Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Obama's Health Care Reform Speech 9 Sept. 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
This was more of the usual smooth-talking fluff.
The Good:
Obama: What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.
That's what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan - more security and stability.
Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange - a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves.
For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned. This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right. In the meantime, for those Americans who can't get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill. This was a good idea when Senator John McCain proposed it in the campaign, it's a good idea now, and we should embrace it.
The Bad:
Obama: That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95% of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.
The "lie" part:
Obama: Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.
A little later he also said this:
Obama: My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a "government takeover" of the entire health care system. As proof, critics point to a provision in our plan that allows the uninsured and small businesses to choose a publicly-sponsored insurance option, administered by the government just like Medicaid or Medicare.
So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly - by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.
And:
Obama: Add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years - less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent - but spent badly - in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle-class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of one percent each year, it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.
My thoughts:
The obvious intent is for the public offering to be floated as if it were meant to take over as a similar plan did in Canada. But, now the details...
One of the problems is the timing of it all. If this all happens 4 years from now, who's to say it won't be a political football for all of the time intervening between now and then? Might it be rescinded by a new president and a new congress four years hence? What's with the four years anyway - is Obama trying to get himself and his congress re-elected with this stuff?
And 5%? WTF? That will not be enough to have this thing take over. It will be too small and too weak.
We won't save on administrative overhead (i.e. paper pushing bullshit) because we will still have a kabillion private insurers biting back for every dollar. So the possible 30% savings that could be realized there is now gone.
I am very concerned about mandates. I am also concerned about penalties connected to a mandate. It's all too ambiguous. Too flimsy.
The last thing I want is to have to buy insurance from the same private insurance companies whose numerous acts of criminality are what necessitated a movement for health care reform in the first place. And what's the option again? Buy or pay a fine. Fuck that noise.
Matt Taibbi has neatly laid out how true reform was torpedoed from the first (see previous posts for links). David Sirota doesn't seem too impressed either, as is summed up at the end of a recent HuffPo piece:
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David Sirota on "Reviewing President Rahm Emanuel's Health Care Speech"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/reviewing-president-rahm_b_281559.html
I mean, I seem to remember an election just a few months ago that resulted in a Democratic president, and huge Democratic majorities in Congress - and I seem to remember there was a Barack Obama who only a short while ago said geting those electoral results was the only obstacle to a full-on single payer health care system, much less a weakened public option. But again, I guess it's just too bad that after that election, President Emanuel now rules America.
------
To echo Sirota's and Taibbi's many excellent points along the same lines: who are the Democrats attempting to appease? They own congress and the oval office. They could just ram through whatever the fuck they like. But no, first it has to be watered down into meaningless pap.
Okay, so maybe Obama's now only 95% Cheney as per Greg Palast's equation.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Obama Health Care Reform Fail Tracked by HuffPo
Cribbing from HuffPo because this is all part of some kind of campaign promises public domain video stuff: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/09/flashback-obama-promises_n_254833.html
------
"The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what the chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making 2 million dollars a year.
Imagine that.
That's an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know I don't want to learn how to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game playing."
------
"First, we'll take on the drug and insurance companies and hold them accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause... And then we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies, 'Thanks but no thanks for overpriced drugs'. Drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada and Mexico. We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower prices. We'll stop drug companies from blocking generic drugs that are just as effective and far less expensive. We'll allow the safe reimportation of low-cost drugs from countries like Canada."
------
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/09/flashback-obama-promises_n_254833.html
"I'm going to listen to everybody. We'll have the doctors and the nurses and the members of Congress and patient advocates. I'll have the insurance and drug companies at the table. They just won't be able to buy every chair. And we will... And I'll be at the table. I'll have the biggest chair, because I'm president. If people have other ideas and I don't assume that I've got every single idea. It can be improved and I want input. We're going to have to make some compromises.
But here's the thing. We're going to do all these negotiations on C-SPAN.
The American people will be able to watch these negotiations so if they start seeing a member of Congress who is carrying the water for the drug companies instead of for their constituents and says, 'Oh, you no. we can't negotiate for the cheapest available price on drugs because the drug companies need these profits to invest in research and development', I'll say, 'OK, let me bring my health care expert in here'. And on TV, we'll ask my health care expert, 'What do you think about what the drug companies are saying?'
And what that drug expert will undoubtedly say is 'Well, drug companies do need some profits to invest in research and development but a lot of what they're calling research and development is actually marketing costs for some of these TV ads you see' ... where everybody is, you have all these people dancing in fields, looking all happy. You don't know what the drug is for. Right? Except for that one drug, you know what that's for. You know what that one is for.
Anyway, you get my point. Open this. Transparency. You will hold me accountable, you will hold Congress accountable. That's how we'll get welfare... uh health care reform passed."
------
So, when I call the guy a lying sack of shit you will know I am not just being a dick about it. The guy is a house nigger all the fucking way. Licking the hands of his masters, soon to float away on a golden parachute...
And yes, it really does piss me off!
------
"The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what the chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making 2 million dollars a year.
Imagine that.
That's an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know I don't want to learn how to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game playing."
------
"First, we'll take on the drug and insurance companies and hold them accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause... And then we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies, 'Thanks but no thanks for overpriced drugs'. Drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada and Mexico. We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower prices. We'll stop drug companies from blocking generic drugs that are just as effective and far less expensive. We'll allow the safe reimportation of low-cost drugs from countries like Canada."
------
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/09/flashback-obama-promises_n_254833.html
"I'm going to listen to everybody. We'll have the doctors and the nurses and the members of Congress and patient advocates. I'll have the insurance and drug companies at the table. They just won't be able to buy every chair. And we will... And I'll be at the table. I'll have the biggest chair, because I'm president. If people have other ideas and I don't assume that I've got every single idea. It can be improved and I want input. We're going to have to make some compromises.
But here's the thing. We're going to do all these negotiations on C-SPAN.
The American people will be able to watch these negotiations so if they start seeing a member of Congress who is carrying the water for the drug companies instead of for their constituents and says, 'Oh, you no. we can't negotiate for the cheapest available price on drugs because the drug companies need these profits to invest in research and development', I'll say, 'OK, let me bring my health care expert in here'. And on TV, we'll ask my health care expert, 'What do you think about what the drug companies are saying?'
And what that drug expert will undoubtedly say is 'Well, drug companies do need some profits to invest in research and development but a lot of what they're calling research and development is actually marketing costs for some of these TV ads you see' ... where everybody is, you have all these people dancing in fields, looking all happy. You don't know what the drug is for. Right? Except for that one drug, you know what that's for. You know what that one is for.
Anyway, you get my point. Open this. Transparency. You will hold me accountable, you will hold Congress accountable. That's how we'll get welfare... uh health care reform passed."
------
So, when I call the guy a lying sack of shit you will know I am not just being a dick about it. The guy is a house nigger all the fucking way. Licking the hands of his masters, soon to float away on a golden parachute...
And yes, it really does piss me off!
Monday, August 10, 2009
Froomkin Fail
Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/our-fuzzy-president-is-ab_n_255524.html
We're finally going to get to know the real President Obama.
Once the final outlines of health-care legislation become clear, we'll know what really matters to him. Where he draws the line. How he wields the levers of power. Whose ox he gores when there's goring that has to be done.
We'll know who's really in charge.
What's amazing is that more than six months into a presidency that Obama vowed would be the most transparent in history, we still know so little about some basic things like how he makes up his mind and who influences him the most.
------
In which Dan Froomkin (late of WaPo now at HuffPo) said nothing worth reading and actually managed to sound like in idiot in under two paragraphs and two sentences.
What Dan doesn't say is how critical it would have been for Obama to show some real leadership in the last several months instead of whatever it was we actually got served up instead.
So now Obama is really gonna show his stuff, huh Dan? I doubt it because we've seen it already; you just haven't been paying attention.
Epic fails all around.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/our-fuzzy-president-is-ab_n_255524.html
We're finally going to get to know the real President Obama.
