The Lessons of Obamacare

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fazer

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I found this article a couple of days ago in my News app on my iPhone.  Its from vox.com and was very helpful in my misunderstanding of Obamacare and whats happening in Washington for the last 8 years with this beast.
Its a little long and I read in sections but recommend you have a look if you live in America and are affected.   

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/15/14908524/obamacare-lessons-ahca-gop
 
I'm sorry, no Vox for me. Here's the Matt, Meghan and Ezra show for context.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7065
 
I find Vox to be drama news.  This one walks through a history of Clinton health care , ACA, and new Repub plan but it also explained the perception difference Americans have compared to Washington . 
The problem is affordable means coverage for the sick people not covered previously so the cost go up for everybody to help the larger pool.

It's not regulation of health charges for meds, tests and procedures.  In Australia an MRI is 225 , in American it 1200.  Washington gave-in on controlllng  cost to avoid conflict with  lobbist and  corporate medical providers.  Doctors are rewarded for each test they ask for rather than what is best for the patient in an affordable concern.  Business buys group plans as a benefit but the self employed individual is stuck with what's offered in there individual  market that's shrinking so insurance goes up and offers less providers because it's a private market.  The price of drugs , operations,and  test have multiple cost.  There are no standard fees as required in almost every other country.  We as. cnsumers might except are major medical cost for the pool if out of pocket cost were not designed to protecting the medical and insurance mafia.  Come on congress how about adding some fixed rates to the business of life and death or just a household accident that requires 3 stitches and $2200 to cover the emergency room/doctor charges.  Washington is concerned with a budget for entitlement without addressing our actual medical cost needs.

  How these thing happened, is the story in the above article and it's not so much of a political rant but why this is so hard to address if you don't have 60 votes in the senate.  It keeps thing a minor budget adjustment as opposed to an actual major improvement for people.  It collapses if not addressed  properly but also it's an ongoing thing to accomplish a true achievement. 

We can't have runaway entitlement but ranaway cost have to be held comparative to other countries at least.  If Trump likes Canada's system then recommend something besides this Ryan plan.  Start this battle and you might win some  by partisans support.  Otherwise he goes down in flames.  This is a hot potato that will be an abortion if it's pass with 51 votes .  It means major budget fixes are impossible  to accomplish .  That  will keep  congress  from having authority to fix the things that need to be faced if I understand thing correctly.  Hence ACA is what it is. Which is the  previous administrations fix without adequate support from both parties.  The replacement plan will have new packaging with less product.  I really don't get Paul Ryan.  Next plan please. 
 
Hey, thank you for the synopsis. I really don't trust those people to tell the truth, I just read it though. I thought this made sense, but I don't trust any of them to actually do it. I mean, if it was the goal, why didn't Obama do it with the 51 votes they used to pass the original POS?

"But those who come after Obama would be wise to heed the lessons of his health reform effort. For Democrats, those lessons are relatively straightforward. It is easy to imagine the next Democratic president passing a health care bill that does four things: expand Medicaid coverage up to 200 percent of poverty, boost subsidies in the exchanges, add a public option that can use Medicare or Medicaid’s pricing power, and let people above age 50 buy into Medicare.

A bill like that could pass the Senate with 51 votes, it would build on what has worked both in America and elsewhere, and it would be straightforward for the government to administer and voters to understand. "

 
Having watched it I truly think Obama was trying to do something that would be a compromise, hopefully bi-partisan, and could be put into place.  THAT is why the ACA stayed with the current market and didn't go further, like full single payer.
I think he underestimated the opposition he would face from Republicans - whatever he tried to do. Not just opposition, but 100% dirty politics to try to make everything fail instead of letting the country see that something successful happened under Obama.

The problem is affordable means coverage for the sick people not covered previously so the cost go up for everybody to help the larger pool.
The increase in healthy people coming into the market was the only hope of the bill being affordable, but not enough came in to balance out the sick people. It was really "Accessible" health care more than affordable. I think it could have been affordable by adding a public option (expand medicare) instead of the exchanges, but the current insurers and health care providers would have gone ballistic.  Docs making $400k/yr don't want to charge less right?
But hopefully what everyone is finally realizing is Republicans are just for tax cuts and personal liberty for the rich. Throw away the poor and further drive down the middle class.
 
Oh, I watched it too.  You can imagine 'what he was doing' all you want, what matters is what he did, and what the result was. It's funny how Obama was just the weakest person in Washington during his residency. Completely helpless to do anything decent at all, according to his supporters.  Sad!

While it is true conservatives attacked every aspect of the law, including the public option, they mostly failed in their attempts to turn the American people against the public option. Well into late 2009 the public option still enjoyed majority support among the American people according to several polls. When Democrats finally removed the public option from the Senate bill it was still one of the more popular elements in the proposed reform package.

Democrats removed the public option from the bill because Democrats really didn’t want to have a public option. President Obama made a deal with insurance industry groups to kill the public option and that is one of the few health care promises he kept. Democrats had ample opportunity and plenty of public support for adding a public option via the reconciliation bill. It would have only taken 50 votes in the Senate but Democrats choose not to.

