By now you’ve probably heard about the Stupack amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance offered on the exchanges set up by the health care reform bill to cover abortion services. It is being allowed to the floor by the leadership, and indications are that there may be enough votes for it to pass. If it were to remain in the final bill, it would strip practical access to abortion from millions of women, a number which would increase when the exchanges open to businesses.
Recently we have also seen the proposal to tie prices for procedures to Medicare +5% fail. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reported that the public option will likely only get 6 million enrollees and will cost more than private offerings because it will get more sick people than private plans since it won’t anti-select, has no auto-enrollment, and won’t have any scale advantages for bargaining since it will have so few people and not be linked to Medicare.
Meanwhile the bill itself will force people to buy insurance, provides inadequate subsidies, and falls hardest on the middle class and young people—forcing them to spend a huge chunk of their discretionary income on average, and doubtless pushing many families into bankruptcy (plenty are on the verge, it is impossible to imagine that this won’t push them over the edge).
And yet it is still supported by the same people who supported it all along. Apparently nothing can happen which would cause them not to support it.
This is the sort of “deal at any cost” thinking which bloggers used to decry. I find it amazing. Absolutely amazing. For any provision which is called “public option”, no matter how weak, folks are apparently willing to swallow hard and get over any number of deficiencies.
At this point, I’m wondering if the Democrats will even maintain control of the House in 2010. It’s looking like a close run thing. The jobs recovery will probably start in Spring, but it’s going to be slow, and most people who lost jobs are not going to find new ones (the recovery will probably not even keep up with population gains). The legislative record of Congress and Obama will stink. And they’re willing to pass a bill which falls hardest on the young (who can’t afford the cost of buying insurance) and on child-bearing age women, two extremely strong Democratic voting cohorts. This behavior seems designed to depress turnout in 2010 and 2012.
I can only conclude that both Democratic politicians and many progressive bloggers want to be back in the opposition, since they keep being willing to swallow bad policy. Policy so bad, in fact, that it seems designed to hurt Democratic electoral prospects. Forget doing the right thing morally, I don’t expect that of Democratic politicians. But apparently they are also incapable of acting in a way designed to make sure they keep their majority.
Remarkable.
Cujo359
To make matters worse, the House “leadership” refused to allow the Kucinich Amendment to come up for a vote. That amendment would have allowed states to set up single-payer systems if they wanted to.
My enthusiasm for this legislation has largely vaporized. The Medicare+5 failure, plus not making the public option available to anyone, did it for me. It’s now just about as useless as letting things remain as they are. It will make it possible for people to get insurance (as long as they’re not poor), but that’s the best that can be said for it. When the bills hit for the people who have to buy their own insurance, I suspect that the reaction will be “I worked for this?”
I think the Democrats are committed political suicide, but apparently suicide is painless compared to doing the right thing.
Formerly T-Bear
Too Big to Fail
followed by:
Designed to Fail
Political seppuku does remove the odium of living with one’s errors.
Bound to Fail
the path the government is on.
tc
How are they stripping practical access to insurance for women? It sounds like they are stripping practical access to abortion, or insured abortions anyway. I doubt many women will forgo all insurance because of the lack of abortion coverage. Maybe if women facing the potential of lost abortion access (not to mention their fetus daddies facing decades of potential child support payments) got a taste of pre-Roe conditions, they might get off their asses and make sure their reps (R or D) supported abortion rights and access.
I can’t speak to the particulars of the health insurance bills or whether the public option will be the disaster you predict. But you don’t need that as evidence for the Vichy Dems desire to be out of power again. They could sweep away the filibuster and end the selfimposed supermajority requirements to pass anything, but that is apparently unthinkable to them (never mind that with the over-representation of Red States in the Senate, we’re talking about being 1 or 2 votes away from super-supermajority status as is, and yet they go grovelling to Olympia Snowe and Joe Lieberman). They had majorities in Congress for years and did very little to slow down or stop the Bush agenda. They’re just timid possums that wouldn’t attack anything unless it was already in its death throes.
Frankly, I don’t see the Republicans making much headway in 2010. On the other hand, with this crowd in charge they don’t need to. Bush rammed thru his agenda and no one will take it back. What else did they want to accomplish? Sure he failed at tearing down Soc Sec and Medicare, which will allegedly be in the black for 30 more years. But when the government goes broke bailing out the banks and insurance companies in the next round of the credit crisis (not to mention financing 2 wars), there won’t be any money left to pay on those programs. Mission accomplished. And their enemies (the Dems) will get most of the blame. Sweet!
If California really is our future, the Republicans may very well be preparing for marginalizaton as the permanent minority, regional party, and still protect the agenda of their base effectively.
