Gross Evidence of Rent-Seeking

It’s not often that you get enough evidence of rent-seeking you can actually find it entered into a public record. Leave it to Stupakistan to show the incredible power of insurance and other nondepository financial institutions to leave their fingerprints without shame on the public policy debate over the healthcare payments system. It looks like the middle men are definitely winning on this one. Check out this article at the NYT today by Robert Pea with damning headline “In House, Many Spoke with One Voice: Lobbyists’. “

We have to get corporate money out of politics.  It’s essential to preserving our republic with its aspirational democratic roots.

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

Notice that it’s an equal opportunity rent-seeking opportunity.  Lobbyists are carefully crafting their message to play to whatever base will fall for it.  If there ever is evidence that public policy is being high jacked by parasites of the market–those third party payers that bring no value and only layers of costs and confusion to the process–this is it.  Unfortunately, people are so dependent on their insurance companies, they fail to see they need to rid themselves of the fleas.

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists.

In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: “I regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was.” He said he got his statement from his staff and “did not know where they got the information from.”

Yea, right.  You’re so frigging business with things and you have so few staff you can’t actually read the bills, get information on the problems in the market, and find solutions for yourself.  You just have to rely on people with stakes in the status quo.

In recent years, Genentech’s political action committee and lobbyists for Roche and Genentech have made campaign contributions to many House members, including some who filed statements in the Congressional Record. And company employees have been among the hosts at fund-raisers for some of those lawmakers. But Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, “There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.”

Mr. Morris said Republicans and Democrats, concerned about the unemployment rate, were receptive to the company’s arguments about the need to keep research jobs in the United States.

Maybe RD can clear up the connection between what they’re demanding congress keep in their cookie jar and the outsourcing of science jobs to the cheapest market, but my guess is it’s just a convenient excuse unless you actually force them to keep the jobs IN THE COUNTRY in the wording of the legislation.  They’ll go where the cheapest options are because corporations have ONLY one goal.  That is MAXIMIZING PROFIT.  Renting seeking and ruthless cost-cutting play right into that.  Also, gaining market share and power so you can manipulate the price and quantity–especially on a price insensitive (inelastic) item like drugs and health care.  When you need them you need them and you’re likely to rearrange your budget and everything else to get them; especially if it’s a matter of life and death.

My guess is we have a lot of gullible shills in Stupakistan.

Mr. Brady’s chief of staff, Stanley V. White, said he had received the draft statement from a lobbyist for Genentech’s parent company, Roche.

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record,” Mr. White said. “I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”

Some differences were just a matter of style. Representative Yvette D. Clarke, Democrat of New York, said, “I see this bill as an exciting opportunity to create the kind of jobs we so desperately need in this country, while at the same time improving the lives of all Americans.”

Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, used the same words, but said the bill would improve the lives of “ALL Americans.”

Mr. Payne and Mr. Brady said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest technology minds.” Mr. Pascrell said the bill would “create new opportunities and markets for our brightest minds in technology.”

My guess is these brains in congress were the same ones that talked their brainy class mates into sharing their homework and rephrased it just enough to pass the professor’s scrutiny or most like the professor’s grad student’s scrutiny.

There is something incredibly wrong in our governing process when a group of powerful nonvoting constituents get to write the voice of public policy.  If your congressman is on this list, find an alternative, FAST!!!

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Incoherency is not an Asset

Something inhuman has taken Paul Krugman from us, I'm afraid.

I’m not sure what happened to Dr. Paul Krugman that fateful night of dinner at the White House, but I’d like the shrill one back now. Was it something in the food? Was it something in the conversation? Who knows? But in as much a Buddhist can offer a Jewish guy a come to Jesus moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to ask him to step forward and confess lest the devil grab his soul (or in my case–no soul to lose–but more confused subtle conscious and an accumulation of some really bad karma). What exactly is this Dr. Milquetoast?

