A Conservative With A Conscience

I am including David Brooks New York Times Column from Friday October 8, 2009 to demonstrate that even dedicated Republicans of the Conservative stripe get it about the need for health care reform and the following text illustrates an often overlooked intra-party squabble going on within the conservative wing of the GOP.

Op-Ed Columnist

The Baucus Conundrum 

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 8, 2009

"The longer the health care debate goes on, the more I become convinced that the American system needs fundamental reform. We need to transition away from a fee-for-service system to one that directs incentives toward better care, not more procedures. We need to move away from the employer-based system, which is eroding year by year. We need to move toward a more transparent system, in which people see the consequences of their choices.

"I’ve also become convinced that the approach championed by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, is the best vehicle for this sort of change. The Wyden approach — first introduced in a bill with Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, and now pared down to an amendment to the current bills—would combine choice with universal coverage. 

"People with insurance could stay with their existing health plans. But if they didn’t like the plans their employer offered, they could take the money their employer spends, add whatever they wanted to throw in, and shop for a better option on a regulated exchange. People without insurance would get subsidies to shop at the exchanges.

"Americans would have real choices. The vigorous exchanges would reward providers and insurers that are efficient, creative and innovative.

"But barring a legislative miracle, the Wyden approach was effectively killed in committee last week. The business and union lobbies worked furiously against it. They want to control their employees’ and members’ benefit packages. Many politicians support it in principle but oppose it in practice. They fear that if they try to fundamentally reform the system, voters will revolt.

"So what we are going to get is health insurance reform, not health care reform. We’ll be adjusting and expanding the current system, not essentially changing it.

"At this point people like me could throw up our hands and oppose everything. But that’s not what adulthood is about. In the real world, you often don’t get to choose what your options will be. You have to choose from a few bad options. The real health care choice now is between the status quo and the bill primarily authored by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is emerging from the Senate Finance Committee.

"The Baucus bill centralizes power, in contrast to the free choice approach, which decentralizes it. The Baucus approach aims to reduce costs, expand coverage and improve efficiency by empowering regulators to write a better set of rules. It aims to rationalize the current system from the top down.

"This approach has many weaknesses. It entrenches a flawed system. It creates greater uniformity and rigidity. It redistributes income from the politically disorganized young to the politically organized old. It squeezes people into a Rube Goldberg complex of bureaucracies based on their income level. It will impose huge costs on people as they rise up the income ladder, distorting the whole economy.

"The biggest problem is that it will retard innovation. Top-down systems just don’t innovate well, no matter how many Innovation Centers you put in the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill will retard innovation by using monopoly power to squeeze costs. It will also retard innovation by directing resources toward current care (and current voters) and away from future technologies and future beneficiaries.

"But the Baucus bill has some advantages over the status quo as well. It would insure an additional 29 million people, a social benefit critics never grapple with.

"It is also more fiscally responsible than any other committee bill. It courageously cuts Medicare benefits by hundreds of billions. It raises taxes on the upper and middle classes in many necessary (and covert) ways. The bill will not really be budget neutral, but the authors have taken fiscal responsibility seriously. They’ve earned that good score from the Congressional Budget Office.

"Most impressively, the Baucus bill includes many provisions to make government-run health care more rational. It would bundle payments to hospitals and encourage doctors to work in efficient teams. It would punish hospitals that have to readmit patients. It would create a commission to perpetually squeeze costs. It would improve information technology. It would measure the comparative effectiveness of different treatments. No one knows how much savings would be produced by these changes in payment method, but they could be significant.

"If you asked me to compare the Baucus approach with the Wyden approach, the answer is easy. But if you asked me to compare it with the status quo, the answer is hard. The Baucus bill contains hidden bombs that could lead to a rigid bureaucratic system that still doesn’t address the fundamental problems. On the other hand, it contains hidden experiments that could lead to new models that might spread across the system.

"If I were in Congress, I’d figure there’s an 80 percent chance of something like this passing anyway. I might as well get engaged as a provisional supporter to fight to make it better, or at least to fight off the coming onslaught to make it worse."

Karl Rove: Just Another Well Paid Peon for the American Un-Health Insurance Industry

Karl Rove, A Leading Member of the GOP Cognoscenti: Late 1900 Beliefs for the 21st Century

How quick witted those traditionalist, status quo supporting headline writers for the Wall Street Journal really are: The cons are afraid to admit how anxious everyday people are for serious health care reform so they use the tern "Obama Care" to thumb their noses at the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to see the failed health care system that is running our economy into the ground fixed once and for all time.

Delivering the cons message; whose sole purpose is to misinform and scare the American people to be thankful for the outlandishly expensive and unresponsive system that the un-health insurance industry has entrenched into the U S economy and into the accepting consciousness of a small but vocal portion of the American people is none other than un-health industry windbag, Karl Rove.