Ian Welsh
If abortions aren’t paid for, many women won’t be able to afford to have one. I didn’t say “all women” I said “millions of women”.
Republicans just did fine in the 2009 elections. The idea that they’re out of it seems unlikely to me. Especially as the Democrats are doing a great deal to suppress base turnout. In addition, by the time of the 2010 elections, the economic problems are not going to be Republican problems, they are going to be Democratic problems. And the populist rage is on the Republican side. (Stupid populism, but populism.)
gtash
I think the Dems will suffer politically in the next round of elections because nobody is going to the polls to enthusiastically endorse them, nor are they going to vote for Dems because they are terrified of the onslaught of Republicans. Instead, the Republicans will simply mobilze their small base and rout the apathetic and disgruntled.
Curmudgeon
WTF motivated the Dem leadership to take an anti-choice stand here?
Normally, when the Dems tack rightward, against the interests of their own constituents, it’s out of deference to the interests of corporate cash. However, abortion is not a hot issue for corporate campaign funding and there is no obvious gain for the Dems to placate the right wing on this issue.
tjfxh
Looks like voters agree. Daily Kos – NEW POLL: Dems Who Oppose Public Option Bill Today Will Lose Obama Voters in 2010. Probably same for a bill that doesn’t fund abortions, since choice is not only a progressive cornerstone but abortion is legal. Bad move for Dems if it is in the final bill that the president signs — if he gets a bill on his desk at all. There are still some big conservative and industry hurdles to navigate. Unfortunately, progressives seem to have caved.
Lex
Yeah, um, sorry…that’s my rep tacking an anti-abortion amendment onto the health care “reform” package.
If you’ll excuse me, i have a letter to write.
Cocciastella
I believe it is better to get *something* then to end up with nothing. Any bill passed today can be amended and enhanced tomorrow.
Mandos
Yes, what Ian says is not a given. Two things have to be true for Ian to be correct:
1. The voters have to agree that no bill is better than a bad bill.
2. The voters have to agree that a bad bill will foreclose all further effort at reform.
(3. The voters have to agree that it is a bad bill.)
It is not AT ALL clear that (1) or (2) will be true, or that it is true of any but the single-payer dead-enders.
One more thing has to be true. It has to be true that depressing the base will hurt the (D) party more than offending the insurance industry. It also has to be true that there was some reasonably likely condition under which Creigh Deeds could have won in Virginia.
tc
“If abortions aren’t paid for, many women won’t be able to afford to have one. I didn’t say “all women” I said “millions of women”.”
No you didn’t, and I didn’t say that you did. You didn’t say millions of women wouldn’t have access to abortions. You said millions of women wouldn’t have access to insurance.
As for a bad bill being worse than no bill, aparently Massachussetts has some crappy sort of attempt at insurance reform, and as much as people don’t like it, they don’t seem ready to scrap it or elect a host of Republicans as a result. Republicans largely get elected because they are seen as better on national security and better for the economy, based on ignorant and very vague notions helpfully promoted by the MSM. I don’t think the disasters of the last decade will be lost on a majority of the voters in just two years or even four. Liberals voters will of course stay home in larger numbers on election day, and the fucktard radical Republican rump will be out in force, but I really can’t see them coming into power again. The magic of the Free Markets and Winning Hearts and Minds has been exposed as a fraud to all except the Village. Actually, the only way I see the R’s gaining control of Congress again is if the economy is in a strong upswing, that’s how stupid Americans are. Think 1994. Once things look good again (and that day is a long way off), the idiots will come out with their prosperity gospel of postivie thinking under which government regulations are a big no-no because it’s all about liberal haters shitting in the Kool Ade bowl. Maybe they’ll get a Republican president (I tend to doubt it at this point, not that I have any love for Obama), but I doubt a Republican president would get much of an agenda accomplished. It’s not like Bush had much to show for his second term besides packing the courts.
The foxes won’t be in charge of the henhouse for quite a while longer. That doesn’t mean we will get the chickens back from the foxes, or that we will stop the foxes from killing more chickens. The status quo or some semblence thereof will be preserved as long a possible. We’re still fucked. Economically and militarily, I think we will just muddle along in a general state of decline until for some reason things collapse when the rest of the world decides to stop propping up our hegemony. Or, optimistically, until things become intolerable and get reformed (fat chance). Like I said, let’s see how California works it out.
Ian Welsh
Wrong. 2 is not necessary since the possibility of reform is many years in the future. There is no reasonable prospect of a more progressive/liberal congress in the next 6 years, at least.
Voters is too vague a group. Specifically, this bill is going to screw young people, especially child bearing age woman and with poorer folks in general who are on the edge (ie. ethnic groups + poor working whites). It will be popular enough with the 50 to 65 crowd, since many of them are willing to screw over anyone else in order to get guaranteed issue and cost sharing (that’s what an individual mandate is) so they can bridge to 65.
