What’s really at stake in the health-care fight
Nicholas Lemann, writing at The New Yorker, has a nice piece on the larger stakes involved in the health care fight. Even conservatives may find themselves agreeing with a lot of the analysis if not the sentiment. But I was struck by this paragraph near the end, in which Lemann summarized the potential impact in realistic terms:
“If a health-care bill passes this fall, it will be full of compromises: departures from liberal ideals, and fudges about how much it will cost. But anybody who stops fighting for it now is going to spend years repenting. As long as Congress passes, and Obama signs, a law that embodies the principle of universal, government-guaranteed coverage, the country will have achieved an enormous, and previously elusive, advance.”
That’s really what this is all about, for all sides in the debate. The details of the bill matter less than the national commitment it would represent.
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169 comments Add your comment
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:15 pm
Am I first?
Truth
August 31st, 2009
5:17 pm
“The details of the bill matter less than the national commitment it would represent.”
That is so wrong, Jay. I can’t believe than even someone with your thought process would agree with that. That statement makes me worry even more about our country.
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:18 pm
I Report/ Vast White Wing Conspirator (-: You Whine )-:
August 31st, 2009
5:20 pm
Commitment to what? Socialism?
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:20 pm
SCOOTER–and the first shall be last!
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:22 pm
Jay, I think Truth is right. We need to get it right the first time (if there is such a thing)
booger
August 31st, 2009
5:23 pm
What’s it gonna cost and who will pay. Until someone can answer that, it’s gonna be an uphill battle.
I Report/ Vast White Wing Conspirator (-: You Whine )-:
August 31st, 2009
5:23 pm
A commitment to failure for everyone, like the Post Office or AmTrak?
Davo
August 31st, 2009
5:23 pm
“….the country will have achieved an enormous, and previously elusive, advance.”
In becoming a vassal of China? No thanks.
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:26 pm
josef, I don’t have to worry about being the last.I am drinking beer tonight!
RW-(the original)
August 31st, 2009
5:27 pm
How credible is somebody that writes the following?
from Rachel Maddow, on the left, to Peggy Noonan, on the right
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:28 pm
“That’s really what this is all about, for all sides in the debate. The details of the bill matter less than the national commitment it would represent. ”
The devil is in the details, so let’s just go ahead and open the door and welcome him in. Why not let’s commit to free, universal care instead of some half a**ed bull sh*t?
I Report/ Vast White Wing Conspirator (-: You Whine )-:
August 31st, 2009
5:31 pm
Look at this koward blaming Bush, of course-
White House Spokesman Uses Phrase “War On Terror”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/08/31/white_house_spokesman_uses_phrase_war_on_terror.html
Funny, I don’t remember Bush turning Afghanistan into a quagmire, like your boy obozo has.
N.J.
August 31st, 2009
5:31 pm
Private, employer paid for, defined benefit health care, has no more than ten years of life. If it is left in the hands of the private sector, it will turn into what pensions have turned into. After a lifetime working for the company, the average worker will see 20 or 30 thousand dollars in their retirement accounts because of the way the math of contributing to them is figured so that the employers matching contributions are limited. This is about what the average America earning the median lifetime average salary gets since the legislative destruction of “defined pension” plans. Businesses were able to get away with not putting away enough money to support these pensions in order to make more profits to fund shareholder dividends and executive compensation. Most of the companies that eliminated defined pensions became hugely profitable, far in excess of anything they were paying out in pensions.
Without health care reform, expect the same in the near future. Employer after employer will actually start dropping health insurance and start putting “matching funds” into a medical savings account, from which the employee is supposed to go out onto the private market to buy health insurance. Of course this fund will not come close to covering the actual cost of buying insurance as an individual on the private market.
This is obvious, The first thing that businesses have scaled back on is providing health insurance for retirees who used to work for them. Employees who worked for companies for decades, part of the deal being that they would keep their employer based health insurance after they retired, have seen those benefits scaled back or completely eliminated. Next will come the average employee. The benefits have been scaled back, and eventually they will vanish.
It happened quite fast. In 1988 66 percent of all companies with more than 200 employees provided retirement health benefits for their employees. By 2006 this was down to 35 percent of all companies with more than 200 employees. This isn’t the government. It is the private sector. And even though the employees had contracts with their employers which gave them these retirement benefits, the courts have always fallen down on the side of the companies, rather than the employees.