Karl Rove is a simple minded mouthpiece.whose sole purpose is to spread the propaganda crafted by the puppet masters of the un-health insurance industry. His sole job is to keep the lies coming for the corporate interests and plutocrats that control the GOP, which is nothing more than a sham creation of the powerful interests that steer the course of public policy in our nation.

Today's specific task for Rove is to portray President Obama as a weak, conniving  leader, whose health care reform is intended to turn the U S into a socialist country. Furthermore, Rove ridicules Obama as a president who is even unable to preside over his own party let alone the nation. The well-established backdrop from which Rove ply's his ad hominin attacks against Obama has already been established by the scores of other peons used by the plutocrats to such an extent that even the most outlandish claims against the president find believers throughout the lunatic right wing fringe constantly cultivated by the cons.

Obama outlandishly shown  in white face paint - Joker style with socialism written across bottom of the poster to reinforce the cons intended discrediting attacks on the president: Santi Tafarella’s blog on books, culture, and politics

What the nay saying cons are failing to perceive as they mount their election style activities against the reform of health care, is that typical Americans have grown weary of the perpetual political campaign that promotes divisiveness by relying on the promotion of distortion, negative attacks and hyped up name calling. The common theme behind the cons use of their attack, attack, attack strategy is that it lacks any positive or uplifting  themes for the general population to rally around.

President Obama as been quick to pick up on the cons overbearing negative style. When the president spoke before Congress last week he made it a point to denounce "the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. "

 

President Obama giving his health care speech before Congress in early September 2009.

Since the speech, the Obama team has raised the intensity of their own campaign before the nation. Included in the administration's strategy is the inclusion of more presidential speeches, rallies, town hall meetings, the application of greater pressure tactics on up until now balking Congressional Democrats.

Meanwhile, Rove, like other Republicans, has no compelling, competitive vision to bring to the attention of Americans. Instead he is engaging his 'expertise' to issue critiques of the president's performance in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that focuses on Obama's appearance before Congress last week. Rove cites a Gallup Poll that "found that 38% of Americans say their representative should vote for ObamaCare--40% want their member to vote against it." Rove continued: "It was 37%-39% on the same question the day before Mr. Obama spoke." 

Rove then missed a chance to excoriate the president on his polling numbers and instead went off on a tangent and complained: "Part of Mr. Obama's problem is his language. His speech contained little new information and his tone was unpresidential. Instead of binding Americans to his cause, he called legitimate concerns "misinformation," "false," "demagoguery," "distortion" or "tall tales." Earlier in the week he declared them "lies." This was like calling people with concerns stupid, and it's not the way to win them over."

Rove then wasted several paragraphs of commentary to recite polling information that he believes should concern Obama and his Democratic colleagues. He then misrepresented last Sundays 9-12 con activist tea bag rally in Washington as some kind of ominous demonstration against health care reform. Then Rove boldly predicted of the rally; that: "If it keeps up, middle-class anxiety about the national debt could make 2010 a tough year for any Democrat up for re-election." Rove then adjusts his Wizard of Oz black top hat.

 The striking similarity between a wax statue of the character who portrayed the Wizard of Oz and Karl Rove the character who works tirelessly to create disinformation and fear!  

and declares with the type of dead reckoning precision that only Karl Rove possesses: "Mr. Obama will appear on five news shows on Sunday. His time might be better spent praying for more public support." Wow! Talk about bold predictions and devastating attacks! Rove once again proves himself without equal in the universe of political punditry!

When one of the top guns for hire available to the GOP takes such a bland tact against Obama; it leaves political observers to ponder just how little ammunition the cons have left to battle Obama and the Democrats on the national health care initiative.

Turdblossom

A Fanatical Devotion to a Cause: Why Do the Cons Keep Dishing Out the Same 'Voters Don't Want Obama to Change the Health Care System' in America Narrative When It Just Isn't True?

 

"Jacques-Louis David does Karl Rove: political murders or suicide?
Marat and Karl Rove are ideologies of some stuff. Engineering foment is a nasty job and requires single mindedness with an ideology that can inspire the less thoughtful, more ignorant to follow into the morass of zealotry." Scari.org

Increasingly, Cons, as a political movement that has for decades projected an image of promoting individualism and free markets, are adopting an increasingly repetitive undertaking that exposes their own shortcomings of being so bereft of substantive alternative ideas that they have taken to laboriously repeating each other as a way to substantiate their claims of representing the will of the people when all that Cons are engaging in is to "inspire the less thoughtful, more ignorant to follow into the morass of zealotry." Rove displays this very tiresome practice by repeating many of the ill-conceived claims made by his fellow ideologue, David Brooks; that I wrote about in a post that appeared a few days ago in a September 1st posting I made to this blog.

Karl Rove recently 'wrote' a commentary that appeared in the Wall Street Journal that serves as an example of the cookie cutter type of pro-corporate viewpoint that is portrayed as fact by the main stream media.

