A mandate to buy overpriced junk insurance is not progressive reform. Progressives should vote no.

Is the white house also going to do a similar “stress test” on the blue dogs, to see where they might be able to bend? Or is this flexibility only being searched out on the liberal side.

Penalties on individuals for not buying insurance will start at about $6 billion a year, according to CBO.

The penalty in the House bill is 2.5% of income, equal to $1000 or more for many people.

According to CBO, $6 billion / $1000 = ~6 million mostly lower-income million people will be fined for not buying insurance that they feel they can’t afford.

This number will increase over time because premium subsidies are not properly indexed to inflation. This is not progressive reform. This is bullsh!t.

as a sign of just how jaded, cynical, ok, skeptical I have become with all the gamesmanship that goes on

last night I wondered if someone in Leadership prodded Stupak to throw this tantrum as a means to keep CPC amendments off the floor

yes, I know he is a long time member in good standing with the Xtian Mafia, but I also think Leadership is genuinely surprised by the depth of CPC’s resistance. Leadership has successfully used the Blew Dogs for this sort of tactic again and again – but with current polling, they went to another well.

Bowers:

The Tri-Caucus does not appear to have won this time, but they do seem to have improved at playing the influence game

yep, yep, and yep. a significant and under reported story in this battle

will wait and see how CPC Co Chairs proceed

man oh man what an excellent question ?

maybe Reps Grijalva and Woolsey should ask it aloud ?

I was thinking the same, that’s a question that really must be posed to the obama administration so he understands;

the progressives represent mainstream america not the blue dogs, the “supposed” liberals have expectations the majority of americans have they are not “left of center” they are center

Indeed. After all, the choice Speaker Pelosi just made – in consultation with her fellow Party bosses who run the House and/or in accordance with whatever she and Obama discussed at their private luncheon a week ago Thursday – with regard to ditching Medicare Plus 5% in the final House bill, is exactly that: A deliberate choice to pressure the Progressive Caucus to buckle on the House leadership’s fait accompli bill (which is now worse for people and better for corporate profits), while easing the way for the demands of the Corporate Dog Caucus by removing any need for them to put their public votes on the record against a (more-people-friendly) bill disliked by their corporate donors.

[As an aside, why did Pelosi apparently pretend - in response to a question from TPM on the conference call yesterday - that she was "too busy" working the health care legislation to know what Obama was up to with regard to lobbying House members on the public option, just a week after Pelosi's private luncheon 'audience' with Obama? What did Pelosi and Obama discuss at that luncheon? The weather?]

I think I’m actually understanding less about the real pros and cons of this health care legislation the more the private deals and the PR mount.

I despise the fact that the political Parties in Congress have basically shut down genuine floor debate on the issues, which is the best opportunity to hear informed pro and con arguments passionately delivered – on the merits, not just on, or because of, the damn Party politics – in order to make up our own minds on the legislation, and on the legislators debating it, accordingly.

This obsessive Party-protecting pre-vote head-counting so as to avoid any democratic ‘surprises’ on the floor, is a power-protecting, democracy-dismantling practice that’s now just accepted as routine in Congress, as Pelosi’s mostly-unremarked-upon apparent plan – to pursue her preferred ends at the expense of the democratic means – to forbid any floor amendments on this massive and momentous piece of House legislation just further exposes and reinforces. [Not to mention that the implementation dates in this legislation seem designed to protect the president's reelection chances, by not kicking in the least-popular provisions until a second term in office...]

Congressional incumbents aren’t just “professional fundraisers” (as phred rightly called them) instead of lawmakers, they’re also professional hucksters, as that carefully-stage-managed and elaborately-produced, self-laudatory press conference yesterday outside the Capitol demonstrated in spades (the way Pelosi gratuitously threw in Kennedy’s name at the end to sell her product was disgusting; having his patina on the ‘negotiated rates’ is obviously one reason she figured she could strip out Medicare Plus 5 and sell the result as not so bad).

“A win” is a means to an end, not the end itself. Winning election is a means to effect improved policy and better outcomes for the American people and nation. “Winning” a floor vote on lousy legislation is a “win” in no one’s world except that of the power-protected politician, and, of course, the profit-worshipping campaign funders whose policy desires were heeded via that lousy legislation, above and at the expense of the well-being of the people and the greater public good.