You see, it has been clear for months that whatever health-care bill finally emerges will fall far short of reformers’ hopes. Yet even a bad bill could be much better than nothing. The question is where to draw the line. How bad does a bill have to be to make it too bad to vote for?

Now, the moment of truth isn’t here quite yet: There’s enough wrong with the Baucus proposal as it stands to make it unworkable and unacceptable. But that said, Senator Baucus’s mark is better than many of us expected. If it serves as a basis for negotiation, and the result of those negotiations is a plan that’s stronger, not weaker, reformers are going to have to make some hard choices about the degree of disappointment they’re willing to live with.

So, the Baucus bill is “unworkable and unacceptable” but even a bad bill could be much better than nothing? What? You want to try that again? So, first he tells any of us that support single payer, that we’re being unreasonable by sticking by our convictions during the first real phase of negotiations. I know Krugman knows game theory, so I ask you, where is the sense in negotiating your potential end game position from the start of the first node?

Krugman does mention these three problems with the bill, so again he realizes it’s basically a very bad piece of policy. You gut these out of the bill, however, and you don’t have the Baucus bill at all. It’s a blank sheet of paper. So why not say, dump the thing and let’s start over?

First, it bungles the so-called “employer mandate.” Most reform plans include a provision requiring that large employers either provide their workers with health coverage or pay into a fund that would help workers who don’t get insurance through their job buy coverage on their own. Mr. Baucus, however, gets too clever, trying to tie each employer’s fees to the subsidies its own employees end up getting.

That’s a terrible idea. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, it would make companies reluctant to hire workers from lower-income families — and it would also create a bureaucratic nightmare. This provision has to go and be replaced with a simple pay-or-play rule.

Second, the plan is too stingy when it comes to financial aid. Lower-middle-class families, in particular, would end up paying much more in premiums than they do under the Massachusetts plan, suggesting that for many people insurance would not, in fact, be affordable. Fixing this means spending more than Mr. Baucus proposes.

Third, the plan doesn’t create real competition in the insurance market. The right way to create competition is to offer a public option, a government-run insurance plan individuals can buy into as an alternative to private insurance. The Baucus plan instead proposes a fake alternative, nonprofit insurance cooperatives — and it places so many restrictions on these cooperatives that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, they “seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country.”

The insurance industry, of course, loves the Baucus plan. Need we say more?

Yes, you do need to say more other than watch and see what happens as it evolves and becomes more complex. Krugman is hoping that it eventually passes some ‘threshhold of acceptability’. Since you’ve given up so much so soon, what the heck do you now consider the minimum threshold of acceptability? As far as I can see, Dr. Krugman, the entire thing would have to be gutted to come close to anything that looks like a subgame perfect, let alone a Nash Equilibrium from my standpoint. But then I really want universal and affordable health care. There are a lot of ways to go about that, but the Baucus bill does not even appear to contain ONE of them. That’s probably because it was written by a Well Point Lobbyist.

Why Force the Poor into Subsidizing Insurance Companies?

This health insurance reform bill has sunk to a level that makes me wonder why all the huge corporations in the country don’t line up in front of the white house on Halloween, with bags, dressed as burglars, yelling trick or treat! The Baucus plan is yet another corporate welfare program masquerading as public welfare policy. If this is the plan that goes forward from here, we all should be working hard to defeat it. It just makes me want to scream. What on earth is going on with the Democrats these days?

WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus talked to Ron Wyden about health care reform (as compared to health insurance industry subsidies) and concludes we should all listen up! I liked the information because we’ve had the ongoing discussion here on The Confluence about those of us bitter knitters that aren’t exactly on the Goldman Sachs bonus plan that will be forced into paying for something we can’t afford now. Just how’s this latest scheme going to work for the nation’s poor? Isn’t being poor enough problem with out your own government punishing you for it?

Now, a family earning three times the poverty level — $66,150 for a family of four — would have to pay up to 13 percent of their income for health insurance. And that’s just the premiums — not counting deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket expenses.

