Film at 11: "Progressive" A-list front-pagers continue single payer coverage blackout FAIL

public option in with this. For that fact, John Edwards' public plan as well. I think we could all accept the public plan with some grace, if it was genuinely public - AS HILLARY'S PROPOSED PLAN WAS - and not this Romney care they've cooked up.

spending bills related to the war or, hell, even the potential filibuster of the FISA bill (which was never going to happen). Jane Hamsher put her whip to work on trying to get timelines into the recent Afghan war spending bill, which lost as was predicted. So I don't think the fact it's likely to lose has been their standard on other things. Most "progressive" blogs routinely cover legislative initiatives that are likely to fail, but worth supporting anyway.

not one that counted, mind you, but a little so to keep them in line.

Seeking to dampen liberal anger about deals cut with centrists, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said House leaders have agreed to allow a floor vote on a government-run, single-payer system.

"A lot of members on our committee want a vote on that," said Waxman said in an interview. "I believe their wishes will be accommodated."

SNIP

Legislation creating a single-payer system would be expected to lose, but would allow liberal members to record their support for the proposal. It will also be a tough vote for some Democrats who will be wary of upsetting the liberal base.

Nice little pat on the head, but then there's this:

Waxman is trying to maintain the support a number of liberals on his committee who don't like the cuts that Waxman, the Obama administration and House leaders negotiated with centrist Blue Dog Democrats.

"I'm still not sure he has the votes," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). "Some people who said they were a yes are not supporting it."

Hhhmmm....

to the Editor is one of the most frequently read sections of the newspaper especially on Sunday when many papers open up that section. Peoples' eyes may glaze over at news ..er, wire service articles or skip the columnist whose views they hate, but they seem to be fascinated with what their fellow average Jane/Joes have to say...even to the point of writing letters to the editor in response to someone else's letter they disagreed with.

And don't stop with your local paper. I have noticed in my travels that many underpowered small town papers actually feature a larger 'Letters' section and don't appear to discriminate against letters from outside the community, especially if you live in the state and can hook some connection in your lede...e.g., vacation there, relatives, friends etc. Since these areas are more likely rural, they are especially ripe for interesting factual letters.

Occasionally on my rambles I have also seen the same letter published in a couple of different papers....just sayin'..

No Yiddish Allowed in Congress

July 31, 2009
Rep. Anthony Weiner let his passions get away from him just now, reaching back to the old country (Brooklyn) for some language in arguing for a single-payer health care system, and inveighing against insurance companies.

“We’re not going to take hundreds of billions of dollars a year and give it to insurance companies who give us bupkis,” Weiner said, veins bulging.

That prompted a gavel from Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and a joking rebuke.

“The gentleman will speak English,” Waxman said.

If anyone has a better spelling of bupkis, we welcome your suggestions, because we’ve got, well, nothing.

- Michael McAuliff

Well, how is "bupkis" spelled?

I keed: Here's the actual reporting.

Weiner, who high-fived Tammy Baldwin after getting the deal, crows in a quick press release:

“It’s a Better Plan and now it’s on Center Stage,” says Weiner

Washington, DC - Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee announced today that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to give Single-Payer an up or down vote when healthcare reform is considered before year’s end.

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Co-Chair of the Middle Class Caucus and member of the Energy & Commerce Committee who led the effort with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA); Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY); Rep. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL); Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL); and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), released the following statement:

“Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.”

Public Record article ;isted above:

Swanson's article in American Chronicle looks at some of the political strategy and tactics underlying Waxman and Pelosi's offer of a floor vote. It answers one of my earlier questions as to just what they were up to. I'm quote at length because I think its important to try to suss out what the WH and leadership are doing:

The U.S. House of Representatives has committed to bringing single-payer healthcare to a vote following summer recess. Stranger things have happened, greater obstacles have been overcome, than what would be involved in winning that vote, winning in the Senate, and compelling the president to sign the bill. We have a moral responsibility to put everything we have into trying; and even a near-victory will advance the cause.

But it is important to recognize exactly how that promise of a floor vote on single-payer came to be, what else is at stake, and what we are up against. Being properly informed, I think, will not diminish by one iota the ferocity of our campaign for justice, but it will alter our strategy by adding a secondary demand to it. ....
SNIP
So, here's the truth. Congress is not voting on single-payer healthcare purely because we forced it to, or because the bill is (prior to our shaking the country up this summer) even remotely likely to pass. Our advocacy for single-payer has had an impact. We're a big reason why some congress members are fighting for a public option. Whether or not you consider any of the current versions of public option worth the paper they're written on, the fact is they'd be weaker without the public demand for single-payer, and were that demand stronger so would the public option be. Our work has also led to passage in the House Education and Labor Committee of an amendment that would make it easier for states to create single-payer systems. And our advocacy led to the promise of a floor vote on single payer in the fall.