I’ve called my shot. I’m far from infallible, but I’ll be very surprised if I’m wrong on this one.
Democrats will lose seats in 2010. They may even lose the House (they will not lose the Senate, there just aren’t enough at risk seats up for grabs).
Also, one needs to game things out into the future. Think multiple moves ahead. My economic model suggest the context of the next election, and it is not going to be pretty.
As Truman said ‘when given a choice between two Republicans, voters will pick the real thing anytime’. That’s what’s being offered. In fact, worse. The Republican Congress could never have passed a bill which made it illegal for any federal funding to be used to fund abortions. Never. Only Democrats could, and would, screw women so badly. Anyone who thinks this won’t suppress turnout is whistling past the grave.
And progressive bloggers, with their unwillingness to draw a line anywhere, are aiding and abetting this. People who aren’t willing to walk away from the table, get whatever the other side is willing to put on the table.
Mandos
The rest is a matter of prognosticative argument that will quickly go nowhere—I mean, who knows, you’ve called your shot—but I think the “kernel” is this:
And progressive bloggers, with their unwillingness to draw a line anywhere, are aiding and abetting this. People who aren’t willing to walk away from the table, get whatever the other side is willing to put on the table.
The problem is that progressives *did* walk away from the table. More than once. There was hardly full-throated support for Kerry, and 2000 some progressives defected to Nader.
What I keep asking is, OK, what is the most plausible scenario in a universe in which progressives drew a line somewhere? (A line where?) This has been very poorly defined and as such it can be exploited by people pretending to be Cassandras.
Oh, and I don’t doubt that Dems will lose seats in 2010, never did, actually. I wouldn’t have doubted that assertion in 2007. How would they not? Think about it: it’s exactly the same question.
Mandos
I guess I should also say:
I don’t agree that there must be a “more progressive/liberal congress” to see further health care reform. About 2/3rds of the entire point of the “bad bill is better than no bill” argument is that passing a bill breaks the rhetorical logjam for disturbing existing systems. Thereafter, in theory, we shouldn’t need a more liberal congress to pass further reform; the system would already have been perturbed.
This goes back to tjfxh’s discussion of symbolism on the other thread.
Tina
Maybe if women facing the potential of lost abortion access (not to mention their fetus daddies facing decades of potential child support payments) got a taste of pre-Roe conditions, they might get off their asses and make sure their reps (R or D) supported abortion rights and access.
excuse me? Of course it just must be the womens fault and we all know they have control of how their representatives vote!
selise
the bill passed last night is worse that the MA reform (as far as i can tell so far). however, i am assured by my rep’s staff that since we already have a waiver from HHS, we will be able to keep our exchanges/rules/subsidies/etc.
i am stunned at what a disaster this bill is, chip, medicaid, mandates, abortion services, fig leaf po, no kucinich amendment to let states try single payer — but what has me really shocked is 1) that there was no whipping of the 57 cpc members (including my rep) who promised to vote against the bill, even though hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised in support of that promise. 2) any progressive supports this bill. would the same be true if this was a republican president and a republican congress trying to sell this clusterf**k?
why do we let dems get away with this crap?
Ian Welsh
Sigh.
a) if progressives oppose this bill it may be at risk of not passing. Obama thinks he /must/ have a bill. Negotiation 101. If you are not willing to walk from the table, you cannot negotiate effectively. If progs oppose it, they are far more likely to get what they want.
b) Obama and co. think the lesson of 2000 is that progs can’t walk because they’ll get another Bush, and therefore they won’t. But the “lesser evil” argument doesn’t motivate people, especially when the lesser evil is much lesser (the Republican Congress never tried to pass a ban on using federal money to fund abortions, there’s no difference on Obama’s policies to banks, etc….). People who don’t vote are already more liberal as a group than people who do. People won’t necessarily go over to a third party, they just won’t vote, volunteer or donate. That margin will cost the Democratic party.
Ian Welsh
“No you didn’t, and I didn’t say that you did. You didn’t say millions of women wouldn’t have access to abortions. You said millions of women wouldn’t have access to insurance.”
Yes, you’re right. My apologies, that was pointed out to me late last night after I wrote my initial reply. I thought I wrote healthcare but didn’t. My bad, one of the problems with writing without an editor is you don’t see what you wrote, you see what you thought you wrote.
Mandos
I think the analogy with market haggling/Negotiation 101 is very simplistic and probably wrong. First of all, let’s agree for the sake of argument that progressives have the level of influence you seem (?) to ascribe to them. Then there are at least two scenarios:
(A) Progressives push Obama to support a more radical (correct) bill. Then, it comes to a vote in Congress. Blue Dogs vote it down. No bill.