Conservatives tried their best to kill the public option but they really deserve almost no credit for its demise. The public option was murdered by President Obama, in the backroom, with secret industry deals and the help of his close personal friend Sen. Joe Lieberman.

https://shadowproof.com/2013/11/12/public-option-revisionist-history/

After a full year of debate and dozens of excuses, the Democratic leadership now stands naked in their opposition to the public option. President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all claimed they that wanted one. They are the three most powerful people in Washington and have huge margins in both chambers. It is ridiculous to believe that the public option could not have become law if the leadership really wanted it. Yet, for months, people were lied to so the Democratic leadership could maintain the insane myth that the public option’s death was not their fault, but the fault of some insurmountable obstacle. What this mythic “insurmountable obstacle” actually was has shifted so many times it is hard to keep track.

Broad bipartisanship

First there was the excuse that health care reform must be bipartisan, and that you simply can’t do something so big without broad bipartisan support. We were told the public option must go to get a number Republican votes. That proves clearly wrong.

Olympia Snowe

When hope of broad bipartisanship faded, we were told that the public option must go because Olympia Snowe did not want it–and Snowe was the linchpin to everything. Now that reform has passed without Snowe, this, too is revealed to be a myth.

The “government takeover of health care” attack

We were told the public option would result in Republicans attacking the bill as a “government takeover of health care,” yet when the public option was dropped, the socialist nightmare, scaremongering attacks did not dissipate. If anything, they increased.

Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and 60 votes

After Snowe refused to play along, we were told that the public option had over 50 votes in the Senate, but it was that damn 60-votes-for-cloture hurdle it could not overcome, so we need to sacrifice it for Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. Of course, not only was no effort made to strongarm these two into standing with their caucus on what was just a procedural vote, but Obama did not even call Lieberman to politely ask him to please support the public option or early Medicare buy-in.

You can’t use Reconciliation

When some people said we should then use reconciliation for the whole bill, the idea was laughed at. We were told the Byrd rule would gut the most important parts of the bill, like the very important new insurance regulations. Of course, now we are using reconciliation and the new insurance regulations in the reconciliation bill were not removed by the Byrd rule.

We no longer have 50 votes in the Senate

Once they decided to use the reconciliation sidecar, we were told, as if by magic, there were no longer 50 votes in the Senate for the public option. The Senate leadership blamed the House, saying it was now the House that no longer had the votes for a public option (even though they passed it before).


We no longer have the votes in the House.

It is hard to know for a fact because right after the Senate blamed the House, the House leadership turned around and blamed the Senate. Steny Hoyer said they did have the votes and claimed it was the Senate’s fault. He claimed Obama did not ask to put a public option in the reconciliation bill because the Senate did not have the votes.

Reconciliation must pass unchanged so it does not go back to the House

When the reconciliation bill was brought to the Senate floor, where any Democrat could have offered a public option amendment to force an up-or-down vote on the public option, a new excuse was found to stop that. We were told the Senate must pass the reconciliation bill unchanged, so it could go straight to the President’s desk without another vote in the House. We were told leadership would whip against any amendments to make health care reform slightly better. This myth, too, withered in the face of reality.

Changing reconciliation will “KILL THE BILL!”

Because of a successful Republican Byrd rule point of order, the reconciliation bill would be force to go back to the House for another vote anyway. At this point, the excuse for not offering a public option amendment got weird. Senators like Michael Bennet (D-CO) took to saying saying it would “kill the bill,” and tried to falsely equate “the bill”–the reconciliation fix, which is mainly a package of minor tax changes that do not take effect for years–with the comprehensive health insurance reform measure already signed into law.

Occam’s razor

I’m sure there were some other excuses that I have forgotten to mention. The important thing is that, in the end, they did use reconciliation. They also could have added the public option to a reconciliation bill that could have passed with a simple majority, and had it not endanger the bulk of the health care reform provision. In the end, all their excuses fade away or became weird nonsense about some possible later promise and not wanting to risk anything.

It is foolish to believe that a President, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House with historically large majorities couldn’t get a public option–which roughly 65% of the country supported–if they really wanted one. Clearly, if they all really wanted to include a public option, they could have done it using reconciliation. To accept their many different excuses of powerlessness requires one to completely suspend reality.

Occam’s razor teaches us the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Here, the simplest explanation is that, months ago, Obama promised to kill the public option as part of a secret deal with the for-profit hospital lobby, and that for months he lied to the American people about supporting the public option while working behind the scenes to stop it.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/03/25/the-death-of-the-public-option-after-parade-of-lies-democratic-leadership-now-stands-naked/

 
It's funny how Obama was just the weakest person in Washington during his residency.
The executive doesn't legislate so is limited in what he can do. Ultimately Congress has to put the bill together. I put blame on Reid and Pelosi, etc for doing a pretty poor job, but mostly Republicans for 100% opposing it and not participating in a compromise at all.
Anybody can write editorials about whose to blame - it's just a bunch of theorizing.  Ultimately it's the voters because they've put in a dysfunctional Congress that's beholden to special interests.
Politics is messy and never gonna be perfect. Especially when voters are uninformed and don't hold their representatives responsible.
The Dems didn't go far enough so the country votes in Trump & the Republicans who are going to go in the opposite direction as far as they can? That makes sense.  Keep paying attention and we're gonna see how bad it gets (unless you're a billionaire). Trump's proposed budget and the Republican health care bill are just the start.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“This bill has as one of its centerpieces a tax cut for investors that would primarily benefit people making over $250,000 a year,” Carson said. “They’ve already done pretty well in the past 10 years, as you know,” he said to Trump, adding a “Bloomberg analysis showed that counties that voted for you — middle-class and working-class counties — would do far less well under this bill.”