As the Wonk Room has recently conducted an exhaustive refutation of a recent typical Frank Lutz, created Karl Rove distributed, collection of lies about the public's rejection of the public health care option that is nothing but vintage Con-created propaganda designed to support the insurance industry's monopolistic suppression of free trade, open marketplace practices.

The following was provided by the Wonk Room and points out in very substantive terms the several ill-conceived notions that the Cons are attaching to their ideological attacks on health care reform:

"A public option is unnecessary: "It's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Insurer and hospital markets are dominated by large insurers and provider systems. Private insurers rarely negotiate with dominant hospital systems and typically pass on the higher costs to beneficiaries in the form of higher premiums. Already, "1 in 6 metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets is dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70% of consumers enrolled in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations." Such consolidation negates any real competition. Without it, insurers don't negotiate prices and boost their profits. In fact, "there have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years," and premiums have risen "nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes." A public plan could, in an environment of head-to-head competition, push private insurance companies to negotiate more aggressively with providers and dramatically lower health care spending." [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008; LA Times, 4/09/2009]

"Private competition in Medicare Part D has reduced costs: “The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore [the ability of private competition to lower prices]. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 — nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition’s benefits.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Medicare Part D beneficiaries have experienced significant cost increases. According to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows “significant increases in premiums, costsharing amounts, use of specialty tiers, and utilization management restrictions since 2008 that could have important implications for beneficiaries’ access to needed medications and out-of-pocket expenses.” [KFF, 6/2009]

"A public plan would shift costs to Americans with private insurance: "Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Private insurer payments promote medical inefficiency. A new public option will change the way the health care reimbursement system so that we pay for value, not volume and reward efficient providers. According to MedPAC, Medicare rates are adequate and consistent with the efficient delivery of services. In fact, over-payments by private insurers to health-care providers drives up overall costs. "Hospitals which didn't rely on high payment rates from private insurers 'are able, in fact, to control their costs and reduce their costs when they need to' and 'combine low costs with quality.'" [WSJ, 3/17/2009]

"A public plan will lead to a welfare state:"If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Americans will choose a public health insurance plan from a menu of different options. The private insurance market isn't going anywhere. Private insurers will play an important role in providing more integrated coverage options than the public plan and would retain a "brand advantage" (in the same way that a lot of people rather have the branded drug than the generic) for consumers. Private insurers who "offer a superior product through high levels of efficiency, satisfaction in consumer preferences and ease of access to quality medical services" will thrive in a reformed market. [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008]

"The public option is too expensive: “Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare — the purest form of a government-run “public choice” for seniors — will start exceeding its payroll-tax “trust fund” in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: A public option will lower family premiums. If a public plan is “far too expensive” and has higher premiums, then Americans will not enroll. But if a public plan offers lower premiums, it will motivate private insurers to lower their costs. As a result, health care costs would decrease across the board.

"Americans will be forced into a public option: "Government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: The government would not force Americans to purchase coverage from the public plan, but Rove would force everyone under 65 to enroll with a private insurer. Rove is essentially arguing that the public plan would work too well. It would use its inherent efficiencies to lower family premiums and force private insurers to aggressively negotiate on behalf of their beneficiaries.

"The public option would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor: “The public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: A public option improves the doctor-patient relationship. Existing reform legislation explicitly preserves the doctor-patient relationship. As a draft of the HELP bill notes, “a strong doctor-patient relationship is essential to the practice of medicine, and patents have a right to an effective doctor patient relationships…Doctors, nurses, and other health professional have the right to judge what is best for their patients.” Moreover, the public plan’s payment innovations would reward doctors for providing quality care and spending more time listening to their patients. [HELP Legislation, 6/09/2009]"

In his Wall Street Journal commentary; Rove takes every opportunity to criticize Obama for his profligate spending habits: "He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, an earmark-laden appropriations bill that boosted domestic spending nearly 8%,..."

Rove's commentary makes the additional complaint: "Mr. Obama's problems are legion. To start with, the president is focusing on health care when the economy and jobs are nearly everyone's top issue. Voters increasingly believe Mr. Obama took his eye off the ball."

Rove's commentary gleefully concludes by advancing that: "Presidents always encounter rough patches. What is unusual is how soon Mr. Obama has hit his. He has used up almost all his goodwill in less than nine months, with the hardest work still ahead. At the year's start, Democrats were cocky. At summer's end, concern is giving way to despair. A perfect political storm is amassing, and heading straight for Democrats."

Rove can only rely his hopes that his ideological fervor will work to negate any successes by President Obama and the Congressional Democrats in bringing about health care reform. Time will tell whether Rove's powers of prognostication drawn from his fanatical devotion to his single-minded job to cause foment among the masses will work.This writer sincerely hopes that Rove and his co-conspirators fail miserably in their attempts; and health care with a strong single-payer element included, becomes a reality for many suffering Americans and helps bring about fiscal sanity to the administration of health coverage in the United States.

