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The Illusory Promise Of Free-Market Health Care Miracles by Wendell Potter, publicintegrity.org | September 5, 2012
The proponents of a pure free-market health care system hope that Americans have amnesia and can be persuaded to blame President Obama for the problems that grew almost immeasurably worse between the demise of the Clinton plan and the passage of the Affordable Care Act. They want us to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that health insurers and the largely unfettered, loosely regulated marketplace can somehow turn things around. And that we should reward insurers for their failure by turning the Medicare program over to them. In many respects, the free market approach to health care has indeed been just what the doctor ordered, although not for patients. There is fresh evidence almost every week that our uniquely American free market health care system continues to fail us. read more »The Medicare Killers by Paul Krugman, The New York Times | August 31, 2012
Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night may have accomplished one good thing: It finally may have dispelled the myth that he is a Serious, Honest Conservative. Indeed, Mr. Ryan’s brazen dishonesty left even his critics breathless. Some of his fibs were trivial but telling, like his suggestion that President Obama is responsible for a closed auto plant in his hometown, even though the plant closed before Mr. Obama took office. Others were infuriating, like his sanctimonious declaration that “the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” This from a man proposing savage cuts in Medicaid, which would cause tens of millions of vulnerable Americans to lose health coverage. But Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program. read more »How Romney Keeps Lying Through His Big White Teeth by Robert B. Reich, robertreich.org | August 29, 2012
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster. A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion. Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired. Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they’re effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they’ve been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media? The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers. read more »Why "Playing The Race Card" Works for Conservatives by Terrance Heath, OurFuture.org | August 29, 2012
Come the revolution, rich, white, male conservatives will be the only people left who can "play the race card" and get away with it. Actually, that revolution is already here. And, with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron, it is being televised — in the form of Mitt Romney's attack ads, focused on Obama's imaginary "gutting" of welfare reform. There's a dark, bitter irony in this latest chapter in the ongoing saga of race in America. Our first African-American president can't talk about race. As Ta-Nehisi Coates explains in his excellent article in The Atlantic, "Fear of a Black President," Barack Obama has become "the most successful black politician in American history," by steering clear of "the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear." Yet the success of the GOP's Romney/Ryan ticket, dubbed "white and whiter" by Salon columnist Joan Walsh, actually depends on exploiting the "radioactive racial issues of yesteryear." At this stage in the game, there's only one reason a campaign doubles down on a particular strategy — especially one with so much potential to backfire: it's working. The question is: Why does it work? There are at least a few reasons why it works. See Dave Johnson's post and Digby's post for more about why we on the left are part of the reason it works, and how we can begin to do something about it. For my purposes, I'm going to focus on to big reasons why playing the race card works so well for conservatives: the media, and the base. read more »Republicans Steal Medicare From The Democrats by Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post | August 28, 2012
Who knew? In the hall-of-mirrors parallel universe where the Republican National Convention is taking place, the GOP stands tall and proud as the party of Medicare. I’m still a little confused about the historical timeline in this alternate reality. Was it President Goldwater who signed into law the nation’s health-care guarantee for seniors? Was it President Dole who made sure the program remained solvent? Did John McCain win in 2008? It must be that in RNC World, the past simply doesn’t exist. There is no other explanation for all the Great Society rhetoric coming from Republicans who once claimed to favor small government, limited entitlements and a balanced budget. read more »George W. Bush as Hurricane Isaac by Robert B. Reich, robertreich.org | August 28, 2012
There is nothing Republicans would rather the American people forget more than George W. Bush, who doesn’t even have a bit-part at the GOP convention opening in Tampa. But W’s ghost may be there, anyway. The National Weather Service says tropical storm Isaac is now heading for New Orleans, and Isaac is projected to become a Category 1 hurricane by the time it makes landfall late Monday or early Tuesday. The GOP was intent on not even bringing up Bush’s name at the GOP convention, because the former president might also remind Americans how little the Republicans care about average Americans, like those caught in Hurricane Katrina, and how much they care about top corporate and Wall Street executives, like those being entertained in Tampa. But Hurricane Isaac seems likely to remind Americans anyway. read more »Romney’s First 100 Days by David Leonhardt, The New York Times | August 27, 2012
It is the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 7, and after a long night of celebrating and a short night of sleep, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan wake up to confront the question awaiting every new administration: Of the campaign’s many promises, which few will become the real priorities? If they win the White House, Republicans are also more likely than not to hold on to the House of Representatives and win a narrow majority in the Senate. The party could then embark on the kind of aggressive legislative push that President Obama and the Democrats did in 2009. Only four years after Democrats seemed on the verge of historic policy gains, Republicans could reverse many of those gains and then some. They could cut the top tax rate to its lowest level in 80 years (as Mr. Romney proposes) and make major changes to federal programs. read more »The Republican Plan To Overhaul Health Care by Sarah Kliff, The Washington Post | August 27, 2012
