Man Bites Dog
Newt Gingrich tells the truth.
Firebaggers argue that the PPACA is conservative, because it is similar to a Heritage Foundation proposal. They neglect to note that the proposal was made in bad faith. The point was to complicate the debate by making it Clintoncare vs Obamacare vs no reform. That way the result was no reform, even though most US adults wanted some reform.
This is not speculation. The Heritage/Romney/Obama approach was also the Chafee proposal. [John] Chafee (R-R.I.) proposed something like the PPACA in 1993. Senate minority leader R. Dole cosponsored the bill. In 1994 Dole voted against a bill whcih he had cosponsored proving that his advocacy of an individual mandate was made in bad faith and aiming only at complicating the debate.
Similarly when Ted Kennedy was advocating single payer/Medicare for all, Nixon proposed a reform similar to that proposed by the Clintons.
Yes Obama, all Democratic Senators, two independent Senators, and a majority in the House voted for a plan similar to one proposed by The Heritage Foundation. Everyone who works at The Heritage Foundation (except maybe a janitor who hates the jerks after whom he cleans up) recognized this as a huge defeat. Jane Hamsher hasn’t wised up.
The personal mandate is not progressive. As Howard Dean points out, they created single payer in Vermont without forcing people to use it. Single payer works, and most people will choose it after they see it works. The personal mandate was not simply a Heritage Foundation ruse. Basically, it is a very strong demand coming from the medical insurance industry and is about protecting industry super-profits.
Agreed. NancyO
Curiouser and curiouser… how in the trees felled to print anti Obamacare screeds for month after month “And it makes the insurance companies richer and more powerful too!” rarely survived the editor’s cut.
It’s a mystery! Maybe CSI can get on it.
amateur
probably you already know this, but the powers routinely attack their own plans in order to provide cover for temporary setbacks, give credibility to their moles, and generally make the masses think they have a choice.
and congressmen routinely vote against bills they support, or for bills they oppose in order to “keep faith” with their base, or provide the parliamentary basis for a reconsider..
it’s all too complicated for me. it’s supposed to be.
Krugman seems to think the mandate is a critical component.
“healthy young people will drop coverage, leaving behind a bad risk pool and high costs”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/the-road-to-romneycare/
Arne
of course it’s a critical component. health insurance at prevailing rates is a “bad bet” for young people.
a nationalized plan that just taxed “the people” and paid the costs when they arose… twenty years later would pay for the risks you don’t know you have yet.
Krugman, bless his heart, tends to be a little shallow at times.
you see, your “risks” are higher toward the end of your life when you don’t have the income to pay for those risks on a monthly basis. spread them out over forty years and they become much more manageable.
but i don’t think that Obamacare does that. don’t know. but it hasn’t been explained to the people if it has.
what they are offering is forced insurance at commercial rates… profit to some citizens extorted from others… with as far as i can tell no guarantee at all that the insurance you buy today will actually cover you when you need it.
“pay as you go” can do that in a way that is fair to everyone.
except the gummint haters will tell you you are paying for someone else’s granny. and you wouldn’t want to do that.
and the fact that it’s “you” that turns out to be “someone else’s granny” is an algebra problem too hard for most people to figure out.
they are already cutting away at Medicare so the people who paid for it won’t get the benefits they need.
“costs have gone up” they say, but the people paid the costs “pay as you go” and so far, have not run up a debt. the issue is costs going up in future. if we just paid for costs “as we go” there would be no debt. everyone would have paid for the care they get, and the higher cost “this” generation pays for their parents and grandparents would come back to them when they incur even higher costs when they retire, paid for directly by their children and grandchildren would would be paying indirectly (the way most things are paid for in a capitalist economy) for their own future costs…
like i said, it’s too hard for most people to understand.
that’s why we used to have leaders.
who knew something more than this quarters profits and next years elections.
Wasabi:
“it is a very strong demand coming from the medical insurance industry and is about protecting industry super-profits.”
Unless one believes the MLR for individuals and group coverage is a concession to maintaining high profits for insurance, pharma, and the medical industry; this statement is without basis.
However, the issue to rising healthcare costs still remains a service for fees cost model which gives no regard for outcome. Bring that undr control which the ACA is and will do and the issue for people diminishes. The ACA is not the best that can be; but, it is the best we could achieve with the Blue Dogs and Lieberman opposing anything better.
coberly:
Beside the MLR, one critical component of the ACA/Manager’s Amendment were ratios based upon age, smoking, etc. The ratios were the lowest on younger and healthier insurees and older (and smoking) at the older end of the spectrum.
Chafee name edited for clarity.
run
thanks. i take that to mean that premiums are higher as you get older. that would seem to be a failure to take advantage of the “mandate” to smooth premiums over a lifetime so that you have paid your “expected costs” by the time you retire.
it would also be a failure to adjust the premiums so they also take into account your “expected” periods of low wages so that you pay a little more during periods of high wages to cover your expected costs.
but this begins to look like “social insurance.”
except rather more explicit than “the rich pay” model of social insurance favored by more liberal thinkers.
FYI vermont does not yet have true singer payer. it’s still a work-in-progress, and promising.
vermont does have a program that provides state medicaid and subsidies for health care that are income-determined. no one in vermont who is struggling financially has to face health care costs they can’t afford. the current program has additional benefits targeted to children as well.
“provide the parliamentary basis for a reconsider.
Exactly, Dole was the Republican floor leader. Part of his job was to often vote against bills he actually supported if they were on track to lose a roll call vote. Why? Only a Senator who voted against a defeated bill can call it back to the floor later.
Also can’t beieve anyone outside the insurance lobby (MLR + premium subsidies = cost plus contrascs that’s make Haliburton envious) actually thinks Obamacare is a good bill. Why on Earth would a hard-fought bill that (in theory) provided universal healthcare wait 4 years to start providing universal healthcare? The period between bill signing and its 2014 insurance exchange start date is longer than the period a between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrendering to MacArthur. By way of contrast, after LBJ signed the Medicare bill, he personally enrolled its first two beneficiaries (Mr. and Mrs Harry S Truman) at the bill signing!
I suppose tthe idea of waiting so long is to thin the herd so it won’t cost so much, but when did we become such a half-assed country?