The Need For a Democratic Solution for Health Care

With the passage of the last several months, it has become crystal clear that Congressional Republicans will stand together in their sole capacity as a status quo supporting party, and will vote together as a block against health care reform. For the Republicans, their only agenda item will be to frame President Obama's primary domestic issue as a threat to the nation. An example of this party-wide intent has been sounded by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina:: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

With such hyperbole in Washington having been established as a part of the capital's political landscape, "Senate Democrats are preparing to push through health care reforms using parliamentary procedures that will allow a simple majority to prevail in their chamber, as it does in the House, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster that Senate Republicans are sure to mount," according to a New York Times Editorial. In other words: "If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy."

Now is clearly the time for the Democrats to use their Congressional majorities and ignore the Republican whining and push ahead by taking advantage of their superior numbers and passing the legislation themselves.

The New York Times Editorial succinctly argues: "Delay would be foolish politically. The Democrats have substantial majorities in the House and the Senate this year. Next year, as the midterm elections approach, it will be even harder for legislators to take controversial stands. After the elections, if history is any guide, the Democratic majorities could be smaller."

President Obama's attempts to make health care reform  a task shared through realistic solutions provided by both parties were level minded and fair. But without the Republicans willing to give an inch toward compromise; bipartisanism was doomed to failure from the very beginning and it is time for President Obama and Congressional Democrats to move on and legislate.

The Times Editorial suggests: "The Democrats are thus well advised to start preparing to use an arcane parliamentary tactic known as "budget reconciliation" that would let them sidestep a Republican filibuster and approve reform proposals by a simple majority.

The Democrats decision to take the reconciliation approach is full of risk. The Times explains: "Reconciliation bills are primarily intended to deal with budget items that affect the deficit, not with substantive legislation like health care reform. Senators could challenge as "extraneous" any provisions that do not change spending or revenues over the next five years, or would have a budget impact that is "merely incidental" to some broader policy purpose, or would increase the deficit in Year 6 and beyond." The most significant question to be answered is "how much of the proposed health care reforms could plausibly fit into a reconciliation bill? The answer," the Times explains; "seems to be: quite a lot, though nobody knows for sure".

The Times cites: "Knowledgeable analysts from both parties (who) believe that these important elements of reform will probably pass muster because of their budgetary impact: expansion of Medicaid for the poor; subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance; new taxes to pay for the trillion-dollar program; Medicare cuts to help finance the program; mandates on individuals to buy insurance and on employers to offer coverage; and tax credits to help small businesses provide insurance."

The Times proposes: "Even the public plan so reviled by Republicans could probably qualify, especially if it is given greater power than currently planned to dictate the prices it will pay to hospitals, doctors, drug companies and other providers, thus saving the government lots of money in subsidies."

The Times correctly points out that: "Greater uncertainty surrounds two other critical elements: new rules requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants and charge them the same premiums without regard to medical condition, and the creation of new exchanges in which people forced to buy their own insurance could find cheaper policies than are currently available."

The Times elaborates: "Republicans claim that they want to make medical insurance and care cheaper and give ordinary Americans more choices. But given their drive to kill health reform at any cost, they might well argue that these are programmatic changes whose budgetary impact is “merely incidental.” Democrats would very likely counter that they are so intertwined with other reforms that they are “a necessary term or condition” for other provisions that do affect spending or revenues, which could allow them to be kept in the bill."

The Times continues: "Nobody knows how the Senate parliamentarian, an obscure official who advises the presiding officer, would rule on any of these complicated issues. But if he were to take a narrow view and eliminate important features, it could leave the reform package riddled with holes — perhaps providing subsidies to buy insurance on exchanges that do not exist, for example. Thus there are plans afoot to use a second bill to pass whatever reforms will not fit under the rubric of reconciliation, but those would be subject to filibuster and would have to depend on their general popularity (insurance reforms are enormously popular) to win 60 votes for passage."

The Times argues that: "Another hurdle is that the reconciliation legislation covers only the next five years, while the Democratic plans are devised to be deficit-neutral over 10 years. The practical effect is that the Democrats will almost surely need to find added revenues or budget cuts within the first five years."

The Times points out: "Another Senate rule, which applies whether reconciliation is used or not, requires that the reforms enacted now not cause an increase in the deficit for decades to come, a difficult but probably not impossible hurdle to surmount."

The Times concludes: "Clearly the reconciliation approach is a risky and less desirable way to enact comprehensive health care reforms. The only worse approach would be to retreat to modest gestures in an effort to win Republican acquiescence. It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote."

How to Lie and Win Using Outdated Economic Policy

The manufactured 'debate' over the 'public option' in health care and it's black crepe adornments announcing its intended purpose of handing America over to those millions of socialists who are just waiting behind the scenes to 'destroy the American way of life and free enterprise' has brought many discouraging challenges to liberals and progressives who favor nationalized health care. The most obvious point of dismay for the reform minded left has been the ease that traditionalist supporters of the status quo have gained been winning the public debate amongst the public by simply incessantly repeating that the public option would lead our nation into the irreversible grip of socialism.