(B) Obama ignores progressives, promotes bad bill. It comes to a vote in Congress. Massive campaign against bill gets progressive-ish congresscritters to vote against it. No bill.
Once again, it boils down not to what progressives do or don’t do, but whether no bill is better than a bad bill.
John J Sears
I’ve been trying to argue with pro-Obama people about this health bill for a while now, and it always seems to come down to a vague hope that this bill will ‘fix’ the healthcare system.
Wrong. It will affect perhaps 10% of the population, and it won’t even fix things for them. Instead, everyone will be required to purchase lousy insurance with almost no value, high copays, high deductibles, and if that isn’t enough of a profit margin the insurance companies will game it some other way. Offhand, what I’d be most afraid of is simply refusing to admit specialists and expensive facilities into their ‘network’ or whatever an individual plan chooses to call it. Or perhaps they’ll drive out the good doctors with a mountain of paperwork and constantly changing forms. Private health insurance is very innovative in this area.
So what you’ll get, if you’re lucky, is a legal requirement to purchase an insurance plan that eats a third or more of your discretionary income, has a 60% actuarial value (meaning you pay 40 percent of all costs, after already paying premiums), high copays, high deductibles before you or your doctors see a dime, and when you get really sick you’ll find out that the doctor you need, or the hospital you need, or the procedure you need… isn’t covered. Isn’t available. Isn’t in your network (feel free to pay in cash!). Or perhaps it’s just a very long wait, after filling out a few hundred pages of paperwork and filing a half dozen appeals.
Hope whatever’s wrong isn’t debilitating, rapidly worsening, or agonizing. So sorry.
The Public Option, meanwhile, should collapse nicely in a surge of debt once the insurance companies dump all the sick people on it, or they all flee the Exchange plans into the PO because they’re literally dying and can’t get care in a timely manner.
Mandos
I mean, going back to the negotiation analogy, the problem is that it’s not JUST the administration and progressives, but there are also players sitting at the table who have no interest in negotiating with progressives, and would prefer to see no bill than one influenced by progressives.
So before we can get down to negotiation 101, we have to figure out how to get these players off the table.
Mandos
Taking a bird’s eye view:
I think the problem is that even if you agree on what the best policy is, there are two ways of organizing your thoughts about the world. One way is to treat it is a negotiation between political interests, which is a mode of thought for which I have great sympathy. Then the question becomes: what is the right bargaining position and strategy to maximize the outcome in relation to my interests?
The other way is to view it as a system of forces in equilibrium with each other. Then the question becomes: what points in the system are most amenable to being disturbed in order to achieve a different equilibrium?
Because of the massive power imbalance and general breakdown/failure of the political system—not least, state capture by the finance sector—we are forced to deal with it in the latter way even though the former is more amenable to the kinds of analysis to which we are accustomed.
CoyoteCreek
tc:
“Maybe if women facing the potential of lost abortion access …. they might get off their asses and make sure their reps (R or D) supported abortion rights and access.”
I have been off my ass for the last 45 years on this subject and I got thrown under the bus – again – last night. Women, alone, can’t win this battle.
Women’s rights are human rights.
John B.
CoyoteCreek…yes. Well put.
b.
If Obama does not get re-elected in 2012 because of low Democratic turnout, the death, pain and suffering that resulted from his corrupt posturing since Jan 20 already, and that will result from the remainder of his term, might at least not be swept under the rug.
Obama’s election was a prime example of “lesser evil” and “deal at any cost”. This is a problem resulting from having a pathetic opposition party – if the alternative is Palin/McCain, even a hollow fraud like Obama looks “good enough”. Only, he was not, is not, will not be – the destruction he will have wrought will be as comprehensive, and more lasting, than Bush exceptionalism. Re-electing Obama would endorse that new “normalcy”, and validate all the dirty deals made behind closed doors.
Obama’s election is also the result of a populace looking to elect a Savior, instead of trying to determine who should be the First Public Servant of the People. If the sovereign does not know how to pull his or her head out, he or she will have to eats it forever.
DWCG
They make it much easier for Blue Does to vote it down, when the bill is oh so crappy.
If the bill allowed open enrollment into Medicare, every person – every single person who signed up from day 1 would see a reduction in their health insurance costs. It’s much harder for a Blue Dog to campaign against a guaranteed reduction in health insurance costs, than this thing that passed last week.
Mandos
Bwuh? The Blue Dogs and other opponents have VERY SUCCESSFULLY argued against a guaranteed reduction in health care costs in that the bill’s public option was made very weak! In fact, there is literally half a planetful of reasons to think that a guaranteed reduction in health care costs is possible and desirable, and yet opponents of reform have very successfully made it possible politically to oppose such reductions in costs!