Politics or Poppycock

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Archive for October, 2009

Poll: Contra Cheney, Big Majority Backs Obama’s “Dithering” On Afghanistan

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 31, 2009

The Plum LineGreg Sargent’s blog

The GOP strategy on Afghanistan has been to frame President Obama’s choice as a decision over whether or not to go along with his commanders’ desire for an expanded counterinsurgency, and the new NBC/WSJ poll suggests it may be bearing some fruit.

But first, I wanted to flag some amusing numbers from the internals that make Dick Cheney’s claim that Obama is “dithering” for too long over what to do look pretty silly:

As you may know, the Obama administration has said it will not make a firm decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan until after that country’s upcoming runoff election when the president of Afghanistan will be determined and the political situation in that country is clearer. Do you support or oppose this decision?

Support 58%
Oppose 37%

Fifty-eight percent support Obama’s postponement of a decision. Looks like a big majority is just fine with his “dithering.”

That said, the broader GOP strategy may be moving the numbers a bit. Forty-seven percent support a troop increase, up from last month and higher than the 43% who oppose it. And 62% have more confidence in the generals to determine the way forward, while only 25% have more confidence in the President and his Secretary of Defense.

But, shockingly, the public adamantly doesn’t want Obama to rush this extremely complex and momentous decision.

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8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 31, 2009

By Adele Stan, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2009.

PR for the GOP? Yes. Platform for right-wing hatemongers? Definitely. But a news organization? Definitely not.

Even before Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, Rupert Murdoch had declared war on him via the personalities of Fox News Channel, a subsidiary of Murdoch’s media conglomerate, News Corp.
Since Obama’s election, the cable channel’s hosts and paid analysts have launched a full frontal assault on the president, smearing his nominees, calling him a racist and suggesting that his administration was trying to persuade disabled veterans to off themselves.
Now the fearmongers at Fox are crying foul since the president and his aides declared Fox not to be a news organization. Earlier this month, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Fox an “arm” of the Republican Party. Obama went even further, suggesting this week that Fox “is operating basically as a talk-radio format,” and we know what that means: A format in which the most provocative opinions dominate the discourse and facts are optional.
Yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Setting Fox apart from the two other cable news networks is its ownership by a corporation whose CEO and major shareholder is a mogul with an ideological agenda — who operates his News Channel as a propaganda machine for his anti-government cause.
He even has his own community organizer, a fellow named Glenn Beck, who can turn out a mob on a dime at your local town-hall meeting. His big ratings-getter, Bill O’Reilly, is a professional bully, handsomely paid to physically intimidate progressive commentators — on video — and to vilify others.
Murdoch’s agenda is simple: He’s against regulation of any kind. Famous for smashing the unions at his U.K. properties, Murdoch also has a pronounced disdain for labor.
In essence, Murdoch’s agenda tracks closely with that of the current GOP, that far-right rump of a party that once claimed to embrace a range of views under the canvas of a big tent. So he uses the Fox airwaves to raise funds for Republican political action committees.
We’ve seen the Fox News-branded hosts and pundits — such as Michelle Malkin and John Stossel — sent out gin up the fearful folk gathered by astroturfing groups funded by corporations that seek to derail government intervention of any kind, whether in the nation’s dysfunctional health care system or in its increasingly compromised environment.
Murdoch saves money by farming out the investigative-journalism functions of his alleged news enterprise to Republican Party entities, whose error-laden press releases are passed off as original Fox News research.
When you watch Fox News Channel, what you see is the advancement of that agenda through a media organ that seeks to turn regular people against their own interests — the better to enrich the coffers of Murdoch and his heirs — and that actively organizes those whose paranoia it has fed with lurid and untrue tales.
How else would you turn their fear of a bitter economy and an unstable world into rage against a president who ran for office on an economic platform geared toward the needs of everyday people?
Here we list a few of the reasons why Fox News Channel is anything but a news operation in the hope of shedding light on what it actually is: a massive media campaign for the consolidation of wealth through unfettered markets.
Why Fox News is not a news operation:
1. Glenn Beck, the community organizer — No other news operation in memory has ever hired its own community organizer, at least not one tasked with the mission of organizing paranoid people to march through the streets of the nation’s capital with signs depicting the president of the United States as a mass murderer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Preserving The Open Internet