But the floor vote was negotiated as an alternative to a vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee. We lost the opportunity to have a vote there. And the Democratic Party leadership, which largely takes its orders from the White House on this, was not so much afraid that single-payer would win on the merits, as that it would pass because Republicans voted for it purely out of spite. The Democratic "leaders" badly wanted to get a bill out of that committee before August, a bill that would at least vaguely resemble the bills passed by two other House committees. Rather than risk failing in that goal, they preferred to allow a floor vote later that would not interfere with the bill they want to pass, and which itself -- at least in their minds -- would be extremely unlikely to succeed.

Allowing such a vote would have another positive side-effect from the point of view of those in charge: it would overwhelmingly distract attention from the state single-payer language passed by the Education and Labor Committee. From their point of view, national single-payer will not pass on the floor this year, not with them whipping hard against it and the Republicans opposing it. But if the language on allowing states to do state-level single-payer is left in the bill that they whip for and pass, it's unlikely to cost them any Blue Dog votes, and it's likely to result in a number of states fairly quickly taking actions that accelerate public awareness of the shortcomings of the federal reforms.

From the point of view of people who really want to get our population better healthcare and who have not been purchased by insurance, drug, and hospital companies, lobbying for Yes votes on single-payer AND lobbying to leave the states language in the non-single-payer bill (or at least allow a vote on it) seems to make a lot of sense. We're saying that we want single-payer nationally, but that if they won't give it to us right away, we at least want states to be left free to lead the way. Canada arrived at its system after a province led the way, and the first state likely to create single-payer, California, is about the same size as Canada. If Canada's system does so much good, why would we deny the same to California?

For those lobbying directly for a public option, it also makes perfect sense to demand freedom for states to do better faster. If the goal is providing more people with better healthcare, if the goal is not to avoid making the federal government look second best, if the goal is not to achieve a perverse hyper-simplicity of "messaging," then including the state single-payer language in August demands is the way to go.

Does mentioning allowing states to do single-payer subtract from demanding that the nation do it? I can't see how.

Does avoiding the topic risk tossing aside our best chance at advancing the cause? Absolutely. (My emphasis)

Analysis?

How many folks here blog under multiple nyms? Just curious.

Policy: No outing without nym holder's permission.

times. First time, I couldn't make out one of the letters in the security code, then I didn't notice the password had to be filled in before reentering the new security code. After that, even when I knew I'd put in the matching letters (and sometimes the letters were so weird I wasn't sure), still didn't take.

I clicked away, came back, tried 4 more times--no go.

WTF? Grrrrrr.

if you count the 'not working' as the elderly and the very poor on medicaid.

the general argument is correct overall, even if some details are elided. we do have three classes of people enrolled in medicare right now: those who have paid for it and are using it but are no longer paying for [elderly], those who are paying for it but can't use it [employed nonelderly], and those who can't pay anything at all. by virtue of having a ssn every last one of these people [ie, all of us] is enrolled in medicare already.

for partisan politics. You end up not caring nearly as much about the policy as you do about simply beating the other team.

Of course, when you start enacting terrible policies, you inevitably lose to the other team. How does digby or any of the A-listers think the Dems won? They weren't Republicans. Although for some bizarre reason they think the answer to electoral heaven is to keep going forward with GOP policies.

Looks like there's been some sort of failure in the Townhouse email filters.

amendments to draw the Repubs into voting against Medicare (they didn't take the bait).

LINK

That kind of behavior is inexcusable.

The only thing I did to Digby today was take her out of my bookmarks. The Palin post did it. I'll still go and read something that interests me if it gets linked somewhere, it's not a boycott or anything. She's a talented writer and one of the best when it comes to critiquing the rightwing noise machine. And, hey, it's her blog she can write (or not write) whatever she wants to, but I'm not spending a second of my time reading about rumors regarding Sarah Palin's marriage. Until recently, I would've thought Digby would've agreed with that.

These are weird fucking times.

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/digby/4...

We were all pained to hear of your loss. Truly.

Even if you don't agree with the post or the agenda, let's not allow this to mutate into a personal disrespect that's the last thing any of us would ever intend.

Here's what I wrote to Digby:

Certainly you have a point that you, specifically, weren't honor-bound to post on a certain topic at a certain time.