“Oh, I know,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “I know. It’s very preliminary.”
 
Yes, I noticed you didn't argue when I said Obama had done nothing decent during his term, making excuses for him is much easier, isn't it? Lily Ledbetter and pardoning Chelsea Manning, the sum total of his cupcake legacy. Editorials you say? Are you sure you were 'watching it' back then? I was, many people were.

Tom Daschle’s admission that the public option was tossed in a deal with the hospital industry may come as news to a lot of people, if it gets wide attention. It’s significant that Daschle tried to clarify his statement to Igor Volsky at The Wonk Room, even though his book contains the same information:

    In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two “working assumptions.” “One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans,” Daschle writes. “The other was that it would contain no public health plan,” which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

In addition, this acknowledgement lines up perfectly with the admittedly scant public record we have on the subject. Miles Mogulescu pursued this story at the Huffington Post for months, and Ed Schultz got an on-the-record confirmation from a reporter at the New York Times.

    On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

    “That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product.”

The timing of Kirkpatrick’s story about the health care negotiations covers exactly the same time frame as Daschle does – the summer of 2009, specifically July. This article is from August 13 of that year:

    Early last month, for example, hospital officials were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?

    Not to worry, Jim Messina, the deputy White House chief of staff, told the hospital lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina told them, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in exchange for its political support.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/10/05/the-deal-with-the-hospital-industry-to-kill-the-public-option/

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ashadowproof.com+%22public+option%22+meeting&btnG=Search&lr=&gbv=1

Like I said, what you imagined happened or how you try to excuse it doesn't matter, what actually happened ,and what the result was is what matters. Enjoy your new resident.
 
Yes, I noticed you didn't argue when I said Obama had done nothing decent during his term, making excuses for him is much easier, isn't it?
Like I've said before I'm not interested in arguing with you.  But I do appreciate that you are at least stating some things you believe / disbelieve instead of just long quotes & links that we all have to scroll by. 

How are your electronics projects going? Found anything of interest at this forum besides politics?  ;D

My opinion is those editorializing websites are just hyperbolic propaganda - with who knows what objective.
Once you start trying to follow the facts of what the are referencing you see the thread start to unravel. For instance,  Daschle wasn't in Congress since 2001, he wasn't a part of the administration during the health care negotiations, and I haven't read the book he wrote advocating for universal health care. But I haven't read it, and the links that site uses to back up their claims are dead.  Have you read his book???

What Daschle did very directly say was:  (which was on the same page but you  omitted from your post)
“In describing some of the challenges to passage of the public option in the health reform bill, I did not mean to suggest in any way that the President was not committed to it. The President fought for the public option just as he did for affordable health care for all Americans. The public option was dropped only when it was no longer viable in Congress, not as a result of any deal cut by the White House. While I was disappointed that the public option was not included in the final legislation, the Affordable Care Act remains a tremendous achievement for the President and the nation.”

Of course, to conspiracy wingnuts what someone actually says/believes isn't important - it's all about the spin.

Dems tried and didn't go as far as you like. Now watch what the Republicans do. It's not going to be good if you're low income and sick. If you have cap gains > $250k though you're gonna do great on your taxes next year.

 
Oh, now you're not interested in arguing?

Are you sure you were watching all this go down back then?

The New York Times is confirming what we feared was true: the White House deal with Big PhRMA to reduce the drug manufacturers’ prices by $80 billion over ten years included White House promises not to require the manufactures to face competition or negotiations with Medicare.

When the deal was announced in June, the WH refused to release details but hailed it as a sign that Big PhRMA would we willing partners in the health care reform effort. So we’ve been getting the "good" Harry and Louise ads paid for by Big PhRMA.

But the price of that cooperation will be to allow the drug companies to raise drug costs for Americans well above levels that could be justified by competition. From the Times article:

    Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed upon $80 billion.

    Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

    In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

So, now the House’s original Blue Dog, Billy Tauzin, now the head of the big pharma trade group, is shaking down the White House, exposing the deal, and demanding that Rahm Emanuel keep the Congress from forcing drug manufacturers to accept Medicare negotiations or Canadian competition. And this is after the drug kings have already pressured Congress into agreeing to lengthy patent and other protections against generic drugs.

The White House has been telling the American people that we need to have an insurance Public Option to compete against the private, for-profit insurers to encourage price reductions and to keep the insurers honest. But the same arguments apply with at least equal force to the major drug companies, whose record of deceptive advertising, misrepresentation, corruption and price collusion (more here) are every bit as offensive as the mega insurers’ practices.

