Sensible Erection | Surprise, surprise: NYT Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Surprise, surprise: NYT Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

quote [ ...the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, [was] that the public option was not going to be in the final product. ]

I know, it's a HuffPost opinion article, so here's the NYT article from August of 09 that it's referring to.

Apparently this has been out there for months but hasn't been in the news (not that I've seen, anyway).

Stay classy, DC!

[politics] [by hildeaux@2:47amGMT] [+5 WTF]

Comments

dangerm00se said @ 2:50am GMT on 17th Mar
:C

hildeaux said @ 2:53am GMT on 17th Mar
You wouldn't have wanted the government option anyway, it would have sucked balls.

Though I'm not sure what could possibly be worse than the status quo of private insurance.

dangerm00se said @ 2:58am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:2 Underrated]
The private option may have sucked balls to begin with, but only by creating and supporting it can we destroy the for-profit system that's destroying America. Once the public option's the only game in town, it can be vastly improved upon.

I'm a pretty healthy dude anyway so I don't even use insurance when I get it, but I'd be happy to give a portion of my paycheck to said option.

hildeaux said @ 3:13am GMT on 17th Mar
My dad is this insane Tea Partier whose favorite defense of private insurance is:

"Expecting to be able to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition is like expecting to be able to get fire insurance for a house that's on fire."

I don't think he realizes that you still have to put out the fucking fire. Or that his own daughter has a pre-existing condition for that matter.

oranges said @ 3:22am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
You should explain to him that fire insurance used to cover actually putting out the fire, until we realized that it fucked too many people and created a public option.

Krutz said @ 3:27am GMT on 17th Mar
I just heard a politician on the radio ranting about how people will be "forced" to buy insurance against their will.

Why isn't there a call for politicians who are against public funding of health insurance to give up their own health insurance that we pay for? I mean, if it's so unneeded and such a waste, how can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning when they get up knowing that they are bleeding the nation dry by having government run health care?

hildeaux said @ 4:02am GMT on 17th Mar
Well, we will be forced to buy it against our will. This came out at that "bipartisan" healthcare summit thing they had at some ritzy restaurant or whatever it was.

Late in the day, Obama admitted that he has reversed his position on the mandate requiring that everyone buy health insurance. “When I ran in the Democratic primaries, I was opposed to the mandate,” he said, adding that he had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to the idea. He then offered a very good defense of the mandate, noting that all who have insurance end up subsidizing the emergency room care and other forms of treatment that those without insurance receive.

I can't remember where I found this quote but I'll look for the link if you're interested.

Krutz said @ 4:19am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
We're already buying it against our will, technically. Via ER visits that go unpaid and have to be made up elsewhere.

In essence, we've all agreed that nobody should be turned away from health care, we're just very, very inefficient about paying for it.

uncletim said @ 4:41am GMT on 17th Mar
"In essence, we've all agreed that nobody should be turned away from health care, we're just very, very inefficient about paying for it."
Nicely put.

arctan said @ 6:44am GMT on 17th Mar
I get a little nervous about making this argument because I get the sneaking suspicion it's just a matter of time till the Republicans start arguing this as a reason for ERs and 911 to start turning away people who can't pay. I guess for them literal corpses in the street are just a sign of an efficient free-market economy disposing of freeloaders.

mrklipp said @ 11:37am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
One big issue with forcing people to buy insurance is that many of them will get forced into buying junk insurance because that's all they can afford.

Unless you happen to get cancer or have your asshole fall out one day, junk insurance is as good as nothing, the deductibles are so high that it won't end up paying for anything barring a major catastrophe, and even then you will likely end up bankrupt from the percentage of the bill you will still be required to cover. To top it all off, many of these plans are structured so as to deny expensive care even if you do end up with a major health emergency.

Now, there are a lot of reasons to pass this bill anyway, but don't don't disregard this issue of forcing people to buy insurance that many won't even be able to afford to use.

