Doable or Un? Helpful or Un? That is the question

[Political Waves]

First let me start by wishing you a Blessed Solstice -- and urge you to put a pocket of time aside for stillness and reverence ... or maybe just your feet up, sipping some herbal tea and listening to soothing music. We begin our journey into shorter days, Winter sleep and recharge.

 

Next, I neglected you last week so I offer a hint of an apology -- I was lost in the quest for perfect gifts, having forgotten what Mass Consumption actually looks like, Southern California-style.  But the weeks news in general has been so absurd, it was hard not to gape, open-mouthed at Lieberman's antics and do anything but wonder at headlines like:

GOP Senator Appears To Wish Robert Byrd Dead To Spoil Health Care Vote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/21/robert-byrds-death-seemin_n_399038.html

Michael Steele: Dems Are Cowards, 'Flipping The Bird' To The Public
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/21/steele-dems-are-cowards-f_n_399350.html

and

John McCain: Obama Created More Partisan Environment Than Bill Clinton
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/20/mccain-obama-created-more_n_398452.html

Reporting on stuff like that seems more the territory of Comedy Central, so I continued to fight my way to cash registers, figure out what my second, third and FOURTH 'perfect' choice would be and generally Fa La La as Christmas comes closer by the minute.

There WAS a bit of unusual activity over the weekend, however, a dramatic turn of which you should be aware. This is how BuzzFlash reports it:

GOP Filibuster of HCR Defeated in Historic 1 AM EST Vote in Senate: 60-40 Along Party Lines. It will pass the Senate by Christmas Eve. It's manifestly clear: the GOP "reverence for life" ends at birth.

So at this point, we have Mandate without Option ... indeed, without public assistance to provide for it. Krugman says that the government is effectively paralyzed and Lefty's in the Senate are telling us that the Public Option will be revisited in the near future -- because, as Howard Dean has stated emphatically, making him even less beloved on the Hill, there is no real reform without Option to break the hold of insurance carriers. The goal is to wedge into the game, and make the required changes later ... arguably, in the next decade [since we have so little ... thank GOD/DESS ... of this one left.]

The worst ledeline I've read, the one that made my eyebrows shoot down in a glower, is the arrogant assertion of Rahm Emanuel -- IMHO, Obama's first, most debilitating and continuing error -- not to worry about the Lefty's. They'll come along.

There will be days ahead when he will be proven wrong -- and he'll live to regret his comment. When you are full of yourself, the Universe is quick to take note and begin to arrange a painful plummet from the pedestal.

Here are a couple of excellent 'toons -- Ann Telnaes on womens healthcare and one featuring Holy Joe. Then, the Clown Prince puts Laura Ingraham in her place:

Jon Stewart takes on Laura Ingraham

We'll start with a couple of short pieces of snark -- then the update on the weekend's doings -- then Howard Dean's op/ed and a tit/tat by P.M. Carpenter. Rummy-like, I'll agree with both, but Carpenter has a point -- you go to vote with the Congress you've got ... and that's where it all goes wonky! You'll find some links after that to good reads.

Healthcare, last week until now ... and still a revolving funnel threatening to turn this way or that, taking something or someone with it ... and their little dog too!

Jude


Senate Unveils CompromiseCare™
Andy Borowitz, Smirking Chimp
December 17, 2009

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25558

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - The United States Senate today unveiled details of its health care plan, tentatively called CompromiseCare™:

* Under CompromiseCare™, people with no coverage will be allowed to keep their current plan.

* Medicare will be extended to 55-year-olds as soon as they turn 65.

* You will have access to cheap Canadian drugs if you live in Canada.

* States whose names contain vowels will be allowed to opt out of the plan.

* You get to choose which doctor you cannot afford to see.

* You will not have to be pre-certified to qualify for cremation.

* A patient will be considered "pre-existing" if he or she already exists.

* You'll be free to choose between medications and heating fuel. ++


Obama Transfers Balls to Lieberman in White House Ceremony
Andy Borowitz, Smirking Chimp
December 16, 2009
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25542

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - In a White House ceremony that many historians are calling unprecedented, President Barack Obama today transferred his balls to the custody of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Called the "Balls Summit" by White House aides, the ceremony was intended as an official acknowledgment of Mr. Lieberman's complete control of the nation's health care future.

"There are now four branches of government," the President said. "Executive, Legislative, Judicial, and Lieberman."

Mr. Lieberman explained his decision to oppose the Medicare buy-in he supported just three months ago, saying, "I'm a bigger dick now." ++


Obama, Dems on track for pre-Christmas health bill

ERICA WERNER, AP
12/21/09

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama cheered a crucial health care vote in the Senate on Monday that put historic legislation well on its way to pre-Christmas passage and which sharpened already edgy partisan tensions. The middle-of-the-night vote, which knocked away Republican attempts at procedural delays, required all 58 Democrats and the Senate's two independents to hold together. The next vote is expected around 7:20 a.m. Tuesday.