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 30, 2009

thinkprogress.org

TECHNOLOGY

With the way the Internet is structured right now, it is just as easy for Americans to visit a tiny website about knitting run by a young mother in Ohio as it is to visit a site run by the federal government or a major corporation. This feature is part of the reason that in 1999, John Chambers, president and CEO of networking giant Cisco, called the Internet the great “equalizer between people, companies, and countries.” But powerful interests in the telecom and cable industries, along with their conservative allies on Capitol Hill and in the media, are trying to create a pay-for-play system where companies able to shell out large amounts of money would have the power to make their sites run faster. If they succeed, they will change the lives of 40 million Americans who use the Internet as their primary source of news and information. (Here’s what that could look like.) Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has explained what would happen if U.S. communications served the interests of broadband providers, rather than the public: “Imagine if you tried to order a pizza and the phone company said AT&T’s preferred pizza vendor is Domino’s. Press one to connect to Domino’s now. If you would still like to order from your neighborhood pizzeria, please hold for three minutes while Domino’s guaranteed orders are placed.” The solution to preserving the openness of the Internet is net neutrality, supported by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), prominent federal lawmakers, consumer groups, and the “geeks” who helped build the Internet. The coalition has even attracted unlikely allies such as the Christian Coalition and Gun Owners of America. But Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is trying to help telecoms and the cable industry make their destructive dream a reality. He recently introduced the inaptly-named “Internet Freedom Act,” arguing that rules preserving net neutrality would be a “government takeover of the Internet.” Join the tens of thousands of people who have spoken out in favor of a free and open Internet by taking action here.

PRINCIPLES FOR AN OPEN INTERNET: Last week, the bipartisan group of FCC commissioners unanimously voted to design regulations to preserve the open architecture of the Internet. Currently, the FCC follows four principles that guide its “case-by-case enforcement of the communications laws.” Chairman Julius Genachowski has summarized them as: “Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network.” He is now urging the Commission to make these principles official rules, in addition to two new ones essential to preserving the open Internet: 1) Broadband providers “cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications,” and 2) Broadband providers “must be transparent about their network management practices.” In July, Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which currently has seven co-sponsors and would establish an “overarching national broadband policy and ensures an open and consumer oriented Internet.” “This bill will ensure that the non-discriminatory framework that allows the Internet to thrive and competition on the Web to flourish is preserved at a time when our economy needs it the most,” said Markey.

THE KEY TO INTERNET GROWTH AND CREATIVITY: Internet giants like Google, eBay, Amazon, and Facebook would not have succeeded without net neutrality, which is why they support regulations preserving this non-discriminatory system. On Oct. 19, 24 leaders of major Internet companies sent a letter to the FCC stating, “Entrepreneurs, technologists, and venture capitalists have previously been able to develop new online products and services with the guarantee of neutral, nondiscriminatory access by users, which has fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity.” Internet pioneers such as Vinton Cerf have advocated preserving the system of “permissionless innovation” that fosters entrepreneurship. Craig Aaron and Derek Turner at Free Press have found that despite “frenzied” claims by opponents of net neutrality, such regulations would not be “catastrophic for investment.” They point out that in 2006, AT&T had to “respect Net Neutrality as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. In the next two years under Net Neutrality, the company’s overall gross investment increased by $1.8 billion — more than any other [Internet service provider's] in America.” While net neutrality wasn’t “solely responsible for AT&T’s increased investment, it also did not dampen growth. The Christian Coalition has raised civil liberties concerns, saying that “free speech should not stop when you turn on your computer or pick up your cell phone.” People should be able to use the Internet “without a phone or cable company snooping in…and deciding whether to allow a particular communication to proceed, slow it down, or offer to speed it up if the author pays extra to be on the ‘fast lane,’” testified Michele Combs, the Coalition’s vice president of communications, in March 2008.