King of the Hill said @ 4:31pm GMT on 17th Mar
Problem is... The mandate fines you at the end of the year via the IRS if you do not have insurance.

The core problem with that is simply this: The fine is far less than the cost of insurance. You pay the fine via your tax return, still are an uninsured liability to everyone, and the government pockets the money. It seems to be purposely structured that way, and anyone with basic math skills should be wondering why.

My question is...Does that roughly $750 "fine" buy you any kind of mandated coverage? If so, then I stand corrected, but I don't see anywhere that it does that.

Krutz said @ 9:46pm GMT on 17th Mar
I would see the problem being private insurance. If the government is making one purchase insurance, the insurer is really a middleman and an unneeded hindrance.

And as I stated, we're already paying for everyone's health care one way or another. Unpaid ER bills show up as higher premiums and other costs passed along to insured patients.

sanepride said @ 10:00pm GMT on 17th Mar
Paying for everyone's ER bills isn't the same as paying for everyone's health care. A lot of uninsured people end up in the ER because they never had the means for regular health maintenance. Everyone sharing the cost of routine health care is potentially a lot cheaper and more efficient than absorbing the costs when they're so sick they need an ER visit - especially if the cost is shared among more younger, healthy people who aren't driving up costs.

mrcucumber said @ 11:15pm GMT on 17th Mar
If anybody is going to change health care, it's gonna be Michelle Obama.

The food industry needs to be changed, and it seems that she's having more impact on a society ripe for change than the health insurance polish.

sanepride said @ 11:29pm GMT on 17th Mar
Well personally I'd follow Michelle anywhere.
But of course the last time a First Lady was given the chance to reform health care it didn't work out so well.

mrklipp said @ 12:56am GMT on 18th Mar
Oh, I don't know about that, it worked out pretty well for her and the status quo.

Once it failed, she got all kinds of money in donations from the health care industry, which was certainly helpful in getting that nice senator gig. Then, once she was going to run for president, she became the second largest recipient of donations from that industry.

sanepride said @ 2:28am GMT on 18th Mar
Maybe, but remember that she didn't win. Though she did end up with that nice Secretary of State gig, which seems to me more than just coincidence a job as far removed from the health care issue as possible.

mrcucumber said @ 4:41am GMT on 18th Mar
She may not have won, but many of her potential appointees are sitting in the positions she(and bill?) would have selected as many are former clintonites. i.e. Rahm Emanuel.

I also guess that the insurance thing is a deal she and obama made behind the scenes. She may be directing a lot more than is readily apparent aside from foriegn policy.

sanepride said @ 5:19am GMT on 18th Mar
Well as a candidate Hillary was always far more committed to stronger health reform than Obama. But I seriously doubt she's still in the equation. She's definitely got her hands full at State.

Krutz said @ 11:37pm GMT on 17th Mar
I'm not saying ER=health care, quite the opposite. Paying for ER care when things have gotten chronic is more expensive than having routine checkups and less invasive/drastic treatments for problems caught early.

sanepride said @ 9:56pm GMT on 17th Mar
The idea behind the reform package is to enforce standards on the health insurance providers that would mean less 'junk insurance'. The idea behind the mandate is to vastly increase the pool so that costs as a whole go down, which ideally means people can more readily afford decent insurance.

mrklipp said @ 10:39pm GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
Well that was the idea, but it hasn't actually come together that way in the final bill. In short, for all the loopholes that are closed, plenty are left in. As an example, pre-existing conditions will no longer keep you from getting insurance, but there is still no enforceable mechanism to stop the insurance companies from denying expensive care.

