[Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

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Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba
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[Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba »

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/10433
The question many health reform advocates have been asking about the public option debate is “what’s the problem”??? Why isn’t the President demanding it, pushing it, selling it? Well, maybe he doesn’t want it.

Why, given strong Congressional majorities in favor of a public option, continuing strong polling support across the country, and overwhelming support from Democratic voters, is Harry Reid treating the matter as though it were a close call?

To be sure, getting 60 votes for cloture is a challenge, but that is not the same as needing 60 votes for a public option, no matter how many times the media equates the two. Only 5 or 6 Senate Democrats are even opposed in concept. Yet not one of these holdouts has publically declared that he/she would join a filibuster to keep a public option from getting a simple majority-rule vote. Sen. Harkin correctly asks, why should these five be empowered to force over fifty to give in?

Everyone also knows that if Harry Reid puts a viable public option in the Senate bill, there aren’t 60 votes to remove it. So why is Harry Reid behaving as though Democrats had something to fear if they demand party loyalty on a cloture vote and then push through a measure that has more voter support than any health reform measure they’ve proposed outside banning insurers from denying coverage to the sick?

Night after night, we are reminded (thanks to Nancy Pelosi prodding CBO) that a strong public option will save tens of billions, give consumers a choice in an industry that is dangerously concentrated and lacking in competition, and put pressure on insurers to lower premiums in the face of their promises/threats to raise them. Everyone now realizes a strong public plan could provide a credible, government-guaranteed alternative even if the private insurers succeed in evading new government regulations banning their most outrageous practices — practices whose evil effects we see repeated on a daily basis. So what’s the problem?

The Beltway conventional wisdom, steeped in cynicism, is that the White House is being disingenuous when it repeatedly says the President supports a public option. WH officials claim Obama believes it is “the best way” to provide an affordable choice and reduce costs. But then why is he not working to get it adopted in the Senate, and explicitly directing his OFA troops to help that effort? Why has he ducked every opportunity to make even the logical argument that the burden is on detractors to show there’s a better measure? No one has seriously attempted such a case.

In House and Senate leadership efforts to merge their respective bills, it’s curious that no one has noticed that House Speaker Pelosi does not seem to need the White House to tell her how to merge three House bills while improving them. But apparently, Harry Reid is not capable — or cannot be trusted — to merge two Senate bills without having Rahm Emanuel, Peter Orszag and Kathleen Sebelius present every meeting.

There’s nothing wrong with the Senate consulting with the White House about what they’re willing to push and pay for. But the White House told reporters that all the key decisions would be made by Harry Reid. So why are these senior White House people, including the man who sees himself as the center of the universe, there if not to tell Harry Reid what he can and cannot decide?

It is hard to avoid the fear that this White House has now become a principal obstacle to getting meaningful health care reform. It claims it wants major cost reductions in Medicare, via a semi-autonomous cost-cutting commission. But the White House has already bargained away the savings it can achieve from most of the major providers: PhRMa ($80 billion), hospitals ($155 billion) so they can give it back to the doctors (for whom AMA is demanding $240+ billion more over ten years in relief from automatic Medicare reductions).

Why should we not also believe that the White House has a deal to shield insurers from competition by preventing the creation of a public option in exchange for the insurers agreeing to reforms on guaranteed issue and limited community ratings (with the flexibility Baucus provided) and to support this framework with tv ads? (Read Ignagni’s WaPo op-ed today; while defending the PwC study, she says they made a deal, but Baucus broke it; she didn’t say the deal’s off.)

The White House isn’t taking up most of the chairs in Harry’s Reid’s meetings just to watch him make decisions on his own. They’re there to make sure Harry Reid doesn’t undo the White House deals and wander off the reservation.

This President has filled the White House with people who have no inclination to pose any major challenge to the economic power of America’s dominant financial industries (GM being an exception). We’ve already seen this in their dealings with Wall Street investment banks and their too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-challenge approach to financial regulation. We’re seeing it now with efforts to shield the major health and insurance industries from any fundamental challenge.

