"Health Care For America Now" Abandons Real Solutions For Universal Health Care

A slew of progressive organizations including MoveOn and Campaign for America's Future just launched a new health care coalition, called Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which basically pushes the mainstream Democratic proposals for health care reform, or namely, incremental bandaid solutions that completely miss the point. I hate to say it, but Obama's plan fits this category. Now I'm sure most, if not all, of these groups know single payer universal health care (the kind run by the government) is the best solution, but, like Obama, just don't believe it is politically feasible, so they support this half-solution. They propose leaving the private insurance companies largely in control of our health care system, with a little added regulation, and they add some public plans to compete.

Is this better than what we have now? Yes, certainly. Most significantly it prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, which is a large part of how they screw people now (although I'm not at all convinced that the insurance companies won't find new ways of screwing people). It is also a hell of a lot better than McCain's plan, which isn't really a plan at all, it is just a continuation of the status quo, but it is actually worse because he takes the burden for benefits from employers, and dumps it on individuals, leaving them to the mercy of the private insurance companies. Read the AFL-CIO's analysis for more details.

But just because it is better than really bad, doesn't make it good. The root of the multitude of problems in our health care system is the insurance companies. They, like all corporations, have one concern, one legal responsibility, and that is to their shareholders, and profit. They look out for the bottom line, period. If it isn't good for business, if it doesn't give them more profit, they don't do it. And nothing makes more profit than cutting corners and screwing customers. Do you notice something missing? I'll give you a hint: It's HEALTH CARE! Simply put, GREED is at the core of our health care system, and it will continue to make private insurance companies look for new, more inventive ways to screw over customers. The preexisting conditions exception is one of the many ways they screw people over, but even if that is closed, they still have many more ways to screw you, and they will never stop finding new loopholes.

The private insurance industry is a cancer in our health care system. It is malignant. The HCAN plan is to try to stunt the cancer's growth, responding to new growths with targeted chemotherapy and radiation, but never actually trying to attack the main tumor. They leave it there to spread and continue to kill the system. What we need is to cut it out, completely, for the health of everyone.

The funny thing is, a completely public universal system is so much simpler than trying to tape together and regulate a private-public hybrid. Remember all that "mandates vs no mandates" debate during the Democratic primary? All the crap about enforcement and fears of people cheating the system? If the plans were public and truly universal, none of that would have been an issue, because that system would cover EVERYONE, period. Those debates and regulations and clauses to try to eliminate all of these problems, and the anticipation of future problems, all those issues were symptoms of trying to piece together a broken, bleeding system with spare body parts and duct tape. Our health care system is dead, and HCAN's plan is to give it life, by turning it into Frankenstein. What we need is a rebirth, from scratch, WITHOUT the tumor of greed. The government needs to take the lead in making sure everyone has access to health care. The government's job is to look out for its citizens, and it is accountable to those citizens. The government could administer health care just like it administers Social Security and Medicare, with a goal of helping people, not screwing them over for a profit. The role of corporations is to look out for their shareholders, to make them rich. Corporate America is incompatible with public health--the goal of corporations is not the same goal as the health care system, in fact it is directly opposed. Greed is incompatible with public health. We will never have a good system of health care with the insurance companies in the middle, exacting their pound of flesh.

I'm not alone in seeing HCAN's plan as a complete cop-out. Take it from experts, like Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association (CNA):

Why is Health Care for America Now giving up on real reform?

The big splash of news and internet coverage for the new Health Care for America Now coalition of labor, progressive and liberal groups is a reminder of the critical importance of health care reform. And a reminder that partial solutions, such as those proposed by the coalition, will only perpetuate, not end the health care crisis.

The groups behind the new coalition are working in concert with the Obama campaign and Democratic leaders in Congress to build "consensus" around a plan that would presumably be introduced in the first days of the next administration, and pushed through to a quick vote before opponents can mount a "Harry and Louse"-style counter attack.

But, in search of a supposedly politically viable plan, the advocates of this approach have surrendered in advance on the only overhaul that will actually cure the disease, a single-payer, expanded and improved Medicare for all reform.

Their good intentions will leave the same failed system in place, and will not even blunt the political opposition from those on the right and corporate interests who will continue to challenge anything that looks like even modest reform.

