Klein counters RedState-fueled hysteria

Just in time for the election season, folks on the right are trying to turn health care reform into a liability for the Democrats.

Consider the lather RedState bloggers have worked themselves into. (Did I just end a sentence with a preposition? Oh, dear! What will Leon Wolf think?) Erick Erickson complains that the Obama administration is going to give waivers to corporations to mitigate the "devastating effects of Obamacare." Brian Simpson complains that very few people will opt for the high risk pools created by health care reform (without mentioning, of course, that high risk pools were also proposed by Republicans). Ben Domenech complains that "HHS has missed one-third of the deadlines contained within the legislation for the first six months under Obama’s new health care regime." Brian Simpson compiled a short laundry list of problems, ranging from the refusal by some insurance companies to issue child-only insurance policies to 3M's decision to reimburse retirees' purchase of health insurance rather than sponsoring a health care plan for them.

Of course, had health care reform not been watered down, perhaps none of these problems would have surfaced. Maybe those waivers would not have been necessary. Certainly the high risk pools wouldn't have been necessary. Single-payer was the best solution, but Democrats took it off the table at the very beginning.

Ezra Klein gave us a reality check this morning. Health care reform will bring an end to practices that ought to end. One of the complains Brian Simpson makes is that health care reform will bring an end to McDonald's "mini-med" coverage. This is actually a good thing. According to Klein, Sen. Chuck Grassley actually called McDonald's mini-med coverage "not better than nothing." "The point of health-care reform," writes Klein, "was to get people into real insurance and protect them from illusory plans that run out when they get sick." The consequence of health care reform, according to Klein, will be

a vastly better health-care system, where 32 million more people have coverage and where tens of millions of more are in far better plans than they would've had without the law. But that will require changes in some of the worst plans, and on the part of some of the worst employers and insurers.

Which is worse: the coming changes, or the status quo?

RedState bloggers complain about these changes, but from the fact that changes are coming, it doesn't follow that catastrophe is on the horizon. And if Republicans really are worried, rather than calling for the repeal of health care reform, they ought to be calling for strengthening it.

The Individual Mandate

Now that health care reform is a reality, many on the right are complaining that the health care reform bill's individual mandate in unconstitutional.  The individual mandate requires all Americans purchase health insurance.  Those who don't will pay a tax penalty of 2.5% of thier income or $695, whichever is greater.  For those who cannot afford to buy insurance, there are, according to Timothy Noah,

exemptions for people who either fall under the tax-filing threshold or who, if forced to purchase health insurance, would end up spending more than 8 percent of their annual income. The majority of those subject to the mandate would receive a government subsidy.  

I was surprised to learn that the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea.   But when you think about it, Republican opposition to the individual mandate isn't all that surprising.  This is just one more piece of evidence for David Frum's claim that Republican opposition to health care reform was motivated not by principle, but by the political desire to make health care reform Obama's Waterloo. 

But is the individual mandate constitutional?  Timothy Noah argues that it is.  Neither I nor Noah are lawyers, but Noah has talked to some.  And one of them, Mark Hall, a professor of law at Wake Forest University, argues that the commerce clause in the Constitution justifies the individual mandate.  Noah writes:

Although health delivery is often local, Hall writes, "most medical supplies, drugs and equipment are shipped in interstate commerce." More to the point, "most health insurance is sold through interstate companies." 

Some argue that the individual mandate is unconstitutional because it violates the Fifth Amedment's takings clause (i.e., "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation").  But, as Noah writes, Yale constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar doesn't buy it.  For one thing, the individual mandate does not result in property being taken without compensation: the insurance one buys is the compensation. 

Still, some people think that the individual mandate is an infringement on their liberty, even if they don't have a legal argument against it.  But this is a mirage.  I guess that they implicitly appeal to Mill's moral distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding conduct (found in On Liberty, Chapter IV).  The state has no right to interfere with a person's self-regarding conduct:

As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. 