The 2008 Republican party platform on Medicare and Medicaid was pretty vanilla. It called for minor tweaks to the program that just about any health wonk could get behind, things like better coordination between doctors and more vigilance against fraud. The whole section came in at about 200 words. Politico has obtained a draft of the 2012 proposal and, for health care, four years has meant a sea change. The Republican party now throws its weight behind a complete restructuring of both entitlement programs. Since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, they have operated as insurance plans where subscribers receive a set amount of benefits. The Republican plan calls for a fundamental change to that structure. They want to set a specific budget for the program and then have seniors and states figure out what benefits they can purchase. The concept of “defined benefit” gets thrown out the window. read more »The Real Romney-Ryan Budgets Cuts Aren’T To Medicare. They’Re To Programs For The Poor. by Ezra Klein, The Washington Post | August 23, 2012
As a general rule in politics, if you’ve got two guys from the Republican Party running for president on a platform that says you can’t cut even a dollar from Medicare for current retirees. But here’s the thing. Paul Ryan says his budget cuts more than $5 trillion in the next decade. Less than a trillion of that is coming from Medicare. Mitt Romney says his budget cuts about $7 trillion from the budget over the next decade and not a dollar of that comes from Medicare. If you’re not cutting Medicare or Social Security or defense you’ve already taken more than half of the federal budget off the table. And you know what’s mainly left, the big pot of money you can still cut? Programs for poor people. read more »Reversing Obama's Medicare Cuts Makes Medicare Go Bust Faster by Matthew Yglesias, slate.com | August 22, 2012
One key argument Mitt Romney has been advancing about Medicare is that the Obama administration "raided" the program in order to pay for the Affordable Care Act. Since political journalism tends to exist in a plane of pure rhetoric, a lot of the Democratic pushback on this has focused on the fact that Paul Ryan and other congressional Republicans are banking on these very same cuts in order to make their own budget math add up. But Jackie Calmes' piece in today's NYT makes the more important point that Obama's alleged raid increases the life of the Medicare trust fund, and if Romney reverses the "cuts" the program actually goes bust sooner. That's because what Obama cut wasn't the flow of revenue into the Medicare piggy bank, it was the reimbursement rate Medicare pays out of the piggy bank. read more »
The Latest
In Colorado, Craving Reform of Health Care and Congress , The New York Times | January 11, 2010
President Obama hopes to sign a bill that guarantees access to insurance, outlaws the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and subsidizes premiums for many low- and middle-income people. Heading into Congressional elections this fall, Democrats hope voters will reward them for a historic achievement. more »
Hidden Costs of Medicare Advantage, The Washington Post | October 16, 2009
President Obama has proposed cutting more than $100 billion in subsidies over 10 years, a contentious component of health-care reform that will be fought in earnest as the bills move through Congress. But unlike some issues that touch off partisan sparring, Medicare Advantage has an unlikely band of bipartisan defenders who have already battled to restore $10 billion of the proposed reductions. more »
Health Care Triumph Gives Way To Heightented Battle, Los Angeles Times | October 16, 2009
The battle over healthcare entered a new, more frenzied stage Wednesday, as lawmakers and powerful interest groups jockeyed for advantage now that most believe some form of an overhaul will ultimately be signed into law. The Senate Finance Committee's passage Tuesday of a sweeping healthcare bill -- with the support of all of its Democratic members, plus Republican Olympia J. more »
White House Team Joins Talks on Health Care Bill , The New York Times | October 16, 2009
A delegation of senior White House officials met on Wednesday at the Capitol with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the chairmen of the Finance and health committees, as Democrats turned their full attention to merging competing versions of the comprehensive health care legislation. more »
Swing Voters To Play Trump Cards In Senate Showdown, Los Angeles Times | October 16, 2009
With Republicans almost unanimously opposed to a healthcare overhaul and with 60 votes needed to thwart a threatened GOP filibuster, every Democrat and independent has become vital for Senate strategists. more »
Democrats Address Their Own Rifts on Health Care, The New York Times | October 15, 2009
Deep fissures among Senate Democrats became evident on Thursday as lawmakers moved closer to a floor debate on legislation to remake the health care system. The divisions involved two issues: whether the government should sell health insurance, in competition with private insurers, and whether Congress should offset any of the cost of legislation to increase Medicare payments to doctors. more »
Health Insurers Emerge as Obama's Top Foe, The Washington Post | October 14, 2009
Now they have an enemy. For months, President Obama and his administration waged their fight for a health-care overhaul without a clear opponent, even courting the industry executives and interest groups that helped kill reform efforts 15 years ago. more »
Health Care Turns to Harry Reid, time.com | October 14, 2009
Now that the last of the five congressional committees with jurisdiction over health care, Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee, has passed its much anticipated reform bill, it falls to majority leader Harry Reid to cobble together something that can pass the Senate. more »
Poll Shows Democrats Lead On Issues, CNN | September 4, 2009
Despite the drop in President Obama's approval ratings, Republican policies are still not as popular as Democratic policies, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates the GOP has gained some ground in polls in recent months, but Democrats still hold the advantage on key issues such as the economy and health care. more »
Democrats Consider Setting "Trigger" for Public Option in Health Reform, Los Angeles Times | September 4, 2009
Looking to break the logjam on health care legislation, the White House and Democrats in the Senate are increasingly placing their hopes on the idea of a "trigger" that, if set off, would allow the government to offer health insurance to many Americans. more »