Washington, despite the recent upswing of Democratic party control has been unable to throw of the yoke of Cons marching to the ideology of Reaganomics that accuses government activity in the marketplace as the problem and Reagan's 'ideological' belief in letting the private sector find it's own way as the solution.

What is most confounding to liberals and progressives is that Reagan's ideological reign should be over.

The most obvious reason being that the Cons use of Reaganomics never delivered what it promised. Their mantra that by lowering taxes on the highest incomes and by ending government checks and balances through deregulation would allow the 'magic of the marketplace to act as 'a rising tide of economic opportunity that would lift all boats' benefiting all Americans; no matter what their current financial situation might have been was a bald faced lie that only created greater and wider income disparities. Under the stewardship of the Cons, Reaganomics allowed the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans to rise by a factor of seven times over the course of almost forty years, 1980 and 2007. However, during the same period of time, actual income levels of middle class family's gained only about 22 percent which represented a real decrease in household income when compared to the previous nearly four decades, failing to keep pace with their upper income tax bracket fellow Americans.

It was only during the Clinton years that average Americans achieved any gain in income levels. Once Clinton left office after eight years of relative economic opportunity for all which had left a surplus for future generations to benefit from; George W. Bush, perhaps the greatest adherent to the Con adherence to Reaganism became president and immediately gave the federal government's surplus away in the form of grossly unnecessary tax cuts and and an unprovoked war against Iraq, and became the first American president since since Herbert Hoover to deprive the rapidly dwindling middle class of any economic advancement. And as an extra added bonus, Bush's laissez-faire brand of Reaganomics brought about the worse recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s

Bush 43 placed our nation in this precarious economic and financial position by a 'bold' backward looking adherence to Reagan-inspired Con ideology that systematically dismantled the New Deal financial regulations and economic checks and balances because the Cons fervently believed that Wall Street and the financial markets would be self-regulating through the magic of the 'invisible hand.' which guru Alan Greenspan preached.

The astonishing aspect of the Cons having succeeded in pushing the nation to the edge of an economic abyss is that Cons are still given a credible voice in being included as a part of fixing the mess caused by their by their own combination of inaction and neglect by the mainstream media. But this should really not hold any surprise; for the Cons are a part of the same controlling structure of American politics that the corporate media also finds itself a part of; as do many Democrats.

So the course of the 'debate' over the public option that has really only been an extended part of the campaign against government-run health care should be of no surprise to any clear minded liberals and progressives. The Senate's so-called gang of six consists of Democrats that are no different from their Republican 'opponents.' The Democratic Senators acknowledge in foreboding terms that given their druthers; most Americans would support the public option over private insurance which he casts as wrong-headed thinking, instead of stating the obvious and pushing the government plan because it is better than what the private insurance industry offers it's customers.

So why does such a publicly-needed quest for reform dying a slow and thought-numbing death? The answer is really quite simple, and it has little more to do than with the tremendously powerful control that money has over American politics. And to paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt: It has never been a great secret that the thoughtlessness of greed leads to a total corruption of morals. We can also add to Roosevelt's summarized dictum to include the relevance of ill-conceived economics to Roosevelt's analysis, based on the Cons economic debacle of last fall.

The debate over the most momentous legislation proposed sice the 1960's civil rights legislation is being torn apart by such dim-witted fear-mongering tactics such as the assertion that one of the "hidden truths' of health care reform is the absolute lie that the American government will use health care reform to create 'death panels' that will arbitrarily condemn old people and the infirm to government sanctioned euthanasia.

The obvious question is how is this Con game being foisted upon the American people can be defeated and allow debate on health care reform to regain a more reasoned approach? The first thing liberals and progressives must understand is that the lies and disinformation being used by the Cons is the only line of attack that they have at their disposal, and correspondingly any hope to convince Cons to give up their irrational beliefs and instead meet the left on a battlefield governed by rational behavior and ideas is nothing short of a pipe dream.

It is also time for the left to give up their fear that a crucial opportunity to pass health care reform is being missed and instead just toughen up and use their superior numbers to push meaningful health care through Congress and get it signed into law. If their are no Republican supporters gained, then that is solely the problem of the GOP.

This is power politics, plain and simple, and the Democrats must recognize that all they need is a simple majority to pass health care, and pass it they must because the public demands it and because the idea has become so centrally attached to the future of both parties. Passage means the Democrats can declare themselves as the winners and the Republicans will have lost a key element that gives them party solidarity; so a loss severly damages the GOP for a very long time, and in addition, may finally push the GOP away from it's extremeist Con roots of Reaganism and more toward a more center-leaning party. And such an occurance will have political reprecusions for decades to come and change the face of American politics.

