnesses.
New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.
Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”
“You have a mandate that’s accessible in theory, but not in practice, because it’s too expensive,” said Mark P. Scherzer, a consumer lawyer and counsel to New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, an advocacy group. “What you get left clinging to the life raft is the population that tends to have pretty high health needs.”
Since 2001, the number of people who bought comprehensive individual policies through HMOs in New York has plummeted to about 31,000 from about 128,000, according to the State Insurance Department.
At the same time, New York has the highest average annual premiums for individual policies: $6,630 for single people and $13,296 for families in mid-2009, more than double the nationwide average, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group.
Rates did not rise as high in small group plans, for businesses with up to 50 workers, because the companies had an incentive to provide insurance to keep employees happy, and so were able to keep healthier people in the plans, said Peter Newell, an analyst for the United Hospital Fund, a New York-based health care research organization.
While premiums for large group plans have risen, their risk pools tend to be large enough to avoid out-of-control rate hikes.
The new federal health care law tries to avoid the death spiral by requiring everyone to have insurance and penalizing those who do not, as well as offering subsidies to low-income customers. But analysts say that provision could prove meaningless if the government does not vigorously enforce the penalties, as insurance companies fear, or if too many people decide it is cheaper to pay the penalty and opt out.
Under the federal law, those who refuse coverage will have to pay an annual penalty of $695 per person, up to $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. The penalty will be phased in from 2014 to 2016.
“In this new marketplace that we envision, this requirement that everybody be covered, that should draw better, healthier people into the insurance pool, which should bring down rates,” said Mark Hall, a professor of law and public health at Wake Forest University. But he added, “You have to sort of take a leap of faith that that’s going to happen.”
As part of the political bargain to get insurance companies to support insurance for all regardless of risk, called community rating, New York State deregulated the market, allowing insurers to charge as much as they wanted within certain profit margins. The state can require companies to retroactively refund overcharges to consumers, but it seldom does.
Now, Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed to reinstate prior approval by the state of rate increases for the small group and individual plans, as a way to reverse New York’s death spiral of healthy people fleeing the market. The change would affect about 3 million of the 10 million New Yorkers insured through private plans, according to the Insurance Department. Most of those are in small group plans, though the biggest beneficiaries might be those seeking individual coverage, where premiums are highest.
New York’s insurance companies are vigorously fighting prior approval. Mark L. Wagar, the president of Empire BlueCross BlueShield, said New York’s problem was not deregulation of rates, but the lack of an effective mandate for everyone to buy insurance. To illustrate, he offered a statistic on how many people in the 18-to-26 age group, who are largely healthy, have bought individual insurance coverage through his company: 88 people out of 6 million insured by his company statewide.
New York is “the bellwether,” Mr. Wagar said. “We have the federal health reform on steroids in terms of richness and strictness.”
The federal health care overhaul contains some protection for people who buy into the new insurance exchanges — organized marketplaces — created by the law. Beginning in 2014, states will be able to recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services ban companies from the exchanges if they impose rate increases the states consider unreasonable.
Mr. Wagar also said that New York’s medical costs, universally acknowledged as being among the highest in the country, were a factor in its high premiums. He noted that the state already regulated insurance company profit margins, allowing them to allocate no more than 25 cents of every dollar for profits and administration in small group plans and 20 cents for individual plans. The governor is proposing to lower both margins to 15 percent.
Troy Oechsner, deputy superintendent for health at the State Insurance Department, blamed the insurance companies for raising rates beyond what was necessary — by being off on their projections — thus accelerating the exodus of healthy people.
“What we saw them do is they really jacked up rates because they could,” Mr. Oechsner said.
To a large extent, insurance companies police themselves, according to Mr. Oechsner. From 2000 to 2007, insurance plans reported that they exceeded state profit allowances just 3 percent of the time, resulting in about $48 million in refunds to policyholders, Mr. Oechsner said. Yet subsequent Insurance Department investigations found that insurers should have refunded three times as much.
The governor’s budget projects that reinstating prior approval would help the state close its $9 billion deficit, saving taxpayers $70 million in the first year, and $150 million after that, by stemming the exodus of people from high-priced plans into state-subsidized plans.
An analysis of the governor’s plan released recently by the Business Council of New York State, whose membership includes insurance companies, contested the governor’s savings estimate, saying that it was “at best speculative,” and that the savings would probably be nominal.
Mr. Hall, the Wake Forest professor, said that with the risk spread over a bigger pool of insured people under federal changes, insurers would be expected to reduce their prices, especially in New York. But Mr. Hall said that insurers might hesitate to do that until they were sure people were going to buy coverage, which could lead to a sort of mutual paralysis.
“You can literally think of people standing around a swimming pool, saying let’s jump in at once,” he said.
As for Ms. Welles, she is not sure how much longer she can keep paying rising rates.
“This is not something that will be sustainable for the rest of my life,” she said. On the other hand, she added, “frankly, with the kind of cancer I have, I don’t think I’ll be paying this for too many years.”