The Republican health care plan

They finally offered one. But it seems they did this precisely so they could say they offered one — and not with any intent of actually trying to reduce the ranks of the uninsured. How do I know this? Because the GOP health reform plan doesn’t actually reduce the ranks of the uninsured:

The different goals and effects of the GOP bill are reflected in a preliminary analysis released Wednesday evening by the Congressional Budget Office, which put the bill’s 10-year price tag at $61 billion. That is far less than the $1 trillion estimate for the Democratic bill that House leaders plan to bring to the floor as soon as this weekend.

But the CBO analysis also concluded that under the GOP plan, 52 million nonelderly Americans would have no insurance in 2019 — even more than the 50 million in 2010. By comparison, the House Democratic bill would reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.

So of course it costs less. It doesn’t actually do anything.

No, seriously: Time to kick Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus

Exactly what do Democrats gain by keeping him in?

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

So, Harry Reid: Joe Lieberman is working against you on domestic priorities. He’s against you on foreign policy priorities. And he’s stumping against your candidates. What’s the upside?

Joe Lieberman will join Republican filibuster of health reform. He should just join the Republicans already.

Politico:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid’s has said the Senate bill will.

It’s time for Democrats to kick Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and strip him of every perk of seniority he gets from them.

He’s with Republicans on the war. He’s with them in the presidential campaign — he was almost the GOP vice presidential nominee! — and now he’s with them on the most significant domestic policy debate of this generation. I wouldn’t suggest kicking him out if he was merely voting against the public option. The fact that he’s willing to filibuster, however, means he’s of no use to Democrats whatsoever. Get rid of him.

Tea Party alert!

The tea partiers will be picketing Sen. Bob Casey’s office, 2000 Market St.,  at 12:30 pm to oppose “ObamaCare.” Tell your friends.

The best health care system in the world

This isn’t new news, but it’s good that lawmakers are taking notice:

Are Americans dying too soon? The answer is yes. When it comes to “preventable deaths” — an array of illnesses and injuries that should not kill at an early age — the United States trails other industrialized nations and has been falling further behind over the past decade.

Although the United States now spends $2.4 trillion a year on medical care — vastly more per capita than comparable countries — the nation ranks near the bottom on premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia, according to research by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund published in the journal Health Affairs.

Doing nothing is an option. But it shouldn’t be.

Hey, liberals: The president wasn’t really talking to you last night

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seemed to me that President Obama spent most of his health care speech last night looking over to his left — at the Republican side of Congress. He was doing this before Joe Wilson made a fool of himself, but even more so afterward.

I mention this, because my colleague Brendan Skwire and big-shot blogger Kevin Drum both expressed some irritation with one aspect of the president’s speech.

Brendan:

I did not like the left being equated with the right. At all.

Kevin Drum:

The relentless attempt to appear bipartisan was kind of grating.  I mean, how many Republicans did he end up namechecking by the time he was done?  Sheesh.  Still, he wasn’t trying to please me, and I imagine this kind of stuff goes over pretty well with the average viewer.

Now Brendan and Drum are coming at this from two different angles, I think, but the message is roughly the same: They don’t like equivocation.

Brendan’s frustrated that Obama looked over at Democrats and suggested they’ve been a litle overheated in their defense of the public option. (Although I thought the president was unusually forthright in branding lies in the debate for what they were. You don’t see that very often, and I’m glad he did it.) Drum’s tired of Obama’s attempts to praise Republicans and talk about their ideas in an attempt to seem bipartisan.

But liberals who are already committed to reform weren’t really the audience for the speech. The audience was that great mass of Americans who might want reform, kinda sorta, but are scared that it might mean higher taxes or worse health care or some vague-but-important “loss of freedom.” It was a sales job. And one of the ways you sell that group of people — people who might put pressure on Congress to get stuff done, or at least not join the tea partiers — is to look even-handed and generous. Not everybody is a liberal, some people need to be convinced, and they’re not going to always be convinced in ways that make liberals happy.

And if, in the end, the speech moved us a little closer to meaningful health reform, who cares? Hitting that goal should be worth just a little bit of pride-swallowing.

Blogging the health speech

8 pm: Starting soon.

8:09 pm: It’s worth saying that while President Obama is giving this speech to Congress, Congress isn’t really his audience here. Most everybody — with the exception of a few, critical votes in the middle — has marked out their territory on this issue. There’s unlikely to be much budging in the Senate based on what the president says. But he might get a few people in the public fired up for health reform … and that might lead to grassroots pressure on Congress. It’s the public, really, that he’s trying to convince.

8:13 pm: He’s wearing a red tie. Socialist!

Oh, and I used to pour scotch for these kinds of occasions. I may go crack open the Laprhoaig bottle open.

8:16 pm: Enough with the applause already. Seriously. We get it, Dems. You love your Dem president.

8:17 pm: “We are by no means out of the woods” of the recession. Good. Don’t proclaim victory over the recession, don’t proclaim victory over the recession, don’t proclaim victory over the recession…

“I can say with confidence we have pulled this economy back from the brink.” That’s too close, dude. Don’t go buy milk in a supermarket anytime soon and marvel at the checkout scanners, ok?