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
5:31 pm
“What’s it gonna cost and who will pay. Until someone can answer that, it’s gonna be an uphill battle”
Do something, or do nothing…it’s gonna cost either way. And we’ll all pay, either way.
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:32 pm
booger
August 31st, 2009
5:23 pm
What’s it gonna cost and who will pay. Until someone can answer that, it’s gonna be an uphill battle
That is the multi-trillion dollar question ain’t it?
Kamchak
August 31st, 2009
5:34 pm
The devil will be in the details of a compromise bill.
AmVet
August 31st, 2009
5:35 pm
“…some half a**ed bull sh*t?”
Right you are.
Hell they could passed this watered down tripe back in 1994 but the conned went ballistic so as to keep their masters in the health insurance industry and BIG pharma happy.
15 years on and they still want to do zip, zero, zilch, nada, nothing, nilch.
But the American people are FINALLY so repulsed with these screw ups and frauds in the GOP that they’ve essentially kicked the lot(t) of them to the political curb.
And now they can’t get away with being such obvious a**holes.
Single-payer now.
md
August 31st, 2009
5:36 pm
Jo,
“Why not let’s commit to free, universal care instead of some half a**ed bull sh*t?”
Now you know darn well nothing is ever “free”.
I find it amazing that a bankrupt country is even discussing adding more to an already maxed out credit card. I guess this last crisis wasn’t really an eye opener after all.
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
5:36 pm
“That is the multi-trillion dollar question ain’t it?”
No, it isn’t. The trillion dollar question is: What’s it gonna cost and who will pay if we do NOTHING.
I Report/ Vast White Wing Conspirator (-: You Whine )-:
August 31st, 2009
5:37 pm
Howard Dean: Democrats Left Tort Reform Out of Health Care Bill Because They Feared ‘Taking On’ Trial Lawyers
What a noble cause.
Such “commitment.”
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:42 pm
K’Chak…
“The devil will be in the details of a compromise bill.”
Won’t he just!
Who’ll pay?
Our children and their children, of course, but if we’re going to bail out the incompetent to the tune of numbers with limitless zeros, what’s a few more? The sins of the fathers of THIS generation have already been visited unto the third and fourth generation, what’s a few more?
Scooter…see your twelve zeros and raise you three…
Normal
August 31st, 2009
5:42 pm
Definitions of compromise
1. [n] – an accommodation in which both sides make concessions
2. [n] – a middle way between two extremes
3. [v] – expose or make liable to danger, suspicion, or disrepute
4. [v] – make a compromise
5. [v] – settle by concession
The above is the only way we will see a health bill. Compromise now and adjust as needed.
Paul
August 31st, 2009
5:44 pm
[[The details of the bill matter less than the national commitment it would represent.]]
And if Progressives and Blue Dogs could just figure that out they could pass it.
But they haven’t.
oh, did I mention it’s the Republicans who won’t let it happen? //sarc//
md
August 31st, 2009
5:45 pm
Democrat Definitions of compromise:
Enlisting 2 republican senators from liberal new england states.
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:45 pm
Doggone, the middle class is going to pay for it no matter what happens.Some things just never change!
Davo
August 31st, 2009
5:45 pm
AmVet
“…but the conned went ballistic so as to keep their masters in the health insurance industry and BIG pharma happy.”
Obama is no different. He’s already sold out to big pharma. Don’t believe me…I heard it from Bill Moyers of all people.
md
“I find it amazing that a bankrupt country is even discussing adding more to an already maxed out credit card. I guess this last crisis wasn’t really an eye opener after all.”
I think it’s just plain evil. The liberals are selling out our children and the future of our country to garner more power.
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:46 pm
md –
“nothing is ever free…”
Agreed, but where is our sense of morality in all this? We maxed the card in the corporate wh-rehouse…it’s all a matter of priorities and we see where Fierce Advocate and Company’s priorities are…
Paul
August 31st, 2009
5:47 pm
[[“The devil will be in the details of a compromise bill.”]]
Lessee, they got out, what, a 1,000 page bill (did that include the 300 page amendment?) in blazingly fast speed. Yet the people who supposedly wrote it never read it.