Obama called the vote "a big victory for the American people," and challenged critics who say it will increase, not reduce costs.

"For all those who are continually carping about how this is somehow a big spending government bill, this cuts our deficit by $132 billion the first 10 years, and by over a trillion in the second," Obama said. "That argument that opponents are making against this bill does not hold water."

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said: "Never have we been so close to reforming America's broken insurance system."

The American Medical Association announced its support for the rejuvenated bill, the product of marathon negotiations that secured the votes of Sens. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, and Ben Nelson, a conservative Nebraska Democrat. The AMA's support came even though the bill doesn't address a top organization goal — a permanent fix to a flawed Medicare reimbursement formula that would cause payments to doctors to drop by 21 percent in January.

Still, Reid did make some last-minute changes to court doctors' support.

A proposed fee on physicians to enroll in Medicare, originally set at $300 annually, was dropped in a final package of amendments, and payment cuts to specialty physicians to pay for bonuses to primary care doctors in underserved areas were also eliminated, the AMA's president-elect, Dr. Cecil B. Wilson, said.

"America has the best health care in the world — if you can get it," Wilson said. "For far too many people access to care is out of reach because they lack insurance. This is not acceptable to physicians."

With final passage on track, Republicans ramped up their criticism, denouncing the last-minute deals and concessions needed to get the 60 votes needed to overcome GOP tactics.

"I am tired of the Congress thumbing their nose and flipping a bird to the American people," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in a conference call with reporters.

Reid promptly criticized Steele for saying "something so obscene" and "so crass and such a terrible example for the youth."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., criticized the side deals needed to win key votes, calling them "Bernie Madoff gimmicks."

Still, the vote represented a major victory for Democrats and Obama, who's now clearly in reach of passing legislation extending health coverage to nearly all Americans, a goal that's eluded a succession of past presidents. The legislation would make health insurance mandatory for the first time for nearly everyone, provide subsidies to help lower-income people buy it, and induce employers to provide it with tax breaks for small businesses and penalties for larger ones.

Two more procedural votes await the Senate, each requiring 60 votes, the first of these set for Tuesday morning. Final passage of the bill requires a simple majority, and that vote could come as late as 7 p.m. on Thursday, Christmas Eve.

The Senate measure still must be harmonized with the health care bill passed by the House in November before final legislation can be sent to Obama's desk.

There are significant differences between the two measures, including stricter abortion language in the House bill, a new government-run insurance plan in the House bill that's missing from the Senate version, and a tax on high-value insurance plans embraced by the Senate but strongly opposed by many House Democrats.

After Monday's vote a number of Senate Democrats warned that the legislation could not change much and expect to maintain support from 60 senators.

Republicans are determined to give Democrats no help, eager to deny Obama a political victory and speculating openly that the health care issue will hurt Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

At their core the bills passed by the House and pending in the Senate are similar. Each costs around $1 trillion over 10 years and is paid for by a combination of tax and fee increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending. Each sets up new insurance marketplaces called exchanges where uninsured or self-employed people and small businesses can compare prices and plans designed to meet some basic requirements. Unpopular insurance practices such as denying people coverage based on pre-existing conditions would be banned, and young adults could retain coverage longer under their parents' insurance plans — through age 25 in the Senate bill and through age 26 in the House version. ++

AP Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.


Health-care bill wouldn't bring real reform
Howard Dean, WaPo
Thursday, December 17, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121601906_pf.html

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to.

To be clear, I'm not giving up on health-care reform. The legislation does have some good points, such as expanding Medicaid and permanently increasing the federal government's contribution to it. It invests critical dollars in public health, wellness and prevention programs; extends the life of the Medicare trust fund; and allows young Americans to stay on their parents' health-care plans until they turn 27. Small businesses struggling with rising health-care costs will receive a tax credit, and primary-care physicians will see increases in their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference. If lawmakers are interested in ensuring that government affordability credits are spent on health-care benefits rather than insurers' salaries, they need to require state-based exchanges, which act as prudent purchasers and select only the most efficient insurers. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) offered this amendment during the Finance Committee markup, and Democrats should include it in the final legislation. A stripped-down version of the current bill that included these provisions would be worth passing.

In Washington, when major bills near final passage, an inside-the-Beltway mentality takes hold. Any bill becomes a victory. Clear thinking is thrown out the window for political calculus. In the heat of battle, decisions are being made that set an irreversible course for how future health reform is done. The result is legislation that has been crafted to get votes, not to reform health care.

I have worked for health-care reform all my political life. In my home state of Vermont, we have accomplished universal health care for children younger than 18 and real insurance reform -- which not only bans discrimination against preexisting conditions but also prevents insurers from charging outrageous sums for policies as a way of keeping out high-risk people. I know health reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America. ++

The writer is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and was governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002.