Once the final outlines of health-care legislation become clear, we'll know what really matters to him. Where he draws the line. How he wields the levers of power. Whose ox he gores when there's goring that has to be done.
We'll know who's really in charge.
What's amazing is that more than six months into a presidency that Obama vowed would be the most transparent in history, we still know so little about some basic things like how he makes up his mind and who influences him the most.
------
In which Dan Froomkin (late of WaPo now at HuffPo) said nothing worth reading and actually managed to sound like in idiot in under two paragraphs and two sentences.
What Dan doesn't say is how critical it would have been for Obama to show some real leadership in the last several months instead of whatever it was we actually got served up instead.
So now Obama is really gonna show his stuff, huh Dan? I doubt it because we've seen it already; you just haven't been paying attention.
Epic fails all around.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
With Democrats Like These,
Who needs Republicans?
Obama's Doctor: President's Vision For Health Care Bound To Fail
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/obamas-doctor-presidents_n_246870.html
Dr. David Scheiner, a 70-year Chicago-based physician who treated Obama for more than 20 years, said he was disheartened by the health care legislation his former patient is championing, calling it piecemeal and ineffectual.
"I look at his program and I can't see how it's going to work," Scheiner told the Huffington Post. "He has no cost control. There would be no effective cost control in his program. The [Congressional Budget Office] said it's going be incredibly expensive ... and the thing that I really am worried about is, if it is the failure that I think it would be, then health reform will be set back a long, long time."
...
"It's a good question," Scheiner said, when asked if having watered-down reform become law was better than getting a single-payer system stalled in Congress. "Is something better than nothing? That is a hard one for me. That is a difficult one, because, in the end, I think [Obama's] program is going to fail."
------
It's hard to avoid the things that Obama once claimed about health care reform - like how it was going to take a Democratic congress to make the change. Well, the Dems have the "oral office," the senate and the house and they still can't get it done. Or is that they won't? That they choose not to...?
These Dems are a big fucking joke. I doubt any good will come of any of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/obamas-doctor-presidents_n_246870.html
Dr. David Scheiner, a 70-year Chicago-based physician who treated Obama for more than 20 years, said he was disheartened by the health care legislation his former patient is championing, calling it piecemeal and ineffectual.
"I look at his program and I can't see how it's going to work," Scheiner told the Huffington Post. "He has no cost control. There would be no effective cost control in his program. The [Congressional Budget Office] said it's going be incredibly expensive ... and the thing that I really am worried about is, if it is the failure that I think it would be, then health reform will be set back a long, long time."
...
"It's a good question," Scheiner said, when asked if having watered-down reform become law was better than getting a single-payer system stalled in Congress. "Is something better than nothing? That is a hard one for me. That is a difficult one, because, in the end, I think [Obama's] program is going to fail."
------
It's hard to avoid the things that Obama once claimed about health care reform - like how it was going to take a Democratic congress to make the change. Well, the Dems have the "oral office," the senate and the house and they still can't get it done. Or is that they won't? That they choose not to...?
These Dems are a big fucking joke. I doubt any good will come of any of it.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Health Care Reform and Politics
Republicans Will Be Toast in 2010 If the Dems Pass Health Reform, and They Know It
http://www.alternet.org/politics/141440/republicans_will_be_toast_in_2010_if_the_dems_pass_health_reform%2C_and_they_know_it/?page=entire
If President Barack Obama succeeds in signing a major health care reform bill into law -- one that provides a public plan for people currently priced out of the system -- he will achieve what at least three presidents before him had hoped for, and failed to do. And he will likely deprive the Republican minority in Congress from anything approaching a comeback in the 2010 midterm elections.
However, if health care reform does not pass early in Obama's term, the Democrats will likely face midterm elections amid rising unemployment figures with a record of having passed legislation characterized as "bailouts" for megabanks and large corporations -- bills whose benefits to the economy have little impact on the person who has already lost a job. So GOP leaders are focused like a laser beam on stopping health-care reform in its tracks.
...
...who hope to scare the American people into believing that Obama is un-American in the literal and figurative sense and that his health-care plan is just a nefarious scheme to remake America's mighty capitalist system into something foreign and evil.
...
And then Perry Logan said:
Not if it's a rotten plan
I figure it a little differently.
In case you hadn't noticed, Barack Obama is a seriously rotten President.
It stands to reason his health-care plan will be equally rotten.
If the Democrats' halfassed plan is implemented, both health care costs and taxes will rise and people won't get what they wanted. In the words of blogger Joe Cannon, the plan will become vastly unpopular.
At some point in the 2014-2020 period, a Republican congress will vote Obama's scheme out of existence. For decades afterward, conservatives will crow: "Well, we tried socialized medicine and it didn't work.'" :(
------
"Foreign and evil" is what American capitalism is right now. We are basically owned by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans on the one side and substantially controlled by the European financial elite on the other side. If people are so clueless that they don't know as much as that then what's the point of comminuicating with them at all?
So yeah, thank you Nixon, Kissinger, and the Walton family of Walmart - we are now owned by your pals in China. Mission accomplished, "morans"!
But that last comment posted to Alternet worries me a great deal. I do fear this supposed "reform" is little more than a token, trojan horse of a reform. The whole point is that it must fail so that we can become good little third world workers.
Cheap labor Republicans are licking their chops at this one. They only lose temporarily. They have placed the debacle of the Bush era aquarely on the shoulders of Democrats centrist enough to do nearly nothing about it and rhetorically willing to take the blame for it too. Obama is constantly owning the crisis in the media. What's the point of that since his policies are going to achieve only the reinflation of the next status quo Wall Street/financial sector bubble?
http://www.alternet.org/politics/141440/republicans_will_be_toast_in_2010_if_the_dems_pass_health_reform%2C_and_they_know_it/?page=entire
If President Barack Obama succeeds in signing a major health care reform bill into law -- one that provides a public plan for people currently priced out of the system -- he will achieve what at least three presidents before him had hoped for, and failed to do. And he will likely deprive the Republican minority in Congress from anything approaching a comeback in the 2010 midterm elections.
However, if health care reform does not pass early in Obama's term, the Democrats will likely face midterm elections amid rising unemployment figures with a record of having passed legislation characterized as "bailouts" for megabanks and large corporations -- bills whose benefits to the economy have little impact on the person who has already lost a job. So GOP leaders are focused like a laser beam on stopping health-care reform in its tracks.
...
...who hope to scare the American people into believing that Obama is un-American in the literal and figurative sense and that his health-care plan is just a nefarious scheme to remake America's mighty capitalist system into something foreign and evil.
...
And then Perry Logan said:
Not if it's a rotten plan
I figure it a little differently.
In case you hadn't noticed, Barack Obama is a seriously rotten President.
It stands to reason his health-care plan will be equally rotten.
If the Democrats' halfassed plan is implemented, both health care costs and taxes will rise and people won't get what they wanted. In the words of blogger Joe Cannon, the plan will become vastly unpopular.
At some point in the 2014-2020 period, a Republican congress will vote Obama's scheme out of existence. For decades afterward, conservatives will crow: "Well, we tried socialized medicine and it didn't work.'" :(
------
"Foreign and evil" is what American capitalism is right now. We are basically owned by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans on the one side and substantially controlled by the European financial elite on the other side. If people are so clueless that they don't know as much as that then what's the point of comminuicating with them at all?
So yeah, thank you Nixon, Kissinger, and the Walton family of Walmart - we are now owned by your pals in China. Mission accomplished, "morans"!
But that last comment posted to Alternet worries me a great deal. I do fear this supposed "reform" is little more than a token, trojan horse of a reform. The whole point is that it must fail so that we can become good little third world workers.
Cheap labor Republicans are licking their chops at this one. They only lose temporarily. They have placed the debacle of the Bush era aquarely on the shoulders of Democrats centrist enough to do nearly nothing about it and rhetorically willing to take the blame for it too. Obama is constantly owning the crisis in the media. What's the point of that since his policies are going to achieve only the reinflation of the next status quo Wall Street/financial sector bubble?