And note the deal was negotiated by Senator Max Baucus, with WH participation and approval. So what should we expect from Baucus’ negotiations with Republicans on the rest of the reform package?

https://shadowproof.com/2009/08/06/white-house-deal-shields-big-pharma-from-competition-why/

My electronics projects are coming along apace, I just ordered some Russian terminal boards.

;D


 
The fact of the matter is that the hard-working middle class is ***ked no matter who is running the show, or what side of the aisle they reside on. If you're self-employed, it's even worse.  Obamacare was not affordable except for the people who mostly did not contribute to it ( or anything, for that matter ) and the current administration's final offering will be no better, probably worse. 
But please don't let this discussion end up as a he said/she said rant divided along party lines. Blue and Red are two sides of the same coin.
The Govt.  cannot continue to steal from Peter to pay for Paul, no matter what it is that's being purchased. Unfortunately, the only thing the Govt. is interested in buying is votes.
The only fair system would be a Flat Tax, where everyone, regardless of income, pays the exact same percentage.
And a Value-Added Tax ( VAT ) the proceeds of which are  designated strictly to Health Care.
Sadly, never happen here in the USA because there is too much class-warfare, greed and material envy. The Greatness of this Country left the building a long time ago and Trump, nor anyone else, won't be able to bring it back no matter what they promise.
 
Spiritworks said:
The Govt.  cannot continue to steal from Peter to pay for Paul, no matter what it is that's being purchased. Unfortunately, the only thing the Govt. is interested in buying is votes.
The only fair system would be a Flat Tax, where everyone, regardless of income, pays the exact same percentage.

There's no reason to let people keep the money they made by exploiting the labor of other people, they should have it taxed out of their hands to use for the common good. The government doesn't have to steal from Peter to pay Paul (not that there's anything wrong with that as Peter first stole it from Paul), it has a sovereign currency and no inflation. Cheer up!
 
Up until this point, most of the attention regarding the failure to disclose the connection between Jonathan Gruber and the White House has fallen on Gruber himself.  Far more troubling, however, is the lack of disclosure on the part of the White House, the Senate, the DNC and other Democratic leaders who distributed Gruber’s work and cited it as independent validation of their proposals, orchestrating the appearance of broad consensus when in fact it was all part of the same effort.

The White House is placing a giant collective bet on Gruber’s “assumptions” to justify key portions of the Senate bill, which they allowed people to believe was independent verification.  Now that we know that Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work performed as a contractor to the White House and paid for by taxpayers, it should be made publicly available so others can judge its merits.

Gruber began negotiating a sole-source contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in February of 2009, for which he was ultimately paid $392,600. The contract called for Gruber to use his statistical model for evaluating alternatives “derived from the President’s health reform proposal.” It was not a research grant, but rather a consulting contract to advise the White House Office of Health Reform, headed by Obama’s health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle, to “develop proposals” for health care reform.

How did the feedback loop work?  Well, take Gruber’s appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage for his testimony.  On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.  Ezra published an excerpt.

White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber’s Senate testimony and Ezra Klein’s article on the White House blog.  “We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day” he said, pointing to Gruber’s “objective analysis.”  The “transparent” part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber’s contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody in the three-hit triangle bothered to disclose.

But that was child’s play compared to the effort that went into selling Gruber’s analysis of the bill unveiled by the Senate on Wednesday, November 18.  Two days later on Friday November 20, Gruber published a paper entitled “Impacts of the Senate High Cost Insurance Excise Tax on Wages: Updated,” claiming that the excise tax would result in wage hikes of $234 billion from 2013 through 2019.

And it was off to the races.

The next day on the 21st, Ron Brownstein wrote in the Atlantic about  Gruber’s effusive praise for the cost-cutting measures in the bill:  “Everything is in here….I can’t think of anything I’d do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn’t have done better than they are doing,” says Gruber.

On Monday the 23rd, the DNC was sending the Brownstein column around in its entirety…one of 71 emails they would send touting Gruber’s work and it was included in OFA’s  Monday Morning News Clips on BarackObama.com.

On Tuesday the 24th, OFA had another post touting the Brownstein article and citing Gruber as a “self-proclaimed skeptic on this stuff.  The DNC sent that around, too.  Mike Allen wrote that Obama had made the Brownstein article “mandatory reading” in the West Wing. TPM had the scoop that Rahm Emanuel told senior staffers “not to come back to the next day’s meeting if they hadn’t read the article.”

David Brooks of the New York Times was not convinced that the Senate bill would be deficit neutral, so Peter Orszag pointed him to the Brownstein’s “insightful article on health care costs” on the White House OMB blog that same day.  It’s hard to believe Orszag didn’t know about Gruber’s contract — a search of the White House visitor logs indicates he met with Gruber on March 26, the day after his HHS contract was first awarded.

Paul Krugman cited Gruber’s glowing analysis in the Brownstein article  — “this is the best effort anyone has made” — as one of the reasons he supported the Senate bill, noting that “the health care economists I respect are seriously impressed by the cost-control measures.” Rahm Emanuel subsequently cited Krugman and Brownstein to Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal as evidence of a “progressive backlash against the progressive backlash” to dismiss liberal criticism of the bill.  Jeff Bingaman mentioned  the Krugman piece on the floor of the Senate, and entered it into the Congressional Record.