Sure, there are changes being offered, new regulations being proposed, and more people will be insured than before. But there is no framework being laid for a new structure for how health care is delivered and paid for in America. That is the pattern of this White House, and there is little basis to expect otherwise.

Watch the decisions Harry “makes” in coming days. My bet is they’ll shore up the underlying deals — they’ll make mandated insurance modestly more affordable and fix the mandates a bit, while protecting the insurers from a viable, functioning public option. The industry will still control a system in which consumers will be forced to buy their unreliable products with government subsidies.

And seeing this coming, Nancy Pelosi will push a more reform-minded House to fight back as hard as they can. The House now carries the hopes for even limited reform. Sadly, her opposition is not just the Senate’s 60 vote barrier; it’s in the White House.
I really don't have much to add beyond the premise of the article. I don't necessarily buy it, I don't dismiss it, and I think it deserves discussion. To be honest, Obama's already outed himself as a homophobe; would it be so surprising if it turned out that he wasn't a spineless and incompetent administror, and is really just a normal American Right-winger? Obviously, that last sentence was deliberately inflammatory, but the idea has merit.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba »

I really hate to double-post like this, but here's a second, similar source I just found.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009 ... ?ref=fpblg
Sources: White House Pushing Back Against Senate Public Option Opt Out Compromise

Multiple sources tell TPMDC that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is very close to rounding up 60 members in support of a public option with an opt out clause, and are continuing to push skeptical members. But they also say that the White House is pushing back against the idea, in a bid to retain the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

"They're skeptical of opt out and are generally deferential to the Snowe strategy that involves the trigger," said one source close to negotiations between the Senate and the White House. "they're certainly not calming moderates' concerns on opt out."

This new development, which casts the White House as an opponent of all but the most watered down form of public option, is likely to yield backlash from progressives, especially those in the House who have been pushing for a more maximal version of reform.

It also suggests for perhaps the first time that the White House's supposed hands off approach that ostensibly allowed the two chambers in Congress to craft their own bill has been discarded.

High level White House officials have floated the trigger idea a number of times, and it seems they continue to do so, even at this, crucial stage of the health care reform process, when their involvement is greatest. That has senators who support the public option concerned.

"Historically, 'trigger' mechanisms have not been successful, and they are not a substitute for a strong public health insurance option," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in a curiously timed statement. "A 'trigger' simply delays price competition, which in turn will delay affordability for consumers and moves us farther away from the goals of health care reform. Already, we are seeing insurance companies threatening to game the system, by raising their prices in advance of reform. The only way to curb price-gouging by health insurance companies is with real competition on day one--that is the public option."

Late update: In response to this report, White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer issued the following statement. "The report is false. The White House continues to work with the Senate on the merging of the two bills. We are making good progress toward enacting comprehensive health reform."
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Ritterin Sophia »

Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:To be honest, Obama's already outed himself as a homophobe;
Would you mind elucidating upon this? I have a feeling you're talking about his refusal to try and force through DADT when his political influence is under such fire by just a watered down semi-socialized healthcare system and thus further risk his policies being voted against, but I might just be assuming.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba »

General Schatten wrote:
Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:To be honest, Obama's already outed himself as a homophobe;
Would you mind elucidating upon this? I have a feeling you're talking about his refusal to try and force through DADT when his political influence is under such fire by just a watered down semi-socialized healthcare system and thus further risk his policies being voted against, but I might just be assuming.
Statements about being personally against gay marriage, asking for an invocation by a virulently bigoted homophobe, refusal to utilize executive orders (which he has used on multiple other issues) to suspend DADT policy, his justic department comparing gay marriage to incestuous or pedophilic marriage, etc.