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Welfare Queen of Wall Street:
Matt Taibbi on the Goldman Sachs Bubble Machine
Crappy PDF of Rolling Stone article here:
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression...
Nearly correct text OCRed here (forum "corrects" for naughty words):
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3159732&pagenumber=1
Taibbi on Goldman Sachs' Semi-Sorta Reply/Non-Reply:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/30/on-giving-goldman-a-chance/
Taibbi on Goldman Sachs front-running:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/02/is-goldman-legally-frontrunning-its-clients/
"You acknowledge that we may monitor your use of the Services for our own purposes (and not for your benefit)."
And finally, Taibbi on the Obama/Goldman Sacks Snuggling:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/09/summers-raked-in-27-million-in-speaking-fees-from-wall-street-44-washingtonpostcom/
Most importantly, I’m sensing in these economic appointments a kind of drearily cynical parsing of the approval-rating situation here — Obama knows he’s still flying high with the “Yes We Can!” t-shirt crowd, and knows that most people simply are not going to give a shit if he packs his Treasury Department with Goldman alums and lobbyists, despite the fact that he explicitly promised to do otherwise.
------
Bottom line: The U.S. federal government and Goldman Sachs have a long and jaded history of revolving door appointments and obvious favoritism for GS and against other players. When you are Goldman Sachs or some other big player, what might otherwise be financial malfeasance is actually perfectly legal. When you make huge, country fucking mistakes the taxpayers will bail you out. Whatever usury you are collecting isn't probably enough. The name of the game is power through debt and it doesn't really matter how much real wealth you have (although its a lot!) as long as you can squeeze everybody else by the balls.
Power.
to.
Squeeze.
So yeah, Obama is just another corrupt asshole so far. His appointments are a fucking joke for the people of this country. Salvation will not be forthcoming. We all wasted our votes on this asshat.
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression...
Nearly correct text OCRed here (forum "corrects" for naughty words):
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3159732&pagenumber=1
Taibbi on Goldman Sachs' Semi-Sorta Reply/Non-Reply:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/30/on-giving-goldman-a-chance/
Taibbi on Goldman Sachs front-running:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/02/is-goldman-legally-frontrunning-its-clients/
"You acknowledge that we may monitor your use of the Services for our own purposes (and not for your benefit)."
And finally, Taibbi on the Obama/Goldman Sacks Snuggling:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/09/summers-raked-in-27-million-in-speaking-fees-from-wall-street-44-washingtonpostcom/
Most importantly, I’m sensing in these economic appointments a kind of drearily cynical parsing of the approval-rating situation here — Obama knows he’s still flying high with the “Yes We Can!” t-shirt crowd, and knows that most people simply are not going to give a shit if he packs his Treasury Department with Goldman alums and lobbyists, despite the fact that he explicitly promised to do otherwise.
------
Bottom line: The U.S. federal government and Goldman Sachs have a long and jaded history of revolving door appointments and obvious favoritism for GS and against other players. When you are Goldman Sachs or some other big player, what might otherwise be financial malfeasance is actually perfectly legal. When you make huge, country fucking mistakes the taxpayers will bail you out. Whatever usury you are collecting isn't probably enough. The name of the game is power through debt and it doesn't really matter how much real wealth you have (although its a lot!) as long as you can squeeze everybody else by the balls.
Power.
to.
Squeeze.
So yeah, Obama is just another corrupt asshole so far. His appointments are a fucking joke for the people of this country. Salvation will not be forthcoming. We all wasted our votes on this asshat.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
A Failure to Lead
Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070302309.html
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.
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Biden: 'We misread how bad the economy was'
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/07/05/D9988FKO0_us_biden/
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You shite cunts...!
Obama, you'd better get used to the notion of being attacked because you are well on your way to becoming a one term prez. And I don't think the Democrats will ever live down the failure of having both houses and the presidency in their pocket and still failing the country on war/foreign policy, the economy and healthcare. Triple fail.
And Biden, that's the job you two yokels have - to see what the situation is and call for the right moves. The job entails showing some backbone and actual leadership skills, not just doing what your false stats claim you should do. There must be vision and courage.
I want my vote back, seriously...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070302309.html
President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.
------
Biden: 'We misread how bad the economy was'
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/07/05/D9988FKO0_us_biden/
------
You shite cunts...!
Obama, you'd better get used to the notion of being attacked because you are well on your way to becoming a one term prez. And I don't think the Democrats will ever live down the failure of having both houses and the presidency in their pocket and still failing the country on war/foreign policy, the economy and healthcare. Triple fail.
And Biden, that's the job you two yokels have - to see what the situation is and call for the right moves. The job entails showing some backbone and actual leadership skills, not just doing what your false stats claim you should do. There must be vision and courage.
I want my vote back, seriously...
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Decisions, decisions...
I voted for the guy so I feel I have every right to complain about how little he seems poised to achieve. Here were my choices...
It's laugh or cry in Obama-town...
It's laugh or cry in Obama-town...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
On the Single-payer Universal Healthcare Crisis
Moyers' Preface to the Second Part of His 22 May 2009 Broadcast in Essay Form:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/22/moyers/
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program."
Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as 2-to-1.
There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."
Fast-forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed -- Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what's happened to single payer?
A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," the president replied. "That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.
"The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based healthcare. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their healthcare, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get healthcare from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into healthcare reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy."
So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, healthcare is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single-payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.
------
Moyers Talks to Donna Smith [Video and Transcript]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch.html
BILL MOYERS: What is it you would like those folks to know, those regular citizens to know about this issue, about single-payer and why it's important to them?
DONNA SMITH: I tell people, I always ask them to tell me if they understand single-payer and what it's all about. It's a great idea from the left, which is public financing, combined with a great idea from the right, which is private delivery. And you put it together in one system that takes out the waste and the abuse that's really happening, which is where all the money goes into the health insurance. Up to 30 percent of the costs have nothing to do with health care at all and everything to do with fueling the health insurance needs.
...
BILL MOYERS: When we did a report on the Journal 12 or 15 months ago on the California nurses and the fight out there for single-payer, we were inundated with mail saying they're socialists and you're a fellow traveler. What do you say to people like that, who read into what you're doing a call for state government-run socialistic medical care?
DONNA SMITH: I laugh a little bit in light of the last six months on how much money we've thrown into Wall Street and how much money we've thrown in keeping financial markets stable in this country. In three days, we were able to come up with three quarters of a trillion dollars to throw into Wall Street. So the argument about socializing things and making things government-run seems a little bit yesterday to me, just intellectually.
But I tell people, you know, look, don't fear this. This is not - you're not turning into a Communist red nation. Please don't be afraid. Even in polling data where the words "socialized medicine" is used, even in that polling data, almost 50 percent of the American public say, "Okay. Do it." And data where we just ask about a national health insurance system, and that's through "The New York Times" and CNN and Yahoo! and a number of polls, 60 percent of the American public say we've got to have a national health program. We just have to do it. It's the only way we fix this mess. It's spun out of control. It's going to bury us financially. It's going to mortgage our children, and it kills people. It just is not working.
------
Moyers Talks to David Himmelstein & Sidney Wolfe [Video and Transcript]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch2.html
BILL MOYERS: Dr. Wolfe, I am puzzled as a journalist as to why this subject of single-payer, whether one is for it or against it, seems totally out of the debate in Washington. It's just not on the table. And it's not in the- on the radar screen of the press. Why do you think that is?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: I think the reason is, unfortunately, simple and frightening. Which is the power of the health insurance industry.
...
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: That's the big problem here is people want to find a solution that they can get through without a big fight with the insurance industry. Unfortunately it's economically and medically nonsensical - you can't actually have a health care program that works, if you keep the insurance industry alive.
