This is pretty much what I imagine goes on in the meetings of Conservatives for Patients Rights, or Patients United Now, or AHIP’s Campaign for an American Solution, or Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Get Health Reform Right. They’re clueless.

Meet HAARM - Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine:

The front group “Get Health Reform Right,” funded by the insurance industry, sent out their first “grassroots” email today. Here’s what it says:

The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and we all have a stake in the outcome. Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration. While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also takes a huge leap in the wrong direction by creating a new government-run health plan.

We all agree that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but legislation that includes a government-run health plan will actually undermine the goals of reform and have devastating consequences on our healthcare system. Take action now and tell Congress to get health reform right.

More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have. A new government health plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers’ choices. Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan. This is not the answer for improving our healthcare system. Instead, Congress should build on the current employer-sponsored healthcare system that is already working for more than 160 million Americans. Tell Congress to build on healthcare that’s working for most until it works for all.

Thank you for making your voice heard on this important issue. With so much riding on healthcare reform, Congress needs to get health reform right for America.

Now, given that it’s the insurance industry sending this message, I’m going to rewrite it so you can see what they really mean:

The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and our profits have a stake in the outcome. Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration. While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also forces us to compete and actually provide health insurance, or lose money. We don’t like that.

We keep saying that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but we’re really worried that our CEOs won’t be able to take that 2nd vacation this year if our profits get cut a couple percentage points. So we’re going to tell people that offering them a choice of a public health insurance option somehow will cause them to lose health care. It’s not true, but it sure is scary! And if we scare them enough, maybe they’ll complain to their Members of Congress!

If we actually had to compete, we couldn’t pay our CEOs billions, and we would have to stop denying care for prexisting conditions. That would be a big problem - for us. And of course, though we’ve argued for years that government is so incompetent that it can’t do anything, we’re going to pretend that we’re so vulnerable that we can’t compete with government. Yes, we know this doesn’t make sense, but we’re going to say it anyway. If we make it sound scary enough, people might not realize they would love to choose to dump us if they could, and that most of them (76%) support giving us a bit of competition.

We hate competition, and so we’re against health reform. And we’re trying to scare you so you are, too.

Boo!

I don’t expect anything better from the industry - they lie about everything else, why not lie about being grassroots.

Update: The Education and Labor Committee sends along this fact-check of the insurance industry’s lies:

1. Government plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers’ choices.

The public health insurance option would be just one choice for consumers and families in a menu of private health insurance options called the national health insurance exchange. The public health insurance option would be required to follow the same rules as private insurers (level playing field). And, the public health insurance option would self-sustaining through premiums, not government subsidies.

If we are serious about real competition to help control costs, and most Americans agree, a public health insurance option must be one of many choices consumers will have. As studies have shown, many Americans have little or no choices in health plans in their region.

2. Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan.

No one will be forced into the public health option. If an employer drops their insurance coverage for their employees, those workers would have a choice of any plan in the health insurance exchange, including a public insurance option. In addition, the employer would then have to pay an 8 percent penalty, based on their payroll, for not covering its employees in order to assist low and moderate income employees to obtain insurance coverage that is right for them.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

Some text for the HELP Committee’s public health insurance option leaked last night. The language includes:

–HHS-based plan: The community health insurance option would be run by HHS. The government would pay for the first three months of claims as a way to capitalize it; this would be a loan to be repaid over time. For the first two years and longer if necessary, the option would also qualify for “risk corridor protections” which offset or reclaim excessive losses and gains which could result during the start-up period (identical to those in Medicare Part D). Subsequently, its premiums would be set to make it self sufficient. This would make the health insurance option quickly available in all areas of the country.

–Plays by the same rules: The option would be one of the Gateway choices. It would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums that are fair and based on local costs. The only difference between this option and others is that the Secretary would set the reserve requirements for this plan rather than states.

