I was driving around the other day and heard on NPR a report saying that the Obama administration had decided to break the president's campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA to protect American jobs, because (claims the administration) the economy is too fragile to do anything like that now. I thought: wow, there he goes again, backing away from a liberal position (one a conservative like me could in theory support). In fact, it's been striking to me how much of his policy liberalism Obama has abandoned now that he's holding power. No, he's not a Republican, but if the left is having a bit of buyer's remorse, who could blame them? Frank Rich wonders if he and his fellow liberals have been punk'd. Excerpt from his column's passage about the health care debate and the role of lobbyists:
In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it's not clear who any American in either party should or could root for. The bipartisan nature of the beast can be encapsulated by the remarkable progress of Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman. Tauzin was a founding member of the Blue Dog Democrats in 1994. A year later, he bolted to the Republicans. Now he is chief of PhRMA, the biggest pharmaceutical trade group. In the 2008 campaign, Obama ran a television ad pillorying Tauzin for his role in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Last week The Los Angeles Times reported -- and The New York Times confirmed -- that Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, had secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices. Now we know why the president has ducked his campaign pledge to broadcast such negotiations on C-Span.The making of legislative sausage is never pretty. The White House has to give to get. But the cynicism being whipped up among voters is justified. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose chief presidential campaign strategist unapologetically did double duty as a high-powered corporate flack, Obama promised change we could actually believe in.
His first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys' club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street's latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner's role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren't going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks -- which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers' money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion -- are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.
It may be the only thing Frank Rich and I ever agree on, but I share his suspicion that re: Wall Street and reform, the fix is in, and that there is only one party in Washington when it comes to the financial sector.
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thomas tucker
Nobody "broke" the health care system and I have to grit my teeth every time I hear that statement. The health care system that we have evolved over time. Like any system, it has its advantages and its flaws, but nobody broke it.
In your universe things can't become broken over time?
The health insurance industry, did, in fact, break the health care industry. They did two things, in fact:
1) They acted as gatekeepers who made more money the less health care that was provided. Thus reducing demand on the hospital side. Which had the short term effect of lowering prices, but, eventually, supply lowers to compensate.
This has resulted in a health care system that is not actually equipped to handle everyone who needs health care. It is, instead, equipped to handle everyone who is _allowed_ into the system, either by their insurance or by money. (Which has resulted in crippling problems at the places 'not allowed to disallow' patients, aka, ERs.)
2) The insurance companies, thanks to their oligopoly position, were able to demand lower prices between themselves as hospitals, resulting in higher prices between hospitals and everyone else. There are three groups of people, the insured, the uninsured who pay, and the uninsured who do not, and the first and last group are seriously underpaying, so being part of the middle group is more and more untenable.
Which means that more and more people needed to subscribe to their insurance to have affordable care. (Or become debt-criminals on the run from collection agencies.)
Note these two things are not things that are being done wrong, they are systematic errors, they are *design* errors.
It is a fundamental design error to setup a system where there is a middleman who makes more money the less he resells. It's just stupid. It's so stupid it's hard to explain how stupid it is. Such a middleman would destroy any industry.
And now, the system has so monopolized care that people can't opt out of the entire thing. And neither can hospitals and doctors generally opt out...if they stop accepting insurance, they cut their patients in half. If they do accept insurance, they make a tiny profit on them, and have to make the rest of their profit from the uninsured....assuming they pay.
Those two things are the reason we're in the situation we're in. One of them is the mere existence of an insurance company that can control access to help care, and the other is the fact that said companies are now so large they can dictate price, and this dictation of prices has harmful effects on people who aren't insured.
It's not some crazy random failure of the free market. If health care was still provided by the free market, where people actually went and purchased care and paid on the way out, or via layaway, well, it would suck, and be annoying, and people would need help covering some expenses...but we'd probably be moderately okay with the system, as competition would work to drive prices down. That is not this system.
And Charles Foster Kane, I too was a fan of Edwards, and was planning on voting for him before he dropped out right before my state voted. I've very glad he didn't get the nomination, though, because of the whole 'affair' thing. I am very glad he brought up health care.
David, that's one of the best short descriptions of how the system is "broken" that I've read anywhere. I wish it had come earlier in the thread.
I agree with some of that although many people say just the opposite- that the system is perverse because it encourages doing more rather than doing less because providers are paid based on how much they do.
I think the main point of our post though is that what we really need is insurance reform. That could easily be done with regulation, as it has with home and auto insurance- it doesn't require a new bureaucracy.
RE: Andrew Jackson, the butcher of the Cherokee, isn't a good example for any civilized person, whether or not he was the hero of oridinary (white) working people. I'd stick with Roosevelt if I were you. I generally agree with your point though.
Hector, you are correct on that point, but history offers no perfect heroes. The same Colonel Chivington who saved Colorado from a confederate army determined to march on California perpetrated the massacre of Black Kettle's Cheyenne at Sand Creek. The same confederates who insisted slavery was sanctioned by the Constitution and the Bible (especially their constitution, which made preservation of "the institution of Negro slavery" explicit) made common cause with several Native nations, who were sold on the idea that "State's rights" would be good for them. And then the "Buffalo soldiers" may offer a role model of sorts for "Black History," but they did participate in genocide in another direction...
Jackson made some positive changes in U.S. politics, and committed genocide against the Five Nations. Henry VIII indulged his lusts and vanity, and in the process made the world safe for the Reformation. Martin Luther was viciously anti-Semitic. Don't worship anyone except the One who is perfect, because the others will always disappoint you. Yes, that includes our president. He's pretty good, but that's about as good as a mere president can ever get.
cfk,
maybe the reason you don't care whether politicians help poor people in their personal lives is because its not about helping poor people, its about feeling morally superior and intellectually aware by supporting "enlightened" programs using other peoples money. of course none of this puts food on president obama's brothers table, but who cares.
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