BILL MOYERS: Well, then how do you account for the fact that so many people in other polls say, "We're satisfied with what we have for health care, and we don't want it taken away from us"?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, people are satisfied many times with their doctor and with the hospitals they go to. And most Americans aren't sick and don't actually have experience of their health insurance. But when you get sick, and actually have to use your insurance, that's when people find out the dark side of the policies they have. Huge co-payments, huge deductibles.
We did a survey of people filing for bankruptcy in courts around the country. Half of the bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies in this country. And of those medical bankruptcies, three quarters of those people had insurance, at least when they first got sick. But people have insurance that goes away after they actually need it.
BILL MOYERS: But why in the dozen or so hearings that I've tracked in Washington recently on health care reform have there been so few advocates of the single-payer?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: The seats at the table, or the witnesses at the hearing are, in a sense, controlled by the health insurance industry. They don't want someone essentially saying, "We don't need a health insurance industry. We can do what most other countries in the world have done. Have the government collect the money and pay the bills and get rid of all these people who are wasting $400 billion a year on excessive administrative costs."
So, we have got a fragmented health insurance industry. And it thrives on being fragmented. The drug countries make much more money with the fragmentation, because there's no price control. The insurance companies make much more money, 'cause they can push away people who aren't going to be profitable. The only people that suffer are the patients.
It's- 1968, I was one of a group of physicians that disrupted the American Medical Association's convention, because they were saying then, and in, for all practical purposes it's still true, "Health care is not a right. It's a privilege." And we said, quietly, as we took over the microphone, "That's wrong." We're now 41 years later, and it's still a privilege. And too many people in this country don't have that privilege. It's resulting in huge numbers of people being ill, sick, and almost 20 thousand people dying a year because they don't have health insurance.
...
BILL MOYERS: I've heard you say that several times. I've read you're saying it. We can do away with the health industry. I mean, them's fightin' words, a very powerful part of the economy, and they're a powerful part of the political statute, as David said.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: It absolutely is. And in Canada, back in 1970 or so, they were spending the same percentage of their gross national product as we were on health. They had huge numbers of uninsured people. They had the same insurance companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield. They decided to just get rid of the health insurance industry. That it was the only way to go. They had experimented with it in Saskatchewan ten years earlier. It worked so well, they couldn't wait to do it nationally. So, where there's a will, there's a way. There is no way we are ever going to get to having good health insurance for everyone, as long as there's a health insurance industry, in the way, obstructing care.
BILL MOYERS: What do you say to the argument, though, of people who've gone to Canada, and looked at that system. "Well, there are long waiting lines. You can't choose your doctor." In fact, conservative critics say that this will lead to what they dread which is socialized medicine. Would single-payer in fact mean I could not choose my doctor?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, in Canada, actually, you can go to any doctor, any hospital in the country.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Much more choice than here.
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Yeah, Canadians have better choice than we do. They spend half as much per person on health care as we do. And if you're going to cut our budget by 50 percent, we'd have to have some waiting lines. But if we're willing to keep spending at our current levels, we could cover everybody with first dollar coverage with terrific access to care.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean first dollar coverage?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: No co-payment, no deductible. You go to the doctor. The whole bill is paid. Any doctor, any hospital in the country. That's the model. And that's not just me who says that. The Congressional Budget Office has said that in the past. The Government Accountability Office says we're spending enough to do that. And we're really talking about social insurance, like Medicare is social insurance. But doctors and hospitals remaining privately owned.
...
BILL MOYERS: Am I correct in thinking on the basis of what I've read that with single-payer, the benefits would be publicly financed, as you just said, but that the health care providers would, for the most part, remain private?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: They certainly would. As would the hospitals.
BILL MOYERS: They wouldn't work for the state.
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: No, no.
BILL MOYERS: They wouldn't get their salaries some...
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: In fact, private practice is more common in Canada than it is here in the U.S. And in the U.S., we're seeing more practices being taken over by big corporations. And people, basically, doctors becoming employees of large bureaucracies. In Canada, private practices remain the norm. And that's what we're saying ought to continue in the U.S.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: I mean, essentially it's socializing the financing. So, I mean, when people use this scare word "socialized medicine" I don't know what they mean. We have socialized libraries. We collect taxes, and we have libraries, we have socialized police. The financing is socialized. In those cases, they are working for a city. In this case, the doctors are in private practice. The hospitals are operating privately. And any patient- it's interesting the system is called Medicare, and so, everyone in the country has a Medicare card and that allows them to go wherever they want. They don't have this limited number of providers, which is getting more and more limited, as everyone who has health insurance in this country knows.
...
BILL MOYERS: You are both doctors, but are there many doctors like you in support of single-payer? Is there any evidence of their numbers?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, we actually started our group, Physicians for a National Health Program with just a few of us. But we now have 16 thousand members. So, there are a lot of doctors who are activists on this issue. But more than that, surveys are showing that most doctors support national health insurance-
BILL MOYERS: Why?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: ...at this point. Because our lives every day taking care of patients drive us to it. The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the game of mother may I we play with the insurance companies. All of those are not what we went into medicine for. We went into medicine, most of us, 'cause we wanted to take care of people. This system doesn't let us do that. And even my conservative colleagues, our organization has Republicans in it. There, at this point, single-payer supporters, 'cause they say "Let me practice medicine."
BILL MOYERS: I want to get your thoughts on President Obama's plan. As I read it, it's very difficult, at this moment, to know the details of it.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: 'Cause there aren't any details.
BILL MOYERS: There aren't any details. But he seems to be advocating a public option that would compete with the private insurance-driven sector, as a way of lowering the cost. What do you think about it? Is that- am I reading his plan correctly?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, most of the cost savings he's talking about are really illusory, I think. And my research group has done most of the research work on administrative costs in health care. And the administrative costs he's talking about saving are a tiny fraction of the potential savings under single-payer. 'Cause hospitals have to keep their bureaucracy, if you're dealing with hundreds of different plans. And doctors have to keep the bureaucracy in our office. You don't actually get the streamlining that you get from having one payer that has one set of rules and can pay lump sum budgets to hospitals. But more than that, we're worried that the public plan actually becomes a dumping ground for the unprofitable patients. As it's happening in Medicare.
...
BILL MOYERS: So, what would you like to see in Obama's plan?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Well, we'd like to see Obama remember where he came from. And not only say, "If we were starting now from scratch, we would have a single-payer, but it's too disruptive." Instead of saying, "We are starting out from scratch, because we need to start out from scratch. There are too many people dying, being sick, ill, because they don't have insurance." And so, we would like Obama to espouse a single-payer program. The majority of people in the Congress would vote for it, if there were some leadership. Instead of saying, "It's politically impossible." It's politically impossible if everyone agrees that it's not possible, it won't happen.
If instead they say, "It's not only politically possible, politically feasible, and it's the only practical way it would happen." Anything short of that is essentially throwing billions of dollars at the insurance industry. And if you're afraid of the insurance industry, then you're afraid of doing the right thing.
------
Obama for Single-Payer Before He Was Against It.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/139959/obama_for_single-payer_before_he_was_against_it._/
...let me just echo Ta-Neishi Coates who recently wrote that "while a good politician accomplishes what is possible, a great one expands the realm of possibility - he doesn't simply accept the lines of argument as they're drawn and hew to the side with the most soldiers, he tries to redraw those lines to benefit his ideals."
The whole idea that single payer is the best option but politically "impossible" is simply unacceptable. Last I checked, electing an African American president was politically "impossible"...until Barack Obama went ahead and got himself elected president. The entire notion of "politically possible" and "politically impossible" is a canard that justifies the status quo. So while it's certainly terrific that Obama is fighting for some sort of universal health care system, and one with a public option (which could ultimately become a single-payer system), let's just remember: Nothing has been politically "possible" until it actually happened - and so if that's the major argument against single payer, it's not just a poor argument, it's a fraud.
------
Obama: Health Care Reform This Year -- Or Never
(two sites for the comments)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/obama-health-care-reform_n_208748.html
and
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140328/obama_calls_for_health_care_reform_now_..._or_never
President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that if health care reform didn't take place this year, it won't be completed during his presidency.