Frankly, the entire red herring about Obama's 'limited political capital' is plain bullshit. More than 70% of the population would like to see DADT ended. The only people opposed to it being ended are people who are already out protesting this Muslim Communist - he would lose no support among any of his constituents, and it would actually be giving something to his gay constituents, who have not only been ignored but attacked on multiple occasions by this administration. Hilariously, the only actual progress on gay rights is stuff coming out of the State department, ie, Hillary Clinton, and between White House pressure to water down any reforms made - ie, the extension of government employee benefits to same-sex partners removing any actual benefits like spusal healthcare benefits or anything - and the spineless Congress, even that has amounted to... Nothing, really. The only current policies that are being trumpeted to gay Democrats are policies which were largely formulated or put into practice in the Late Bush White House.

But apparently people have just accepted, hook, line and sinker, that a super-majority constitutes 'limited capital'. Turns out the Republican Party and Caucus were just as fragmented and filled with divisive interests as the Democratic one is?
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Count Chocula »

Don't be so quick to characterise President Obama as a closet conservative; the White House opposition to a public option, which is an overt subsuming of the private insurance market, may be a smokescreen to have a "trigger" option implemented in any legislature that passes, should it pass. So what's a "trigger" provision? In short, it's a way for this Congress to pass legislation that has a financial and industry impact for which they will bear neither the credit (if it succeeds), or the blame (if it fails).

"Trigger" legislation would set parameters for state-by-state compliance with requirements for health care coverage that, to date, are not set. A convenient benchmark would be % of a state's population that is not covered, with a specified level of coverage. For example, if less than 95% of a particular state's population did not have insurance according to Federally specified parameters, or if that average coverage cost more than an as-yet-undefined Federally mandated cost, the legislation would automatically result in the birth of a federally-provided insurance option in that particular state. I realize this sounds a bit nebulous, but we don't have enough information today to say more; Congressional Democratic leadership is meeting with the White House behind closed doors and there's no legislation on the floor yet.

If this becomes reality, it would effectively result in the 111th Congress making commitments that would have to be supported, for good or bad, by the 112th, 113th, 114th, etc. Congress. It would effectively delay any electoral or financial reckoning for the vote to future Congressmen, many of whom may not have voted for the legislation. It would represent an involuntary commitment of a future Congress to the actions of a prior Congress, effectively making an end-run around them. It would be a way for this Congress to lay taxes, if it takes effect, that a future Congress could not affect.

Should health care "reform" legislation pass with a "trigger" clause, or mandatory insurance purchase under penalty of fines and imprisonment (in Baucus' bill), I'd expect a lawsuit challenging the legality of the legislation posthaste.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Knife »

You think the White House is settling for a trigger option? to do that would mean certain death for the bill in the House, and serious trouble in the Senate. It is a mistake to take what happened in the Finance Committee as the norm for the entire Senate, Backus's committee was very conservative compared with the majority of the Democratic caucus. A trigger option would be something the blue dogs might want, or moderate GOPers, not the majority of the Dems, and not something Obama's base would settle for. If indeed, Obama did toss in a trigger option, his base would explode in furry and pretty much end his term.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

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Count Chocula wrote: If this becomes reality, it would effectively result in the 111th Congress making commitments that would have to be supported, for good or bad, by the 112th, 113th, 114th, etc. Congress. It would effectively delay any electoral or financial reckoning for the vote to future Congressmen, many of whom may not have voted for the legislation. It would represent an involuntary commitment of a future Congress to the actions of a prior Congress, effectively making an end-run around them. It would be a way for this Congress to lay taxes, if it takes effect, that a future Congress could not affect.
:wtf: I thought virtually every action taken by Congress affects future Congresses. That's how we run deficits? So why can't they just go "o no" and pass a bill repealing the Public Option in a few years should the shit hit the fan?
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Count Chocula »

^ They could repeal the legislation, if the political will existed at the time the trigger initiated the expenditures.