THE OPPONENTS: Net neutrality’s biggest opponents are the telecom and cable industries, which want to profit off of Internet discrimination. AT&T and Verizon have both said that they are willing to accept some net neutrality regulation, which is a step in the right direction. But they still oppose Genachowski’s new principle prohibiting discrimination against certain content or applications. Some of these companies have already launched astroturf campaigns. AT&T chief lobbyist James Cicconi has “asked” his employees to “use their personal e-mail accounts to warn the FCC that Net Neutrality would ‘halt private investment in broadband infrastructure’” and requested that they flood FCC’s Open Internet site with anti net-neutrality comments. The FCC has also been receiving fishy letters that appear to be templates from unknown organizations purporting to be against net neutrality. The telecoms have now enlisted McCain, one of their longest-standing allies on Capitol Hill, to fight their fight. McCain argues that killing regulations preserving net neutrality is key to “innovation and job growth,” pointing to the success of Google and Yahoo (even though both companies support an open Internet). The Arizona senator was the top recipient of campaign contributions from this industry over the past two years, taking in $894,379. Even as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005, McCain made sure to craft technology rules that benefited his campaign donors. (Ironically, he is also someone who has been described as a “technological troglodyte” by former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, for the senator making comments about how he has “never felt the particular need to e-mail” and is a computer “illiterate.”) The telecoms and their allies have also successfully co-opted pundits like Glenn Beck, who is arguing that the FCC is key to President Obama “trying to take over the media.”

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House of Representatives–HCR Bill

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 30, 2009

It’s a long, long read…
For those such as me, page 366 begins the Medicare aspect of the bill.

The full text can be found at the following site:

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21804224/House-HCR-Bill


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Strongest Public Option Short of 218 House Majority

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 29, 2009

Strongest Public Option Short of 218 House Majority
House health care bill unveiled today. Cuts deficit, but includes weaker version of public option. W. Post: “The House legislation aims to provide health insurance of one form or another to almost all Americans at an expected cost just below $900 billion over 10 years, without increasing the federal budget deficit for at least 20 years, House Democrats said … Lacking the votes to pass it, House leaders abandoned an effort to include a public option backed by liberals that would establish reimbursement rates to providers based on Medicare … Instead, Pelosi is expected to offer a more moderate alternative in which rates would be negotiated between providers and federal health officials, similar to the way in which private insurance operates.”

NYT reports the bill will include a “millionaires’ tax”: “The cost would be offset by new taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so the bill would not increase the federal budget deficit in the next 10 years or in the decade after that. The new bill, like an earlier version, retains a surtax on high-income people, but increases the thresholds. The tax would hit married couples with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million a year and individuals over $500,000 — just three-tenths of 1 percent of all households, Democrats said. Ms. Pelosi can describe the proposal as a ‘millionaires’ tax.’”

LA Times notes it will cover more people than the Baucus bill: “…after 10 years, it will boost those covered by about 35 million people, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That is substantially more than the more conservative bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee this month, which would have dropped the number of uninsured by 29 million.”

Politico questions if CBO will say the second decade is deficit neutral: “The CBO analysis will show that the bill runs surpluses in the first five years and deficits in the second, making it deficit neutral during the first decade. BUT those late decade deficits were raising questions about whether the CBO will be able to declare the second 10 years deficit neutral.”

HCAN flags Raleigh News & Observer report on Blue Cross and Blue Shield raising premiums while complaining about unfair competition from public option: “many customers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina are ticked off at the mail they’ve received recently from the state’s largest insurer. First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year. Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan.”

Republican senators sad business lobbies don’t hate reform as much as they do. The Hill: “[Sen. Kyl] said some industries have sat on the sidelines and ’some folks that have made some kind of a deal and may live to regret it.’”

FireDogLake challenges Sen. Blanche Lincoln: “If her opposition to a government run insurance program is truly philosophical and not just politically convenient, I look forward to all those Committee hearings on how the government can’t continue to insure Big Ag’s profits.”

Reid’s bill still needs CBO scoring on new insurance tax, “free rider” thresholds. CQ:
The bill makes an important change to a significant revenue-raiser borrowed from the Finance Committee bill (S 1796) — an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans. It was originally written as a 40 percent tax on plans costing $21,000 per year for a family, indexed to inflation plus 1 percent. Reid, D-Nev., has raised that figure to $23,000, with the same growth rate of inflation plus 1 percent. The result will be less revenue raised by the tax, which will likely have to be made up elsewhere.
Reid’s bill has been sent to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be scored, but with several policy options that are still being negotiated.
One option under consideration is a fine on employers whose workers get government subsidies to buy health insurance instead of getting coverage through the workplace … The fine would be $750 for every worker. For a 100-person company, if some workers got the subsidized coverage, the employer could pay $75,000 in fines. In the original Finance bill, the penalty was either $400 per employee or the average cost of the subsidies that were going to workers in the company, whichever was smaller. Companies with fewer than 50 employees are exempt in the Finance bill…
…A lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Chuck Loveless, said union groups would keep pushing Reid to get rid of the tax on high-cost insurance plans, something they argue will be passed on to workers through higher premiums. “Our goal right now is to eliminate the excise tax from the bill,” Loveless said. “It’s still not adequate from our point of view, but it is an improvement,” he said of the changes. “We commend the leader for the effort he has made.”
Reid’s legislation probably will not be unveiled until the CBO scoring is complete. “That could take four days, and it could take two weeks,” Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Charles E. Schumer of New York said Wednesday. “No one knows.”