“I don’t know very many working-class families who you can look in the eyes and say: ‘Do you have that kind of money in your checking account?’ — because they don’t,” Wyden told me.

Those without coverage would face a fine of as much as $3,800, unless costs exceeded 10 percent of their income, in which case they would be given an “affordability exemption.” In other words, they wouldn’t have insurance, but at least they wouldn’t be penalized for it.

“Folks are having trouble affording coverage that meets their families’ needs now. And they have been hearing from the White House and Congress that they’re going to get health-care security,” Wyden said.

If the Baucus proposal passes, he said, “They’re going to say, ‘Huh? Health-care security means I pay a whole lot more than I’m paying today or I get to be exempt from it, or I pay a penalty?’ They’re not going to say that meets the definition of health-care security.”

So, let’s get this straight. We’re going to fine poor people to subsidize the second most expensive payment mechanism in the world and I might add, a highly profitable payment mechanism for the highly profitable insurance industry? Excuse me, but I think this makes Max Bacchus look like the Grinch that stole food from babies’ mouths. What’s the point of working or reporting income at all, if all you’re going to do is get taxed for not being able to afford the 37th best health care system in the world with the number two price tag? Why not just sit home and go for the medicaid option?

The “hardship exemption,” he said, is “a big congressional punt.” The people most in need of insurance — those in their late 50s and early 60s — will end up saying, as Wyden put it, “I’m just as uninsured as I was before I heard all the politicians speak.”

On choice, Wyden argues, the White House and congressional plans have defined eligibility for the new insurance exchanges so narrowly that the vast majority of Americans won’t be allowed to participate.

For all the hullabaloo over the public option, the reality is that most Americans would not be eligible to choose even a private option. In an effort to avoid destabilizing employer-sponsored health care, the exchanges will be open only to the uninsured and small businesses.

“Nobody ever told the folks carrying the public-option signs all over America that 85 percent wouldn’t even get to choose it,” Wyden said. “For hundreds of millions of people, they’re going to have no more leverage after this bill passes than they do today. They work in some company, some person they don’t know in the human resources department decides what’s good for them. Nothing has changed.”

There are reasonable explanations for why Wyden’s colleagues and the White House made the choices they did. A price tag of more than $1 trillion for a more generous subsidy package induced sticker shock — though the cost ought not to have been surprising.

So, let me ask this question. Why are we supposed to support any of this? What is in it for any one but the President who gets to say he did something and the insurance companies who get windfall profits that would make the CEO of Chevron Exxon blush?

And you wonder why we can’t have a Public Option

H/T David Sirota and Open Left

I just got this link via David on Facebook. I’m speechless but not surprised.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option. According to CNN, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance – whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats.”

This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth’s lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted this email invitation throughout Washington, D.C. I just happened to get my hands on a copy of the invitation from a source – check it out:

From: Steve Elmendorf [mailto:steve@elmendorfstrategies.com]
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 8:31 AM
Subject: event with Speaker Pelosi at my homeYou are cordially invited to a reception with

Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi

Thursday, September 24, 2009
6:30pm ~ 8:00pm

At the home of
Steve Elmendorf
2301 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apt. 7B
Washington, D.C.

$5,000 PAC
$2,400 Individual

To RSVP or for additional information please contact
Carmela Clendening at(202) 485-3508 or clendening@dccc.org

Steve Elmendorf
ELMENDORF STRATEGIES
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS SOLUTIONS
900 7th Street NW Suite 750 Washington DC 20001

Again, Elmendorf is a registered lobbyist for UnitedHealth, and his firm’s website brags about its work for UnitedHealth on its website.

Paging Law Enforcement: Can we try using RICO ?