They create a false hope of systemic change that won't be, squandering the opportunity to achieve the fundamental reform so desperately needed with so many lives in the balance.

They've also missed one of the most important lessons of the failure of the Clinton plan of 1993-94 which collapsed in part due to the absence of a broad, grassroots, activist movement needed to counter the insurance industry. Only single payer engenders such a movement, the very reason the single payer bill now in Congress, HR 676, has more co-sponsors than any other reform bill with tens of thousands around the country already working to enact it.

Health Care for America Now has identified the main culprit and obstacle to genuine reform. As their inaugural ad proclaims, "Will health insurance companies ever put your health ahead of their profits? We can't trust insurance companies to fix the healthcare mess."

There's just one problem -- the coalition's proposal does nothing to end the actual practice of insurance companies putting their profits ahead of your health. Nor does it fix the two central components of the health care morass -- insurance company denials of care and the financial squeeze facing American families due to ever skyrocketing healthcare costs which is exacerbated by the escalating credit crisis.

Consider the four healthcare questions posed by families in the first 30-second ad: "Will they pay for his inhaler? Is my surgery covered? Can I choose my child's doctor? Will they cover the chemo?"

All are the direct result of care denials and price gouging by the insurers -- and none would be solved by the HCAN "statement of common purpose."

How does the HCAN coalition propose to crack down on the insurance pirates? With a "watchdog role" on the plans "to assure that risk is fairly spread" and that "insurers do not turn people away, raise rates or drop coverage based on a person's health history or wrongly delay or deny care."

You can watch someone rob your bank, but unless you stop them, the vaults are still going to be stripped bare. If you're looking for the hammer or any enforcement mechanism in the HCAN proposal, don't bother, it's not there.

The insurers don't care if we know they are thieves, they will continue to deny and delay care because it's in their DNA. It's how they are set up to operate, it's how they make money for their shareholders, it's how they generate plush pay packages for their executives, and it's how they compete with the other insurance giants.

Nor does the HCAN proposal contain any effective cost controls on the insurers. Their commitment to basing pricing on "ability to pay" is a recipe for merely getting the healthcare you can afford, not what you need. It also fails to assure real choice of providers beyond the limited network established by all private insurance plans.

The bone the coalition sponsors throw to single payer advocates is the false promise of a public plan side by side with private insurance. The public plan, they contend, will be so much more attractive that the private plans will just wither away. Don't count on it.

The insurance companies will always be able to lower their prices with cut rate plans with lower standards that they can aggressively market through massive advertising, tele-marketing, even door to door salesmen (as some do now) with a marketing campaign that the public plans will not have the funding to be able to match.

The private plans can then continue to cherry pick the younger and healthier patients while the sicker and older patients are dumped in the public plan, wrecking the whole idea of a risk pool and driving up the costs for the public plan to operate. The competition won't starve the private plans and cause them to wither away, they'll starve the public plan.

There's only one way to stop the insurance industry abuses -- it's to actually stop them. The rest of the world has figured this one out -- see the study in Britain earlier this year that found that the U.S. ranks last in preventable deaths among 19 industrialized nations even though we spend twice as much on healthcare as anyone else. Isn't it time we figured it out here as well?

Or Dr. David Himmelstein with his response "A Policy Response to Health Care for America Now" (worth the read), as well as Dr. Don McCanne's "What is 'Health Care for America Now' Doing?". They all point out what should be obvious to everyone, HCAN is missing the point, and totally fails to cure (remove) the root cause of the health care crisis.

Like I said before, I believe these groups know that single payer universal coverage is the best solution, but they just don't think it is politically possible, so they are starting out by conceding meaningful reform. That isn't how you negotiate. You start with what you really want, and if it is impossible, you make concessions. You don't concede reform before you even try. There is a movement for single payer health care. People want real solutions and they want the government to lead the way. We just have to put pressure on our representatives so they realize truly universal health care is popular, and should be pursued. We are going to be in a perfect position to push meaningful reform next year, with Democrats controlling the White House and having large majorities in both houses of Congress. Who knows how long this position will last, or when we'll be in this position again? We can't squander this historic moment of great opportunity on bandaid solutions and piecemeal change. We must FIGHT for REAL health care reform. I intend to focus on this quite a bit going forward, especially after the election, because the debate can't be allowed to end with pseudo-reform, if it does the Republicans and private insurance companies have already won.