As Noah points out, one's refusal to buy health insurance does affect the interests of others.  According to Hall,

Covering more people is expected to reduce the price of insurance by addressing free-rider and adverse selection problems. Free riding includes relying on emergency care and other services without paying for all the costs, and forcing providers to shift those costs onto people with insurance. Adverse selection is the tendency to wait to purchase until a person expects to need health care, thereby keeping out of the insurance pool a full cross section of both low and higher cost subscribers. Covering more people also could reduce premiums by enhancing economies of scale in pooling of risk and managing medical costs.

You might have no interest in complying with the mandate.  Indeed, the law provides for no penalties, even if you refuse to pay the penalty for not having insurance.  Perhaps you believe that your rights will disappear unless you exercise them and generally make a nuisance of yourself.  Fine.  If that's the way you feel, I want you to make the following pledge: if you refuse to buy health insurance now, then you refuse to buy health insurance for the rest of your life, and you refuse to accept medical treatment unless you pay for it out of your own pocket.  If you are not ready to take that pledge now, then you are really one of those free-riders Hall mentioned, cowering behind noble language that, to you, signifies nothing.

And this is the problem

One of my Facebook friends posted the following image.  It's well worth reading.  I do not know the identity of the author, but whoever you are, thank you.

The Pro-life argument for health care reform

I learned from Ezra Klein today that T.R. Reid has confirmed a belief I expressed back in September that more affordable health care might lead to fewer abortions.

Back then I wrote:

The question is, how can we most effectively decrease the number of abortions? What we could collectively do is make it less likely that women who find themselves [in difficult circumstances] choose abortion. We could do more to make sure that everyone in this country has health insurance. (In fact, if health care reform is passed and more people are insured, it might actually result in a decrease in the number of abortions!)

T.R. Reid argues for this claim in The Washington Post. Here is Klein's excerpt of Reid's column:

The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org, demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example, has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to abortion rates in the developed world, we're No. 1.

No one could argue that Germans, Japanese, Brits or Canadians have more respect for life or deeper religious convictions than Americans do. So why do they have fewer abortions?

One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.

The connection was explained to me by a wise and holy man, Cardinal Basil Hume. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate of England and Wales when I lived in London; as a reporter and a Catholic, I got to know him.

In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal. Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.

The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"

A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. "If you're [sexually] active," she said, "the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that's easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free."

When all else fails, go after the orphan

Check out the following video:



What is Michelle Malkin's take on this?  The boy in the video, Marcelas Owens, is being used by Harry Reid as a "kiddie human shield":

Harry Reid put Marcelas Owens in front of the cameras to help deflect tough health care policy and political questions. . . . The usual hyperventilating from the Left — horrible conservatives “targeting” poor, innocent kid! conservatives “assault” poor, innocent kid! — just proves my point. Despite President Obama’s repeated admonition that health care reform is a “complex issue that can’t be reduced to snippets,” it’s exactly what Reid, Murray, Schumer, and his Owens’ grandmother propped up young Marcelas to do. Anyone who questions the narrative and absolute moral authority of the kiddie human shield is a heartless, right-wing stalker who should be vilified, if not arrested.

You said it, Michelle. I didn't.

Malkin also goes after Marcelas, his mother, and anyone who believes their story.  According to Malkin, The New York Times "swallows the Owens’ family story whole without asking a single question of any independent state agency or outside source for verification."  Malkin writes:

The Times fails to mention that Owens’ grandmother and family have been longtime activists for the left-wing, single-payer advocates of the Washington Community Action Network or that the boy and his grandmother traveled to Washington with sponsorship from the Astroturf lobbyists of the Health Care for America Now outfit, which characterized Marcelas as an “insurance abuse survivor.”

Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence that any health insurer ever “abused” Marcelas. Never mind that the family has made no claim that Marcelas himself has survived without insurance (in Washington state, low-income children have been covered either through Medicaid, SCHIP, or the SCHIP expansion program Apple Health for Kids).