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If you think you’re worse off now, you’re right and not alone

From CBPP

I put this article from yesterday’s NYTimes in the comments section of my thread yesterday. I’m not sure every one read it so I thought I’d front page it. It’s on the increasing poverty and median income declines in the U.S. as reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and the Census Bureau. The depressing reality of The Great Recession and the Dubya years has set in and there’s several obvious trends. First, the the nation’s poverty rate climbed from 12.5 percent in 2007 to 13.2 percent in 2008. This is the highest level since 1960 and the highest rate since 1997. The number of people in poverty is 39.8 million. Second, there’s been decline in employer-provided health insurance coverage for adults. It would’ve been bad for children and the poor too, but the increased participation in SCHIP and MEDICAID offset that. (You’re probably aware that I support de-linking employment and health insurance coverage since this is happening any way and switching to means-tested payments with basic plan provision for all.) Third, median income declined.

In another sign of both the recession and the long-term stagnation of middle-class wages, median family incomes in 2008 fell to $50,300, compared with $52,200 the year before. This wiped out the income gains of the previous three years, the report said.

Adjusted for inflation, in fact, median family incomes were lower in 2008 than a decade earlier.

“This is the largest decline in the first year of a recession we’ve seen since the Census Bureau started collecting data after World War II,” said Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University, referring to household incomes. “We’ve seen a lost decade for the typical American family.”

The share of American residents who said they lacked health insurance throughout the entire year remained steady, at 15.4 percent, or 46.3 million people. But the total masked some more worrisome trends that are helping to drive the debate over a national health care overhaul.

Continuing an eight-year trend, the number of people with private or employer-sponsored insurance declined, while the number of people relying on government insurance programs including Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s insurance program and military insurance rose.

Paradise Squandered

I guess the old adage is true. A year is a long time in politics. Less than 18 months ago I held out hope that we would see a solid democratic majority for some time and that there would be a democratic President with a democratic agenda moving the country forward and away from the Bush Cheney nightmare. I expected that we would have no more warrantless wiretapping. I believed we would be discussing an energy policy that included more options that drill, baby drill. I thought a women’s uterus would no longer be considered an object of state interest. I figured that we’d see the end to talk about protecting traditional marriage, whatever the heck that ever was to start out with but basically we’d no longer exclude gay couples from a civil institution and gay soldiers from openly serving in our military.

I thought our future seemed bright.

I thought perhaps we could have a defense department budget that resembled the levels of other democratic countries and that we would have a health care plan that resembled the rest of the developed world. I especially felt hopeful, when I watched the first democratic debate, that one of those folks would be in charge of America again. It was only a matter of which one. Little did I know then, the one I discounted as not really knowing a thing by the time the second debate was over is the one we got. My basic thought about Obama was Vice President material.

Now, our national nightmare continues and The Cook Political Report has just dropped the other shoe. The Cook Political Report has a very good reputation for handicapping elections.

Gallup’s three-night moving average tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating in both their August 16-18 and August 17-19 averages was just 51 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. The latter sampling showed his disapproval up to 42 percent, matching his all-time low hit in the August 15-17 tracking poll. The 51% job approval rating is identical to two other polls released in recent days conducted by NBC News and the Pew Research Center. Today’s regression-based trend estimate computed by our friends at Pollster.com from all major national surveys show an approval rating of 50.7 percent and disapproval of 43.7 percent.

These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low.

Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats. A new Gallup poll that shows Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents should provide little solace to Democrats. In the same poll, Congressional approval among independents is at 22 percent, with 31 percent approving overall, and 62 percent disapproving.

I’m with him …

I have to say, I’m with my neighbor James Carville on this one … put a decent health care reform out there and let the Republicans kill it. I’ve said over and over that without a vital public option, it’s neither about the health care or the reform. It’s about the lobbyists and an administration win and I don’t think we should go for it. Carville thinks it would send a good signal to the country about how little Republicans are willing to come to the table in the name of what’s good for American and bi-partisanship if they fight health care reform vehemently. Let them show themselves as obstructionists while we trot out people bankrupted by underinsurance, folks who lost relatives to insurance companies who ration health care, and people who can’t even access the basics enough to be treated for the most treatable of diseases. Let them all be seen on TV saying no well baby care and prenatal care to their fetus fetishists.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic strategist James Carville became the first leading Democrat to suggest publicly that there might be political advantage in letting Republicans “kill” health care.