[I do thank you, dday, for this helpful reporting about the latest round of secret, 'compartmented' negotiations on this legislation. It's just a crying shame that our public House and Senate floors are now off-limits, because of the dictates of Party PR, to genuine public debates about the most important and far-reaching federal policies and priorities.]

No kidding. It’s not “what do you want” but “what’s the bare minimum we can give you”

dump the fucking mandate.

I think I’m actually understanding less about the real pros and cons of this health care legislation the more the private deals and the PR mount.

amen. and i’ve been seriously trying.

No health care reform without a robust public option accountable to Congress and available to the American people on Day One. And let’s keep reminding DeeCee that this is a SIGNIFICANT compromise already from what the American people really want.

I’d take opt-out if we had Medicare + 5 rates and the PO was open to everyone.

Short of that, let the PO and Individual Mandate cancel one another out and just for the business practices reforms without granting the insurance sector a coerced customer base.

Same here. I feel like this is sausage-making except I’m the one going through the meat grinder.

hey D Dayden,

not rhetorical, and not generic (but deserved) Rahm bashing -

just how does WH think they are going to get around Labor, specifically AFL-CIO with Triggers ? that they even suggested them to CPC tells me they may not be completely up to speed on the current landscape – but just how does Emanuel think he is going to finesse this with the likes of Trumka and McEntee ??

good way to put it, me too

“But clearly, the White House wanted to feel out that opposition and see if they could potentially break it down.”; how much more evidence does anyone need to understand that the Obama Admin is nothing but the top bitch for the corporate pimps and start calling out Obama?

It would have been good if congress had this much trouble approving the iraq war. Many lives could have been saved.

Nah, just redo it — mandate that every American is covered under Medicare. And make it start now. Oh, and flush the Eshoo biologics “gouge us forever” amendment, too.

Ah, but the fix for the Iraq War was in all across society; Paul Wellstone was the one big roadblock left, and he got killed in a plane crash right before the election he was about to win in large part because of his opposition to the planned war.

Remember, the “liberal” network MSNBC, then in its infancy, dumped Phil Donahue’s show — its highest-rated show at the time, which had started to take chunks out of Bill O’Reilly’s hide — because he was questioning the rush to war. Even now, its liberal programming amounts to two out of the twenty-four hours of its programming day.

LOL! and fix medicare. and pay for it with taxes.

yep, i’m in!

Amen to that! If this is the sort of crappy pseudo-reform they’re going to give us then that mandate needs to come out. Of course if this plays out the way it’s looking, I think we’ll see enormous gains by Republicans in 2010. We can only hope their libertarian wing, their religious fanatic wing and the corporatist wing cancel each other out before they really screw us.

they better vote against it.

1) medicare +5%
2) available to EVERYONE not just those without insurance
3) available on day 1

without those 3 progressives should vote against it or they’re backing down from thier word and I have to become even more jaded than I am now.

I Fuckin’-A love The Simple. Or, would that be The Obvious?
(If I’ve heard this option voiced in my house the last several weeks, I’ve heard it 25 times.) My mister’s a very smart person. You too, more than obviously. *g*

I agree with you. However, as someone that supported Obama with time and money, I am beyond disgusted. He has so betrayed us on healthcare. He has given the insurers and pharma almost everything and the citizens worse than nothing. Where is his support, his advocacy and his use of the bully pulpit for meaningful reform? He squeezes those that represenet the public interest and coddles the corportists. He has pulled the biggest bait and switch in history. In my own limited circle that is very mixed politically, there is a real sense of failure for any good reform. This is going to cost him and the Democrats dearly in 2010. The last time a pol flip flopped this bad was when Bush said he didn’t believe in nation building.

I just tweeted this post to the Obama’s twitter account:

@BarackObama: Want to know what your “base” really thinks about your efforts on health care? Read this: http://tinyurl.com/y8e877n Not good.

If anyone else has a twitter account, please feel free to use above or modify to suit yourselves. I’m about to post it on Facebook, too.

I’m pasting verbatim an EPU’d comment by Kip Sullivan to an earlier thread, which provides crucial context for the PO rating-structure debate:

This issue about whether the PO should be authorized to use this rate or that rate is irrelevant until it has been shown that the PO will be big enough to make any rate below the market average stick. The great debate about whether the House bill should authorize the PO to use Medicare plus 5% is a flaming red herring. Until PO advocates propose a PO that will achieve large size, there’s no point in authorizing the PO to pay providers below-private-sector rates. Authorizing the Dems’ pathetic little PO to use low reimbursement rates is like authorizing me to fly to the moon. Great, thank you for the “authority.” Now could you give me the tools to fly to the moon.