–Provider payments and participation:

• Negotiated rates within limits: The payment rates paid by the option would be no more than the local average private rates – but could be less. The Secretary would negotiate these rates.

• Input from Advisory Councils: Each State would create a Council of provider and consumers to recommend strategies for quality improvement and affordability. States would share in the savings that result.

• Purely voluntary: Health care providers would have the choice of participating in this plan; there would be no obligation to do so.

Why It Will Make Health Care Affordable:

–Pooled purchasing power: This health insurance option can pool the purchasing power of its enrollees nationwide to leverage lower prices to compete with private plans. Similar negotiation power has been used by states to get drug rebates in Medicaid beyond the statutory minimum. It has been used by large businesses to drive delivery system change. This negotiation would be backed by a ceiling of paying no more than average local rates.

–Flexibility and incentives to innovate: Unlike administered pricing, the negotiation for payment rates gives the Secretary the ability to quickly and aggressively promote payment policies that promote quality and best practices. In addition, the State Advisory Councils would tailor delivery system reform for the plan, with a financial bonus for success.

–Lower administrative overhead: The community health insurance option would not need to raise premiums to support shareholder profits, extensive marketing, and extra risk reserves required by require to protect enrollees from plan insolvency or mismanagement of funds.

This fulfills the broad requirements for a public option: Available everywhere and on day one, and accountable to Congress and the voters, as well as rate flexibility. Of course, things are still very much in flux and these details could all change, for better or for worse. But so far, so good.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

Via Talking Points Memo:

For all of the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. 32 Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.

Now, will Pawlenty sign the certificate, or make an ass out of himself in front of the country for his Presidential ambitions (because apparently, you’re a better shot for President if you defy Supreme Courts…).

Chris Bowers has been keeping track of the answers you all have gotten from the Senate over the last few weeks. For those just joining the campaign, we, along with Chris at OpenLeft and Democracy for America, are asking Senators to answer for questions on the public health insurance option:

• Do you support a public healthcare option as part of reform?
• Do you support a public healthcare option that is ready on day one?
• Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to our government?
• Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

The answers are starting to trickle in, and we’re going to publish them all this week. But we want to make sure we’ve gotten all the responses so our count is accurate. So, if you’ve gotten a response from your Senator, click here to report it.

Of course, if you haven’t gotten an answer yet, keep asking. As Chris says (and I concur), if there’s one thing he’s learned from blogging, it’s that you have to keep asking Senators over and over until you get the answer you want. So, click here to email you Senator.

And of course, tell your friends about this campaign, so we can turn up the pressure.

Stay tuned for the answers!

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

In the previous maladministration, the constitution was viewed as an annoyance. That made it hard to make a fuss when other presidents in other countries violated their constitutions. In Colombia, President Uribe sought to keep office despite constitutional term limits. While Uribe courted the previous maladministration by participating in its ‘drug war’, it distinguished itself by building up body count figures to court more U.S. funds by murdering civilians and re-labeling them as the enemy. That was overlooked by the then U.S. maladministration in its big rush to get ‘free’ market trade going with Colombia despite the atrocities involved.

How embarrassing, now Uribe is visiting the U.S. under Obama while President Zelaya of Honduras is kicked out for seeking to do the same thing Uribe is seeking to do. While we can’t officially announce that a coup has happened because then we’d have to cut off all aid to Honduras, our government, along with most of the world, is sternly admonishing the army, Congress, courts and presently installed president of Honduras to take him back.

This would make great comedy material, except that it concerns serious concerns of worldwide emergencies. In June, 2008, riots in Honduras and neighboring countries protested hunger, a problem that is on the increase as the world suffers from the greedy manipulations of deregulated financial industry in the U.S.

Concerned humanitarians of the world still look on the security of a country as the well-being of its people. The Guardian features one expression of those humanitarian aims.