Also of note, the bill contains almost nothing that will keep down costs. Apart from the minimum medical loss ratio, there is nothing to keep insurers from charging what they like regardless of how many new people enroll, because in the vast majority of markets they have no competition due to the antitrust protection they have.

sanepride said @ 11:28pm GMT on 17th Mar
Yes, it is true that there's not much in the bill that directly controls costs, other than the idea of increasing the market, spreading the risk, and promoting the 'exchanges' that at least in theory will give people more choice (and potentially add an element of competition).
Obviously if people are compelled to buy insurance, and costs & premiums continue to rise unabated, this will force the government's hand in offering a true public option or enforcing direct price controls. No doubt the insurance companies are aware of this scenario.

mrklipp said @ 12:52am GMT on 18th Mar
I don't know. If the insurance companies gave any consideration to how rate increases will affect public perception, what about blue cross of California announcing a big rate increase in the current climate?

I think at the end of the day, they know that the days of raking in money with no controls are over, and rather than easing back they are trying to jam it in that last inch or so now to get whatever they can while they can.

sanepride said @ 2:34am GMT on 18th Mar
I'm not saying they care about public perception, I'm saying they care about the possibility of even tighter government regulation - even to the point of them getting out of the biz and leaving health coverage to government entirely (which would be fine by me).

And even though Anthem Blue Cross does make a very convenient villain, their huge rate hike really did have more to do with a dwindling pool of low-risk enrollees than with plain old corporate greed and indifference. This is exactly the issue the insurance mandate seeks to correct.

tiemy said @ 2:53am GMT on 18th Mar
Or, more realistically, costs and premiums will continue to rise, more people will lose their insurance and fifty million without access to medical care (no great source of outrage for Obama and the Democrats) will become sixty million, seventy million, and so on.

The two party system's hand isn't forced by public pressure in any meaningful way. What's going on today is more than enough proof of that.

sanepride said @ 4:02am GMT on 18th Mar
...and that'll be your chance for revolution comrade!

arctan said @ 6:43am GMT on 17th Mar
Yes, what we call "health insurance" is *completely* the cost of putting out the fire.

What we call "fire insurance", which covers the cost of replacing the value the fire destroyed, is, when you apply it to health problems, more like disability benefits or mandated cost-of-living stipends for sick leave or whatnot -- stuff that, while it would make perfect sense for the government to cover here (as it does in many European countries), is nonetheless only going to be universally covered when pigs fly. (Hell, the pigs have to grow white feathery wings first for even people who don't have really, really good jobs to have any guarantee of that kind of safety net if they fall seriously ill.)

aliron said @ 8:07pm GMT on 17th Mar
Is he affiliated with an insurance company? I don't understand what these people have to gain other than lower tax rates, which, unless they have high incomes, doesn't affect them anyway.

Dioxin said @ 2:55am GMT on 17th Mar
Ɔ:

Bek said @ 2:57am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
I remember reading about this almost a year ago on Robert Reich's blog. Funny how people didn't believe me because the 'proper media' wasn't talking about it.

Krutz said @ 3:14am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
+1 Robert Reich. He's one of the best reasons to listen to PRI's "Marketplace."

sanepride said @ 3:19am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Funny]
+1 for the +1 for Robert Reich.
It's just too bad that he didn't end up in the Obama administration.

jplkeekif said @ 10:02pm GMT on 17th Mar [Score:2 Funny]

JOECAM said @ 3:09am GMT on 17th Mar

sanepride said @ 3:26am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
Not really news. The questions are - did a public option really ever stand a chance of passing in the current political environment? And if it did indeed die as a result of 'backroom deal-making' by Obama and co. (which is still a questionable premise btw)- was it because of some kind of give-away to the insurance companies, or a pragmatic strategy designed to simply increase the chances of the bill getting to his desk? I guess the answer to the second question really depends on how cynical one happens to be towards Obama. It's worth noting, though, that in spite of the accusations of back-room dealing and give-aways to the insurance industry - they remain steadfastly and aggressively opposed to even the modest, watered-down bill that remains.