(It's ironic that Malkin attempts to make stones of our hearts here by informing us that Marcelas may have been covered by a government-run health care plan.)

Here are a few questions for Malkin:

• What reason do we have to doubt the truth of Marcelas's story?  Why not suppose that they are working with Democrats to sell health care reform because their story is true? 
• Suppose that Owens' family have been left-wing activists.  What reason does that give us to ignore what they have to say?  What if they are left-wing activists because they are victims of the private health insurance industry? 
• Aren't you embarrassed by the fact that you have to resort to ad hominem arguments to make your point? 

The Democrats are not using human beings as shields.  They are reminding us all about the human cost of Republican ideology and obstructionism. 

Why does Malkin lash out at the Democrats for this video?  Because she does not like to be reminded of the human cost of her self-interested proliferation of propaganda for fear that she might actually be tormented by faint pangs of compassion and guilt.  That's my guess, and I'm trying to be perhaps unjustifiably charitable to Malkin. Maybe she's just a sociopath. 

The result?  A disgusting display of contempt for fellow Americans and human beings.  Sure, Malkin does say that "It’s a heart-wrenching story," but she immediately backpedals when she says that "the tale raises more questions than it answers."  That's wishful thinking, Malkin.  If you can't handle the real-world consequences of your ideology, that's no one's problem but your own.

Help for Democrats addicted to polls

Ezra Klein just posted this pdf produced by Joel Benenson, "Barack Obama's pollster of choice."  The White House is circulating this memo among congressional Democrats in an effort to convince them that their votes for health care reform will be vindicated by voters in November.  Go ahead and have a look, and compare your impressions to those expressed by Republicans reporting from Fantasyland. 

Health care reform angers imaginary Americans

On MSNBC's The Daily Rundown this morning, Rep. John Boehner claimed that Americans are "adamantly opposed" to the health care reform bill taking shape in Congress.

I wonder how he reconciles that claim with this graph:



According to Ezra Klein, health care reform is getting more popular, not less.

The Republican's strategy now is to try to convince everyone that Americans are overwhelmingly against health care reform and that Democrats will pay in November if they pass it.  As usual, however, the Republican strategy is based almost entirely on ideology and lies. 

Update.  Your elected Republican representatives aren't alone in perpetuating the fantasy; their propaganda arm is aiding and abetting them.  It appears that everyone got the memo! 

A Bill that even Republicans can read

Grayson introduces Public Option Act

Congressman Alan Grayson, (D-Orlando), today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

Congressman Grayson said, “Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative.”

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program. Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

In keeping with the “Grayson style,” the bill is clear and concise. It is only four pages.

Sources: http://westorlandonews.com/2010/03/09/grayson-introduces-public-option-act/, http://grayson.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=175363

You can read the bill here. At four pages, it is short enough that even Republicans in Congress can read it. They can even draw on the pages with their crayons if they want.

The Race to the Bottom

This is an excerpt from "Come Together," Hendrik Hertzberg's commentary on the Health Care Summit, which appeared in the March 8 edition of The New Yorker.

The Democrats made it clear that they intend to cover the uninsured before another lifetime or two elapses; the Republicans made it equally clear that they do not. “We just can’t afford this,” Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, said, adding dismissively, “In a perfect world, everyone would have everything they want.” But, even when the two sides seemed to agree on a particular goal, the similarities were irreconcilable, so to speak. For example, both sides say that they favor making it impossible for people with “preëexisting conditions” to be refused insurance. Obviously, this can’t be done by simply ordering insurance companies to accept such people. Too many of the young and healthy, knowing that they couldn’t be refused, would wait to buy insurance until they got sick; the ranks of the insured would grow thinner and sicker, and premiums would balloon. Without the universal or near-universal coverage that Democrats support, just telling insurance companies that they must accept everyone becomes another way of distributing health care by ability to pay. We have enough of that already. Segregating the sick into “high-risk pools”—the oxymoronic Republican solution—has generally flopped in states where it has been tried. A similar logic holds for allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, another point of nominal bipartisan agreement. Without the sort of standards that Democrats want and Republicans don’t, those among the young, the healthy, and the poor who bought insurance at all would choose the cheapest, skimpiest policies from companies in the least regulated states, leaving people who need the kind of insurance many of us are lucky enough to have in shrinking pools with increasingly unaffordable premiums—the “race to the bottom” that the Democrats kept talking about.