Did we ever figure out just who it was who wrote the Democrat’s proposals?!?? Heck, all the Dems have to do is go back to the source and tell’em to write a compromise. Based on their initial writing, it oughta take’em all o three hours -
booger
August 31st, 2009
5:49 pm
Doggone,
I know what I pay now. You may be comfortable with a blank check, but as one who may end up footing the bill, I am not.
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
5:50 pm
“Enlisting 2 republican senators from liberal new england states”
Whatever it takes…as long as it’s not illegal, immoral or fattening
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:51 pm
Normal…
“Compromise now and adjust as needed.”
I disagree. Usually I’m with you on compromise, but not here. Free universal care. Period. Kaput. Done with. Any compromise there should be on how to pay for it, but that basic principal is not negotiabl. No way. No how.
PAUL
“oh, did I mention it’s the Republicans who won’t let it happen? //sarc//”
Them and the ragpickers.
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
5:51 pm
“You may be comfortable with a blank check, but as one who may end up footing the bill, I am not.”
Well be prepared to be less comfortable then, because it’s a blank check either way.
md
August 31st, 2009
5:53 pm
“Lessee, they got out, what, a 1,000 page bill (did that include the 300 page amendment?) in blazingly fast speed. Yet the people who supposedly wrote it never read it.”
Thats because it was written 40 years ago and put in the demo vault to be wipped out when the time was “right”. Already 10 trillion in the hole – lets buy a new car! (or program).
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
5:53 pm
“Doggone, the middle class is going to pay for it no matter what happens.”
That’s right…and as long as I’m going to have to pay regardless, I’d feel better about paying to help ALL Americans.
AmVet
August 31st, 2009
5:53 pm
Davo, Ralph Nader asked “Is Obama going to be an Uncle Sam for the people or an Uncle Tom for the corporations?”
And not just the easily offended left but ironically the ever concerned about the little people right-wingers, were also aghast.
I felt it was a valid question.
Then and now…
N.J.
August 31st, 2009
5:53 pm
The total cost of health care could be reduced by 1.2 trillion dollars and increase health access rather than reduce it by simply removing every element that has no part in actually providing health care from the system. That is the insurance industry. They do not in any way, shape or form contribute to the health care of a single individual by actually doing anything related to the practice of medicine.
The reason that France, and Germany can do so without rationing health care and even increasing health access at a lower cost is simply by getting rid of the insurance companies or limiting the role they play in health care. No one in Germany or France needs to get pre-authorization for anything. No waiting for anything. Not for a doctors appointment, not for a hospital visit. No medical treatments that doctors prescribe for the patients can be denied. Not by the government. Not by the insurance companies.
The 30 percent that administration costs is rather an underestimate. By the time you get executive benefits, shareholder profits, direct managerial administrative costs, indirect administrative costs, etc, you are looking at about fifty percent of that 2.5 trillion. The minute that health insurance companies were legally allowed to become for profit organizations, the genie was let out of the bottle. Before this, health care costs did not increase anywhere near what they did afterwards.
The fact remains that in all countries that have some form of universal health care aside from the few that Republicans choose to focus on, there is better health care, more health care, more access to health care, and no gatekeeper. No one can deny a claim in these countries and a long wait would be considered to get a doctors appointment would be two days.
In the United States only 30 percent of all people calling to get a PRIMARY CARE appointment the next day will get it. In France and Germany more than fifty percent can get a next day appointment. The figures for two days is a staggeringly high 95 percent.
In the U.S. you don’t even come close. Average wait in a large city for a primary care appointment is over two months. One month on average for the entire country.
That is the only person who decides what is going to be paid for by the insurance company is your doctor. The industry at the very least is regulated so that they do not have the slightest control over what will be paid for.
RW-(the original)
August 31st, 2009
5:54 pm
Did we ever figure out just who it was who wrote the Democrat’s proposals?!??
Harry Truman and it gets pulled out the drawer to gain new fingerprints every few years.
I Report/ Vast White Wing Conspirator (-: You Whine )-:
August 31st, 2009
5:55 pm
The latest figures show 242 patients died of malnutrition in NHS hospitals in 2007 – the highest toll in a decade. More than 8,000 left hospital under-nourished – double the figure when Labour came to power.