House Hearings Today On Too-Big-To-Fail Bill
AFL-CIO to oppose House bill, reports OurFuture.org’s Mike Elk. “In an advance copy of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s prepared [House] testimony that I obtained, Trumka will tesify that: ‘The discussion draft would appear to give power to the Federal Reserve to preempt a wide range of rules regulating the capital markets – power which could be used to gut investor and consumer protections … We are also deeply troubled by provision in the discussion that would allow the Federal Reserve to use taxpayer funds to rescue failing banks, and then bill other non-failing banks for the costs.’”

New Deal 2.0’s Joshua Rosner argues the bill not aggressive in preventing meltdowns: “The House draft bill written by Rep. Barney Frank (D – MA) – along with several former Fed attorneys and Treasury staff and consultants — ignores fundamental reality: You don’t employ a bomb squad to sit around and wait for a bomb to explode, you engage them to dismantle it as soon as they find one … An honest bill would recognize that any institution that is ‘Too Big to Fail’ should be given economic ‘incentives’ (through prohibitively high capital levels and insurance assessments) to shrink or sell off business units.”

Naked Capitalism not pleased: “Government Is Trying to Make Bailouts for the Giant Banks PERMANENT”

CQ reports Rep. Frank is putting some limits on Fed power, but not necessarily enough to satisfy critics: “The legislation … would create a Financial Services Oversight Council to determine which firms could pose a threat to the economy, rather than leaving the decision entirely up to the Fed … The central bank would still wield plenty of authority under the legislation. The council would hold the broad power of designating threats, but the Fed would have the ability to take drastic action against firms it deems systemically risky and critically undercapitalized. Among the Fed’s options would be firing and replacing boards of directors and senior executives and forcing the divestiture of financial institutions. The central bank also would be able to approve or deny mergers and acquisitions by identified institutions and would have the power to restrict their growth.”

Rep. Maloney backing off of her weakening amendment, HuffPost’s Shahien Nasiripour reports: “Rep. Carolyn Maloney, of New York, originally proposed that firms with market capitalization less than $75 million be exempt from a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act … [now she is[ instead [calling] for a study of the costs of complying with the already-existing provision, and delaying its planned implementation by a year.”

HuffPost’s Tom Edsall reports on new poll showing great concern that policies favor Wall Street: “A paltry 13 percent of those interviewed for the September 2009 survey said that the average Joe and Jill have been ‘helped a lot or a fair amount’ — compared to 65 percent who think regular folks have gotten little or no assistance from the government. Fully 54 percent of respondents said Wall Street investment companies have been helped – and nearly two-thirds said the large banks have been taken care of.”

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General fallibility

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 27, 2009

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Years ago, I bought an old Time magazine — the issue with the 1965 Man of the Year on the cover. I stuffed it into an old picture frame and kept it around to remind me of the fallibility of men, and, even, of Time magazine. It was of Gen. William C. Westmoreland. He was the Vietnam era’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Westmoreland was an utter failure, and I do not mean to suggest that McChrystal is the same. Yet at the time the square-jawed Westmoreland appeared on the cover of Time, he was seen as something of a savior — the man who would lead America out of the swamp of Vietnam. When he addressed Congress in 1967, his speech was interrupted 19 times by applause. A bit more than a year later, he was gone — replaced by Gen. Creighton Abrams, who, we are told in Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War,” could have won if he had only been given the chance.