------
*Special Note* Do see the Moyers video segments if at all possible. They are golden.
...
Obama hasn't floated a plan of his own and despite his previous support for a single-payer plan he has refused to allow any such plan to be discussed at recent healthcare reform negotiations. His claimed deadline may reflect the political realities of congressional elections in 2010, but it is also defeatist and melodramatic. Where was the forewarning on this? Now everyone is supposed to immediately jump in support of whatever Obama decides his plan will be even though he has refused to state just what in the hell it is? And the single-payer option is off the table? And it's now or never? By 1 August 2009?
He doesn't seem very hopeful, does he?
Obama is carefully orchestrating all of the reasons why any healthcare reform will prove impossible. And despite whatever Obama or any other Democrat may say of it in the future - they are intentionally dropping the ball on this reform issue because they lack both the leadership and the courage to do the right thing. Cowards all!
Let me float some ideas of my own with you...
Access to healthcare when you need it is a right and not a privilege. No one should be bankrupted by the vagaries of fate or accidental misfortunes concerning their health.
There is no reason to include the health insurance industry in any negotiations about healthcare reform. Why not? Because the health insurance industry is the problem and the source of waste that needs to be corrected.
Any plan that mandates that citizens must buy insurance from private insurers is a giveaway just like mandatory auto liability insurance. And the waste and enormous expense of healthcare will continue to escalate under such a reworked version of the status quo.
Our political representatives aren't going to do what's right because they fear the health insurance industry more than they fear you, the electorate. You are going to have to make them fear your displeasure more instead.
Obama hasn't really succeeded at anything so far. If he screws up healthcare reform as well, I know I am not voting for him a second time. And I won't be wasting my votes on other Democrats any longer either. I am tired of pretending to myself that Democrats represent any kind of meaningful alternative to the Republicans that will also not get my votes. If we don't pass single-payer during Obama's presidency I am never voting for either party again. Not ever.
Now is the time to contact your political representatives and make them understand what is at stake. I hope that you will make them understand that their political survival hangs on this issue.
People are dying while our representatives kowtow to the health insurance industry instead of us, their rightful masters.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/22/moyers/
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program."
Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as 2-to-1.
There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."
Fast-forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed -- Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what's happened to single payer?
A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," the president replied. "That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.
"The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based healthcare. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their healthcare, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get healthcare from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into healthcare reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy."
So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, healthcare is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single-payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.
------
Moyers Talks to Donna Smith [Video and Transcript]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch.html
BILL MOYERS: What is it you would like those folks to know, those regular citizens to know about this issue, about single-payer and why it's important to them?
DONNA SMITH: I tell people, I always ask them to tell me if they understand single-payer and what it's all about. It's a great idea from the left, which is public financing, combined with a great idea from the right, which is private delivery. And you put it together in one system that takes out the waste and the abuse that's really happening, which is where all the money goes into the health insurance. Up to 30 percent of the costs have nothing to do with health care at all and everything to do with fueling the health insurance needs.
...
BILL MOYERS: When we did a report on the Journal 12 or 15 months ago on the California nurses and the fight out there for single-payer, we were inundated with mail saying they're socialists and you're a fellow traveler. What do you say to people like that, who read into what you're doing a call for state government-run socialistic medical care?
DONNA SMITH: I laugh a little bit in light of the last six months on how much money we've thrown into Wall Street and how much money we've thrown in keeping financial markets stable in this country. In three days, we were able to come up with three quarters of a trillion dollars to throw into Wall Street. So the argument about socializing things and making things government-run seems a little bit yesterday to me, just intellectually.
But I tell people, you know, look, don't fear this. This is not - you're not turning into a Communist red nation. Please don't be afraid. Even in polling data where the words "socialized medicine" is used, even in that polling data, almost 50 percent of the American public say, "Okay. Do it." And data where we just ask about a national health insurance system, and that's through "The New York Times" and CNN and Yahoo! and a number of polls, 60 percent of the American public say we've got to have a national health program. We just have to do it. It's the only way we fix this mess. It's spun out of control. It's going to bury us financially. It's going to mortgage our children, and it kills people. It just is not working.
------
Moyers Talks to David Himmelstein & Sidney Wolfe [Video and Transcript]
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch2.html
BILL MOYERS: Dr. Wolfe, I am puzzled as a journalist as to why this subject of single-payer, whether one is for it or against it, seems totally out of the debate in Washington. It's just not on the table. And it's not in the- on the radar screen of the press. Why do you think that is?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: I think the reason is, unfortunately, simple and frightening. Which is the power of the health insurance industry.
...
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: That's the big problem here is people want to find a solution that they can get through without a big fight with the insurance industry. Unfortunately it's economically and medically nonsensical - you can't actually have a health care program that works, if you keep the insurance industry alive.
BILL MOYERS: Well, then how do you account for the fact that so many people in other polls say, "We're satisfied with what we have for health care, and we don't want it taken away from us"?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, people are satisfied many times with their doctor and with the hospitals they go to. And most Americans aren't sick and don't actually have experience of their health insurance. But when you get sick, and actually have to use your insurance, that's when people find out the dark side of the policies they have. Huge co-payments, huge deductibles.
We did a survey of people filing for bankruptcy in courts around the country. Half of the bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies in this country. And of those medical bankruptcies, three quarters of those people had insurance, at least when they first got sick. But people have insurance that goes away after they actually need it.
BILL MOYERS: But why in the dozen or so hearings that I've tracked in Washington recently on health care reform have there been so few advocates of the single-payer?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: The seats at the table, or the witnesses at the hearing are, in a sense, controlled by the health insurance industry. They don't want someone essentially saying, "We don't need a health insurance industry. We can do what most other countries in the world have done. Have the government collect the money and pay the bills and get rid of all these people who are wasting $400 billion a year on excessive administrative costs."
So, we have got a fragmented health insurance industry. And it thrives on being fragmented. The drug countries make much more money with the fragmentation, because there's no price control. The insurance companies make much more money, 'cause they can push away people who aren't going to be profitable. The only people that suffer are the patients.
It's- 1968, I was one of a group of physicians that disrupted the American Medical Association's convention, because they were saying then, and in, for all practical purposes it's still true, "Health care is not a right. It's a privilege." And we said, quietly, as we took over the microphone, "That's wrong." We're now 41 years later, and it's still a privilege. And too many people in this country don't have that privilege. It's resulting in huge numbers of people being ill, sick, and almost 20 thousand people dying a year because they don't have health insurance.
...
BILL MOYERS: I've heard you say that several times. I've read you're saying it. We can do away with the health industry. I mean, them's fightin' words, a very powerful part of the economy, and they're a powerful part of the political statute, as David said.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: It absolutely is. And in Canada, back in 1970 or so, they were spending the same percentage of their gross national product as we were on health. They had huge numbers of uninsured people. They had the same insurance companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield. They decided to just get rid of the health insurance industry. That it was the only way to go. They had experimented with it in Saskatchewan ten years earlier. It worked so well, they couldn't wait to do it nationally. So, where there's a will, there's a way. There is no way we are ever going to get to having good health insurance for everyone, as long as there's a health insurance industry, in the way, obstructing care.
BILL MOYERS: What do you say to the argument, though, of people who've gone to Canada, and looked at that system. "Well, there are long waiting lines. You can't choose your doctor." In fact, conservative critics say that this will lead to what they dread which is socialized medicine. Would single-payer in fact mean I could not choose my doctor?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, in Canada, actually, you can go to any doctor, any hospital in the country.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Much more choice than here.
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Yeah, Canadians have better choice than we do. They spend half as much per person on health care as we do. And if you're going to cut our budget by 50 percent, we'd have to have some waiting lines. But if we're willing to keep spending at our current levels, we could cover everybody with first dollar coverage with terrific access to care.