On November 25, Peter Orszag and Nancy-Ann DeParle had a conference call with reporters to tout a letter written by 23 economists — including Gruber — encouraging the President to enact the excise tax and other measures.  Once again, Orszag again invoked the Brownstein article, saying  he “has done the work to understand the issue”:

Orszag seconded that notion, saying, “I agree with Jon Gruber that basically everything that has been put forward in health policy discussions for a decade is in this bill.”

“And then some,” added DeParle.

On November 27, Gruber released another report saying the Senate bill would reduce non-group premiums after the CBO score was released (Gruber is one of the CBO’s academic advisors). Again, Ezra Klein printed excerpts in his Washington Post blog, saying it was “good news for advocates of reform.”

The next day on the 28th, Mike Allen ran it with the headline “MIT analysis backs Obama health plan,” leading readers to believe that Gruber’s work represented outside confirmation.  The DNC didn’t flinch at that description, sending around an email on the 29th with the subject line:  “MIT Analysis backs Obama Health Plan,” and another on the 30th saying “ICYMI” (“In Case You Missed It”), just to be sure you didn’t.  Tom Udall pointed to Gruber’s report, in addition to Ezra and Politico, on his website.

Then HHS included the Politico article in their newsletter, saying “a memo authored by MIT economist Johnathan Gruber” finds the bill will lower non-group premiums.  No mention that he was working for them.

On the 29th Nancy-Ann DeParle, head of the  very White House Office of Health Reform that Gruber was hired to consult for, posted perhaps the most misleading column of all on the White House blog:

    MIT Economist Confirms Senate Health Reform Bill Reduces Costs and Improves Coverage

She identified Gruber as an “MIT Economist who has been closely following the health insurance reform process” who had “issued a compelling new report.”  There was no acknowledgment that her very own White House office had commissioned Gruber’s work.

On November 30th, Krugman wrote about the CBO report, relying on Gruber’s analysis.  He, too, concluded it was “good news for reform advocates.”  That same day, Harry Reid took to the floor of the Senate that same day, saying “just a few days ago an MIT economist–one of the Nation’s foremost economists–a man by the name of Jonathan Gruber, analyzed our bill and concluded it will help Americans pay less and get more.”

Reid read from the piece on the floor of the Senate, saying that it provided substantiation from “who is one of the most respected economists in the world” that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit.  Nancy Pelosi touted “the Gruber analysis”on the Speaker’s website.

On December 3, Kathleen Sebelius released a statement on the “Benefits of Health Insurance Reform for Businesses.”  She substantiated claims made in the statement by citing Gruber’s November 3 testimony before the HELP Committee, and his November 5 paper.  No mention that he was a contractor to HHS.

And on December 12, John McCain referred to “an analysis by MIT economist John Gruber released by the White House this weekend.”

Subsequent to that, a report was issued on December 14 from the Executive Office of the President by the Council of Economic Advisers.  It again invoked Gruber’s November 20 paper as the sole source for the claim that  the excise tax would cause wages to increase:  “Research by Jonathan Gruber finds that even just a single provision – the excise tax – would increase after-tax wages by $234 billion from 2013 to 2019,” it says.

On December 28, Gruber published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post — in which he neglected to mention his contract to consult with the White House on this very issue.  He was asked point-blank if he had any contracts related to the piece for which he was being paid, and he said “no.”  The Post subsequently published a correction.

And just last week, John Kerry — author of the Cadillac Tax provision of the Senate bill — writing in The Hill cited Gruber’s work alone as the authority for the claim that the excise tax would result in increased wages.  Did Kerry, as author of that part of the Senate bill, work with Gruber to craft it too? He doesn’t say.

Gruber validates the argument put forward by the Senate bill’s proponent that it will make health care more affordable — a claim that Marcy Wheeler has made compelling arguments against.  Though Gruber’s analysis has been cited as support that insurance would be affordable, it appears that the individual mandate will impose a financial burden on middle class families that will leave them with no ability to make the co-pays necessary to use the insurance they are forced to buy.  But because Gruber’s work has the authority of an expert from MIT, it has been accepted as independent confirmation that the bill will make things better, not worse.

Gruber is also cited repeatedly to substantiate the claim that the excise tax will result in higher wages after employers reduce benefits, because they’ll pass those savings on to workers. That argument on its face flies in the face of all reason, and nobody has been able to point to a study showing that when health care costs go down, businesses mostly share those savings. Quite the contrary:  In November, a Mercer survey of 465 employer health plan sponsors found that only 16% would pass on any savings to employees.

But Gruber’s representations on that front are continually advanced as one of the primary reasons why Krugman and others support passage of the bill.  As Marcy Wheeler observed, when Jason Fuhrman made that case on the White House blog, Gruber was the sole source supporting that particular claim.  She noted with irony that the administration “can’t muster any support among 3 hand-picked reports for its claim that the excise tax will lead to wage increases.”

But her central point is critical:  most claims that the excise tax will “bend the cost curve” inevitably lead back to Gruber’s analysis..  And now that his ties to the White House have been exposed, he seems to be inserting caveats and backing away from that assertion.

