It looks like Max Baucus may finally unveil the Senate Finance Committee’s version of the health care bill tomorrow. It has a mandate and it has co-ops, but it doesn’t have a public option. It would be a tremendously bad and obnoxious bill. But it doesn’t really matter what is in the bill. If it even passes through the committee it will still have to be merged with the Senate HELP Committee’s bill. And if that combined bill actually passes through the Senate, it will have to be merged with whatever passes through the House. It’s actually more likely that the Senate will filibuster the bill and force the Democrats to resort to the budget reconciliation process. But, we’ll see what happens. I’m just glad that Baucus is finally going to present something.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Mandated, so-called co-ops would be a big fat transfer of wealth directly from the pockets of citizens to the insurance industry. BC/BS, United Healthcare, and all the other scammers will simply roll out “new,” “co-operative” divisions and rake in the windfall. What a pile of crap!
Well, I don’t know if they’d be able to set up co-ops, which are envisioned as citizen-owned. But if those co-ops couldn’t compete, they’d use the mandate to get a ton of healthy customers.
Way back during the primaries, I preferred Obama over Clinton because she said, “Mandatory,” while he said, “Voluntary.” She said, “the risk pool has to be large enough,” and he said, “if it’s affordable, people will want to buy it and the pool will be big enough.”
I know what the word, co-operative, is supposed to mean and that it implies a non-profit organization, too. But, I recall reading that BC/BS of some mid-western state has already proposed to set up a division to “administer” such an animal. Let me see if I can find a link…
BC/BS started out as a co-op way back when. I think it is still kind of publicly owned, but no longer non-profit.
Here’s where I got my impressions:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/health/policy/18plan.html?hpw
“Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota dominates the state’s private insurance market, collecting nearly 90 percent of premiums. As a nonprofit owned by its members, the company would hope to qualify as a co-op under federal legislation, said Paul von Ebers, its incoming president and chief executive.”
The word, Carolina, could be substituted for Dakota and the story would be the same. They claim to be non-profit and member-owned while paying millions to their management, rejecting 28% of claims, and — in our own case — expecting one-third of our annual income for the honor of membership.
With mandated co-ops, BCBS would qualify for Federal subsidies! Let’s say, they’d get half of their grossly inflated premium directly from us and then get the other half indirectly from our taxes. Of course, they’d promise to reduce their costs “over time” so the Feds would pay less while the citizen’s share edged upwards…
What a scam! These people are E-Vile! O please, O please, don’t force me to do business with them!
The latest Research 2000 poll shows Obama and the Democratic Congress losing Dems and Independents:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/4/775471/-Weekly-Tracking-Poll:-From-Bad-To-Worse-For-The-B
lue-Team
Many progressives have expressed frustration with President Obama’s refusal to commit to a government-run health insurance plan. If the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has their way, the president will soon hear from them directly.
The PCCC is fundraising to put out an ad featuring former Obama campaign workers, volunteers, voters, donors and staffers telling the president to insist on a public option in health care reform.
The group is circulating a petition among Obama supporters who are disappointed by recent news out of the White House.
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4951/content.jsp?content_KEY=2793&tag=pod_digby
Please sign if you support the fight for the public option.
Is there a more effective way to bury something than to release it on Labor Day weekend?
Figures. Mandates and co ops. The two things that we the people hate the most.
Doesn’t stand a chance in hell. Will Baucus go away now? And hopefully we never have to see or hear from him again.
Didn’t the Republicans say they won’t vote for anything with co-ops in it, because it’s a trojan horse for the public option, or something similar?
Ues. Jon Kyl did the honors in making that announcement.
I just hope that when the conference groups are selected, Harry Reid has the sense to not include any of the Baucus bunch. They’ve screwed things enough. At least grant us that, o FSM.
I don’t know who Baucus thinks will vote for his little piece of crap plan. The rethugs sure won’t vote for any kind of reform and the dems better NOT vote for it.
So what’s the point of even putting something like this out? Oh wait, he has to justify his existance. When it merges with the HELP plan the rethugs STILL won’t vote for it and hopefully the dems won’t either unless it dumps the co op and puts in a public option.
And mandates? uh no. I certainly won’t comply and be forced to pay the insurance company thieves. And I’m sure I am not alone on that. So then they’ll have to come up with a whole other bill to enforce the mandate-like taking our tax refunds, or taking it out of our paychecks or out of our unemployment money or putting us in insurance jail or taking away our drivers licenses. That’ll be real popular. And Mr. Obama can begin looking for a job after 2012.
Worst part of the baucus plan:
“Employers who did not provide coverage would have to help pay the cost for many of their low-income workers — those who qualify for federal subsidies to buy insurance on their own.”
That just means a smart businessman simply wouldn’t hire poor people. Why is it so fucking hard to just spend the extra 100 billion dollars on upping subsidies? It’s just 10 billion a year.
It’s $10 billion for the poor. Can’t justify that.
Yeah, they need that to buy a couple more smart bombs.
If y’all haven’t read Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article “Sick and Wrong” yet because it was behind their firewall and you didn’t subscribe to the magazine, it is available now for all to read on the internet. It’s long. Nine pages printed.
You really need to read it if you haven’t. He really sums it all up well. As I see it, if we can’t offer a last-minute substitution for this entire disastrous set of bills, we need to kill the entire effort and allow nothing to pass.
…and I wonder if this was all in Obama’s master plan. Leave it to the congress. Let them come up with a clusterfuck of bad legislation that makes everything infinitely worse in every respect and then swoop in with a clean bill to replace it all. We can only hope.