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/08/100308taco_talk_hertzberg

RedState, Abortion, and the Senate Health Care Bill

Brian Faughnan of RedState recently claimed that "Obamacare" pays for abortion. His evidence for this claim was a quotation of Sen. Barbara Boxer appearing in California Catholic Daily:

Boxer, who played a prominent role in brokering the ‘compromise’ in behind-closed-doors meetings with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska (who insisted on the abortion provision to obtain his yes vote), came under withering attacks from her longtime pro-abortion supporters following the inclusion of the Nelson provision. . . .

But not to worry, Boxer told McClatchy News Service. Boxer, reported McClatchy, “said it's only an ‘accounting procedure’ that will do nothing to restrict [abortion] coverage.”

So is it true? Does the Senate bill provide for government funding of abortion as California Catholic Daily, that paragon of objective and impartial reporting, claims?

Here's what Timothy Noah of Slate has to say about the matter:

"If you go to Page 2069 through Page 2078 [of the Senate bill]," Stupak told George Stephanopoulos on March 4 on Good Morning America, "you will find in there the federal government would directly subsidize abortions, plus every enrollee in the Office of Personnel Management-enrolled plan, every enrollee has to pay a minimum of one dollar per month toward reproductive rights, which includes abortions." Stupak is here referring to the exchanges created under health reform and to a nonprofit plan managed by the Office of Personnel Management that would be sold through the exchanges. The latter was a consolation prize to supporters of a public-option government health insurance program that didn't make it into the bill.

Let's go to Page 2069 through Page 2078 of the Senate-passed bill. It says, "If a qualified plan provides [abortion] coverage … the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to [health reform's government-funding mechanisms] for purposes of paying for such services." (This is on Page 2072.) That seems pretty straightforward. No government funding for abortions. (Except in the case of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life—the same exceptions granted under current law.) If a health insurer selling through the exchanges wishes to offer abortion coverage—the federal government may not require it to do so, and the state where the exchange is located may (the bill states) pass a law forbidding it to do so—then the insurer must collect from each enrollee (regardless of sex or age) a separate payment to cover abortion. The insurer must keep this pool of money separate to ensure it won't be commingled with so much as a nickel of government subsidy. (This is on Pages 2072-2074.)

Stupak is right that anyone who enrolls through the exchange in a health plan that covers abortions must pay a nominal sum (defined on Page 125 of the bill as not less than "$1 per enrollee, per month") into the specially segregated abortion fund. But Stupak is wrong to say this applies to "every enrollee." If an enrollee objects morally to spending one un-government-subsidized dollar to cover abortion, then he or she can simply choose a different health plan offered through the exchange, one that doesn't cover abortions. (Under the Senate bill, every insurance exchange must offer at least one abortion-free health plan.)

When Boxer said that the bill would do nothing to restrict abortion coverage, then, she was claiming that those who enroll in a health plan through the exchange would be able to obtain coverage for abortion if they so chose; she was not claiming that taxpayers would pay for those abortions, as California Catholic Daily claims.

If I had to speculate, I would say that the folks at California Catholic Daily made an honest mistake. Their belief that Democrats want people to have abortions, combined with their own incompetence, resulted in their mistaken reporting. The losers at RedState, on the other hand, did not make an honest mistake. They want health care reform to fail, and they are willing to say anything, true or false, to help bring that about.

Another swing and a miss by RedState. You're the gift that keeps on giving. This is too easy.

The "Mike" Johanns-bot executes most recent programming

The "Mike" Johanns-bot as seen in 2008 before its most recent software upgrade.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevewhite/3005624472/

Below is an article by Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal-Star about Sen. "Mike" Johanns-bot's comments on the use of reconciliation to pass health care reform in the Senate.