What was Gruber’s role in crafting the Senate bill?  Nobody will say. Is he in effect grading his own work when he praises the bill?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that the White House engaged an expert who was quite likely to reach the conclusions he reached, because he’d been making similar claims for years.  And they worked hard to promote his work as independent validation of their plan, when in fact he was an integral part of it.

Gruber says he believes in transparency, and claims to have a spreadsheet for his simulation model.  On February 27, two days after the presolicitation of his HHS contract began, Gruber participated in an HHS hearing on modeling health insurance data.  According to the transcript, Gruber said:

As much as we can do in groups like this to be transparent about modeling the process, I call my model a black box, but in fact I have now put together a spreadsheet which lays out every single one of the assumptions that is in the model, in a document which describes it all. I think we all need to be as transparent as possible in what is going into the models, so that ultimately folks like ASPE and CBO and others who need to use these to make policy can understand why we are getting different answers and what is going on.

Recently Bill Black, Eliot Spitzer and Frank Partnoy called for the release of AIG emails and internal documents, asserting that the public now owns 80% of the company and should be able to examine them in order to be able to ascertain what happened in the past.  Likewise, now that it is known that Jonathan Gruber was a White House consultant, the assumptions that have been used by the White House to estimate the impact of the health care bill will for decades to come should be made publicly available.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/01/13/gruber/

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22jonathan+gruber%22+site:shadowproof.com&lr=&as_qdr=all&gbv=1&sei=tlDNWPnAD82sjwP4qL2gCA
 
So if I may:

The Affordable Care Act is crappy (flawed by compromise to get it through) but is better then what was happening before. And the New Affordable Care Act is worse (flawed by further compromise and political agenda) than the old one.

Now my comment! So our elected officials are so panicked because they have been borrowing for years instead of being transparent and informing the American People, their employers,  that we are not taxed enough in this country to pay the freight of being a so called developed nation and thus screwed up Social Security and Related public programs by borrowing against them, and it is our fault?! Way to move forward Washington! It takes money and everybody in the pool to be #1 and we are light on the pot! Oh and want to privatize Government Programs?! OK! Create special Corporate Governance laws that limit profit and force employment and special tax rates that reflect surplus gains and growth of these entities! Let the toil of those performing a necessary function for our country get rich but regulate it effectively. That would be some trickle down and up if you ask me!!! Don't like the sound of that well there is the door to Capitalist America, Corporate America!
 
You certainly may, Pip!

dmp you still here?

Lynn Woolsey says she’s a definite “yes” vote on the Senate health care bill. Even if it lacks a public option. Despite the fact that it’s the biggest blow to a woman’s right to choose in a generation, and may come at the price of a stand-alone vote that allows Blue Dogs and ConservaDems to join with Republicans and roll them back even further in order to get Bart Stupak’s support.

Any ability for progressives to negotiate, to achieve meaningful concessions, to exert their influence and make the bill better just disappeared.

It’s time for Lynn Woolsey to resign as the head of the Progressive Caucus.

Woolsey shares the job of Co-Chair with Raul Grijalva. Throughout the health care battle, Grijalva has shown steadfast leadership even when things got tough. Starting in the early summer of of 2009, he began working with Jerrold Nadler behind the scenes to whip members of Congress to vote against any bill that did not have a public option.

We joined that fight on June 23, but without Grijalva’s leadership and his consistent willingness to stand on principle — even when he was being pilloried as a “monster” for doing so — we’d all be signing checks to Wellpoint right now while PhRMA was popping champagne corks.

Woolsey was certainly part of the fight for a public option, co-authoring a letter on June 5 with Grijalva outlining the health care principles of the Progressive Caucus. And here’s a video from June where Woolsey says she will insist on the inclusion of a public option:

Woolsey:

“Oh I will vote against anything that does not include … and it’s got to be real. I mean, you can call it anything you want … I believe there are enough of us, among the 120 in the tri-caucus and the progressive caucus, that can stop any votes…. Any health care reform that does not include a strong, robust public option for all Americans will not be health care reform.”

Woolsey then commenced a petty battle for control of the progressive caucus (and the public option campaign). She held a press conference on June 24, claiming to represent 120 members of the quad caucus who would vote against any bill that did not have a public option:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California, co-chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, said the groups’ statement was unusual. Typically, leaders of the caucuses do not publicly challenge their party leadership, preferring to work behind the scenes to win concessions in legislation, she said.

“What we’re telling you this time: it’s different,” she said. “Not that we’re going to vote with Republicans. But if reform legislation comes to the floor and doesn’t include a real and robust public option, we will fight it with everything we have.”

Her statements today reflect absolutely no consciousness that she ever said anything like this, or was in any way in a leadership position on the issue. But that has been the way Woolsey has operated throughout the health care campaign.

When we began our whip count in late June it quickly became evident that contrary to Woolsey’s assertions, not all 120 members of the quad caucus agreed on the need for a public option. When we asked that individual members of Congress to go on record and state their personal beliefs, Woolsey got angry that our efforts to get people on the record might demystify a brilliant campaign that allowed members to hide anonymously underneath an umbrella that gave them “strength in numbers.”