“Put a bill out there, make them filibuster it, make them be what they are, the party of no,” Carville said. “Let them kill it. Let them kill it with the interest group money, then run against them. That’s what we ought to do.”

This weekend’s comments by White House officials simply acknowledged the long-obvious reality that the idea of a government-run insurance plan was partly a bargaining chip.

Bargaining chip? WTF? What exactly do we get if the public option is off the table?

Krugman says the public option may be a signal on Obama’s trustworthiness that not every one is seeing. Okay, finance/economics lesson time again. Signaling theory is based on the idea that that market reacts rationally to publicly available information. So, for example, if I want to signal that my company is worth more than the average company, I want to find a way to signal that to the market I’m superior so they’ll run up my stock price to recognize me as a superior company. Then I can rake in bonuses and capital gains. I could borrow money in the commercial market, for example, that gives me a Aaa rating. This signals raters who are assumed to be in the know find my company to be a good bet compared to others that they rate lower. This signal should push up my stock price.

So what kind of signal do we have here? Well, Krugman argues that the public option is one of the ways Obama can ’signal’ that he’s still a progressive democrat and he’s signaling that he’s a sell out without realizing it. He points out that the public option debate has turn into a signal on who should buy stock in what Obama says. Signals are based on the market knowing what actions can be trusted, however. You have to trust that some one who gives a company the Aaa rating really has some inside proprietary information and believe they are a reliable, trustworthy source of rating. Krugman says the Obama administration is sending out bad signals and doesn’t even realize it.

If progressives had real trust in Obama’s commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn’t command that kind of trust.

Partly it’s a matter of style — as many people have noted, he has been weirdly reluctant to make the moral case for universal care, weirdly unable to show passion on the issue, weirdly diffident even about the blatant lies from the right. Partly it’s a spillover from his other policies: by appointing an economic team that’s Rubin redux, by taking such a kindly attitude to the banks, he has squandered a lot of progressive enthusiasm.

Add in the dealmaking as part of the health care process itself, and progressives can be forgiven for having the impression that Obama (a) takes them for granted (b) is way too easily rolled by the other side.

So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that’s easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.

And the bizarre thing is that the administration doesn’t seem to get that.

So, who’s signals should we trust? Carville? Krugman? Obama?

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Enough is Enough!

Left Blogistan is alive with the sounds of open dissent. I can only say, it’s about time. Here’s a good example from TheHill.com aptly headed Obama picks fight with left on Health Reform. The news, however, is this fact. A public option is not a liberal option. It’s the option that every advanced economy in the world has chosen in some form. We already have a public option for seniors. We’re the majority, in every sense of the word, on this issue. This fight is not with the Left. This fight is with our babies who die in bigger numbers than most countries, our families bankrupted by inadequate insurance, and the many many ill people who are simply numbers on a spreadsheet that provide a mark-up of 30 percent or more for a industry based on always saying no!

Even in the real Socialized medicine haven of the. U.K., former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher knew she had an unassailable object because it makes peoples lives much improved and they wouldn’t give it up once they had it. Here in the U.S., we’re not even talking socialized medicine despite the bleating of the right wing media machine. We’re talking about extending something we already have–Medicare– reformatting it so it benefits doctors, hospitals and patients rather than a superfluous, bonus paying, extraordinary profit making, third party payer. How can you lose the high ground on an issue that’s been so easily solved in nearly every other country that’s not an economic or political basket case? How can you lose momentum on an issue that polls showed people supported until you botched the policy so badly?

Liberal Democrats have insisted a public insurance option is necessary to ensure competition for private insurers. Just this week, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean predicted there could be Democratic primary challenges if a healthcare bill without a public option is approved by Congress.

Dean also told liberal bloggers gathered last week at the “Netroots Nation” convention that the only piece of reform left in the House bill that is worth doing is the public option.

