That's the kindest explanation I can think of.

Bloggeth the formerly-liberal perfesser a few days ago:

What this suggests is that the really important thing, for reformers, is to get the principle of universality established. Once that happens, there’s no going back.

Yeah, well, I guess it helps if you define universe.

Don McCann says abort. Then reboot:

The five reform bills passed by House and Senate committees will not control health care costs, and yet these are to be merged into one bill – that will not control health care costs.

What is the worst that could happen?

The second worst is that the final bill could be defeated and everyone would walk away with yet another failed attempt at reform. (Everyone would understand that very soon we would have to return to start over since the status quo is totally unacceptable.)

The very worst is that this bill could pass and everyone would walk away insisting that we have successfully reformed health care when all we have done is to establish an unnecessary and unethical ten-year long experiment that will cause financial hardship, physical suffering and even death – adverse outcomes that could be prevented with reform based on policy evidence rather than markets.

I think Dr. McCann is an optimist.

Cokie Roberts.

But AFAIC, she's right on this one -- or at least a hell of a lot closer to right about what you should do with a guy who drugs, rapes and sodomizes a 13-year-old kid than nearly any other Villager (or media / entertainment / political 'star') voice I've heard on this subject.

Remember, Polanski not only gave the kid liquor and Quaalude, he admitted it.

Luc Besson, director of Léon, refused to sign a Hollywood petition calling for Polanski's immediate release.

"There is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone," Besson said on French radio. "I have a daughter, 13 years old. If she was violated, nothing would be the same, even 30 years later."
Popular support in France for Polanski, who has lived in Paris as a fugitive ever since the episode, has quickly waned - if it was ever there at all. More than 70 per cent of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by Le Figaro believed that Polanski should be extradited to face justice.
Four hundred readers of the French magazine Le Point have written to condemn Polanski and the French celebrities who back him, dismissing them as the "crypto-intelligentsia of our country" who deliver "eloquent phrases that defy common sense".

Remember, Polanski not only pleaded guilty, he underwent a psych eval.
Remember, Polanski spent 42 days in a California lockup -- and 31 years running.

The Swiss say they wouldn't have let him go so long if they'd known. That's a little specious -- he owned a chalet there, and presumably had to show a passport upon visiting. But they did nail him, finally -- and publicly. If it's their idea of tit-for-tat over UBS ... I'm okay with that. Hell, I'd give 'em Phil Gramm in zip-tie handcuffs, if only I could.

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns has a lengthy post on Naked Capitalism entitled The recession is over but the depression has just begun. Basically, Harrison has concluded that despite the fact that the national government now remains the only entity that can "pick up the slack" in generating demand to get the economy moving forward, "large scale government deficit spending is politically impossible." Hence, welcome to America's new Lost Decade.

Really, I am just going to STFU.

Because one must not annoy one's health insurance company, nor must one annoy one's current employer, who may in fact be demanding twice as much work for no more pay, because one is bound to one's job as serfs were once bound to the land, but we won't really want to talk about it because the lives of oneself and one's loved ones may depend on one's ability to STFU.

And even though, more and more, one is encountering denial of medicines and services, in an apparent attempt to "cut costs" -- or perhaps "increase profits"? one must not talk about that.

Even though fiddling around with meds can sometimes, um, down the road, cause those who had previously been stable to, um, you know de-stabilize? Resulting in repeated, you know, hospitalizations? Which are actually more costly?

But -- I'd better watch what I say.

Then, I'll watch what you say.

Insisting on "Medicare Equality"? "Medicare for All"?

STFU.