On deficits, you're wrong. The Congress can't vote to repeal deficits incurred by prior sessions; what they can do is implement budgets to reduce or pay off deficits incurred by prior sessions of Vongress. Or preplanned expenditures. You see this all the time with defense allocations, like the F-22 and F-35 programs.

What a trigger would do is expose a Congress who didn't vote for the act to the displeasure of their constituents (or, to take the other side, pleasure) with limited ability to modify its impact on the deficits scams pork barrel district projects budgets they already enacted. Fast-track legislation to nullify the 111th's act could be done, I suppose, but it would be a political hot potato if the Federal plan has members and publicity by the time Congress got off its ass.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

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On deficits, you're wrong. The Congress can't vote to repeal deficits incurred by prior sessions; what they can do is implement budgets to reduce or pay off deficits incurred by prior sessions of Vongress. Or preplanned expenditures. You see this all the time with defense allocations, like the F-22 and F-35 programs.
A deficit is a real-life counterexample of the first sentence you wrote that I quoted, that "the 111th Congress [is] making commitments that would have to be supported...by the 112th, 113th, 114th, etc. Congress". Well yeah, nothing unusual about that. Aren't the level of Social Security benefits mandated by a continuing law, for example? You're describing some ostensibly scary ideas then speculating about lawsuits which sounds pretty baseless particularly considering how nebulous you conceded the idea is right now.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Destructionator XIII wrote:This isn't news. It has been obvious from day one that Obama was against real health care reform. If he actually cared about us, we'd already have single payer and the problem would be solved. He came in with a huge majority and people loved him (for whatever reason). He could have used that to save lives, but instead, he pissed it away to further enrich his rich friends on the death panels and in the banks.

People want Medicare for everyone. The recent rebranding thing has even shown that. But in Obamaland, it has never even been on the table. It's clear where his priorities are.
I disagree. While I cannot read minds and thus cannot really speak for all of Obama's personal motivations and goals, from a political point of view he cannot just fucking snap his fingers and change everything instantaneously. I don't care how fucking popular he is-throw in Conservative Democrats who don't like a public option at all along with Republicans who will oppose Obama no matter what, and the Senate is pretty evenly split on Health Care. Yes, I agree with the OP article that it could be done. And I think it probably will be. That doesn't mean it will be easy. And the article's implication that White House people are at Senate meetings to tell Harry Reid to drop the public option because of a deal they made with insurers is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, nothing more.

Obama said he wanted a public option. He has suggested he might be willing to compromise on that, and given the political situation I'm not sure I can blame him. But to jump from that to saying that "it has been obvious from day one that Obama was against real health care reform" seems somewhat absurd. Unless, like so many of Obama's supporters apparently thought, "real reform" to you means "Obama snaps his fingers and magically makes things work exactly the way you want them to."
What good is political influence if he isn't going to use it to help the people who most desperately need it? Besides, did he, or you, consider that if he actually fought to do the right thing, people might respect him more rather than less?
You know, I wish Obama had repelled Don't Ask Don't Tell, but I can understand his position of leaving it to the Congress rather than doing it by Executive Order, if only because I suspect the decision to overturn it would have more legitimacy in some people's eyes if done by Congress rather than by Presidential decree. And given how difficult passing health care reform is going to be, I can't say I blame him for wanting to avoid any other debates that might further weaken his support in Congress, however slightly. If I was in his place, I think I would weigh health care reform for the entire country, against passing a law to allow ten percent of the country to serve openly in the military, and reach the same conclusion as to where my priorities should be.

I expect him to move on DADT after a health care bill is passed, and I will be pissed if he doesn't. But I'm giving him until then, at least.