I am no more familiar with McChrystal than I was with Westmoreland. I do know, though, that from time to time the media swoons for a soldier, especially a handsome one (Westy had matinee idol looks), and McChrystal — as lean, if not as hungry, as the ambitious Cassius — fits the bill. As with that other celebrity soldier, David Petraeus, McChrystal is a fitness buff, the sort of disciplined man less-disciplined men admire both out of senses of awe and insufficiency. Discipline and dedication are not to be belittled. Still, I cannot imagine Gen. Dwight Eisenhower putting out his cigarette and going for a four-mile run — not unless Mamie was coming after him with a cleaver.

The other thing I know about generals is that they do not ask for less — less equipment or less personnel. They ask for more, just as Westmoreland did in Vietnam before reality — otherwise known as domestic politics — forced Lyndon Johnson to rein him in. If Sorley is right about Abrams, the war could have been won with fewer men. As it turned out, South Vietnam was ultimately defeated because Congress turned its back on it — not pretty or necessarily honorable, but effective.

This is why McChrystal’s request for 40,000 or so additional troops for Afghanistan ought not to be taken as some sort of holy writ. These requests are a starting point, a place to begin the debate. Those whose battle cry is “Give the generals what they need” are actually saying “Give the generals what they want” — which is not responsible policymaking. President Obama’s protracted review of all the options is precisely the right approach. We have gone to war in a hurry once too often of late. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Obama Administration, Afghanistan, Opinions | Leave a Comment »

Bring the troops home

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 27, 2009

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Barack Obama didn’t set out to be a “war president,” but that’s what history compels him to be. The nation and the world are fortunate that he doesn’t have the reckless, ready-fire-aim mentality of George W. Bush. But Afghanistan doesn’t present the kind of “false choices” that Obama, by nature, habitually rejects. The choices are real and awful, and no amount of reframing and rephrasing will make them go away.

Monday’s tragic events — 14 Americans killed in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan — remind us of the decisions Obama faces. At least he seems to recognize that he can’t just let the situation drift.

But it looks as if Obama’s inclination is to disappoint both hawks and doves — and, yes, I’m consciously using Vietnam-era language. The debate over whether we stay or leave is bound to become sharper and more passionate as American casualties continue to mount.

One person who deserves no voice in that debate is Dick Cheney, who helped get us into this quagmire. By turning from Afghanistan prematurely to launch an elective, unnecessary and ill-advised invasion of Iraq, Bush and Cheney managed to transform one war we were winning into two that we were in danger of losing.

For Cheney to charge that Obama is “dithering” over sending more troops to Afghanistan, when he and Bush ignored a troop request from U.S. commanders for the better part of a year, is obscene. For Cheney to complain that Obama ought to simply accept the Bush administration’s in-depth analysis of the situation in Afghanistan, rather than conduct his own careful review, is a sick joke.

That said, Afghanistan is Obama’s war now. And his considerable successes in pursuing his ambitious domestic agenda teach him nothing about how to proceed.

His basic method has been to avoid drawing bright lines between mutually exclusive positions. He looks for ways to reframe issues so that what once was an either-or proposition can be transformed into a both-and scenario. On health care, for example, he set out to provide both universal coverage and long-term cost control. The legislation that now seems likely to emerge doesn’t quite do either, but it does some of each — and Obama, by splitting the difference, has managed to bring us closer to meaningful, though imperfect, health-care reform than we’ve ever been.

But the decisions on Afghanistan truly are either-or. Obama can decide to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy or a counterterrorism strategy. He can do one or the other — not both. If he chooses counterinsurgency, he has to send enough troops to make that strategy work. If he doesn’t want to send all those troops, he needs to pursue counterterrorism or do something else.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan who has devised the counterinsurgency strategy, is asking for 40,000 or more additional troops. Obama is right to examine the general’s calculations, but it would make no sense to try a middle path and approve, say, a troop increase of 20,000. That would just put more Americans in harm’s way without giving McChrystal the resources he says he needs. This game’s been going on for eight years. It’s time to raise or fold.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Bending the Health Care Cost Curve

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 18, 2009

Posted in *Healthcare Issues | Leave a Comment »

Why Health Reform Is the Right Prescription for Health Professionals and Their Patients

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 18, 2009

© Center for American Progress

Health Care

healthmemo1009_onpage.jpg

SOURCE: AP/Nick Ut

Nurse Allison Tanksley checks Samantha Fierro’s blood pressure during a free medical care clinic.