Barack Obama "gets it"; Howard Dean doesn't
P.M. Carpenter, BuzzFlash
Mon, 12/21/2009
http://blog.buzzflash.com/carpenter/567

As the familiar story goes, after meeting in the White House with president-elect Dwight Eisenhower, sitting-president Harry Truman grimly quipped: "He'll sit right here and he'll say do this, do that. And nothing will happen. Poor Ike -- it won't be a bit like the Army."

Although Truman was being a trifle ungenerous -- Eisenhower, as the Allies' Supreme Commander ten years prior, was well aware of institutional inertia born of parochial interests -- he was also echoing, broadly and accurately, the long-enduring frustrations of his office: Congressional deadlock, bureaucratic lassitude, the political system's natural sluggishness, factional disputes, personal antagonisms, immovable ideological camps ... ad infinitum -- in short, every imaginable roadblock to progress.

Having been there, done that, Truman was, however, correct about most incoming presidents' expectations. No matter how well read they have been in the history of their peculiar institution, virtually every one of them has been shocked to learn just how powerless they can be, Gulliverlike, tied down and overwhelmed by swarms of competing Lilliputian objections.

While on the campaign trail, future presidents -- again, even the best read, best schooled, best informed among them -- start thinking their Big Mo will carry their Mojo into the White House. Their overflowing rallies and sense of inevitability confirm it; and that, in turn, creates a set of symbiotic expectations: Hey, the base believes, we really can do this, no exceptions.

Then the presidential hand goes on the Bible, Congress convenes, ballyhooed legislation is submitted, and somber meetings and committee negotiations commence. And generally it's at about this point in a new president's term that one starts reading passages such as this one, from the weekend NY Times: "Little this year has come as easily as Mr. Obama and his team once imagined."

It -- the immutable reality of Washington's ways -- nails them every time.

Also at this point, having recovered from the transcendent intoxication of campaign hopes, sober White Houses adjust their expectations. It's either this, or unmistakable -- worse, unforgettable -- failure. And then one reads passages like this, again from the Times: "After weeks of frustrating delays ... Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get [on health care], declare victory and claim momentum..., even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them."

Yet, there is always what we might call a realization gap -- a kind of electoral lag -- that forms among some of any president's base. They're still mired, if you will, in the unadulterated expectations of the campaign trail; they're still pumped to go fight, fight, fight -- always a vague exhortation -- not having themselves sat at numerous negotiating tables and discovered firsthand just how immovable some parochial interests and political factions can be, and not having accepted that progress often means quick study and sudden adjustments.

Case in point: Howard Dean's appearance on "Meet the Press" yesterday. It was astonishing. I sat watching, slack-jawed but in utter agreement with Dr. Dean about the evils of private health insurance and the coming legislative battles with this monstrous special interest, should the recently tailored Senate bill be signed into law. Yep, that's what will happen all right. No doubt about it. I couldn't have agreed more.

So how, you might ask, could I sit vigorously nodding my head up and down while my jaw slackened in disbelief -- even disgust?
Simply because Dean repeatedly ventured that the bill should be improved, it should be improved, it should be improved -- while not once taking the good time and trouble to inform us just how the bill realistically could be improved.

The Senate doesn't have the votes. Never did Dean acknowledge that simple, inescapable political reality. We already know the bill could be better; we know every bill could be better -- and all of those vastly improved bills dwell in the uncompromising fantasyland of progressive otherworldliness.

That world is precisely what Truman's predecessor sought to escape -- and his successful escape is what launched 20th-century liberalism's upward trajectory. Franklin Roosevelt didn't play around long with celestial visions and he absolutely rejected unrealistic stubbornness. He took what he could get, when he could get it, knowing that small successes -- however disagreeable -- ultimately accumulate larger than their sum.

Obama, as a student of history, has learned from the master. He has, as the Times further framed his approach, "put a high value on ... keeping things moving, recognizing that history generally does not remember the to and fro, only the big sweep of presidential accomplishments" -- which build on themselves.

And that was the profound summary offered by Paul Krugman last Friday in defense of the result of Obama's approach: "Bear in mind ... the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by."

One does what is doable; that is the key to triumphant progressivism. Some understand that. Some don't. Barack Obama does. Howard Dean -- the unheeding personification of Harry Truman's lament -- doesn't. ++


'Kill The Bill' Debate Rages
HuffPo
12-17-09
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/17/kill-the-bill-debate-rage_n_395449.html

Joe Lieberman and the Health Care Train Wreck
William Rivers Pitt, truthout via Smirking Chimp

December 16, 2009
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25547

Sanders Says Single-Payer Day Will Come as He Withdraws Amendment
Healthcare Policy
by Donna Smith | December 17, 2009 - 9:31am
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25559

"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

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