The NHS throws away 11million meals every year, and many nurses say they are too busy to help the frail eat.
All this so a bunch of illegal aliens can get health insurance.
What a bright idea from the “committed.”
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
5:55 pm
Paul, Pelosi wrote it!
Nothing is Free
August 31st, 2009
5:57 pm
Josef nix
**Why not let’s commit to free, universal care instead of some half a**ed bull sh*t?**
Please tell me that you don’t really think that anything will be free.
If you are currently on public assistance (Food Stamps, etc) you will have health care given to you, much like it is now. You will go to clinics that have doctors who can’t get clients to pay full price so instead of going to emergency rooms, (Grady is one of the best in the US), you will go to clinics with substandard doctors.
If you do not currently qualify for public assistance, you will be required by law to purchase this same substandard insurance unless you work for a small business that hasn’t to date been able to afford to give you health care. If that is the case, your employer will then be fined, 8% (or 6%, depending on the plan)of your salary. That money WILL NOT COVER YOU. You will still be required to buy your own health insurance, whether you buy it from the government or from a real health provider.
None of these plans will provide free insurance for anyone who is not presently on public assistance. The difference is that if you couldn’t afford to insure yourself before, now you will be required to pay that insurance before you pay your bills and feed your children.
josef nix
August 31st, 2009
5:57 pm
Davo
“I think it’s just plain evil. The liberals are selling out our children and the future of our country to garner more power.”
I agree 150% and there’s not ten cents worth of difference between us (I’m a liberal) and the conservatives…
Doggone–”…illegal, immoral or fattening…”
It can be illegal or fattening as far as I’m concerned…if that’s what it takes to overcome the immorality we’re rolling in at the moment…
AmVet
August 31st, 2009
5:59 pm
Do you people even have checking or other accounts?
You wanna buy a new TV? Fine, it likely means there is something else you won’t be able to get.
You wanna spend more on the war machine than all of the rest of the planet combined? Great, there go bridges, highways, whatever.
You wanna give away billions more every year to multi-nationals that then turn around and swindle billions of dollars of other people’s money? Okie Dokie. There goes single-payer.
It’s all about choices.
All this blathering about we can’t afford it is sheer nonsense.
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
6:00 pm
“It can be illegal or fattening as far as I’m concerned…if that’s what it takes to overcome the immorality we’re rolling in at the moment”
There is that…
md
August 31st, 2009
6:00 pm
“I think it’s just plain evil. The liberals are selling out our children and the future of our country to garner more power.”
Unfortunately, they are acting like the other group of politicians they were hired to replace. But I guess we were asking a bit too much since they are POLITICIANS.
Anyone seen any of those bottomless checkbooks on ebay lately, or did DC get the last ones.
Normal
August 31st, 2009
6:01 pm
Josef, I’ll meet you on the green, suh…
Politics is played that way, so the HCB has to be played that way too.
But seriously, I agree with you in principle, but it will not get done otherwise. I wish that I had the majic dust to make everybody see that a good healthcare bill is good and right for the people of theUnited States, but I don’t. We need to get a bill into law, then start the process of making it good. If too much is tried at once, it will fail…out flank them.
Nothing is Free
August 31st, 2009
6:01 pm
DoggoneGA
**That’s right…and as long as I’m going to have to pay regardless, I’d feel better about paying to help ALL Americans.**
So how will the working poor being forced to buy something that they cannot afford help them?
DoggoneGA
August 31st, 2009
6:02 pm
“All this blathering about we can’t afford it is sheer nonsense”
Of course it is…but the “it’s all about ME” crowd can only go by their limited imaginings of THEIR costs going up. And they can’t see that the costs are going to go up regardless, and they are going to pay more regardless. But I guess asking them to see beyond the end of their noses is asking too much of them.
Taxpayer
August 31st, 2009
6:02 pm
A commitment to anti-Republicanism, to true pro-life. Now that’s change that Obama brings to the table. Republicans can only whine or do nothing but say no or lie. So what. That’s just what they do.
Scooter
August 31st, 2009
6:03 pm
That’s right…and as long as I’m going to have to pay regardless, I’d feel better about paying to help ALL Americans.
Doggone, that is a noble attitude that I wish everyone had!