You might remember the Johanns-bot's gig with the previous administration as Android Secretary of Agriculture. Nebraskans overwhelmingly elected it to serve in the United States Senate, which is pretty generous, considering the incredible mess it and the rest of the Bush administration made of the country. When you consider how red the Cornhusker state is, though, it makes perfect sense.

Anyway, the Johanns-bot has been recently reprogrammed, and it is now mindlessly executing its new programming as it interacts with the news media. I'll reproduce Walton's story here together with my comments.

Sen. Mike Johanns said Thursday the best conclusion to President Barack Obama's health care reform summit would have been a pledge not to seek Senate approval using the so-called reconciliation process.

That procedure would allow enactment by a Senate majority of 51 votes, bypassing the need to acquire 60 votes to break a Republican filibuster.

Comprehensive health care reform "should not be rammed through" by using a process that was designed to control spending, Johanns said.

It appears that certain facts have not been downloaded to the Johanns-bot. Reconciliation has been used 22 times since 1980. Republicans have themselves used reconciliation, and the Android senator belongs to the Republican Party. In addition, Republicans have made the use of reconciliation necessary, since they refuse to vote for any health care reform supported by Democrats and have threatened use of the filibuster. In fact, it may be safely said that Republicans are abusing the filibuster, so the Johanns-bot's insistence on the rules of the Senate in the present case is quite amusing. Apparently, the Johanns-bot's database does not include these important facts.

Reconciliation "bypasses thoughtful consideration of legislation," he said.

"Let's just take reconciliation off the table," the Republican senator said, and seek bipartisan agreement through discussion and debate.

"Nothing would clear the air more," Johanns said during a telephone conference call from Washington as the health care reform conference was winding down.

Again, the Johanns-bot is mindlessly executing its programming by repeating Republican talking points. Both houses of Congress have been working on health care reform for a year, so it is rather implausible to claim that the resulting legislation has not been thoughtfully considered. Clearly, the Johanns-bot is either incapable of rudimentary logic (as is many of his Republican colleagues) or it is simply malfunctioning. Further, it has been programmed to recognize a Democratic victory as a threat to the Republican Party to which it owes everything, including its many software upgrades. And Democrats could score a victory by passing health care reform through reconciliation. The Johanns-bot promises bipartisan agreement if reconciliation off the table, but it is programmed to avoid bipartisan activity at all costs.

Obama told congressional leaders at the summit he believes the public isn't too interested in Senate procedures.

"I think most Americans think that a majority vote makes sense," he said.

Johanns said he was "very disappointed" that Obama shaped Thursday's discussion around a modified version of the Democratic bill approved by the Senate in December.

That proposal has been "overwhelmingly rejected" by the American people, he said.

Here again the operation of the Johanns-bot is predicable and reliable, in spite of potential problems with its central processing unit. It has been programmed to state that Democratic health care bills have been overwhelmingly rejected by the American people even though that contradicts the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll which also indicates that most Americans support many of the features of the bill.

"My hope is all of us can start with a notion that we need to write down on a sheet of paper what we want to achieve," Johanns said.

And that could be "the starting point," he said.

Unfortunately, the Johanns-bot has not downloaded all those health care bills that have been written down on paper. Perhaps it had been deactivated for repairs at some time last year; that would explain why it apparently missed the starting point about a year ago. Whatever the reason for its tenuous grip on reality, the Johanns-bot's programmers are strongly motivated to send it out into the world in its present state: if the Johanns-bot, the McConnell-bot, the Cantor-bot, the Boehner-bot, and others can convince Democrats to scrap a year's worth of hard work and start over, they could delay the passage of health care reform for who knows how much longer.

Source: http://www.journalstar.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_2a665362-2257-11df-a0d1-001cc4c002e0.html

Pull the Reconciliation Trigger

In this interesting column, Robert Reich argues that Democrats ought to use the reconciliation process to pass health care reform in the Senate. This would allow them to pass the legislation with only 51 votes instead of the 60 that would be needed to jump procedural hurdles that Republicans have threatened.