We condemn the military coup and kidnapping of the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. On Sunday 28 June, President Manuel Zelaya Rosales was kidnapped, removed from his home by force, rendered incommunicado for several hours and expelled from his country. Soldiers also seized Honduran foreign minister, Patricia Rodas, and the ambassadors of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The military and coup conspirators are trying to suppress popular demonstrations and news by blanket military presence, curfews and intimidation of reporters.

President Zelaya was working to free his country from decades of hunger and poverty. This military coup is an illegal attempt to use armed force to overturn the course of democracy and social progress chosen by the Honduran people at the polls. We urge every government in the world to demand the restoration of the democratically elected president and to pledge not to recognise the illegal government put in power by a military coup.
Colin Burgon MP, Ken Livingstone, Dr Francisco Dominguez Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, Tony Woodley Unite, Gerry Doherty TSSA, Matt Wrack FBU, Brian Caton POA

While the U.S. lost the right to represent itself as an example to follow, in the last maladministration, it has the opportunity now to represent our basic decency and get out of the process of making world affairs purely a business.

The public interest has not lost out to profit motive in much of the world. The U.S. can turn that around now, by cutting out support for tyrants and leaders who violate their constitutions and undercut their people.

The visit of Uribe would make a great opportunity for just that. We overlooked the attempts of Uribe to overthrow the constitution of Colombia, along with his regime’s brutality. We have violated our nation’s principles in seeking good relations with regimes that violate their own people’s rights, and their interests. What a good time to turn that around, by ending our partnership with Uribe and the pretense of a ‘war on drugs’ that has failed there and throughout the world.

President Obama can depart from the very bad example set by his predecessor by giving our support to people rather than to big business interests. This would be a major advance back into civilization from the atrocities of the previous regime.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

The NY Times has a piece in today’s paper entitled “Journalism Rules Are Bent in News Coverage from Iran.”  The piece questions the accuracy of news reporting on recent events in Iran that is based on “anonymous Twitter messages”, blogging and “unverified videos.”  The Times piece calls this type of reporting evidence of a “publish first, ask questions later” approach to journalism.

I think it’s absolutely fair for the Times to ask questions about the sources for news coming out of Iran, but I also think they’re incorrectly suggesting that the axiom “check the source” especially applies to reports associated with new media.  Let’s not forget the Times’ failure to consider the source when it uncritically published reports by Judith Miller and others that accepted at face value the Bush administration’s misinformation about WMD in Iraq The Times ultimately conceded that its coverage of the buildup to the war in Iraq was “not as rigorous as it should have been.”  It admitted that reporting had often depended on “Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq” whose credibility “c[a]me under increasing public debate.”  That’s putting it mildly.

I think it’s a great idea for the Times and others across the media spectrum to be skeptical, to ask questions, to consider and check the source when it comes to recent events in Iran.  I just hope that this scrutiny is not limited only to reporting that involves new media and is not limited to recent events in Iran .

As usual:

This won’t come as the slightest surprise to those versed in health care policy issues. But I fear it’s only barely permeated the health care reform debate in the country, certainly in Washington. And that’s this: the opposition to a so-called ‘public option’ comes almost entirely from insurance companies who have developed monopolies or near monopolies in particular geographic areas. And they don’t want competition.

Note, I’m not saying more competition. I’m saying any competition at all. As Zack Roth explains in this new piece 94% of the health care insurance market is now under monopoly or near-monopoly conditions — the official term of art is ‘highly concentrated’. In other words, there’s no mystery why insurance costs keep going up even as the suck quotient rises precipitously. Because in most areas there’s little or no actual competition.

That’s exactly right. As President Obama pointed out last week, the arguments used by the industry and by conservatives are illogical at best and dishonest at worst:

If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

They’re not against the public plan because it would be bad for you and me, they just don’t want the competition. Pretty self-serving, no?

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

“The Lord sent Prophet Nathan to King David. When he came to him, he said, ‘There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.’”

King David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’

Then Prophet Nathan said to King David, ‘You are the man!’”