By Ellen-Marie Whelan, Mandy Krauthamer | October 5, 2009

Download this memo (pdf)

The health care community will play an important role in the eventual implementation of health care reform legislation, but will also have a unique ability to explain to patients how health reform will impact their lives, the health of their communities, and the delivery of their health care. The public has very high confidence in health professionals to recommend the right thing. One recent survey found that 79 percent of responders had at least a fair amount of confidence in nurses’ groups, and 70 percent in doctors’ groups.

The health care system is broken and health professionals agree we need reform

Health professionals see the shortcomings of our health care system firsthand every day: insurance companies denying coverage for the care they prescribe, families losing access to their doctors, and a system that forces them to spend more time with paperwork and less time with patients. They see a health care system that is uncoordinated, payment incentives that are misaligned, and inadequate investments in prevention and wellness.

The broad health care community has shown unprecedented support for health reform in recent months. Many health professionals have been supportive of health care reform efforts in the past, but medical professional organizations have been traditionally resistant to reform. Yet even these groups are now publicly advocating on its behalf. In the physician community, organizations representing over half a million physicians have publically endorsed the heath reform legislation moving through Congress. It is clear that clinicians’ interest to best serve their patients is aligned with the American public’s desire for a health care system that works. Both groups no longer accept the unacceptable status quo. Today’s evolving consensus on health reform targets precisely the issues that have frustrated clinicians and hampered their ability to do their jobs.

Creating a health care system—a true system—that works well for all Americans is the most important goal. Health care providers have long attempted to “work around” the myriad of barriers they encounter when trying to provide a single standard of high-quality patient care. They volunteer in free clinics, alter plans of care for patients with inadequate health care, provide important services that are not reimbursed, and trudge through seemingly arbitrary health insurance regulations.

There are six core elements of the emerging health reform package that meet the provider community’s shared goals and will begin to fix this dysfunctional system:

1. Expanded insurance coverage for all Americans

2. Delivery system reform and payment innovation

3. A focus on prevention and wellness

4. Enhanced primary care and chronic care management

5. Robust comparative effectiveness research

6. Attention to the health workforce

Each of these elements will help ensure that providers are better able to serve their patients in critical ways.

1. Expanded insurance coverage for all Americans

A system in which all Americans have adequate health insurance coverage would allow health professionals to provide needed care to all Americans without cutting corners. The health care reform proposals that Congress is developing contain many common measures to improve health care coverage for all Americans. The most important aspect of health care reform is making coverage more affordable for the 46 million uninsured and the 25 million underinsured Americans.

Health insurance exchange: Legislation in both the House and Senate contain a health insurance exchange. The exchange would create a marketplace where individuals not covered by an employer’s health plan could comparison shop and purchase coverage with benefits and rates similar to those negotiated by large employers.

Subsidies for low-income Americans: The legislative proposals would provide subsidies on a sliding scale to enable more low-income and middle-class Americans to purchase health insurance within the exchange.

Caps on out-of-pocket spending: The bills place a limit on the maximum amount an individual spends on health care in a single year or over a lifetime, which would greatly reduce the incidence of medical bankruptcy.

Expansion of Medicaid: The legislation expands the Medicaid program so that is can provide insurance to many more low-income individuals. It is estimated that this provision will cover an additional 11 million people. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Healthcare Issues | 1 Comment »

Bill Moyers: Was the Financial Bailout Just a Slick, Friendly Takeover of the Federal Government?

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 17, 2009

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted October 12, 2009.

Moyers interviews Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a hero of

Michael Moore’s latest documentary, and former

IMF head Simon Johnson on Wall Street’s

purchase of our democracy.

The following is excerpted from the transcript of Bill Moyers’ interview with Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Simon Johnson, former head of the International Monetary Fund, from PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal.

Bill Moyers: I sat in a theater packed with passionate moviegoers, every one of them seemingly aghast at the Wall Street skullduggery exposed by Michael Moore in his latest film. It’s called Capitalism: A Love Story. Here’s an excerpt:

Michael Moore: We’re here to get the money back for the American people. Do you think it’s too harsh to call what has happened here a coup d’etat? A financial coup d’etat?

Marcy Kaptur: That’s, no. Because I think that’s what’s happened. Um, a financial coup d’etat?

MM: Yeah.

