Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
September 29, 2009
This is very encouraging news. Hopefully this will lend political cover for the rest of the Dogs who are hesitant to vote in favor of something that enjoys, you know, overwhelming public support.
Incidentally, when will 100 House Republicans co-sponsor a bill banning “dogs” from serving in Congress?
http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/09/25_blue_dogs_en.html
Copyright 2009 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
Categories: Health Care
Only Republicans really buy the anti-healthcare reform lies. So why are some Dems settling for such an awful bill?
Gene Lyons
salon.com
Thursday, Sep 24, 2009
“I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist. In my country, you’d be considered a conservative.” — President Obama, Sept. 20, 2009
There have always been two basic arguments for health insurance reform: one based in morality, the other self-interest. For a documented 45,000 persons to die prematurely in America each year because they can’t afford proper care is a national disgrace. Almost everybody apart from “conservatives” whose moral imagination is limited to judging other people’s sex lives understands that.
The current cruel, wasteful system is indefensible. Surely that’s why almost three-quarters of physicians polled by the New England Journal of Medicine favor genuine reform. About 63 percent of doctors surveyed nationwide support a public option; 10 percent would prefer a single-payer system, basically Medicare for everybody.
For all the hullabaloo, it appears alarmist rhetoric hasn’t scared ordinary people as much as it has cable TV anchors. A Bloomberg poll asked which right-wing objections people found legitimate, and which were “scare tactics.” Basically, voters rejected GOP rhetoric almost 2-to-1. About 63 percent think Sarah Palin’s “death panels” are a distortion, versus 30 percent who fear them. It’s 61 to 33 percent on the claim that health reform means government-paid abortions, 58 to 37 percent on the false claim that illegal aliens will get subsidized insurance, etc.
In short, hardcore opposition is mainly confined to the Republican “base,” itself increasingly confined to the South. Why has Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, started making conciliatory noises? Consider these remarkable statistics from a Research 2000 poll: Voters in the Northeast overwhelmingly dislike congressional Republicans. The party’s favorability rating there is a minuscule 7, yes 7, percent. Moreover, it’s a paltry 13 percent in the Midwest; 14 percent in the West. Only in the South is the GOP politically relevant, with a 50 to 37 percent advantage over Democrats.
Hence the odds of Obama’s signing what the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait correctly calls “one of the towering social reforms in American history” appear excellent. Ending the game of health insurance roulette that keeps workers unsure their coverage will actually exist when they need it, and fearful of losing their jobs lest illness or injury lead to bankruptcy, would be a significant moral achievement.
Chait, however, also thinks progressives should shut up and accept a deeply flawed bill. He fails to grasp why some suspect Democrats could be slow-walking into political disaster. See, that’s where the self-interest side of the argument comes in. Because the widely publicized bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., not only won’t get Republican votes, it would also do little to restrain galloping cost increases. That’s why insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists love it.
Instead, Baucus’ bill would force millions of working Americans currently without coverage to spend up to 13 percent of their annual income on private health insurance policies they can’t afford.
Have these abstemious “centrists” on the Senate Finance Committee been hitting the medical marijuana stash? A surer way to stoke a right-wing populist rebellion can’t be imagined. Like Politics Daily’s David Corn, “I feel as if I’m watching a cheesy horror flick and some poor unsuspecting person is about to open the wrong door — and you want to scream, ‘Hey, don’t open that door!’”
Democratic bloggers boast about how brilliantly Obama schooled George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ “This Week.” The host wondered whether a government mandate requiring people to buy health insurance wasn’t a steep tax increase. Obama argued semantics. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.”
No, Mr. President, it’s not. Technically speaking. But it’s thousands of bucks out of the pockets of people who’ve already decided they can’t afford insurance. Sure, some are improvident deadbeats willing to take their chances, visit the emergency room as necessary, and stick everybody else with the bill. But most just can’t find the money.