I would like to publically acknowledge the ideas and thought of Paul Krugman for this posting.

08/22/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

SATURDAY, AUGUST 22ND, 2009 AT 12:01 AM
Weekly Address: Myths and Morality in Health Insurance Reform

Posted by Jesse Lee
"President Obama debunks the myths around health insurance reform, and discusses the public option proposal in which many of them are rooted -- but he focuses his address on the stark moral and historical turning point at which we find ourselves: "This is our chance to march forward. I cannot promise you that the reforms we seek will be perfect or make a difference overnight. But I can promise you this: if we pass health insurance reform, we will look back many years from now and say, this was the moment we summoned what's best in each of us to make life better for all of us. This was the moment we built a health care system worthy of the nation and the people we love. This was the moment we earned our place alongside the greatest generations. And that is what our generation of Americans is called to do right now."

read the transcript

The New York Times, The Caucus:

August 22, 2009, 9:11 am
Saturday Word: Myth Busters
By Janie Lorber

"President Obama seems to be starting his own version of Discovery Channel's MythBusters. For the second consecutive week Mr. Obama used his weekly address to dispel what he called the "outrageous myths" circulating about his health care proposal.

"Among the rumors he set out to quash: the idea that illegal immigrants will be covered, that abortions will be funded by taxpayer dollars, and that so-called "death panels" will be formed to decide who receives treatment.

"He also addressed the public option, the future of which has caused a bit of controversy. Liberal Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi say the House will not pass a bill without the government run health plan, while the more conservative "Group of Six"—the three Republican and three Democratic senators developing the finance committee's version of the bill—is seriously considering a system of health insurance cooperatives as an alternative.

"The public option question dominated conversation in Washington this week and Mr. Obama doesn't seem to like its pre-eminence.

""This one aspect of the health care debate shouldn't overshadow the other important steps we can and must take to reduce the increasing burdens families and businesses face," he said in the weekly address, which he recorded Friday before departing on a weeklong vacation."

Obama to health care critics: end `phony claims'

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE (AP)

WASHINGTON — "President Barack Obama is challenging critics of his push to overhaul the health care system to stop making "phony claims" about proposals now the subject of intense coast-to-coast debate.

""This is an issue of vital concern to every American, and I'm glad that so many are engaged," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "But it also should be an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are."

""So today, I want to spend a few minutes debunking some of the more outrageous myths circulating on the Internet, on cable TV and repeated at some town halls across this country," the president said.

"Obama said the overhaul would not cover illegal immigrants nor use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and he does not intend a government takeover of health care — as critics have claimed at contentious town hall-style meetings with members of Congress.

"He also took a swipe at "death panels," an idea former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced on her Facebook page.

""As every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels — an offensive notion to me and to the American people," Obama said. "These are phony claims meant to divide us."

"Obama angered his liberal base this past week after seeming to suggest he would be OK with a plan that didn't have a government-run health insurance option.

""This is one idea among many to provide more competition and choice, especially in the many places around the country where just one insurer thoroughly dominates the marketplace," Obama said. "Let me repeat: It would be just an option; those who prefer their private insurer would be under no obligation to shift to a public plan."

Desperate Con Games and Team Obama Response

The cons like to set the agenda and they can do so because they have large portions of the corporate establishment and private wealthy interests behind them. So money and foot soldiers are never a problem for cons to push their views on the American people.

The narrative behind their 'American tale of rugged individualism' was established decades ago; back in the later stages of the 19th century in fact. The cons strategy is to tell simple stories that grab the attention of 'common people' by setting up a scenario of two easy, competing tales of good and bad; white and black, with no contrasting shades of gray allowed.

The cons have had difficulty getting two of their favorite narratives to stick in the public consciousness: their race-baiting jabs, and their socialistic big government laments have fallen on deaf ears because since his January inauguration Barack Obama has commanded the attention of the American people from a mountain top of respect and dignity reserved for a historic presidency who stands as a true statesman. Cons who attempted their petty attacks against Obama were justifiably vilified throughout the media and by the public at large for using blatantly obvious delaying tactics intended to make the president appear to be a failure.

So after months of disarray and missteps by the Cons; they believe they have finally gained the upper hand on Obama by arguing that the combination of the August recess and his failure to pass a health-care plan portends of a massive loss by Obama and his fellow Democrats.

The cons can hardly contain their glee! They believe that all that Obama can now achieve is a watered down version of his original proposal. And to make things worse for Obama, the cons believe is that the impending failure is splitting the Democrats into two competing camps.

The progressive left, and the unions stand on one side of the divide while the Blue Dog Democrats, consisting of centrists and independents stand to the other side of what the cons hope is an insurmountable chasm.

So the cons are trying to extend their hand and add to the Democrats moment of seemingly disunity by resorting to their scare tactic approach based on the 'fact' that a new health-care system will shock taxpayers back into the GOP camp once they realize that not only Obama supporters in the upper tax brackets will suffer but that those in the middle class will be overwhelmed with revulsion once they realize at how high their top marginal rates could go.