The decision by clinics and hospitals to accept PO-insured patients at rates even with or below the insurance industry’s rates will hinge on how big the PO is IN THE PROVIDER’S LOCAL MARKET (as opposed to nationally). Until we have some assurance that the PO in any given market will have enough market share to induce providers to accept below-average rates, there’s no reason to debate whether we want the PO to have the authority to charge this or that rate.

Incidentally, Medicare was never “authorized” to reimburse at rates below te private sector. Medicare just does it and gets away with it because it’s so big — and big UNIFORMLY across the country. So, if the PO is so “like Medicare,” why does it need “authority” to charge Medicare-like rates?

Similarly, there is no law that says providers have to accept Medicare patients. So if the PO is so “like Medicare,” why does it need the ridiculously vaporous “opt out” provision in HR 3200, or anything resembling a stick or declaration designed to make providers accept PO-insured patients?

This PO rabbit hole we’re in is sooo strange.

Kip

I would add to that:

Carefully designed, closely monitored and effectively policed risk adjustment procedures (to offset the effects of ‘adverse selection’ – i.e. sicker patients ending up on any insurer’s rolls, public or private)

Now we finally know where all the resistance is coming from. Obama wants a fig leaf to pretend that we are getting the public option and still keep his arrangements with teh Insurance Industry. It is not Rahm, this is Obama pushing to neuter the public option. A public option trigger has no more chance of being executed than the trigger on the medicare part D plan. They are currently legislating to close the doughnut holes, why didn’t that problem and the skyrocketing premiums and drug costs trigger the “back up ” plan. Because the trigger is a feel good facade. Everyone gets to say the voted for the public option with the knowledge it will never see the light of day. This is a major betrayal.

By the way, Is it true that the DNC chair passed away? No one has heard from him for months. I am wondering if Obama might want to rename Howrd Dean to take his place.

No public option go with single payer and the young population can start paying in with a teired system and those very rich republicans,bank ceo and
those bastards that make millions off of war can pay in.They have taken advantage of us long enough.I have written my state reps and said they’d bettter vote “no” I am with Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich on this one.
I get daily e-mail to donate to Obama or the DNC. NO MORE!!! Obama sending more troops at a cost of what 50,000 per soldier. Money keeps going to the middle east. We can’t afford health care but can support intrastructure of all these other countries? I am done.The middle class needs to bring these
Senators and Congressman down.Start making our list of who we will remove from office.Start with Lieberman and these blue dogs. Then start pulling our money out of these “too big to fail banks” Put our money in credit unions or our community banks.I have already done it. Let’s use our power and stop these people who have been too concerned about making money off of us and taking money from insurance companies to line their own pockets.
Obama and his side kick Rahm has sold us out.LET THE BILL FAIL!WE WANT SINGLE PAYER THAT STARTS NOW!!! Let’s start buying only U.S.A made products.Boycott companies that have taken our jobs!!! Watch how quick these idiots that have been elected then need us!!!Then watch them work for us!!! We have more power then we think but, must are we willing to use it!!!????

I agree copy Hacker’s Plan which is flawed but better and less stench. Medicare For All should be, SHOULD BE the bill we hold out for. I say LET IT FAIL, reboot this bullshit and we’ll start over AFTER the 2010 elections where Liberals will keep their seats and ConservaDems will LOOSE there. The Puppies on this site will be chewing up pants legs and we should start just as soon as the numbnuts that don’t vote for any of the progressive amendments are identified.

The hegemonic rule of the rich who’ve led the ignorant with their channels
in our bedrooms, and propaganda in our media have spoke. There is an excess
of democracy, the size, and what the majority says is irrelevant. Obama must mobilize support from the leaders who butter their bread on both sides. His coalition must include the private-sector ‘Establishment’ besides his key Reagan Democrats in Congress, and the Executive Branch.

If Obama wants them to accept the opt-out, he’s smart. That’s the only thing that can pass.

If Obama wants them to accept the trigger, he’s stupid. And they’d be stupid to accept a policy and political disaster. Their hand is stronger than the few ConservaDem Senators who might hold up the bill – the CPC would win that game of chicken and actually kill a bill.

Therefore I hope Obama’s support for the trigger and the CPC’s opposition to the opt-out are both negotiating stances, because either would kill this bill.