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean first dollar coverage?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: No co-payment, no deductible. You go to the doctor. The whole bill is paid. Any doctor, any hospital in the country. That's the model. And that's not just me who says that. The Congressional Budget Office has said that in the past. The Government Accountability Office says we're spending enough to do that. And we're really talking about social insurance, like Medicare is social insurance. But doctors and hospitals remaining privately owned.
...
BILL MOYERS: Am I correct in thinking on the basis of what I've read that with single-payer, the benefits would be publicly financed, as you just said, but that the health care providers would, for the most part, remain private?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: They certainly would. As would the hospitals.
BILL MOYERS: They wouldn't work for the state.
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: No, no.
BILL MOYERS: They wouldn't get their salaries some...
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: In fact, private practice is more common in Canada than it is here in the U.S. And in the U.S., we're seeing more practices being taken over by big corporations. And people, basically, doctors becoming employees of large bureaucracies. In Canada, private practices remain the norm. And that's what we're saying ought to continue in the U.S.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: I mean, essentially it's socializing the financing. So, I mean, when people use this scare word "socialized medicine" I don't know what they mean. We have socialized libraries. We collect taxes, and we have libraries, we have socialized police. The financing is socialized. In those cases, they are working for a city. In this case, the doctors are in private practice. The hospitals are operating privately. And any patient- it's interesting the system is called Medicare, and so, everyone in the country has a Medicare card and that allows them to go wherever they want. They don't have this limited number of providers, which is getting more and more limited, as everyone who has health insurance in this country knows.
...
BILL MOYERS: You are both doctors, but are there many doctors like you in support of single-payer? Is there any evidence of their numbers?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, we actually started our group, Physicians for a National Health Program with just a few of us. But we now have 16 thousand members. So, there are a lot of doctors who are activists on this issue. But more than that, surveys are showing that most doctors support national health insurance-
BILL MOYERS: Why?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: ...at this point. Because our lives every day taking care of patients drive us to it. The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the game of mother may I we play with the insurance companies. All of those are not what we went into medicine for. We went into medicine, most of us, 'cause we wanted to take care of people. This system doesn't let us do that. And even my conservative colleagues, our organization has Republicans in it. There, at this point, single-payer supporters, 'cause they say "Let me practice medicine."
BILL MOYERS: I want to get your thoughts on President Obama's plan. As I read it, it's very difficult, at this moment, to know the details of it.
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: 'Cause there aren't any details.
BILL MOYERS: There aren't any details. But he seems to be advocating a public option that would compete with the private insurance-driven sector, as a way of lowering the cost. What do you think about it? Is that- am I reading his plan correctly?
DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, most of the cost savings he's talking about are really illusory, I think. And my research group has done most of the research work on administrative costs in health care. And the administrative costs he's talking about saving are a tiny fraction of the potential savings under single-payer. 'Cause hospitals have to keep their bureaucracy, if you're dealing with hundreds of different plans. And doctors have to keep the bureaucracy in our office. You don't actually get the streamlining that you get from having one payer that has one set of rules and can pay lump sum budgets to hospitals. But more than that, we're worried that the public plan actually becomes a dumping ground for the unprofitable patients. As it's happening in Medicare.
...
BILL MOYERS: So, what would you like to see in Obama's plan?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Well, we'd like to see Obama remember where he came from. And not only say, "If we were starting now from scratch, we would have a single-payer, but it's too disruptive." Instead of saying, "We are starting out from scratch, because we need to start out from scratch. There are too many people dying, being sick, ill, because they don't have insurance." And so, we would like Obama to espouse a single-payer program. The majority of people in the Congress would vote for it, if there were some leadership. Instead of saying, "It's politically impossible." It's politically impossible if everyone agrees that it's not possible, it won't happen.
If instead they say, "It's not only politically possible, politically feasible, and it's the only practical way it would happen." Anything short of that is essentially throwing billions of dollars at the insurance industry. And if you're afraid of the insurance industry, then you're afraid of doing the right thing.
------
Obama for Single-Payer Before He Was Against It.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/139959/obama_for_single-payer_before_he_was_against_it._/
...let me just echo Ta-Neishi Coates who recently wrote that "while a good politician accomplishes what is possible, a great one expands the realm of possibility - he doesn't simply accept the lines of argument as they're drawn and hew to the side with the most soldiers, he tries to redraw those lines to benefit his ideals."
The whole idea that single payer is the best option but politically "impossible" is simply unacceptable. Last I checked, electing an African American president was politically "impossible"...until Barack Obama went ahead and got himself elected president. The entire notion of "politically possible" and "politically impossible" is a canard that justifies the status quo. So while it's certainly terrific that Obama is fighting for some sort of universal health care system, and one with a public option (which could ultimately become a single-payer system), let's just remember: Nothing has been politically "possible" until it actually happened - and so if that's the major argument against single payer, it's not just a poor argument, it's a fraud.
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Obama: Health Care Reform This Year -- Or Never
(two sites for the comments)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/obama-health-care-reform_n_208748.html
and
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/140328/obama_calls_for_health_care_reform_now_..._or_never
President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that if health care reform didn't take place this year, it won't be completed during his presidency.
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*Special Note* Do see the Moyers video segments if at all possible. They are golden.
...
Obama hasn't floated a plan of his own and despite his previous support for a single-payer plan he has refused to allow any such plan to be discussed at recent healthcare reform negotiations. His claimed deadline may reflect the political realities of congressional elections in 2010, but it is also defeatist and melodramatic. Where was the forewarning on this? Now everyone is supposed to immediately jump in support of whatever Obama decides his plan will be even though he has refused to state just what in the hell it is? And the single-payer option is off the table? And it's now or never? By 1 August 2009?
He doesn't seem very hopeful, does he?
Obama is carefully orchestrating all of the reasons why any healthcare reform will prove impossible. And despite whatever Obama or any other Democrat may say of it in the future - they are intentionally dropping the ball on this reform issue because they lack both the leadership and the courage to do the right thing. Cowards all!
Let me float some ideas of my own with you...
Access to healthcare when you need it is a right and not a privilege. No one should be bankrupted by the vagaries of fate or accidental misfortunes concerning their health.
There is no reason to include the health insurance industry in any negotiations about healthcare reform. Why not? Because the health insurance industry is the problem and the source of waste that needs to be corrected.
Any plan that mandates that citizens must buy insurance from private insurers is a giveaway just like mandatory auto liability insurance. And the waste and enormous expense of healthcare will continue to escalate under such a reworked version of the status quo.
Our political representatives aren't going to do what's right because they fear the health insurance industry more than they fear you, the electorate. You are going to have to make them fear your displeasure more instead.
Obama hasn't really succeeded at anything so far. If he screws up healthcare reform as well, I know I am not voting for him a second time. And I won't be wasting my votes on other Democrats any longer either. I am tired of pretending to myself that Democrats represent any kind of meaningful alternative to the Republicans that will also not get my votes. If we don't pass single-payer during Obama's presidency I am never voting for either party again. Not ever.
Now is the time to contact your political representatives and make them understand what is at stake. I hope that you will make them understand that their political survival hangs on this issue.
People are dying while our representatives kowtow to the health insurance industry instead of us, their rightful masters.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Obama Botches It All
Universal Single-payer healthcare? Nothing like it has even been proposed.
Election reform? eh?
Anti-war position? Continual warfare in every theater. Thanks, MoveOn.org
Economic recovery? Only if you are a bankster, Wall Street huckster or a foreign investor. Main Street americans can go fuck themselves.
Prosecution of Bush et al war crimes? LOL! Not in this lifetime...
Isn't that known as 0 for 5?
Yay...
Election reform? eh?
Anti-war position? Continual warfare in every theater. Thanks, MoveOn.org
Economic recovery? Only if you are a bankster, Wall Street huckster or a foreign investor. Main Street americans can go fuck themselves.
Prosecution of Bush et al war crimes? LOL! Not in this lifetime...
Isn't that known as 0 for 5?
Yay...
Universal Healthcare = Mandatory Liability Insurance According to Obama
Another fail, Obama.