Adam said @ 2:30am GMT on 18th Mar
They wouldn't even fight. Maybe it would have been stripped out of the bill eventually, but you don't give up on it before the fight is even joined.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:29am GMT on 17th Mar
It would be stupid not to know the next best offer. Anyway, enough individual Democrats are willing to sell out the nation for their state. Fair enough, but it's a shame there won't be a real "liberalizing" of America. There was a lot of potentual there to have the government support American business by supporting its citizenry. (Yes, I know Jawtrax, the free market can do this, but ignores indirect benefits within society- spread of desease, robbery, increased taxes through better documentation, hpefully better medical record keeping etc. At least there is a lot of potentual... which can be used for/sold to the private sector for business effeciencies.)

God Bless short term thinking and profits.

f00m@nB@r said @ 3:48am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:4 Insightful]

verycleanteeth said @ 5:08am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:2 Insightful]
I don't understand the obsession with the public option. I'd like one, yes, but compared to the rest of the bill the meager public option that Lieberman killed accounted for peanuts. The lack of one is certainly no reason to shove the entire bill aside.

The good news is that there is a little provision in the health care bill that allows states to set up their own systems as long as they achieve the goals of near-universal coverage that the national bill does. This means it's completely possible we could see a few states building their own public options that might expand outwards in the future.

mrklipp said @ 11:15am GMT on 17th Mar
Not likely without an ERISA waiver, which is still quite up in the air. If they at least manage that, it could do more than the watered down public option ever would have for real progress.

ring riot said @ 5:49am GMT on 17th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
Er.

Not really. This is all very old news and it's being completely misinterpreted by this "entertainment attorney" writing on HuffPost. The NY Times article from August '09 said (says) that hospital lobbyists said that it was "understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.

That's not a deal to not have government-run plan. That's a presumption that a government-run plan would not pay Medicare rates or be controlled by the secretary of health and human services.

If you'll recall, the public option that was in the bill that passed the House didn't pay Medicare rates - but the public option was included in the bill. It was people like Lieberman and Nelson who mostly killed a p.o. for the Senate bill because at that time 60 votes were required in the Senate for everything in order to kill the GOP filibuster. They then tried reducing the Medicare age to 55 - same problem - only this time, it was all Lieberman, who was for it until he heard Anthony Wiener saying he liked it too much. Then he said he wouldn't be the 60th vote because the Medicare buy-in was included.

This "entertainment attorney" quotes Kirkpatrick as saying that there was a "presumption" about a public option with the hospitals - not a deal. He's talking about the same thing they were - they didn't want a specific p.o. that paid Medicare rates.

The bottom line is that every piece of health care legislation passed in this country gets compromised in one way or another in order to achieve a larger goal - and to get it to the point where it can be improved later. It takes a Herculean effort to pass major social legislation in a primarily capitalist country - especially when it comes to health care. Presidents since Truman have been trying to do what this will achieve. Not to mention, the public option that would have been included in the bill was no "single payer" - it would have barely covered anyone and hardly anyone would have been eligible for it. Once this passes (either this week or the next) there will be additions to it in the years to come - maybe sooner than anyone thinks. The fact that this is actually getting done - in this political environment - is astonishing. While it doesn't have
everything I would have wanted, a bill with everything I wanted could have never passed the House or the Senate. But it does have specific, fundamental elements that will directly improve my fiancee's (who has a pre-existing condition that currently makes her all-but uninsurable) and my situation, as well as millions more people. One of the elements that kicks in immediately, this year, is children will no longer be denied for having a pre-existing condition - this will directly change friends of ours who have a son who no company will touch right now. Anyway - this was not a "deal to kill the public option" - it was about a specific kind of public option - one that we now know wouldn't even have had the votes last year anyway. From everything I'm hearing, the idea is to get this through - and, as with all health care legislation - bring
improvements to it over time.