On July 9, after the Blue Dogs said they had the votes to kill the health care bill, Woolsey announced — apparently unaware of the irony — that she now had 60 votes to vote against a bill without a public option. Where did the other 60 votes suddenly go? Well, she didn’t say. I wrote “If Lynn Woolsey’s got 60 votes, I’ve got leprechauns in my laundry room” and demanded that she name names. Because if there’s one thing we learned from the supplemental battle, it’s that a member who won’t even publicly commit to a position is certainly not going to go to the mat for it.

A week later, an “internal whip list” was leaked by Woolsey’s office. It was now down to 50 names. What happened to the extra 10 names Woolsey said she had the week before? Well, they seemed to have magically disappeared too.

We began calling all 50 offices. We could not get one member of Congress to confirm that their name was validly on that list.

Woolsey’s strategy, her theatrics, her leadership on health care devolved into a colossal joke. Nobody took her seriously. Nothing she said ever turned out to be true, and any thinking person would rightly conclude that any threat she made was idle. She was incapable of commanding the respect of the Progressive Caucus, and it became clear as time went on that her lack of leadership was an enormous problem when it comes to organizing progressives in the House who now had the opportunity to exert real power.

Members of the Progressive Caucus, however, realized that people were laughing and it was time to “put up or shut up.” And so 60 members finally signed their names to the famous July 31 letter to Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman saying they would vote against any bill that didn’t have a public option — tied to Medicare reimbursement rates.

Now, fighting for Medicare reimbursement rates as a cost-control measure was important, but anyone with the ability to Google could figure out that there was long-term opposition among Democrats from rural districts sufficient to take the health care bill down over it. It’s one thing to fight for something, it’s quite another to draw a line in the sand you know you’re fully prepared to step over. But Woolsey led many members of the caucus to demand its inclusion this in the letter, which was ultimately used undermine the public option fight down the line.

Predictably, they gave up the fight on Medicare rates the next day. It would re-emerge as an issue later in a watered down “Medicare Plus 5” version, but mostly as a face-saving measure I think. It never had a serious chance.

Nonetheless, online supporters were delighted that progressives were taking a stand. It wasn’t much of a political risk, since the public option was something that 80% of the country wanted. But they showed their support by donating $430,000 to the members who were willing to commit to vote against any health care bill that didn’t have a public option. Of those, 1734 people donated $5,613 to Lynn Woolsey.

Is she ready to give that money back if she goes back on her promise to vote “no” on any bill that doesn’t have a public option? Because a poll determined that 90% of our readers think that she should.

Furthermore, 76% of our readers think that members of Congress who go back on that pledge should face primary challenges (the filing deadline for California is March 12). And a full 82.3% think that anyone who votes to restrict a woman’s right to choose, as the Senate bill does, should face a primary challenge too.

Woolsey has been inconsistent and muddled throughout the health care fight, and her leadership non-existent. And now she’s ready to capitulate to the Senate bill. Really? Here she is in November when the Senate bill passed:

I was very relieved on Saturday night when the Senate had the 60 votes. Now, the games begin. If the House position is to take what the Senate did and capitulate to it, then they have the wrong idea about what the House of Representatives is going to do.

While Woolsey has been willing to take a progressive stand on issues over the years, she risks nothing for doing so. She’s in a safe Democratic seat, from a district with a D+23 PVI. It’s full of progressive, pro-choice Democrats who have donated to her campaign since she first took office in 1993, and she’s be in more political trouble if she didn’t take those positions.

I understand that the health care bill will probably fail because of its own inertia, the search right now is for a scapegoat to blame it on and no Democrat but Bart Stupak really wants to have that honor. But there are certain principles that someone who calls themselves a progressive leader should not be cavalier about, and a woman’s right to choose is one of them. As Scarecrow wrote here in December, the Nelson language in the Senate bill was written to tee up a Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade.

That is unacceptable.

Lynn Woolsey’s inability to effectively lead the Progressive Caucus represents a tremendous problem in the House. She inevitably drags any organizing attempt into chaos and petty bickering, and her idea of “leadership” is issuing a symphony of idle threats she never follows through on that reduces the caucus to a laughing stock and renders the entire caucus ineffectual.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/03/05/lynn-woolsey-should-resign-as-head-of-the-progressive-caucus/

 
dmp you still here?
Sure, but if I read one quote you post and do a little research on the actual validity of the editorializing, my response is lost in 5 more quotes you post. So I don't see the point in reading through it.

It seems like we can break it down like this:

Democrats: tried reform with ACA, but plan was imperfect.  taxed the rich (>$250k), subsidized the poor (+20million insured people), but did not address rising costs for middle incomes and caved to health insurance lobbies / Republicans to not create a public option.

health insurance and medical lobbies: trying to maintain policies where they continue to make craploads of money. Screw the poor & middle class.

Republicans: advocate a free market, deregulated system where people (wealthy) can buy good insurance for (somewhat) cheap.  Against taxing the wealthy to provide assistance for the poor.

About right?

Does it make sense to vilify the Democrats, undermine their support, and watch the Republicans and big business unwind what has been accomplished over the last 8 yrs? Why is that your agenda?
 