We need top to bottom healthcare reform, Obama - not another fucking bill to pay to private interests.
Brilliant move, BTW - you failed to even propose single-payer as a starting point for negotiations. What's left to concede? You gave it all away in your first move.
We need top to bottom healthcare reform, Obama - not another fucking bill to pay to private interests.
Brilliant move, BTW - you failed to even propose single-payer as a starting point for negotiations. What's left to concede? You gave it all away in your first move.
The Two Faces of Obama on Civil Liberties
Obama's civil liberties speech
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/21/obama/
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
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Obama is not impressing me very much of late. I am still thrilled to have him over McCain, but it's getting to a point where that isn't saying very much.
You know, it being Mouseland and all...
Given a choice between being duped by one candidate or being duped by the other, I chose to be duped by the candidate whose policy claims where closest to my own political ideals.
And ultimately, that's turning out to mean almost nothing. That "almost" there is really just a hold out for hope without any real meaning.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/21/obama/
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
------
Obama is not impressing me very much of late. I am still thrilled to have him over McCain, but it's getting to a point where that isn't saying very much.
You know, it being Mouseland and all...
Given a choice between being duped by one candidate or being duped by the other, I chose to be duped by the candidate whose policy claims where closest to my own political ideals.
And ultimately, that's turning out to mean almost nothing. That "almost" there is really just a hold out for hope without any real meaning.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Torture Roundup
The 13 people who made torture possible
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/18/torture/print.html
01. Dick Cheney
02. David Addington
03. Alberto Gonzales
04. James Mitchell
05. George Tenet
06. Condoleezza Rice
07. John Yoo
08. Jay Bybee
09. William "Jim" Haynes
10. Donald Rumsfeld
11. John Rizzo
12. Steven Bradbury
13. George W. Bush
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These people are an embarrassment to the rest of us in the United States. Right now, Obama is choosing to do exactly the wrong thing about it - which is nothing. He claims he doesn't want to look at the past but rather toward the future. The problem is that he is tasked as President of the U.S. to prosecute exactly these sorts of crimes. Obama is the chief law enforcement officer on matters of national policy with this much gravity. So choosing to do nothing sends the message that there are people that are above the law; or alternatively, beneath the notice of the current Prez.
I would suggest the following two options:
1. Prosecute every one of these assholes to the fullest extent of the law and then hopefully throw them in jail once they've had their day in court.
2. Pardon them for their various crimes by first enumerating each and every one of said crimes and then explaining why the grant of a pardon is somehow in keeping with the national policies or security interests of this nation.
Personally, I'd like to see a real prison time price paid for these types of crimes. Torture is an ugly crime and a blot upon our national pride. A simple political spanking will not do in my opinion.
But doing nothing is completely unacceptable, Mr. Prez.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/18/torture/print.html
01. Dick Cheney
02. David Addington
03. Alberto Gonzales
04. James Mitchell
05. George Tenet
06. Condoleezza Rice
07. John Yoo
08. Jay Bybee
09. William "Jim" Haynes
10. Donald Rumsfeld
11. John Rizzo
12. Steven Bradbury
13. George W. Bush
------
These people are an embarrassment to the rest of us in the United States. Right now, Obama is choosing to do exactly the wrong thing about it - which is nothing. He claims he doesn't want to look at the past but rather toward the future. The problem is that he is tasked as President of the U.S. to prosecute exactly these sorts of crimes. Obama is the chief law enforcement officer on matters of national policy with this much gravity. So choosing to do nothing sends the message that there are people that are above the law; or alternatively, beneath the notice of the current Prez.
I would suggest the following two options:
1. Prosecute every one of these assholes to the fullest extent of the law and then hopefully throw them in jail once they've had their day in court.
2. Pardon them for their various crimes by first enumerating each and every one of said crimes and then explaining why the grant of a pardon is somehow in keeping with the national policies or security interests of this nation.
Personally, I'd like to see a real prison time price paid for these types of crimes. Torture is an ugly crime and a blot upon our national pride. A simple political spanking will not do in my opinion.
But doing nothing is completely unacceptable, Mr. Prez.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Obama's Reconciliation Threat
I will not claim to be the expert on the federal congressional reconciliation process but from where I sit either Obama has been making empty threats or what he is actually doing is being reported very badly. Let me check the story as I have heard it...
Most of us want something like a universal health-care plan or at the very least some kind of single-payer system. Check!
But as the Grand Obstructionist Party stands in our way we aren't likely to get what we want any time soon or without losing most of what we want along the way. Check!
So Obama has supposedly been citing the zero support he received for the bailout plan and threatening the Grand Obstructionist Party with going around them via the reconciliation process. Check!
The rub is that the reconciliation process is really not intended for anything like this maneuver and Obama is probably fucked on it. I suppose it makes good headlines to report things like that even when they make no sense whatever. Wiki informs me that "President Clinton wanted to use reconciliation to pass his health care plan, but Senator Robert Byrd insisted that the health care plan was out of bounds for a process that is theoretically about budgets." And that's just in case you wondered how in bed with the Clintons Obama really happens to be.
Or maybe I just really don't know my shit and should just shut my trap.
Most of us want something like a universal health-care plan or at the very least some kind of single-payer system. Check!
But as the Grand Obstructionist Party stands in our way we aren't likely to get what we want any time soon or without losing most of what we want along the way. Check!
So Obama has supposedly been citing the zero support he received for the bailout plan and threatening the Grand Obstructionist Party with going around them via the reconciliation process. Check!
The rub is that the reconciliation process is really not intended for anything like this maneuver and Obama is probably fucked on it. I suppose it makes good headlines to report things like that even when they make no sense whatever. Wiki informs me that "President Clinton wanted to use reconciliation to pass his health care plan, but Senator Robert Byrd insisted that the health care plan was out of bounds for a process that is theoretically about budgets." And that's just in case you wondered how in bed with the Clintons Obama really happens to be.
Or maybe I just really don't know my shit and should just shut my trap.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Elizabeth Warren Explains It All
------
So basically we have three models we can follow in the current economic crisis to save our failing and failed financial institutions: we can follow the FDR model and shut down insolvent entities, we can follow the Swedish model and temporarily takeover the entities we think we can restructure and save or we can follow Japan's lost decade model and subsidize and try to save nearly all of them.
Obama used to talk a lot about moral hazard but you can expect him to shut up pronto because he is clearly talking out of his ass while playing "bottom boy" for the banksters. Obama has allowed nearly 2 trillion dollars to be squandered between what the Fed has paid out and what the taxpayers are being forced to cough up for the likes of Goldman Sachs. Moral hazard, indeed...
So, we are absolutely following the Japanese model and making a huge motherfucking mistake too. Obama wants to simply re-inflate the bubble in the grand tradition of U.S. economic bubble and bust cycles. He's wrong and we are fools to allow it to continue.
More here:
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Warren Pt. 1 | ||||
| ||||
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2 | ||||
| ||||
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So Elizabeth does much talking because that's about all she can do. But yes, she is getting the word out and that's a hell of a lot more than what Obama is doing as bankster butt-boy.
But let's be clear about how very little oversight exists for the processes being undertaken right now in our names. It's a big fucking joke with the banksters laughing all the way to China, Japan, the Hamptons and Dubai.
We need to re-regulate the banks and undo what was wrought by Phil Gramm, Jim Leach and Bill Clinton when they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that was originally implemented by FDR. Why in the world would they have done that? Because there was money to be made, that's why. Pure, unadulterated greed. Same old story...
Here's a funny thought: maybe as a matter of national security we shouldn't allow foreign interests to control so large a part of our financial markets. If people understood that most of our debt is held by China and Japan I would think that there might be some tumult over that very fact. And why should that be the case, after all? We should manufacture and sell in the U.S. so that we owe less to the outside world. That's what everyone else is going to do - just you watch! Some might call it protectionist; I call it survival.
Charity starts at home. So does good sense.