It's worth reading. Here, for example, are some facts Reich mentions that you might not be aware of:

George W. Bush used reconciliation to enact his giant tax cut bill in 2003 (he garnered only 50 votes for it in the Senate, forcing Vice President Cheney to cast the deciding vote). Six years before that, Bill Clinton rounded up 51 votes to enact the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for children in the U.S. since Medicaid began in the 1960s. Through reconciliation, we also got Medicare Advantage. Also through reconciliation came the COBRA act, which gives Americans a bit of healthcare protection after they lose a job ("reconciliaton is the "R" in the COBRA acronym.) These were all big, important pieces of legislation, and all were enacted by 51 votes in the Senate.

Now, people talk about reconciliation as if it is some sort of nuclear option. It's not. Reich deals with other arguments against using reconciliation. The only remaining argument, I think, would be that Democrats simply don't have the guts to make health care reform happen.

Just do it.

The health care summit may be useful as political theater, but we're not likely to accomplish anything there. Just today, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor called the White House health care reform bill a "non-starter," and that bill doesn't even have a public option in it. The Party of No will never say yes.

Just Freaking do it.

Update: Reid: GOP Should 'Stop Crying About Reconciliation'

Politics 1, Reason 0

According to Jacob Weisberg, Medicare Part D, passed by Republicans in 2003, will cost $1.2 trillion over ten years and was financed entirely by deficit spending. The Senate health care reform bill costs $848 billion and will not add to the deficit. And yet Republicans are against it. Sen. Charles Grassley is opposed to it on the grounds that it "expands the deficit, threatens Medicare, and does too little to restrain health care inflation." Weisberg infers from these facts that the Republicans' complaints about health care reform are "disingenuous" and he concludes that they are not serious about health care reform. Read Weisberg's piece here. Of course, we all knew this already, but Weisberg's piece is interesting in spite of that fact.

One might also believe that the Democrats aren't serious about health care reform either. The prominent health care reform bills have been so watered down that they barely resemble what many of us had in mind when we dreamed about reform back in January. It is easy to be disappointed in Obama's failure to lead and the Democrats' failure to show real courage and backbone in the Senate and the House. 2010 will be a dark year for Democrats indeed.

Tell us how you really feel, Phi.

Perhaps you're aware of the possibility that some guy in Connecticut could kill health care reform in the Senate.

And perhaps you know his name: Senator Joe Lieberman.

We face a crisis in government when one man in Connecticut can stop the Democratic party from achieving its goals—in spite of the fact that democrats have through free and fair elections built commanding majorities in both houses of Congress.

President of Air America Media Mark Green discusses the problem here.

According to Green, Lieberman's only remaining argument against the public option is that it would be "an unnatural and dangerous appendage to health care reform."

If Lieberman's opposition to the public option rests on this atrocious argument, then Lieberman must be motivated by money. This is a manifestation of a structural problem with government, argues Green, and it must be addressed if we are to govern ourselves well and wisely.

How do you sleep at night, Sen. Droopy Dog? Do you have any idea how infuriating it is that some son of a bitch in Connecticut might actually deprive the people in my own state of the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they want a public option?

I hate to use this kind of language, but I think it is appropriate here:

Fuck you, Senator Joe Lieberman. Fuck you.

"209 pages? My favorite comic book isn't anywhere near that long!"

Don't believe all the scary things Republicans say about the length of the health care reform bills in Congress. Only those people not accustomed to reading anything more challenging than Animal Farm will find reading these bills daunting. Read this Associated Press article for details.

The human face of the debate

The insurance industry has an antitrust exemption?

I am fully aware of the irony of embedding an MSNBC video in this post after publishing a post in which I advised you to ignore Fox "News." The difference between the two networks is that MSNBC is, unlike Fox, right more often than not.