8:22 pm: He’s talking about middle class Americans having problems with their health care. Good. If people think this is about welfare for poor people, this effort won’t succeed.

8:24 pm: RT @mattyglesias: “I feel like Obama’s sample people should have names.” Agreed.

8:26 pm: “Simply put, our healthcare problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else comes close.” Well… there is defense spending. But that’s sacrosanct, I suppose.

8:27 pm: “Build on what works, and fix what doesn’t, instead of trying to build an entirely new system from scratch.” Right. The remarkable thing about GOP opposition to health reform is that Republicans act as though we’re adopting Canada’s system … and we’re not.

8:28 pm: “Bring the best ideas of both parties together.” Errr… is that really going to work?

8:31 pm: Oh, thank God. Republicans applaud prohibiting insurance companies from dropping you for pre-existing conditions. But … a lot of them sit on their hands for the “no one should go broke because they get sick.” Ooooooookaaaaay.

8:35 pm: Nice move pushing John McCain’s ideas. Republicans tend to give lip service, at best, to reforming health care during election seasons and in efforts to scuttle Democratic reform efforts. But holding them to their own promises is just tricky enough to work….

8:37 pm: Question for my Republican friends: The car insurance mandate is relatively uncontroversial. Why would that be significantly different from a health insurance mandate?

8:38 pm: On “death panels”: “It is a lie, plain and simple.” Good for him.

Is Congress heckling the president? Has that ever happened in recent memory?

8:46 pm: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficit, either now or in the future.” Promises requirement of spending cuts if savings don’t materialize.

And he points out — properly and truthfully — that his predecessor didn’t hold himself to that same level of accountability.

8:53 pm: And he co-opts Republicans on tort reform. It’s not a silver bullet, he says — and he’s right — but it can help. And he gives credit to George W. Bush for advancing the idea through “demonstration projects.” Bipartisan!

8:57 pm: The boy is awake and in teething pain. Will return.

9:06 pm: I think he made the best possible speech he could. He checked off the boxes — making the case for why reform is needed, what the reforms would do, how they’d be paid for and why some of the criticisms are, frankly, a lie. Let’s see how the people react and what that means in Congress.

9:09 pm: Now Rep. Charles Boustany gives the Republican response. RT @daveweigel: In the future, all disappointing speeches will be given by people from Louisiana.

OK. Gonna go digest reaction. Have a good night!

Taking Sarah Palin seriously

She’s in the Wall Street Journal, talking about the need for “market-driven” solutions instead of more government. For liberals, the temptation with Sarah Palin is to mock her and roll one’s eyes because she’s been pretty clearly out of her depth when it comes to federal policy matters — it really does feel similar to watching a child put on grownup clothes and march around proudly.

But let me try to take her seriously for a moment. She does, after all, have a rather devoted constituency. Mocking seeming lightweights has never, ever served Democrats well. Who knows? She could be the next president of the United States. And op-eds like this one will lay the foundation for the kinds of policies she would implement.

An attempt to meaningfully engage Sarah Palin, after the jump.

More »

Breaking news! Fox News distorts the news!

OK, that’s actually old news, which is why I only have snarky jokes to make. Still, Media Matters’ analysis  that Fox showed only opponents of health reform in its town hall coverage would, I think, pose a challenge to serious conservatives. Doesn’t a realistic view of the world — and the ability to effectively counter your opponents arguments — require depicting the existence of opposing views and understanding/representing them fairly?

I mean, I get it: “Liberal media” blah blah blah. But the angry opponents of health reform were certainly getting their air time on CNN and MSNBC the last month or so. On Fox, the opposition simply disappears when it’s not being mocked.

Rallies for health insurance reform

From Young Philly Politics:

We’ve beaten back right wing opposition in the last few weeks and emerged with more support for real reform. Now it is time for the final push. Take part in one of the 13 Let’s Get It Done events all over Pennsylvania. Tell your Representatives and Senators that it is time for action. They must go back to Washington and move health care reform forward. And tell your friends about the Health Insurance Reform campaign and these events by clicking here.

In the Delaware Valley you can join us at one of two events:

Thursday, September 3, 12:00 noon / 1900 Market Street/ Philadelphia, PA

Public Health Insurance Option or Insurance Companies: Which Side Are You On? Rally at Blue Cross and then march to Senator Bob Casey’s office in support of the public option in the Kennedy HELP Committee bill.
RSVP here

Saturday, September 5, 10:30 am / Lions Park / Bristol, PA / 10:30 am

Rally for Health Insurance Reform with Representative Patrick Murphy

After these events, we want to ramp up phone banking from Philadelphia into other parts of the state where we have few shaky Democrats. You can phone bank at home. Just get in touch with me at MarcStier@hcanpa.org and I’ll send you a list and talking points. Or come to one of the phone bank events we will start having next week. Details soon.
RSVP here