ring riot said @ 6:35am GMT on 17th Mar
In short, what the article is actually saying is that Kirkpatrick says that he thinks what Kahn says is likely right, because (Mogulescu says) that Kirkpatrick says that Messina says that a "deal" existed that wasn't even about "killing a public option", but about a "presumption" that if a public option was in the bill, it would not pay Medicare rates.

symmetrian said @ 6:25pm GMT on 17th Mar
So it's like a game of he said he said he said she said he said she said we said?

f00m@nB@r said @ 8:59pm GMT on 17th Mar
that's what they said!

mrcucumber said @ 3:43pm GMT on 17th Mar
I think what many fail to realize is that like the primaries and the election, Obama and the democrats use language that sways public opinion. They've learned from the "other side" so that regardless of what deals were made, or whether it would have been a "good public option" and worth it or if the bill was watered down to accommodate both sides because that's the way the best things work blah blah blah, it's essentially lying to the public. At least the public that understands little of the bill or the process - which is a great deal of the populace. It creates conflict, propagating this us vs them mentality driving everybody apart. i.e teabaggers, "deal panel" talk, etc etc.

At the very least it fails at building trust, or all that crap about changing politics or the status quo(the same with nafta, israel, ethanol and corn growers, etc). Bait and switch. Talk a lot about great health care reform to garner support and then yank it out or split hairs to accommodate the process and the other side. It's politics as usual. Sometimes compromise isn't the best thing. Simply by stating pragmatism and apologizing for all the shortcomings of the bill or who said what when and for whatever reason and passing a joke bill is taking baby steps when giant leaps are necessary. Sure, you can look at the bright side of this effort, eliminating pre-existing conditions (and insurance companies will find other ways to charge more - see mrklipp's comment), but ignoring the bad isn't going to get us anywhere, Pollyanna. Yeah, maybe I'm cynical towards Obama...but you can't deny the disconnect between the message and reality. Maybe I'm just disappointed in democracy and capitalism as it's been formed and don't see it getting any better.

sanepride said @ 10:30pm GMT on 17th Mar
Just in:
Kucinich is now supporting the health care bill.

bbqkink said @ 3:55am GMT on 18th Mar
Yea as bad as this turkey is we are all going to have to hold our noses and just swallow.
If you look at this as the only choice between this and nothing...
Ok it is better than nothing.
I like Kucinich want to say, "Is this the best you can do?" A Supper majority in the Senate, a very large majority in the House, The Whitehouse and this is the best the best you can do??
President Clinton said "as long as we keep falling in the right direction"
I wonder does it count if they fall on their ass and crawl in the right direction?
Yea it is better than the statues quo..but not much.

sanepride said @ 5:21am GMT on 18th Mar
Yes it counts. It's still the right direction, and it's still a lot better than nothing.

sacrelicious said @ 3:53am GMT on 18th Mar
so he made a deal to kill a good idea -but one that was so contentious that it would ruin any chances that a bill containing it would pass- in exchange for something else? well that's just shrewd. if it's a choice between losing something and getting nothing, or losing something and getting something, I think one of those choices is clearly better than the other.

bbqkink said @ 4:06am GMT on 18th Mar
Would health care changes be felt immediately?

Although some of the provisions in the reform bill won't be implemented immediately, here's what Democrats say would go into effect in the first year after passage:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/16/health.care.immediate/index.html

bbqkink said @ 4:35am GMT on 18th Mar
72 hours after CBO score due in Tommie it all starts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

bbqkink said @ 4:36am GMT on 18th Mar
Tommie... wtf ...tomorrow CBO due in tomorrow.

sanepride said @ 5:31am GMT on 18th Mar
It's cute that you have your own little nickname for 'tomorrow'.

Krutz said @ 7:46am GMT on 18th Mar
He does make the most interesting typos. I often thought it was due to typing too quickly, but I'm beginning to wonder...

bbqkink said @ 10:49pm GMT on 18th Mar
Spell check and click the wrong ingestion digestion...suggestion ahh you see.