Face it: Obama is not God, and he is not dictator for life (as much as the Right presents him as trying to become one). 60% of the country might have liked him, but in a Congress with too many conservative democrats, that might not mean much. Of all the things that could happen in America right now, one of the ones that scares me most is the possibility that short-sighted and childish individuals on the Left will make a scene because Obama couldn't magically circumvent the system and make all their wishes come true in his first six months, and that we'll end up with a Romney or even a Palin in four years as a result.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Ritterin Sophia »

Destructionator XIII wrote:What good is political influence if he isn't going to use it to help the people who most desperately need it? Besides, did he, or you, consider that if he actually fought to do the right thing, people might respect him more rather than less?
I assume you haven't been watching the same news as I have, the one where conservatives blatantly fearmongered that our president would try to instill socialism into our youth and it was the beginning of some propaganda driven education system to turn us into the new Soviet Union? How about the one where we have citizens carrying assault rifles protesting taxes at a meeting where the president is going to be? Or you know the advocation of a violent revolution? I'm all for gay marriage and homosexuals being allowed to serve, but you'd have to be blind to not realize that UHC had 70% approval as well and not look at the problems we're having passing that. The opposition is a group of people who see ANY progressive law passing as the inevitable slide into a communist nation and I'm not under some naive illusion that the Democratic Party has a lock-step desire for liberal movements so we need some of those 'moderate' conservatives in Congress to support the bill for UHC. Repealling DADT through executive order will not only be seen as illegitemate and thus alienate a number of conservative Republicans and Democrats we need to vote yes on UHC but it can also be counteracted by the next conservative President with another EO. :roll:

Sorry for not being a naive idiot.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Civil War Man »

Saying that Obama is not a Liberal by the political standards of most First World nations is one thing, but claiming that he is secretly right wing is a stretch that comes close to Birther levels of conspiracy theories.

The reason why it is comes down to one question: Assuming for a moment that he is some right winger pretending to be a Democrat, why would he be doing it? If he were a right winger, why was he pretending not to be one when it was politically fashionable to be one? If he wants health care reform to fail, why is he staking so much of his political clout on having it succeed? It assigns him the same level of clairvoyance and cartoonish levels of supervillainy that the Birthers give to the people who "forged" his birth certificate.
The blog entry wrote:In House and Senate leadership efforts to merge their respective bills, it’s curious that no one has noticed that House Speaker Pelosi does not seem to need the White House to tell her how to merge three House bills while improving them. But apparently, Harry Reid is not capable — or cannot be trusted — to merge two Senate bills without having Rahm Emanuel, Peter Orszag and Kathleen Sebelius present every meeting.

There’s nothing wrong with the Senate consulting with the White House about what they’re willing to push and pay for. But the White House told reporters that all the key decisions would be made by Harry Reid. So why are these senior White House people, including the man who sees himself as the center of the universe, there if not to tell Harry Reid what he can and cannot decide?
Let us look at the facts surrounding this situation.
1. Harry Reid comes from a state with a sizeable conservative population
2. He has historically capitulated to the Republican on a wide variety of issues
3. High-ranking officials of Obama's administration are sitting in on Reid's meetings regarding the health care bill

This author takes those facts and immediately draws the conclusion "OMG Obama is forcing Reid to kill the health care bill!!!1!!one!"

If Obama wanted the bill dead, he could just sit back and let Reid do what he always does.
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Re: [Blog] The White House doesn't want a public option?

Post by Darth Wong »

Frankly, this is just what happens when an echo chamber forms. In this case, it's a left-wing echo chamber rather than the much larger and better-organized right-wing echo chamber (which has its own national 24/7 TV network), but the effect is the same: they are so isolated from the larger community that their positions start to seem "self-evident". Once a position seems "self-evident", they start seeing shadowy conspiracies everywhere, which is the only conceivable explanation in their minds why the larger community has not yet come around.

There is no hidden conspiracy here: just a lot of venal politicians in both parties, with whom Obama must deal. The people who dismiss the "political capital" idea seem to forget that Obama is not just at risk of facing Republican resistance; there is a real danger of revolts within his own party, from the traitorous "Blue Dog Democrats". And like it or not, Obama ran on a platform of being a conciliator. If he didn't, he probably wouldn't have gotten elected.
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