MK: I could agree with that. I could agree with that. Because the people here really aren’t in charge. Wall Street is in charge.
Bill Moyers: That’s the progressive representative from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, she’s with me now. She has a master’s from the University of Michigan, did graduate study at M.I.T. and still lives in the same house in the Toledo working-class neighborhood where she grew up. She’s in her 14th term in Congress, the longest-serving Democratic woman in the history of the House, and she’s an outspoken financial watchdog on three important committees: appropriations, budget and oversight and government reform. Also with me is a familiar face to viewers of this broadcast. Simon Johnson is the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He now teaches global economics and management at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He’s one of the founders of the Web site Baselinescenario.com. I check it out daily for Simon’s take on the economic and financial crisis. It’s been a year since the great collapse, and both my guests are well equipped to assess what’s happened since then. Welcome to you both. MK: Thank you.

BM: Let’s look at this story that I just read from the Associated Press this week about how Treasury Secretary [Timothy] Geithner is on the phone several times a day with a select group of very powerful Wall Street bankers, especially Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs. He will talk to them when members of Congress have to leave a message on the answering machine. And these are the bankers who helped bring on this calamity and who are now benefiting from it. What does that say to you?

MK: That says to me that Wall Street and Washington is a circuit. And because Mr. Geithner headed the New York Fed that that historic relationship, unfortunately, continues. And it gives them special access and special power to influence policy.

 Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Economy | Leave a Comment »

Afghanstan – A Plan to Win

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 17, 2009

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Afghanstan–A-Plan-to-Win-by-sameh-abdelaziz-091015-794.html

October 17, 2009

By sameh abdelaziz

Should Americans shoulder the burden of the war in Afghanistan? Is it fair to put forty thousand additional families through the grinder as per General McChrystal’s request? Is the war winnable?

These questions come at a time of economic upheaval, with unemployment at twenty-six years high, a government drowning in debt, and citizens suffering silently searching for the very basic promise of America.

The current poisonous political environment that transformed ex-doves into vicious hawks, and magically helped others see the light of a new world where American military might should never be thrown around at a whim, makes it impossible to find the sound of reason in the mist of all the raving. However, the questions are legitimate and need answers.

Our enemy is not a race, a tribe, or a nation. The fight is against a distorted ideology based on a flawed interpretation of the reasons behind the demise of Islam as a political power and Muslims’ role in the world. An army of mostly uneducated individuals with very little earthly inspirations and bleak social existence carries the so-called holy war. They are armed, and willing to die, for a cause beyond our control.

Moreover, the conditions that produced organized terrorism in Afghanistan at a global scale are now widely spread in places such as Yemen and Somalia. Fighting in every failing nation on earth is not an option. Holding every Muslim suspect is impractical, illogical and beyond our reach.

Nevertheless, leaving Afghanistan –now- is the wrong choice. We did it once in the early eighties. Two decades later, our nation had to mourn the innocent victims fallen on September 11. Read the rest of this entry »

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Idea Of The Day: A Health Care System That Works For All Americans

Posted by James O'Rourke on October 15, 2009

Center for American Progress

Idea of the Day: A Health Care System that Works for All Americans

October 15, 2009

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Health professionals see the shortcomings of our health care system firsthand every day: insurance companies denying coverage for the care they prescribe, families losing access to their doctors, and a system that forces them to spend more time with paperwork and less time with patients. They see a health care system that is uncoordinated, payment incentives that are misaligned, and inadequate investments in prevention and wellness.

Creating a health care system—a true system—that works well for all Americans is the most important goal. Health care providers have long attempted to “work around” the myriad of barriers they encounter when trying to provide a single standard of high-quality patient care. They volunteer in free clinics, alter plans of care for patients with inadequate health care, provide important services that are not reimbursed, and trudge through seemingly arbitrary health insurance regulations.

There are six core elements of the emerging health reform package that meet the provider community’s shared goals and will begin to fix this dysfunctional system:

  1. Expanded insurance coverage for all Americans.
  2. Delivery system reform and payment innovation.
  3. A focus on prevention and wellness.
  4. Enhanced primary care and chronic care management.
  5. Robust comparative effectiveness research.
  6. Attention to the health workforce.

Each of these elements will help ensure that providers are better able to serve their patients in critical ways.

For more on this topic, please see:

  1. Why Health Reform Is the Right Prescription for Health Professionals and Their Patients by Ellen-Marie Whelan and Mandy Krauthamer

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