Succinct Quote of the Day

Rarely has so much been made about so little!

- Robert Reich commenting on Sarah Palin's book tour on This Week.

The Public Option Diluted

Robert Reich always has an uncanny viewpoint of events. His perspective on the Senate healthcare bill is direct and to the point in his article, Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option [emphasis added].

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It's a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a "holy war."

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word "public?" Make it available to only twelve people?

What does Reich suggest?

I want every Senator who's not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a "Ted Kennedy Medicare for All" amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a "Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All" amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn't have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.

Let's hope our Senators get Reich's point so we don't get stuck with Reid's.

Read more here.

Business as Usual

Bipartisanship - NOT!

It's nice to see that when the public gets sufficiently angry about something, Congress responds. In a rare show of bipartisanship, members are eagerly registering shock and outrage at AIG's bonus payments by coming up with an assortment of ways to reclaim the bonanza, including taxing them away retroactively. Who says democracy is dead?

But much of this is for show. When the public isn't looking, Congress reverts to its old ways. The Obama-supported plan to allow distressed homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages under the protection of bankruptcy has run into a Wall Street wall.

~snip~

Meanwhile, Obama's plan to limit itemized deductions for the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers (including the top 1.9 percent of small business owners) to 28 percent, starting in 2011, is also in trouble on the Hill.

Is It All Show?

The news that President Obama wants to put a cap on the salaries of executives who receive TARP money has put the exec's in a tither.

But Robert Reich thinks this proposed $500,000 limit on executive pay, is just for show.

The $500,000 seems little more than a symbolic gesture designed to reassure the public that the large amounts about to be asked for in the next stage of bank bailout -- likely far more than the $350 billion remaining in "TARP" (more on this in a moment) -- will not simply feather the nests of those who created the mess in the first place.

The guidelines don't actually put a cap on total pay but only on salaries (usually a small portion of total pay), and even then apply only to firms receiving "exceptional assistance" -- presumably especially large bailouts in the tens of billions of dollar range, such as went to Citigroup and AIG -- rather than to those receiving run-of-the-mill bailouts amounting to, say, under ten billion. Most firms getting bailouts may continue to pay their executives whatever they want to pay them as long as they disclose it to their shareholders and give shareholders an opportunity to express their views about it.

So why is Wall Street so upset about the faux $500,000 limit? Precisely because of its symbolism.