Because everything Obama 'accomplished' ha ha in the last 8 years is a gutless, prancing sellout. What other agenda than vilifying it would I adopt? I certainly won't be associated with it, and I will make clear exactly what it is, and who it's for.

Not a surprise really that upon passage of the health care bill, Max Baucus would openly thank Liz Fowler, the former Wellpoint VP, for writing it:

    Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, there are a flood of emotions going through all of us today as we pass this reconciliation bill which improves upon the bill the President signed 2 days ago. I would like to focus only on one part–a very important part but only one part–and that is to thank the people who have worked so hard, especially in this body, to help accomplish this result.

    […]

    "We all want to thank so many people. Once we start mentioning a couple or three names, we run the danger of offending people whose names are not mentioned. We all know that. There will be an appropriate time for us to make all the thanks, and I will make mine so sincerely because I am so grateful for all the hard work my staff has put into this.

    I wish to single out one person, and that one person is sitting next to me. Her name is Liz Fowler. Liz Fowler is my chief health counsel. Liz Fowler has put my health care team together. Liz Fowler worked for me many years ago, left for the private sector, and then came back when she realized she could be there at the creation of health care reform because she wanted that to be, in a certain sense, her profession lifetime goal. She put together the White Paper last November–2008–the 87-page document which became the basis, the foundation, the blueprint from which almost all health care measures in all bills on both sides of the aisle came. She is an amazing person. She is a lawyer; she is a Ph.D. She is just so decent. She is always smiling, she is always working, always available to help any Senator, any staff. I thank Liz from the bottom of my heart. In many ways, she typifies, she represents all of the people who have worked so hard to make this bill such a great accomplishment.

    I will have printed in the Record the names of all my professional staff. There are more than I realized, so I can’t name them all. I ask unanimous consent to have that list printed in the Record and just regret that I cannot thank everybody personally."

It’s right up there with Tom Carper’s insistence that the Senate had to respect the White House deal with PhRMA because after all they paid for it with $150 million in political advertising as “most telling moments of the health care debate.”

Nancy Pelosi says the foundations of the health care bill were written by the Heritage Foundation. Probably true, Heritage is awash in corporate money. And really, the plan is no different from the one that AHIP (then HIAA) wrote in 1992:

    – Every American was required to buy ‘an essential package’ of benefits

    – The government would help define the essential package and private insurers would provide the standard package “regardless of a person’s medical history”

    – Only the essential package would be protected from taxation. If employers bought more than the basic benefits, the premiums pad for the extra coverage “would be treated as income to the employees, and they would have to pay income tax on it.”

    – The government would work with private insures to “stabilize health-care prices” and make sure private insures and government programs pay similar amounts for the same services in the same geographic area.

All of the underpinnings of the insurance “reform” package were already there, waiting for someone to sweep in and make AHIP’s champagne dreams come true. And now that the Chamber of Commerce is not funding the mandate repeal effort any more, those legislative efforts are stalling out across the country. Republicans in Alaska, Kansas, Georgia and Michigan have all voted down anti-mandate bills since the Chamber pulled the plug (failing by one vote in Kansas after Republican Dwayne Upmeyer “accidentally” voted against it. “Oops” was his response.) Sarah Palin didn’t mention the mandate in her speech before cheering Tea Partiers at Searchlight, no doubt conscious of the $2.5 million in donations the health care sector contributed to McCain/Palin in 2008.

The insurance industry has spent their money well, spreading it across both parties. They got what they paid for with this neoliberal health care bill. Ken Silverstein’s prescient 2006 article in Harpers on Obama’s early vetting by corporate interests still stands up. They sized up the situation accurately years ago.

Thanks indeed, Liz Fowler. The country really does owe you one.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/03/29/baucus-thanks-wellpoint-vp-liz-fowler-for-writing-health-care-bill/

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22max+baucus%22+lobbyist+site:shadowproof.com&lr=&as_qdr=all&gbv=1&sei=iffPWNjkFqWXjwTEnL_wDA
 
Because everything Obama 'accomplished' ha ha in the last 8 years is a gutless, prancing sellout. What other agenda than vilifying it would I adopt? I certainly won't be associated with it, and I will make clear exactly what it is, and who it's for.

20 million low income people gaining access to subsidized health care (very cheap)?
Increasing taxes on incomes >$250k to pay for it?
A good friend of mine has much needed health care on the ACA for like $100 a month.

Do you think Trump & Republicans are going to do things you want?
 
dmp said:
20 million low income people gaining access to subsidized health care (very cheap)?
Increasing taxes on incomes >$250k to pay for it?
A good friend of mine has much needed health care on the ACA for like $100 a month.
But that suggests the ACA is sustainable as it currently exists (it isn't IMO).  To perpetuate this entitlement without reform will bust future budgets. 
Do you think Trump & Republicans are going to do things you want?
I doubt they will do exactly what either of us want.

The hard part will be phase three of the reform when senate democrats must buy in . We are more than a little pregnant with this new entitlement and that is unlikely to ever go away (republicans are politicians too).   

We can afford to subsidize a couple 10 million of the most desolate without screwing up the entire healthcare system. This is what some other countries do.

But we'll see, DC seems a little constipated these days and easily distracted by shiny things.

JR
 

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