The cons are furiously playing up their gloom and doom scenarios to taxpayers in states on the fiscal brink and are asking these people whether they can afford to pay higher marginal rates for people who are obviously too inept to secure their own private medical insurance coverage and instead are clamoring for a boondoggle federal health-care program that will force higher taxes on hard working, responsible Americans.

The cons are taking credit for insuring that President Obama's health-care bill has hit the wall and will never recover.

The cons are taking every opportunity to feed into the myth that Americans are thoroughly confused over the need for publicly funded healthcare even though the Democrats have well established facts on their side when they explain that the the lack of health insurance effects about “47 million uninsured Americans.” The cons are pushing their weak narrative that relies on disinformation and scare tactics that once tax payers realize that their taxes would increase under government health care they will revolt against government run health care.

White House adviser David Axelrod pushed back against the con verbiage when he said, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”

The cons hope that the harder the White House and Democrats push public health care, the worse it could get for them. The cons are betting their house stakes on their hope that Americans may have arrived at the limit of how much government they want or will pay for. If Barack Obama can’t sell more of it, no one can.

Meanwhile, President Obama is adapting his message on national health care to speak directly to those who already have health insurance.

On the president's agenda for the upcoming week; he will highlight his proposal to ban insurance companies from denying individuals coverage because of pre-existing conditions. During a Friday trip to Bozeman, Mont., Obama will stress how his plan would block companies from dropping an individual's coverage if he or she becomes ill. And at weeks end, in Grand Junction, Colo., Obama will emphasize that the Democrats' plan would end high out-of-pocket costs in some policies. All of these topics bypass Con rhetoric and concentrate on real, everyday issues faced by millions of Americans.

In another example of a shifting in Obama's strategy the White House has pivoted to campaign mode, making two significant modifications in their approach; they have dispersed select members of the Cabinet to key states to make the administrations case, and; a tech-savvy response to con misinformation has been launched through the White House Twitter and Facebook accounts, and has launched a new page on the White House's Web site entitled Health Insurance Reform Reality Check in which the administration enumerates examples of "the facts about the stability and security," Americans will "get from health insurance reform."

Obama and Congressional Democrats Contemplate Expanding Help to Jobless Americans

JACKIE CALMES and CARL HULSE report in the New York Times that: “President-elect Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are considering major expansions of government-assisted health care insurance and unemployment compensation as they begin intensive work this week on a two-year economic recovery package. One proposal, as described by Democratic advisers, would extend unemployment compensation to part-time workers, an idea that Congressional Republicans have blocked in the past. Other policy changes would subsidize employers’ expenses for temporarily continuing health insurance coverage to laid-off and retired workers and their dependents, as mandated under a 22-year-old federal law known as Cobra, and allow workers who lose jobs that did not come with insurance benefits to be eligible, for the first time, to apply for Medicaid coverage.” In his weekly YouTube and radio address on Saturday Obama explained the need for swift action. “Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” Mr. Obama said, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach.” In describing his economic plan, Obama said he intends to use government spending and tax incentives to increase renewable energy production; prioritize energy efficient government buildings; make infrastructure repairs and improvements; and bring modernized methods to health care and he pledged to “put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow.” Obama also intends to “reshape the economy, especially for the good of low-wage and middle-class workers.” One of Obama’s goals is “that he would seek money to develop a national energy grid to harness and distribute power from wind, water and other local alternative energy sources.” Congressional Democrats plan to be very aggressive in keeping “...the emerging legislation free of the pork-barrel projects that could invite criticism from Republicans and foster public skepticism.” House leadership has pledged that: “Every dollar will have to be justified as to whether it is targeted to our economy,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said last week. “This is not a bill that will be an excuse to put things in that otherwise might not be justified.” Democrats are under extreme pressure to produce meaningful results without overspending. “...officials said the size of the proposed two-year stimulus, equivalent to nearly a year of federal discretionary spending, had tested imaginations both in Congress and the Obama camp. Aides and advisers are struggling to identify enough projects that would meet Mr. Obama’s criteria that they be truly stimulative, create jobs and not be open to being branded as pork. This has really forced people to think outside the box,” one aide on the House Appropriations Committee said, “because this is more money than anybody expected to be spending.” There have also been: “Tensions on the opposite side involve demands from fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House and from some Senate Democrats — notably the Senate Budget Committee chairman, Kent Conrad of North Dakota — for provisions imposing budgetary controls on future spending and tax cuts for the long-term health of the economy. According to both sides, Obama officials have assured the fiscal conservatives that Mr. Obama would propose long-term controls in his first five-year budget, which is due by late February.” Conservative democrats “support deficit spending to jump-start the economy” but they also make the case that proper planning must be in place to retire the creation of increased debt. An idea that is making its way among Democrats is the creation of “a bipartisan commission to propose limits on future benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the entitlement programs whose projected future costs would squeeze out all other spending; a nonpartisan entity to designate infrastructure projects, like roads and public buildings, based on merit, and federal pay-as-you-go rules requiring offsetting savings for spending increases and new tax cuts.”