The left wing of the Democratic party already has been irritated by concessions its leaders have made on healthcare to centrists in the House and Senate.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) told CNN on Sunday it would be “very difficult” for her and other liberals to support legislation that does not include a public option.

“The only way we can be sure that very low-income people and persons who work for companies that don’t offer insurance have access to it, is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition,” she said.

The last word in the Sunday TV Spin Zone was given to North Dakota Senator DINO Kent Conrad. This man has fewer folks in his entire state than do most neighborhoods in any major city in America. Why does he get to frame the debate?

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said the president remained convinced that a public plan was “the best way to go.” But Mr. Axelrod said the nuances of how to develop a nonprofit competitor to private industry had never been “carved in stone.”

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to produce a bill that features a nonprofit co-op. The author of the idea, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, predicted Sunday that Mr. Obama would have no choice but to drop the public option.

“The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” Mr. Conrad said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”

So, that’s it. The high rate of infant mortality we have here in the U.S. (worse than many developing nations), the appalling number of personal bankruptcies due to folks with either no insurance or underinsurance, and the number of people that have no access to even the most basic services other than the emergency rooms are simply Axelrovian ‘nuances’. TheHill.com continues to describe the back pedal, the sell-out, the cave-in, or what ever pejorative metaphor for the big Obama cop-out.

RIP: Public Option

In a yet another policy flip of epic proportion, nearly every democrat on the talking head circuit put to rest the idea that we might get even a small public option for health insurance. Fear tactics and greed in America are once again winning the health care debate. Evidently sixty isn’t enough when the majority of democrats in the senate prefer to join the Republicans in shooting down whatever hope we had of joining the rest of the industrialized and developed world in removing the burden of health care insurance from business and the poor and middle classes.

Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico reminds us what President Barack Obama said about a public option at the beginning of this public policy debacle.

It was only in June that Obama said in a letter to Senate Democrats that “I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”

A month ago, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that “any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.”

The reality on the ground today was delivered by via CNN.

A day after President Obama appeared to suggest that his administration might be open to health care reform legislation that does not include a public health insurance option, one of Obama’s top aides on the issue left the door open to accepting nonprofit health insurance co-ops, a proposal that has gained traction in bipartisan negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee.

“I think there will be a competition to private insurers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that really is the essential part, that you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace [after health care legislation is enacted] to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”

At a town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado Saturday, Mr. Obama seemed to downplay the necessity of having a public insurance option in the final version of any health care reform legislation presented to him by Congress.

“The public option – whether we have it or we don’t have it – is not the entirety of health care reform,” the President said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And, by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else . . .”

Echoing Mr. Obama’s Saturday comments, Sebelius also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that “what’s important is choice and competition.” A public option “is not an essential element,” the Cabinet secretary said Sunday.

No wonder they’re planning for windfall profits at United Health Care. They are getting exactly what they want. A bunch of new people at terms that were negotiated by the world’s biggest sucker. How can any one left standing in the Democrat corner possibly believe any thing this administration says from now on? How can we possibly support health care reform that is not about health care or reform. What we are seeing is another big industry payoff placed on the national credit card. I would have never thought I’d have seen the bonus class have so much to celebrate with a democratic majority controlling so much. The only thing that makes the Dubya handouts bigger is that they came with a war that not only cost treasury, but human lives.

I am waiting to see how any one in Left Blogistan can all this anything but complete capitulation. Complete capitulation is not 11th dimensional kung fu chess no matter what hallucinogenic you’ve taken.

Dear Progressives: You’ve been had …

Not at NetRoots but close

I’ve been busy getting the youngest back to University and entertaining a friend as well as trying to get my own stuff together for semester’s start so I didn’t go to Netroots and I haven’t followed it very closely. Just got back in from a day of driving way too many places to see two headlines that juxtapose nicely. First, is at HuffPo and the headline is “Valarie Jarret Heckled and Hissed at Netroots Nation”. The other is from Politico and that headline is “Party leaders prepare liberals to accept a health care reform deal”. Do you think we need to play connect the dots? Sure you do!!!