President Obama spoke at the annual Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner on June 19th.  Here are a couple of his timely quips.

“Nick at Nite has a new take on an old classic, “Leave it to Uigurs. I thought that was pretty good.”

“But I have to say, as I traveled to all these countries, I saw firsthand how much people truly have in common with one another. Because no matter where I went, there’s one thing I heard over and over again from every world leader:  “No thanks, but have you considered Palau?”

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor are two of my stylistic and rhetorical gurus.  I am given to satirical and politically incorrect humor.  Yet, something about my President’s jokes on these matters, at this time in our history, sounds off key.  This scene reminds me of the Prophet Nathan’s cunning parable that indicted King David.  It is one thing for Leno, Letterman, or Stewart to satirize the Uighurs plight, but for the President who holds their destiny in his hands to do so seems indecent.

The 17 Chinese Muslim ethnic Uighurs in Obama’s joke have been held at the Guantanamo Bay Prison for more than seven years without charge.  They were cleared for release from Guantanamo four years ago after US officials ruled there was no evidence to hold them as “enemy combatants.”

Last year a Federal judge ordered the men released into the United States, but an appeals court halted the order, and they have been in legal limbo ever since.

The US state department has said the Uighurs cannot be returned to China because of fears they will face persecution and possible execution.

Officials in Palau, a U.S. administered territory until 1994, have agreed to temporarily take in the 17 Uighurs for humanitarian reasons.  The island is heavily dependent on U.S. aid.  Plus, Palau maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, not China.  Ironically, Palau and the United States are discussing the possibility of a $200-million aid package.

Here’s what gets my little lamb, I mean, goat.

From my back porch, Obama’s cavalier joking is part of a larger American soul affliction.  We live such comfy, entitled lives that wise cracks about locking up marginalized Chinese guys for years on end without cause, is like watching a movie.  Admitting they are completely innocent, yet holding them in prison for their own “protection” is like playing a video game.  Dealing them for money to a helpless former island territory is like the Washington Redskins trading a football player.  Reporters, known in days of yore as political watchdogs, making jolly with the President about our human rights abuses is like attending a farcical play.

Maybe I got up today on the self - righteous side of the bed.  But, Prophet Nathan’s confrontational exclamation seems on the money.

America, “You are the man!”

Just so we’re clear, we know Republicans aren’t going to vote for health reform that actually does anything right?

Via the New York Times:

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said he was unaware of any House Republican inclined to support the Democrats’ proposed legislation.

Asked how many Senate Republicans could sign on to developing Democratic plans, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, author of a Republican alternative, said: “I think right now, none. Zero.”

So, the question becomes, how far are you willing to push this “bipartisanship” thing? Will you go for bipartisanship at the expense of getting a bill that does what President Obama and the American people want it to do - lower costs, make health care affordable, and increase coverage?

Because it’s possible to get, say, one or two Republican votes in the Senate, but that might not even be enough to satisfy Republicans:

Hoping to lessen the divide, a handful of senators from the two parties who sit on the Finance Committee have been meeting privately, trying to find some consensus. But they left for the weeklong Fourth of July recess without any firm agreement, though they pledged to keep trying. Even a senator at the center of those talks among four Republicans and three Democrats, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the committee, indicated a reluctance to back any legislation unless it was constructed to attract more than a handful of Republicans.

“This is not going to be a bipartisan bill with just three or four Republicans,” Mr. Grassley said. “This is a bill that gets broad bipartisan support or it is not going to be a bipartisan bill.”

Now you tell me: What kind of bill do you think more than a few Republican Senators would vote for? Do you think it would do any good? Do you think it would be anything but the status quo? Do you think it would lower your costs instead of bailing out the insurance industry with taxpayer dollars?

If I had to guess, any bill Senate Republicans support would do nothing for the American people. The health care crisis is too great - bipartisanship isn’t worth the price we’d pay.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)