As an organizer supporting home and community services and high quality affordable health care with equal access for all at Access Living for many years, I have seen advances and setbacks for people with disabilities in Illinois based on state policy decisions related to Medicaid. In the current Illinois budget crisis (which is partially due to many years of financial mismanagement and a structural deficit predating the economic crash) Illinois is in the midst of the worst financial circumstances for state government since the Great Depression. Because of this crisis, Illinois has proposed cuts in state services.
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Senate health care bill, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, H.R. 3590. I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue and I apologize for any delay in my response.
How could public perception of the President's Health Care Bill change so dramatically since it was passed? Polls taken before the vote (eg, Bloomberg & CNN) showed less than 40 percent of those polled favored the legislation, while more than 50 percent opposed it. Yet right after the vote, the USA Today/Gallup Poll asked if respondents thought "it is a good thing or a bad thing that Congress passed this bill?" 49 percent said it was a good thing, while 40 percent thought it was a bad thing. that's a ten percent swing among results expressing favoring the bill, and almost a 20 percent swing among those who didn't (using the CNN results). How could that be?
Most articles and commentary on the legislative package just passed call it "health care reform." That's what many of us have wished for, for decades even, and the push for universal health care started out under that umbrella, but unfortunately the legislative proposals continued to be called "health care reform" even as single-payer was abandoned, and as public option was jettisoned. The label stuck while the plan/concept moved farther and farther away from really changing the health care system, and more toward modifying the existing private-insurance-based health care payment system.
So what passed was not "health care reform" but "health insurance reform."
(Kucinich is a rara avis - there is no "out doing him". Yeah, Luis is angling. He knows how, both at the top and with his voters. imho. - promoted by wegerje)
I support the house passing the Senate Bill. It would sure be lovely if the 43 Senators who support passing a public option through reconciliation would morph into 51. Of course the now problematic House needs to pass reconciliation language and if it doesn't have public option language then the Senate support is moot. Mind I'm not saying I would support opposition to a House reconciliation bill without public option. I'm just saying if I had my druthers...
So along comes this cute stunt by Alan Grayson of a four page bill that would amend Medicare to allow anyone who doesn't qualify now to buy it as health-care insurance for themselves (and family?) Too easy, too simple and too obvious for passage? Yeah most likely.
Moveon.org national is polling its members on whether to support or oppose the president's health insurance reform plan. Their email offers some links:
The links weight the poll toward a "Yes." I didn't see a real cogent argument against the bill, but Howard Dean in The Hill last week made some policy and political arguments to kill the bill. While a few provisions have changed in the last 75 days, he explained his reasning in this interview with Stephanopoulos back in December, which includes a clip of Tom Harkin on Rachel Maddow:
What do we think? Is Dean right? or Harkin? How should I vote?
We respectfully ask that you bring for a vote before the full Senate a public health insurance option under budget reconciliation rules.
There are four fundamental reasons why we support this approach - its potential for billions of dollars in cost savings; the growing need to increase competition and lower costs for the consumer; the history of using reconciliation for significant pieces of health care legislation; and the continued public support for a public option.
(This was a comment over at the Agonist. I have been in a percolation period. I haven't been moved to post much diary-wise.
In Illinois I would love to see Jan and Jesse move into something like I describe below. But the other piece for us is combining our progressive institutions into a solidified and allied meta-structure. Some more buzz words.)
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I agree that the so-called Health Care Reform (HCR) is more like Health Care Regulation than reform. Single Payer would have been reform and the farther from that the less reform, at least in my book.
I agree that the current HCR is a boon to the MIC (Medical Industrial Complex).
But that said I think it will be a winner for the Dems at the ballot box next November if they run on it correctly and proudly. Never mind that to us there is little to be proud of. We all hated the Massachusetts Care thing yet even as the voters there complain they still don't want it to go away by a 79% to whatever margin. No the Dems can do very well with this bill. That's can rather than necessarily will, but I actually think they'll do well enough. Maybe simply not lose a lot of seats well rather than gain seats well but still well enough.