So, we’ve known for some time that this is the health care reform plan that really isn’t about health care or reform. Now, we’re being asked to bend over, open wide and … well, you catch my drift. I’m not about to take one for Howard Dean or the Gipper, Gypper, POTUS, whatever. I’ll admit to being a fully recovered Deaniac. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Here’s Politico’s story.

After the toughest week yet for health reform, leading Democrats are warning that the party likely will have to accept major compromises to get a bill passed this year – perhaps even dropping a proposal to create a government-run plan that is almost an article of faith among some liberals.

With August dominated by angry faces and raised voices at town hall meetings, influential Democrats began laying the groundwork for the fall, particularly with the party’s liberal base, saying they may need to accept a less-than-perfect bill to achieve health reform this year.

“Trying to hold the president’s feet to the fire is fine, but first we have to win the big argument,” former President Bill Clinton said Thursday at the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of liberal activists and bloggers who will prove most difficult to convince. “I am pleading with you. It is OK with me if you want to keep everybody honest. . . . But try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass a bill and move this thing forward.”

“I want us to be mindful we may need to take less than a full loaf,” he said after recounting the political troubles that followed his failed reform effort in 1994.

It won’t be an easy sell. Even former national party chairman Howard Dean this week threatened Democrats who don’t support the public insurance plan with the prospect of primary challenges – the first rumblings of what could devolve into a Democratic civil war over health care.

So, how’s that sitting with the Netroots folks? They may have been polite to the Big Dawg and the Big Scream, but Valarie Jarett didn’t fare too well. It was a hootin’ and hollerin’ time up there in Pittsburgh! Why, you’d have thought it was just another town hall meeting with a bunch of Beck and O’Reilly acolytes! Do you suppose there were some sino-peruvian-lesbian plants up there or has some one finally awakened to the smell of bad milk in their cafe latte? Again, this was reported by HuffPo.

On Saturday morning, one of the president’s closest advisers, Valerie Jarrett addressed the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh. And while attendees were largely supportive throughout the question and answer session, the reception was warm at best. The defining moment, in fact, came when Jarrett was hissed and heckled.

Roughly midway through the session, Jarrett was pressed to explain why the President was “continuing so many of [Bush's] policies many of which he criticized as candidate Obama.” Knowing the mood and makeup of the audience – largely progressive activists from across the country – she acknowledged off the bat that it was “a fair question.” But from there, things grew a bit rough.

Jarrett defended the work Obama has done outlawing torture, and releasing Office of Legal Counsel memos detailing how such interrogation practices came to be. At that point, a protester in the audience screamed out a question about why the White House was trying to keep additional photographs of detainee abuse from becoming public.

“I heard somebody shout out about the pictures,” Jarrett replied. “Everybody knows what’s in those pictures. And this is where it gets very delicate and I know it is a touchy subject for this audience. But what he is trying to balance as president, is keeping us safe, not giving ammunition to people who already have ample ammunition from what they’ve seen before to be adverse to us.”

More shouts and protests followed. “I can’t hear you,” Jarrett said. “You know what you’ve got to do? You’ve got to figure out a way to get your question on here [pointing to the computer on stage that was receiving emails from questioners]. We are not going to have shout outs from the audience.”

Wow! Are the folks at Netroots part of the mob now? Have some of them finally realized that if they don’t cooperate with the current meme there’s a place for them under that big ol’ bus the rest of us were thrown under during the primary last year? Are they really willing to sell out every single item on the liberal/progressive agenda for enhanced status quo? Are these possibly those chickens we kept hearing about? Are they finally coming home to roost? And, do you think it’s too late to get some REAL health care reform out while we’re at it?

Listen, Netroots, POTUS said he wouldn’t sign anything that didn’t include a public option. Are you going to join us to hold him accountable for those words or are you going to cave into this pressure to win one for the Gipper or is that the Gypper?

Drink up and make room for Netroots Nation Under the Bus!!!!

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