Not even a public option here, despite from 2000 to 2007, profits at the 10 largest publicly-traded health insurance companies went up 428 percent. CEOs at these companies made an average of $11.9 million in 2007. In the past nine years, health insurance premiums have more than doubled — a rate three times faster than wage increases. Health care firms boosted their lobbying efforts in the second quarter of this year by $133 million, becoming the largest industry spender on lobbying. And Karen Ignagni, the chief lobbyist for the health insurance trade association, made $1.65 million in 2007. (MoJo The Democrats’ Split Personality Disorder)
Click to Enlarge.
Reform without a public option can still remedy a lot of these ills, as long as there’s enough regulation. But it’s not clear there will be, which is why Rockefeller is speaking out – and why he should be.
What Rockefeller Understands Johnathan Cohn.
Bad Congressmen. They are like dogs. If you feed them, and obviously the insurance industry is feeding them, they obey. The insurance industry big shots are sitting down to their — not on the healthy diet list, French chef served — dinners this evening, sighing with relief, and doing a impertinent yet malicious fist bump. “We did it again, phew that was close, a bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam, if you please waiter”.
Addendum: I found this blog saying something which may end up true. Showing that the insurance companies are the only ones laughing this quote says it all.
I actually think we are going to get a reform that is both worse than the status quo and worse than a pure single payer system.
Kudos to our Congress!
As I understand it, insurance companies will not be able to refuse to cover some one, nor will they be able to charge high risk people a premium that reflects their risk. The price won’t be uniform, but the maximum variation will be well below what it would take to correctly price the variation in risks.
As I noted before, this will make premiums for healthy people extra high. And as the WSJ pointed out yesterday, at least on the margin, it will make healthy people want to hold off from getting any insurance until they are actually sick.
Problem solved, you say?
Ahh, but now it appears that the third leg of the trinity will be rule that it will be illegal to not have insurance!
So young healthy people will be forced to buy way overpriced (relative to their risk) insurance. Plus if said young healthy people make good money, they can look forward to paying more taxes to subsidize the purchase of said insurance by others.
Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating, Individual Mandate. They sound so reasonable and innocuous, but they are freakin’ lethal.
Other Chain Yankers:
Love that some film critic is questioning the ethics of the DA in the Polanski case, and only 1 WAPO columnist out of 3 not defending him. Thank you Eugene.
While were on ethics, I don’t care if the Polanski case is politically motivated. It doesn’t make Polanski any less guilty, nor does his age, or his films. His genius means nothing to me. I could have lived without his films. We gain nothing by them, at least not more than we lose by letting someone who raped, and drugged, a 13 year old go free, because genius, celebrity, entitlement, and the support of various film industry persona, makes some think he should.
Peace
So were like China, most of Africa, some of South America and what’s that? Kazakhstan??
Way to go USA.
The media is loving this Polanski thing. The indignance of some toward his arrest is hard to figure.
jake´s last blog ..Ravens
The media is useless. I used to love Anderson Cooper now I just want him to shut up.
Yea, we stand with the best in social justice don’t we.
The fact of the matter is that we, the progressives, have empowered Democrats to behave this way. We give them the benefit of the doubt because we know that we need to deal with a Republican Party that in power behave like overlords and out of power behave like petulant children. But they’ve done nothing to deserve it. Not really.
I remember watching the news Newt and Co. when voted to shut down the government because Clinton wasn’t letting them have their way. And Clinton coming out in his second term declaring that “the era of big government is over”
Before this shit started, Obama was in favor of single payer and Baucus was in favor of the public option. Today Baucus said twice that he would vote against the public option because he couldn’t get to 60 votes with it.
Do you know how I know it doesn’t take 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate? Because Article 1 Section 3 Clause 4 of the Constitution says:
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
Wake me when we have Senators who care more about the will of the People than the whining of the opposition and the coin in their campaign coffers
EsotericWombat´s last blog ..Only in the United States Senate
I’ve been doubting them for a long time now, months. They should be ashamed. I hope that everyone of them lose their jobs. It’s a game to them, they want to say they did something so they settle for something much worse than anything we have and the insurance companies are loving it.
We are a lazy people though, most people my age have no idea how screwed they now are.
I wish I could take away the fear your generation should be feeling. I can’t. You’re screwed. I’m right behind you though, an X’er.
I hear you on Polanski. I loved Chinatown one of the best movies ever made, Rosemary’s Baby is a classic, The Piano a masterpiece, The Tenant — see it if you haven’t. That’s it,he did some really bad stuff as well.
Justice, funny word, don’t see it often enough.
Yeah I’m pretty sure we are screwed, no one will notice it for awhile though, most people my age are too busy trying to pay for their apartments because after 4 years of college they can’t find a job that pays well enough to pay the rent.
I’ve been telling everyone who would listen (not many) this is how it would play out after I heard Obama’s speech. It was obvious then that the Dems had no stomach for a fight, and were willing to compromise almost everything just to say they “passed health care reform.” That blog quote is exactly right. But we in America don’t believe in facts, or science, or reality. The media is beyond useless.
Francis Scudellari´s last blog ..Per-happy Spins
Yea but to put us worse off and the insurance companies better off?