For the so-called "public option" (or "plan") to work, the insurance companies must be tightly and successfully regulated, as its advocates will admit. This is true for several reasons: First, so they don't sell junk insurance to the people who will be forced to buy it via the mandate; so they don't deny coverage to those who have paid their premiums via scams like rescission; so they don't cherrypick those who are less likely to need insurance, throwing the rest of the burden on taxpayers; and finally, so they "play fair"* as contractors, when they manage and administer the "public plan" (or "option") for the government.**

Will tightly regulating the insurance companies work? Fortunately, we have a controlled experiment we can look at that compares single payer and the privatized approach directly: Medicare, and Medicare Part D. Don McCann writes at PNHP:

What’s beautiful about the Medicare Advantage program is that it has provided us with a real-life laboratory experiment which allows us to compare the functioning of highly-regulated private insurance plans as contrasted with the functioning of a public insurance program: traditional Medicare. The results are in, though that would be tough to ascertain if you simply observe the response of Congress.

What have we learned? The private plans take away the choice of health care providers that the traditional public program offers. The private plans insert intrusive interventions between the patient and the physician – interventions that are not found in the public plans. Private plans divert more resources to excessive, wasteful administrative services while increasing the administrative burden on the health care providers and on the public stewards who must provide oversight of our tax dollars that are diverted to this industry. Private plans also provide more entry points for the criminal element to cheat the taxpayers, patients, and providers. And for this we are paying far more of our tax dollars than we do in the traditional Medicare program for comparable levels of care. ... Our Medicare Advantage experiment has demonstrated that it is the private plans that must be jettisoned, and it is Medicare that must be granted to everyone after modest, appropriate reengineering so that it works even better than it does now.

BarbMD declares "This is what is sounds like when someone representing the Democratic wing of the Party speaks" in reference to AFL-CIO president Trumka laying down markers for what health reform must have, including the so-called public option (It is unclear if Trumka is referring to Hacker's 2007 Medicare Plus, or the sliver public option being debated in Congress). Trumka's line in the sand is the public option, but where do member unions stand?

Ian Welsh is on fire today:

[T]hose who are claiming TARP is turning “profits” don’t understand how this works.

The FED has large special loan facilities to banks, in which it gives them money in exchange for underwater securities. The FDIC has guaranteed huge amounts of debt issue by the banks. The FED is letting banks keep bad securities on their books at whatever value they want to claim. And they are loaning out money at concessionary rates while banks jack up interest rates to consumers, earning spreads of well over 20%.

Quoted by Greenwald. Of health care insurance rdeform:

MOYERS: I don’t think the problem is the Republicans . . . .The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives -- who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform -- to sit down and shut up. That’s what Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff at the White House, in effect told progressives who stood up as a unit in Congress and said: "no public insurance option, no health care reform."

And I think the reason for that is -- in the time since I was there, 40 years ago, the Democratic Part has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests. . . .

You really have essentially -- except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the country -- who, as Glenn Greenwald, who is a great analyst and journalist, wrote just this week: these narrow interests seem to win, determine the outcomes, no matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter who has their hands on the levers of powers, these narrow interests determine the outcomes in Washington, even when they have to run roughshod over the interests of ordinary Americans. I’m sad to say that has happened to the Democratic Party.

No, the two parties are not "the same." But they are different wings of the same palace: Versailles.

750 comments at Big Orange:

But I don't get how you can possibly hand me a health care bill with an individual mandate and no public option. If I'm uninsured or poorly insured, and the answer coming out of Congress is that I now have to buy crappy insurance from some private company that has no plan to actually help me pay for my health care without raking me over the coals, then I've gone into this fight an ardent supporter of strong reform, and come out a teabagger.

You're going to force me to pay an insurance company for shit insurance that as a free market actor I decided not to even try to buy?

Yeah. Your point?

The new 'Obamacare' plan that's getting crudely cobbled together right now in Congress features a system of mandates that are supposed to accomplish a number of key goals. These wonderful mandates -- we are told -- 'ensure universal coverage,' and 'drive down costs,' -- by 'preventing individuals and companies from gaming the system.'

Are any of these assessments accurate? Do these mandates actually ensure healthcare for everyone? Can they drive down and/or contain runaway costs in healthcare or lower overhead?

In a word, no.

Or, no - at least, if we are to judge these mandates based on their track record from places they've been previously implemented such as Massachussetts, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Maine.