On the 3rd party score I agree something in that vein can and needs to be done. Not exactly a third party but a quasi-3rd party perhaps. The switching registration to Independent mentioned above has possibilities. Reps would get elected as something else than Dems and then pretty much caucus with the Dems. It would be nice for branding purposes for something other than "Independent" be created to associate all of them though.
But 3rd parties are doomed right up to the moment they can realistically become the 2nd party. For that to happen there has to be an intermediate phase, I believe. The last thing this new entity wants to do is run someone for president. The Nader curse is now very very strong. No that's a last step not an early one.
Let there be a "one, two a hundred" Bernie Sanders bloom approach. I use Sanders as an example here not necessarily a model. But I would think that if enough members of the progressive caucus, again for example, were to band together as a branded group of independents that caucused with the Dems that that could be a path to a new 2nd party.
In order to defeat the mono-party of Republican/Democratic so-called centrists, it might need to ally with Paulist types to find a non-corporate funding path and common anti-corporate agenda. Just as the Blue-Dogs now float back and forth between the wings of Republican/Democratic mono-party, so we need to find ways for our own common cause back and forth floats that can successfully oppose the corporatists.
And yes further, the major goal of such an independent and branded group would need to be campaign finance reform. Absent that I'm not sure there will ever be much that can be done until the American Empire had declined sufficiently for populism to enter through the cracks. And even then we might need to suffer an authoritarian populistic or even a dictatorial communistic populistic regime, ala many South American regimes, before coming out the other side with a Libertarian/Socialist/Democratic regime.
I threw out a bunch of buzz-words there (Duck-Speak anyone) but you get the drift.
It turns out that the so-called $750 "fine" for not purchasing health insurance is not going to be enforced against the folks:
(2) SPECIAL RULES.-Notwithstanding any other provision of law-
''(A) WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES.- In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.
''(B) LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES.-The Secretary shall not-
''(i) file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or
''(ii) levy on any such property with respect to such failure.
In sum: No criminal penalties, no IRS liens on your property or bank account. The "fine" is purely voluntary (you can still pay it if you wish, but they can't force you).
Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend from high school who is generally pretty moderate (a Democrat, but not prone to absolutist arguments) and inclined to see the world from the perspective of the investor class. It's good to have money.
He was as down on the bill as the progressive activists, like Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas and Ellen Beth Gill. He had a wide variety of concerns, some based on issues he and his family have faced, some based on talking to physicians and some were about policy.
One of the points he made was that he believed that most of the cost savings would be realized by government, not employers. And the big players, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and specialty physicians would all make at least as much money if the bill passed. He was also very concerned that people who didn't make much money, like artists, would be forced to pay and that the legislation would reinforce the problem of people being tied to large employers because it would become even more onerous to start a small business.
Below are some questions I have about health care.
Burris's backpedaling yesterday on any attempt to kill the Health Care Reform in the Senate was note number 1 of a Bower's claim that progressives or the "left" would in any way be able to be held responsible for the death of Obamacare, to coin a phrase; oh wait the wingnuts already coined it.
Recent actions and statements from Roland Burris, Bernie Sanders, and Russ Feingold make it clear no such left-wing filibuster will take place. As such, if the bill is defeated, it will be entirely because of right-wing opposition.
Now some might argue that there are those in the progressive blogsphere or the progressive internet (Move-On) who have been carrying water for the authoritarian attack on Obama's HCR. Perhaps, but that's a bit of a different story. A story locally docuemented here at the last mention of Burris.
Excuse the lack of specific Illinois content but after the fold I will quote a chunk of a recent post from OpenLeft by Chris Bowers. Bowers is suggesting that all of the possible outcomes for Health Care Reform at this point will be bad for the Democrats and some are even worse for progressives.
Senator Roland W. Burris, Democrat of Illinois, has vowed that he will not vote for a health care bill that does not include a government-run insurance plan, or public option.
"The family, Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn."
Only the be mocked by anti-reform Tea Partiers by
an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who "go from event to event and (cry) the same story."