Bush's Failed Health Care Legacy

A New York Times editorial praises President Bush for some worthy achievements in health care: " As we have argued in the past, Mr. Bush deserves high praise for significantly increasing American support for the global effort to control AIDS... there is little doubt that the president has played a key role in providing drug treatments or supportive care to millions of patients who would otherwise have gone untended." The Times editorial points out that: "It is a remarkable record for the leader of a party that had been reluctant in the Reagan era to deal with a disease whose victims at the time in this country were primarily gay men and injection drug users. Equally remarkable was Mr. Bush’s decision to push through a costly new prescription drug benefit under the Medicare program for older Americans despite stout opposition in his party to government-run health care. It was the largest expansion of Medicare in decades and it dragged the program, at long last, into the modern medical era, in which drugs are a cornerstone of treatment." The Times points out their objections "to many features of the program — the refusal to allow the government to negotiate with manufacturers for lower prices, shortfalls in providing subsidies to low-income Americans, a failure to protect many patients from high out-of-pocket costs. Still, it has achieved its main goal by reducing the percentage of older Americans who lack drug coverage, from 33 percent before the program started to only 8 percent in 2006.Less heralded was the Bush administration’s willingness to grant Massachusetts a Medicaid waiver to redeploy federal funds to help start a universal health insurance program... Another substantial health achievement came in the form of bricks and mortar, through the president’s vigorous support of community health clinics." These achievements, the Times notes do not absolve the Bush Administration for it's most glaring failures in health care, including: " its failure to address the problem of millions of uninsured Americans or stem the rising costs of health care, its refusal to expand eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, its devious maneuvers to cut Medicaid spending, its support of unjustified subsidies for private health plans, to name a few." Regardless of the Times' list of Bush achievements, I believe that there is no doubt that President Bush deserves a low grade for his overall performance in matters of health care; his most glaring omission has been his failure to provide health care insurance to the millions of American's who must face each day of their lives without adequate and affordable heath care protection - a trip to the emergency room is not the way to solve our national health care shortfall. President-elect Obama has been left with many tasks that President Bush failed to accomplish. I hope that Obama's efforts will prove to be more productive than Bush's failures to act on issues of major significance regarding health care.

Wall Street Journal Commentary Pushes Lies About Obama Health Care Plan

Unfortunately, to the detriment of the American people, The Opinion Page of The Wall Street Journal continues to spread lies and feebly attempts to scare citizens about the horrors of a national health plan. This time the plan of attack employs Canadian Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a well funded right wing think tank. Her task is to talk down to the millions of Americans who are depending on Obama and his team to deliver health care legislation into law. Ms. Pipes claims clairvoyant powers by declaring: "we can predict both the strategy and substance of the new administration's health-care reform." This line of false prognostication attempts to charge that Obama intends to "ration" health - not true. She then retreats to the old canard that: "Americans can expect a quick, hard push to build more federal bureaucracy, impose price controls, restrict medicines and technology, boost taxes, mandate the purchase of health insurance, and expand government health care." Instead of discussing her charges in depth she decides to proceed with ad hominem assaults on Mr. Obama and the soon-to-be secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle. Still determined to charge that health care will be rationed but providing no proof for such an absurd charge, Ms. Pipes wallows through the standard right wing attack on Medicare and Medicaid. Then, showing how desperate the right wing is to stop national health care, she proceeds to assault the Massachusetts plan that had been created by Republican governor, Mitt Romney. I guess Ms. Pipes has no problem vilifying a former Republican candidate for president who touted his Massachusetts plan as a model for America. With her ammunition running low, Ms. Pipes charges that: "Mr. Daschle and the Democrats have spent years developing both the policy and political strategy to make the final push for taxpayer-financed universal health insurance. They have the players on the field, a crisis providing a sense of urgency, and a playbook filled with lessons learned from years of health policy reform disasters -- most recently that of HillaryCare in 1994." I guess the temptation to attack Hillary Clinton was too much for Ms. Pipes to neglect. Ms. Pipes ends on a note of sanity though, when she admits: "With employers and most insurers reportedly on board with the new administration's desire for radical overhaul, who will step in to ask the tough questions? Will these issues get raised in time to provoke a meaningful, fact-based debate?" Ms. Pipes is correct, there is overwhelming support for health care reform among employers, insurers and everyday people and there is a need for strict attention to the details of the plan. My hope is for a coalescence of support for quickly moving, constructive discussions to proceed that result in the creation of a world class health care plan for all Americans that avoids the fear tactics and ad hominem attacks of charlatans such as Ms. Pipes.