See, the argument from self-interest starts with the realization that Americans already spend almost twice as much per capita for healthcare as the citizens of any other country. And that most of the difference goes to outsize corporate profits. Insurance and pharmaceutical executives aren’t wicked, but corporations can be as amoral as sharks.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean insists that the bill simply must include a competitive public insurance plan: “Because it’s the only thing that works … If controlling costs, which is part of the president’s agenda, is going to happen, you have to have a public option. If you want to get some people insured by 2010, which I think is essential for the future of the Democratic Party, you have to have a public option.”
Is that because Dean’s a left-wing ideologue?
No, it’s because he’s a doctor.
© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association
Categories: Health Care · Republicans
Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
September 15, 2009
This list by Jon Perr is really great:
Here, then, are 10 Lessons for Tea Baggers:
1. President Obama Cut Your Taxes
2. The Stimulus is Working
3. First Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt…
4. …Then George W. Bush Doubled It Again
5. Republican States Have the Worst Health Care
6. Medicare is a Government Program
7. Barack Obama is Not a Muslim
8. Barack Obama was Born in the United States
9. 70,000 Does Not Equal 2,000,000
10. The Economy Almost Always Does Better Under Democrats
More details and sources for each item over at Crooks & Liars.
http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/09/ten_lessons_for.html
Copyright 2009 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
Categories: Health Care
Robert Greenwald
the Brave New Films team
Fri 9/11/2009
Watch this video of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explaining what a public option for healthcare coverage really means for working people. Then pass it on to everyone you know.
We can’t let the insurance companies decide who gets care and who doesn’t.
Copyright 2009 Brave New Films
Categories: Democrats · Health Care
Bob Cesca
Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
September 6, 2009
Thought I’d summarize why support for the public option is so tenacious. Here are 10 reasons.
1) Quick definition. The public option as proposed by the House bill and the HELP bill is a government-run health insurance policy that Americans could choose to purchase in lieu of a private health insurance plan. Rates and administrative overhead would be similar to Medicare (which is very affordable and popular). Overhead for Medicare is 3 percent compared with upwards of 40 percent for private insurance corporations.
2) The public option is supported by anywhere from 50-80 percent of the American people. Many polls show strong majority support from Republicans and Independents.
3) Competition from the public option incentivizes private insurers to reduce their premiums and provide better overall service in order to compete. So even people who don’t sign up for the public option will see many benefits from the increased competition.
4) The public option might lead to a single-payer government health insurance system, but not a governent takeover of the entire healthcare system.
5) The public option is, in fact, a compromise position for liberals and progressives — it’s not a core policy position. Recent demand to either eliminate the public option or to weaken it is absolutely one compromise too many. We’ve played fair politics by moving closer to the center, now it’s the center’s turn to meet us here. Not the other way around.
6) The public option is an option of good conscience. One aspect of achieving “universal healthcare” is by mandating that everyone buy insurance. However, mandating that Americans buy a corporate health insurance policy amounts to a massive and compulsory giveaway to private, for-profit health insurance providers who have a long history of abusive and deadly practices, as well as using our money to finance record-breaking CEO salaries and bonuses. The public option is therefore an escape hatch for those of us who understand that mandates are necessary but who refuse to subsidize what we consider to be a legalized criminal enterprise.
7) The public option would be affordable, portable and reliable. If you can’t afford your premium, there will be subsidies to help you. You can take your policy with you no matter where you go. And you will never have to worry about being dropped from your policy or being denied coverage when/if you’re sick or injured.
The public option will save hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. For example, the CBO estimates that the cost of the Senate HELP Committee’s reform bill will drop by as much as $400 billion over ten years if the public option is included. How does this work? See also numbers 3 and 9. In short: Competition reduces costs and premiums finance the system.
9) The public option is not free health insurance. Americans who choose to enroll would have to pay a premium just as with Medicare. So “you” wouldn’t be financing “my” health insurance. (Also, no other nation has “free” health insurance. People in those nations either pay a premium or a higher tax rate in order to finance the system.)