We need to force Obama to actually fix the problem and not just re-inflate the endless cycle of bubble and bust to which we have all grown so appallingly accustomed. Enough is fucking enough! If you are as exhausted and disgusted by Obama's last three months as I am, it's time to force his hand. There is nothing we can't fix here by regulation, Obama.
Honore de Balzac said that, "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
Today that crime is called a "bailout" and TARP.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Economic Crisis Roundup
Simon Johnson says: "Break up the banks"
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/feature/2009/04/23/simon_johnson/
Simon Johnson is the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and in recent months has emerged as one of the most cogent critics of how the Obama administration is addressing the banking crisis.
------
The Crisis That Could Bring Down Obama
http://www.progressive.org/mag/rc041509.html
In other words, the banks are insolvent. That's why they must rely on the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But at the same time, they are claiming to be healthy. Both things can't be true.
------
Bernanke, Paulson should be charged with securities violations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/bernanke-paulson-should-b_b_190636.html
Instead, Bernanke and Paulson told Lewis not to disclose the dire consequences unfolding at Merrill within his bank which meant that millions of shares of the Bank of America and other stocks worth tens of billions traded for prices they would not have fetched if these U.S. government officials had not allegedly imposed a cover-up.
...
In this case, the two most powerful regulators in the history of the world financially damaged markets, widows and orphans, pension funds, mutual funds and other investors by not telling them a bank, and indirectly the financial system as whole, was in worse shape than previously disclosed.
...
Rather than face the music and take decisive action, Bernanke and Paulson ordered a CEO to disobey the law of the land. This makes them accessories, not leaders.
------
Obama is blowing it. BIG TIME!
We are still doing the countdown to bank nationalization. Our politicians want to re-inflate the bubble that got us here, not actually fix the problem. By re-inflating the bubble we can pass off to future generations the problems we are creating today in the financial sector. I guess its like taking a really messy bowel movement and not even thinking to wipe your own ass - that must be someone else's problem!
And so we have Obama kowtowing to banks but playing hardball with the last remaining segment of America's great job creating industries: the auto manufacturers. I will be the first to criticize the auto-makers but I will also recognize that they create jobs. So who is it better to save: leeches like banksters or the job producing "morans" at GM?
We are a long way down a dark tunnel leading us in the absolutely wrong direction. Maybe all Obama can do is to lessen the impact of the hard fall that us sure to come. Our problems are systemic, from top to bottom. The solutions will not be band-aid solutions. We are looking at tourniquet and amputation procedures. It's bad. Really bad. We are apparently doomed to live in interesting times.
But hey, have a nice day!
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/feature/2009/04/23/simon_johnson/
Simon Johnson is the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and in recent months has emerged as one of the most cogent critics of how the Obama administration is addressing the banking crisis.
------
The Crisis That Could Bring Down Obama
http://www.progressive.org/mag/rc041509.html
In other words, the banks are insolvent. That's why they must rely on the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But at the same time, they are claiming to be healthy. Both things can't be true.
------
Bernanke, Paulson should be charged with securities violations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/bernanke-paulson-should-b_b_190636.html
Instead, Bernanke and Paulson told Lewis not to disclose the dire consequences unfolding at Merrill within his bank which meant that millions of shares of the Bank of America and other stocks worth tens of billions traded for prices they would not have fetched if these U.S. government officials had not allegedly imposed a cover-up.
...
In this case, the two most powerful regulators in the history of the world financially damaged markets, widows and orphans, pension funds, mutual funds and other investors by not telling them a bank, and indirectly the financial system as whole, was in worse shape than previously disclosed.
...
Rather than face the music and take decisive action, Bernanke and Paulson ordered a CEO to disobey the law of the land. This makes them accessories, not leaders.
------
Obama is blowing it. BIG TIME!
We are still doing the countdown to bank nationalization. Our politicians want to re-inflate the bubble that got us here, not actually fix the problem. By re-inflating the bubble we can pass off to future generations the problems we are creating today in the financial sector. I guess its like taking a really messy bowel movement and not even thinking to wipe your own ass - that must be someone else's problem!
And so we have Obama kowtowing to banks but playing hardball with the last remaining segment of America's great job creating industries: the auto manufacturers. I will be the first to criticize the auto-makers but I will also recognize that they create jobs. So who is it better to save: leeches like banksters or the job producing "morans" at GM?
We are a long way down a dark tunnel leading us in the absolutely wrong direction. Maybe all Obama can do is to lessen the impact of the hard fall that us sure to come. Our problems are systemic, from top to bottom. The solutions will not be band-aid solutions. We are looking at tourniquet and amputation procedures. It's bad. Really bad. We are apparently doomed to live in interesting times.
But hey, have a nice day!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Obama: Drunk With Power
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
------
And here's Glenn Greenwald on the same stuff with the same video content:
Keith Olbermann's scathing criticism of Obama's secrecy/immunity claims
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/08/criticism/
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Olbermann reports on how Obama is now performing and defending the same actions for which he criticized Bush Jr. It's an appalling about face to the peace movement to see how the secrecy and the warmongering continues with a Prez who rode in on a mandate to end the secrecy and the wars of the previous resident of the oral office.
Obama is breaking promises and we must take him to task for it.
I don't quite believe that we have ended the torture, we've just moved it out of sight of public scrutiny and denunciation. Why the careful legal moves otherwise? Power for the sake of power, or power because it has motives? You choose. It stinks either way...
End the wars! End the secrecy and hidden torture!
Bring back the light! Bring back our civil liberties!
I stand firm on my right to privacy.
Fuck you, Obama!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Obama and Geithner's Ultra-Bullshit:
Moral Hazard
Moral Hazard can be defined as "the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk."
Here's Joshua Holland on Geithner's less than brilliant plan:
------
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/134986/proof_that_geithner's_bank_plan_is_a_massive_giveaway_to_the_bastards_who_started_this_mess/
Recall the Geithner Bank Plan in a nutshell: private investors would buy those "toxic" assets off of struggling "zombie banks." The buyers would put about 7 percent of the purchase price down, and the Treasury Department would match that with another 7 or so percent. Then the FDIC would offer government-backed loans for the remainder.
If the assets were to recover their value and turn a profit down the road, the investors would split the profits with the government. But if they don't -- if their values continue to tank -- then you and I and everyone else who pays taxes will be on the hook for the lion's share of the losses.
In other words, we're limiting bargain-hunters' downside risk if they buy the banks' crap and it doesn't turn out well for them. It's a pretty sweet deal for those investors. And, as I wrote when Geithner first announced it, pretty much the definition of "moral hazard."
------
And the countdown to nationalization continues...
Here's Joshua Holland on Geithner's less than brilliant plan:
------
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/134986/proof_that_geithner's_bank_plan_is_a_massive_giveaway_to_the_bastards_who_started_this_mess/
Recall the Geithner Bank Plan in a nutshell: private investors would buy those "toxic" assets off of struggling "zombie banks." The buyers would put about 7 percent of the purchase price down, and the Treasury Department would match that with another 7 or so percent. Then the FDIC would offer government-backed loans for the remainder.
If the assets were to recover their value and turn a profit down the road, the investors would split the profits with the government. But if they don't -- if their values continue to tank -- then you and I and everyone else who pays taxes will be on the hook for the lion's share of the losses.
In other words, we're limiting bargain-hunters' downside risk if they buy the banks' crap and it doesn't turn out well for them. It's a pretty sweet deal for those investors. And, as I wrote when Geithner first announced it, pretty much the definition of "moral hazard."
------
And the countdown to nationalization continues...
Obama the Great Conciliator
Inside Obama's bank CEOs meeting
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html
Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.
"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market."
But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that."
"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
------
He says the right things, he just doesn't do the right things. Well, maybe he could say the N-word too and be a man of the people.
You know, Nationalization.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html
Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.
"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market."
But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that."
"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
------
He says the right things, he just doesn't do the right things. Well, maybe he could say the N-word too and be a man of the people.
You know, Nationalization.
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