That's according, anyway, to John Geyman, MD, Physicians for a National Health Plan.

So - let's look at some of the facts. . (via Progressive Review)

Since single payer advocates are being insulted by some*, and lectured** by others, for not understanding how the legislative sausage is really made, I thought I'd turn to people more likely to be insider experts than the "progressive" bloggers.*** Bill Moyers:

MARCIA ANGELL [of the NEJM]: And I would say, on the politics first, that it is something of a Waterloo. In the sense that if he doesn't get it right he's going to be President for three more years. And the chickens will come home to roost.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

MARCIA ANGELL: So-- well, it can-- the failure can show up before he's out the door. And then he's got a real problem. He was right in his press conference, when he talked about cost as the central issue. And he said, if we don't control cost, not only will the health system continue to disintegrate, but it'll drag the whole economy down with it.

What he has essentially advocated is throwing more money into the current system. He's treating the symptom and he's not treating the underlying cause of our problem. Our problem is that we spend two and a half times as much per person on health care as other advanced countries, the average of other advanced countries. And we don't get our money's worth. So, now he says, okay, this is a terribly inefficient, wasteful system. Let's throw some money into it.

That's a political problem Obama created for himself. It's a self-inflicted wound. The "little single payer advocates" -- who have, tragically, been excluded from the, er, political process and censored by the White House -- have nothing at all to do with the FAIL.

BILL MOYERS: Into the same system?

MARCIA ANGELL: Into the same system. That's his problem. The other problem, in the press conference, was that he was trying to mobilize public support for a bill, and we don't know what that bill is.

That, too, is a FAIL Obama created for himself. Single payer advocates didn't do that; Obama did. And single payer advocates don't have Obama's problem: We know exactly what we're advocating for, we can prove it saves money and lives, and our principles -- "Everybody in, nobody out" -- aren't vague bullet points concocted on K Street by the same lobbyists who are also writing the bills. Not that Obama didn't have help aiming the gun at his own foot from the same "progressive" enablers who didn't advocate for single payer when it might have made a difference, and who are now congratulating themselves on their expertise at selling a bad bill.

So here's the state of play. Obama's stuck trying to sell a plan that:

1. Nobody can understand, except for one thing:

2. It's going to do the same thing while expecting a different result.

As readers know, I've been looking for an explanation of what, if anything, "public option" actually means. I think I've finally found the right analogy:

[M]any congressional leaders of police reform insist that the votes are not there for a complete government takeover of America's private warlords and militias. As a compromise, Sen. Bill Melater, D-R.I., and others have introduced a bill that would include a public plan alongside a requirement for all Americans to buy private police protection. ...

... and penalize small businesses that don't provide health insurance. And have "a new regulated market known as a health insurance exchange" for those thrown under the bus the subsidized, except structure the market so that nobody who has insurance now will actually go out on the exchange to get a better deal -- the same exchange that is also supposed to "keep the insurance companies honest" by competing with them. The circle is, like, totally squared!

[Pounds head on desk.]

Do you get the feeling that our Democrats in the Senate are making things more complicated than they need to be?

is explained in a nutshell over at Delong's place. No, I'm not quoting the vileness that is Douthat. Dirtbag.

Sorry for that image, but it's from this great post from MarketTicker, who interprets this story from the Times:

Translation:

The banks are still carrying these "assets" at well-above their actual market value.  This means their balance sheets are showing them to be healthier than they really are.

The Government, which claimed it was going to "drain the swamp" and get the market moving again, tried everything short of the barrel of an M-16 in the mouth of people like Blankfein and Pandit, but couldn't get them to sell.

Granholm will be at the White House tomorrow and the hopeful word in some feminist circles is that she might be there for the announcement that she is being nominated to the United States Supreme Court. If this is the case, I think Democrats have very good reasons to oppose her appointment.

Ari Gibbs:

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, objected when reporters suggested that the president was planning to use the Bush administration’s system for prosecuting terror suspects. Mr. Gibbs said it was more like buying a used car but “changing the engine and painting it a different color.”