10) Employers would not be able to sign up their employees for the public option right away. This would phase in over many years. However, employees have never been able to choose their own health insurance provider. Furthermore, no one will lose their health insurance. Under a compulsory universal system, this would be practically impossible. Meanwhile, however, tens of thousands of Americans are losing their health insurance every month — in the current free market system. 3,000 Americans — the same as were killed on 9/11 — die every two months for a lack of affordable healthcare.
http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/09/why_are_we_obse.html
Copyright 2009 Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog
Categories: Health Care
Erica Jong
The Huffington Post
August 31, 2009
The crazy person always makes the decision, says my husband the divorce lawyer. “If you have two partners–and one is sane and the other crazy–guess who always wins?”
“The one who screams the loudest?” I ask, knowing this because I come from a family of crazy people.
“You betcha.”
There are things sane people don’t do–like lie, like drag the children into the dispute, like leave for New Zealand with the kids, like rob the joint bank accounts. But the crazy person will do it–and the sane partner is usually left holding the bag. Oh you can sue and sue and sue–but in the end, the kids are wetting their beds, the bank account is gone and the sane partner is on welfare.
That’s what I think about the health care ruckus. The Republicans will say just about anything to derail progress. The Democrats are too reticent. Not that they don’t have corrupt Blue Dogs with their hands in the pockets of the health care profiteers. They do. But all their talk–and the president’s–of compromise is like arguing with a crazy person who will say anything. Forget reasoning. Just push he damn thing through.
OK, I’m not a diplomat or a politician. I haven’t got the patience. But it’s clear to me that our country’s lack of a public option is bankrupting businesses and families. Not only does our tiny one-writer, one-lawyer business pay fortunes for health care for our assistants, housekeeper and ourselves, but any time the health care company makes a mistake, we pay anyway for fear of being cancelled.
Just pay, our broker says–if you hold back your check, they’ll cancel you. So for six months last year, I paid full coverage for a fired assistant–though the broker gave me erroneous information.
Companies with 25 employees, not one, are responsible for paying health insurance for a worker who’s been fired after six months. The broker was wrong. Blue Cross or Aetna or Oxford–I forget which–held our money for six months and then refused to refund the correct amount. I’m still asking for it. This is what monopolies do.
I’m a lucky cuss–good earning power and a spouse with good earning power–but the health care giants answer to no one. Why should they? They have cornered the market. Unless there is a competing option, they will continue to act like the eight hundred pound gorilla who sits wherever he wants.
This is common sense, not rocket science. If there were no competition in the clothing business, we’d all have to pay $300 for jeans–not just fashionistas. Competition is vital. Especially when life and death are at stake.
So come on Dems, get with the program. We need a public option–or we’re gonna have to start a new political party with guts. We could call it the Healthy Party. Or we could move to Canada–or Ireland or Italy or France. We could move almost anywhere and get health care without breaking the bank. What’s wrong with the US? The crazy people make the decisions–on health, on guns, on wildlife, on the environment. What stupidity. There’s a helluva good universe next door–let’s go. (With apologies to ee cummings, who knew insanity when he saw it).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/dont-let-the-crazy-people_b_272337.html
Copyright 2009 HuffingtonPost.com
Categories: Wingnuts
PATRICIA
Morning Martini
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 01, 2009
These are facts reported on the front page of The Palm Beach Post yesterday, see if you can guess whose home this describes.
The home was purchased by him in 2008 for the price of $40,549,376. The value of the home today is $48,303,931. The value of his home has gone up 19.1% since he purchased it.
The home is 32,000 square feet and it sits on 3 acres of land along the ocean with a pool and elevator.
So who owns this mansion? None other than Rush Limbaugh. I guess you can make a pretty good living ranting and spewing bull fecal matter all day long in a radio station.
http://morning-martini.blogspot.com/
Copyright 2009 Morning Martini
Categories: Rush Limbaugh