But these things are true:

* The A-list has provided little oxygen to the single-payer movement
* The A-list has taken a relatively unchallenging approach, hauling in behind the ill-defined "Public Option"
* The A-list, overall, didn't jump on the Weiner story -- which is consistent with the above
* The A-list has communications and cultural mechanisms to make a certain story or angle travel fast and get traction. At no point has the single payer movement, nor [the story about] the Obama administration's active marginalization of it, benefited from those mechanisms
* You've argued that we shouldn't fuss too much about what goes in the health "reform" sausage

That, and not how you spent your Friday night, is what's relevant here.

Does that ring true to you? Given your observations in Boehlert's book, you're surely well-aware of how the A-list cultivates (or at least neglects) certain narratives.

Now, I've been a little confounded by your take on "public option" for the following reasons:

* I made the argument, commenting both on your site and on your posts at C&L, that "Public Option" / "Stand with Dr. Dean" smells like Lucy-and-the-football -- and AFAIK, you never responded to any of the comments
* You favorably linked to an Avedon post that echoed (and linked to) my comments

As best I can tell, your position is ("shorter" constructions usually sound snarky, but I'm just trying to be concise, not snarking here):

* People need reform now, so let's hope for the best with the "public option," rather than rattle cages for single payer
* Howard Dean isn't going to sell us out

Is that a fair summary?

I'd love to be able to have a real discussion with you on it. Could we do that?

In any case, you are in my thoughts in your time of trial. Very best wishes to you.

personally suffer is almost always in my thoughts. When I read about proposals to "reform" health INSURANCE, I want to scream. And I think of you. I think of other people with no health insurance or insurance they pay lots but which covers very little. I think of the cost savings and benefits of single payer.

I think of a young woman I met who was clerking in a small dress shop, now out of business. We would talk politics, and she told me she was ecstatic that Clinton (this was a long, long time ago) was going to do something about affordable health care. She was born with one of those rare, difficult to treat and manage conditions. Her parents' lost their health insurance due to the expense of her care. Their employers had such steep price increases due to the coverage of their daughter that the parents were told they could only have coverage for themselves and their non-chronically ill children. Eventually, the state of NJ developed a program for such people that the Big Insurers wouldn't touch, and that was how this young woman was covered. How she stayed alive.

Her problem was that she was aging out of the program. She was a college senior, had been applying for jobs, had some interviews, got tentative offers -- but couldn't pass the physicals. Job offers disappeared. She was feeling desperate, as with graduation, she was on her own.

We were both so excited about Clinton and the coming change! Alas....

I lost touch with her when I was transferred and then the shop closed, but I've never forgotten her. I still wonder how she's doing. Did she find a job with a big enough employer to handle her effects on their health insurance bottom line? Did she marry into health insurance? I'll never know. But I still wonder.

I want the best health CARE we can get -- for everyone. I want people to know about Medicare for All. I want the MCM to be forced to cover single payer/Medicare for All. Will the A-Listers covering it help make the MCM cover it? Maybe, maybe not. Will it affect Obama and his Chicago Boys econ-health insurance team? I don't know.

Won't know if the coverage isn't there.

My own GP told me that there simply aren't enough people being vocal and active to overcome the power of the Big Insurance Parasites' (BIPs)' and other Big Health Industry Players' (BHIPs) monetary importance to both parties. I said I call, write, email; he said there aren't enough like me. (He's very concerned as the BIPs lower his reimbursement every year.)

I'm desperate to get Medicare for All. I'll have cleaned out my savings by the time I make it to Medicare--I might have squeaked through had the market not tanked when I needed to take out big bucks to feed my Big Insurance Parasite (BIP). But I want it for others...NOW. Not 4 (or more?) years from now. Not 10-15 years from now.

Interestingly, Ed Schultz had a come to Medicare for All moment, according to a diary on DKos, when he went to talk up the amorphous public plan and the crowd kept calling out for Single Payer, Medicare for All!

Fascinating account-- after many speakers about problems with coverage, lack of coverage, the problems with the various permutations of the public plan. Then Dr. Frankel, a Portland pediatrician since 1965, spoke:

...he told Ed that just hours before, Speaker Pelosi guaranteed that a single payer amendment to the health care bill, HR 676, would get a full debate and vote in the house after the August recess. Dr. Frankel got a standing ovation from the overheated packed house.

This was the final turning point for Ed Schultz. He had heard enough. Ed promised everyone in that room that he would start pushing for single payer on the radio, on TV and at his appearances. He swore he would become the voice for this movement to single payer. Over 600 people heard his oath, and we will all hold him to it.

PS--I don't really have bookmarks (keep forgetting to check them), but I read you every day.