I’m all for Universal Health Care as long as it doesn’t involve me paying more for it. I just basically want to walk into a hospital for anything that may be wrong with me and walk out without having to spend anything for the ordeal.
mojo shivers´s last blog ..I Can’t Accept That It’s Over, I Will Block The Door Like A Goalie Tending The Net, In The Third Quarter, Of A Tied-Game Rivalry
You are a fantasy love,r yes?
OK, but counting yanked chains, who was it that campaigned on universal health care without an individual mandate only to be “persuaded” once in office.
They’re scoundrels for the insurance companies and scoundrels for the people.
Doug´s last blog ..Barrister
Oh, I am perfectly aware of that. Just because I wanted him to be president over that other old man does’t mean I wasn’t perfectly ware this could happen.
I know national heath care would have had to involve a personal mandate, it is the only way it is successful, but now we get something the insurance companies wanted, a mandate, without even a public fucking option. Sadly most people my age have no idea what this will end up meaning for them down the road.
Actually, sadder than that, I think, is that most of your generation won’t understand what has happened to them when it’s happened.
Doug´s last blog ..Brain
Oh, and I didn’t mean to criticize Obama’s voters. I just got set off a little when he said he’d been “persuaded” of the need for a mandate. All in all, a fine choice given the choices.
Doug´s last blog ..Brain
It’s very possible we will end up with something worse than we have now. If there is no public option, then we will be back in five years going through this whole thing again. Regulating the insurance industries won’t create reform. All it will do is create more bureaucracy, which will actually require its very own regulation.
For all the money we’ve spent in Iraq alone, we could have ten years of a public option program in this country. Tax payer money going right back to tax payers. Why is it easier to recklessly invade a foreign country, kill hundreds of thousands of people just so our news media can get a hard on?
Chris´s last blog ..Double Talking Extremism
I’m really mad at the Democrats who could have pushed a National Plan and fuck the insruance companies, as they should have. We know now for sure, as if there was any doubt, who run Washington and it isn’t any one of them.
I’m with ya. We let Tea Baggers talking about death panels win. Sure insurance companies pumped millions into it, but in the end the debate flowed without the basic level of sanity whatsoever.
Chris´s last blog ..Deep Thought
I have to be selfish here. Ever since the insurance agent told me I was lying and I had to prove a negative which is impossible I have been scared to go to the doctor. I answered the questions as they were asked. They didn’t ask about conditions I might have had in the past I realize now that was so they could deny the claims
Cooper if anything happens to me I don’t want to have go through my resources and sell my house which is a distinct possibility.
Yes I know insurance companies are banking on people like me who want pre-existing conditions and recisson to end so thousands more applicants can join in each state if they can afford the premium
I live for the day I can call the insurance agent and say “you lie.”
Yes I want a public option. I think that is the marker of a civilized society
And I know I sound like a broken record but are people like me who are willing to pay more than we should so we can be fully covered supposed to wait until we get on Medicare – if that still exists to be sick? Because life doesn’t work like that/
I think pre-existing conditions and rescission should end right now and then we figure out the rest. Otherwise you might have to have benefits for me someday and you’re too busy
pia´s last blog ..
I am not for a mandate that doesn’t allow an option no matter who they cover and I think this will be a very big mistake for the country down the road. Somewhere in there the companies will find a way to cost shift something they have been doing increasingly over the last few years.
I’m just blown away by these things of course and wish I had time to write letters all day long to members of congress and wished I was an anarchist and could spit on their cars. Alas I have papers to write, and research to do.
It ate my comment
Chris´s last blog ..Deep Thought
It never swallows it, it’s always stuck in the throat and I pluck it out when I get to it. You are not alone.
A blog that doesn’t swallow, that’s good to know
Chris´s last blog ..Deep Thought
I could see the writing on this wall for a long time now. It is so disappointing. Angering.
If you think things look bleak now, just wait a few years. This is not acceptable and shoudn’t be acceptable to anyone.
I don’t care about Polanski, as much as I care that they really let him get away with it until it became a political move.
john´s last blog ..The Next Americn Pundit
Political move?
Polanski got careless and went to a country that would extradite him.
Coop…
I’m of a mind to boycott any and all of the people on the petition for Polanski: http://j.mp/osagx
It’s one thing to stick by a friend — it’s another to make asinine pleas that are thinly-disguised rationalizations for the notion that “artists” should get their own cushioned penal code… or that “not working in Hollywood for 32 years” constitutes “punishment.”
The arrogance is galling.
I’m all for boycotting these weasels.
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/39618660.html
Good god.
I’m back forever and how I wish it were not the case. It’s hard to get handle on all this stuff passing for news over here. How you can hear anything above the shouting is hard to understand. I’ll find out soon enough I guess.
Ben´s last blog ..Back For Good
You know I’m happy about that. See you when you get closer to the MD line.
How can some of the senators vote against a public option but vote to spend tens of millions on useless abstinence education?
Perhaps they think that will result in Polanski leaving the 13-y.o. alone.
There was a time when I liked Harvey Weinstein and Debra Winger. I dunno bout him no more but she sure is a dinger.
sauerkraut´s last blog ..Kanye goes “Joe Wilson” on Taylor Swift
Tine to start following their every move I guess.
yeah..Cooper
well Polanski disgusted me just as Woody Allen does…and I’m not really that enamored of their work either.…
laketrees´s last blog ..a tour of my studio.…