I was under the impression that The Morning Meeting was less partisan and more news-oriented than other MSNBC programs like Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show. That impression evaporated this morning. Ratigan and his guest Eliot Spitzer go after the health insurance companies and argue convincingly that their antitrust exemption ought to be eliminated. (That exemption would, of course, help explain why insurance costs have been skyrocketing.) You can read more about the antitrust exemption here.

The partisan tone of the segment is alarming, given that it appeared in a time slot that was devoted to news before The Morning Meeting premiered some months ago. But the content of the segment is, it seems to me, sound. (Seriously: allowing insurance companies to become monopolies can only make insurance more expensive for their customers. Markets governed by antitrust exemptions are not free and do not function properly.) It is comforting to know that someone on cable is countering Fox "News," the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Rep. Alan Grayson on health care reform

These are the remarks of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida) on 30 September 2009. The study to which he refers can be found here. According to that study, 44,789 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance. Now is the time for pro-lifers and Christians in general to kick the Party of No to the curb and demand that something be done about this loss of innocent life.

The perilous seductiveness of choice

I watched The Morning Meeting on MSNBC today. This is a bit unusual for me: it's pretty obvious to me that the host, Dylan Ratigan, prefers the sound of his own voice over the sound of the voices of others. So I find watching him difficult. I find watching Chris Matthews difficult for a similar reason.

But enough about me. The topic of this morning's program was what the producers called the death of free choice. The Senate Finance Committee has been working on their version of a health insurance reform bill, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) was protesting last night that the reforms he prefers didn't make the cut.

Slate's Jacob Weisberg has written about Wyden's plan. As I undertstand it, in a nutshell, Wyden's proposal is to sever the link between employers and health insurance. Instead, what employers pay for health insurance would be converted into extra salary. Employees would then be able to shop for health insurance on their own, which they would be required to purchase. Insurance companies would compete for their business, but only if the plans they offered met certain conditions. It is claimed that Wyden's plan would reduce health care spending in the United States by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This figure comes from The Lewin Group, which, as Rachel Maddow has pointed out, is part of the health insurance industry.

Ratigan's argument this morning in support of this sort of reform is this: if consumers are allowed to freely choose their insurance plan, which something like Wyden's plan would allow, insurers would be forced to compete with each other for customers. Such competition would lower health care costs, which most of us want. (One wonders why The Lewin Group would support Wyden's plan if this is its expected effect, but that's another matter.) This should be an argument in its favor that even republicans can embrace, since competition is, of course, important to a capitalist economy for a number of reasons.

Here's the worry. The market works for consumers only if consumers can make rational choices. And in order for consumers to make rational choices, they must be able to accumulate the information they need to make rational choices, and the time and effort required to make a rational choice must be reasonable. As Bob Sullivan has convincingly shown in his book, Gotcha Capitalism, corporations have gone to great lengths to undercut the ability of the consumer to make rational choices. They do this by using a variety of techniques. For example, credit card companies write agreements that most people simply do not have the time to attempt to understand: they are lengthy and written in 15th Grade English. That is because credit card companies do not want consumers to understand them: they can make more money off of a confused consumer than an informed consumer, because confused consumers do not make rational choices. Corporations also use what is known as mouseprint in their marketing. Mouseprint is very small writing that some people can't even read. It's not meant to be read, because companies do not want consumers to understand what they are agreeing to when they enter into a business relationship with them.

Our government is finally taking steps to protect the consumer from such practices. But it allowed these practices to flourish. As attractive as choice is, without government regulation of the market, we have every reason to expect that insurance companies would use the same techniques to confuse consumers shopping for health care insurance. Creating a market in which there is choice does not guarantee that choices made in that market will be free and rational. Government regulation is essential to a free market. Republican deregulation of markets creates an anarchy in which the only rational decision-makers are corporations. Deregulation kills capitalism. While killing Wyden's plan might in some sense represent the death of free choice, there is no guarantee that enacting Wyden's plan would resurrect free choice either.

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