Just so we're clear, Gibbs is saying that if you buy a red Hummer, paint it blue, and put in a rebuilt engine, your Hummer is no longer a Hummer. Oh-k-a-a-a-y.

The health insurance parasites don't need to be "nudged" -- they need to be beaten down with a very large bat. Clark Newhall:

Don McCanne, the web editor of the Physicians for a National Health Plan, commented on a recent report released by the Congressional Budget Office discussing the current proposals for "building on our pressent system" as Obama phrases it. He points out that without a single payer system, any 'reform' will inevitably cost more money and deliver poorer quality than we already suffer. In other words, the current system cannot be fixed or 'reformed', no matter how many mandates or how many subsidies are legislated. The risk pool is too small, the incentives for middleman profit are too great, the administrative burdens of underwriting and selling are too pervasive---for profit health insurance companies must be relegated to the past, just like for-profit fire departments, for-profit public education, for-profit police departments and for-profit interstate highway systems. A public utility must operate for the public benefit, not for private profit. There is no more important public utility than the American health system.

Don McCanne's Comment: Everyone who is participating in the efforts to reform health care financing in the United Sates should have a copy of this CBO report. It describes in considerable detail the various policy decisions that must be made as we approach the goal of affordable health care for everyone, but only those policies that would apply to a multi-payer system of private and public programs. What is clear is that each policy decision under this scenario increases the administrative complexities of the financing system, and that the inevitable tradeoffs that must be made can only result in compromises that cause us to fall short on our goals of universality, equity, efficiency, quality, access, and affordability. Once the decision is made that we must build on our current system, there is no possible way to avoid spending more money for reform that would fall so short of a high-performance system.

Bingo!

In the Audacity of Democracy, I define bigoted language as language that relies on demeaning cultural stereotypes for its punch. One of the things that went badly wrong in the primary is that no one with a big enough megaphone to provoke a cultural discussion defined bigoted language. As a result, it became a matter of opinion whether something was sexist or racist. In point of fact, there are objective standards available to define these things.

I am, at this moment, so damn glad I am not represented at the state or national level by the subject of the video below that you're glad of it too. This ... nasty-nice Republican Representative stood up to speak on a hate crimes bill, and announced to the world that Matthew Shepard's death had nothing to do with his sexuality.

What you need to do   Read more…

Just aksin.

Would it be wrong not to?

So a 13-year-old honor student goes to school one day, and her classmate gets busted for having ibuprofen. Classmate fingers the honor student as having supplied the pills ... and the girl ends up strip-searched. Lawsuit ensues, with the aid of the ACLU. The US Supreme Court justices don't seem to care as much about the Constitution and Bill of Rights as about the kiddie-porn imagery, though.

"So if you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has drugs and you search every other place (and don't find any drugs) ... don't you have (a) reasonable suspicion that she has drugs in her underpants?" (USSC Justice Antonin) Scalia asked (during yesterday's oral arguments).

"No," (David O'Neil, assistant to the Solicitor General arguing on independent grounds for reversal) O'Neil said.

"Your logic fails me," Scalia said.

The search followed an unsupported accusation -- and the student who made it didn't say the student being searched currently had possession of ibuprofen, just that the pills the caught student had were received from that student previously. The student searched didn't have a history of discipline problems.

While Justice David Souter seemed to think this level of intrusive search excessive for possession of a common painkiller, Chief Justice Roberts apparently doubted that limits on searches of students and their clothes could ever be a good thing

... when it needs $330,855,884 worth of public relations.

[h/t DCblogger]

George Packer plays 11 dimensional chess:

Obama’s signature projects defy grouping under a single heading, and, as a result, he has been criticized for inconsistency. To take one example, he forced the chief executive of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, into early retirement, and yet he has not called for the removal of any of the failed leaders of America’s financial institutions, like Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis.

No, Obama's not being criticized for "inconsistency."