With that I have nothing left to say, except that I am really disappointed that so many progressive organizations have essentially given up on meaningful reform, and abandoned their mission to push the progressive agenda forward. They have left us hanging, and now it is our job to pick up the slack and pressure those who usually do the pressuring. It won't be easy, but it isn't impossible. So please, do everything you can to push single payer universal health care. And check out the Physicians for a National Health Program website to stay informed and get involved.

And even if you are cynical and pessimistic and don't think we can win this fight for truly universal health care, remember the Overton Window, and help us push it in the right direction, because that will ensure we'll get there eventually, even if we lose the battle (which hopefully we won't).

Donna Edwards Goes To Washington

There was some good news that I woke up to this morning (gotta love morning news on the radio), progressive community activist Donna Edwards won a special election last night to replace Al Wynn in the House, after he lost to her in the Democratic primary back in February.

Edwards beat her Republican opponent around 80%-20%. Her easy triumph over corporate Democrat Al Wynn (who since resigned so he could go work for a lobbying firm, surprise surprise) was a great victory for progressive Democrats who are continuing to clean up the party while leading the push to expand our majorities in Congress. Congratulations to Donna Edwards for her win last night, and congrats for her recent endorsement from progressive pro-Israel group J Street, which I've written about previously.

J-Street had this to say about their first even endorsements:

Today's endorsements are truly 'firsts.' Never before have candidates received tangible political support for agreeing that pursuing both a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and aggressive diplomacy to solve political conflicts in the Middle East should be central to American foreign policy.

JStreetPAC's endorsements aim to open up much-needed political space needed for honest discussion of American foreign policy and for debate over what policies are in fact in the best interests of both the United States and of Israel.

For too long, the only voice representing "pro-Israel" Americans have come from the far right. Meanwhile, a majority of American Jews and their friends opposed war in Iraq, are against a pre-emptive military strike against Iran and favor a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. JStreetPAC's endorsements represent a significant step in making it clear to candidates that the single most pro-Israel thing they can do is help to bring about a two-state solution and a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and her neighbors.

Go show your support for a new progressive approach to Middle East peace by donating to Edwards (and other candidates like Darcy Burner, another great candidate) from J Street's website.

J Street, A Progressive Pro-Israel Group Launches

So this wouldn't seem that important to most people, and I'm sure most people will never know about this, but it is quite important nevertheless: Today J Street, a new progressive pro-Israel lobbying organization was officially launched, for the purpose of providing an alternative to the hardline rightwing neoconservative (and all powerful) AIPAC lobby, which we can thank in large part for our current situation in the Middle East. Here is their mission statement:

J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.

J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. We support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region.

J Street represents Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own - two states living side-by-side in peace and security. We believe ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.

J Street supports diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise. For more on our policy positions, click here.

J Street will advocate forcefully in the policy process, in Congress, in the media, and in the Jewish community to make sure public officials and community leaders clearly see the depth and breadth of support for our views on Middle East policy among voters and supporters in their states and districts. We seek to complement the work of existing organizations and individuals that share our agenda. In our lobbying and advocacy efforts, we will enlist individual supporters of other efforts as partners.

And here is their introductory video:



I'm sure the progressive community, those who know about this at least, are cheering today, because we know all too well the ills AIPAC, and other rightwing pro-Israel groups, have wrought upon our foreign policy as well as our domestic discourse (or lack thereof). Christopher Hayes of The Nation also breathed a similar sign of relief today:

Israel policy is, of course, the area in which this dynamic has been most destructively evident. It's really remarkable that for the last two decades AIPAC has been allowed to arrogate to itself the role of speaking for American Jews on the topic of Israel, despite the fact its actual positions and staff are far, far to the right of your average Jewish American. Now J Street has, thankfully, joined the scene. As former NYC Corporate council Victor Kovner just put in on a press call introducing the organization, "It's long overdue."

It will probably be a hard haul for J Street, for just like previous attempts at challenging the rightwing dominance of AIPAC it will be met with stiff resistance by entrenched hardline interests. I guarantee some of these hardliners will even try to brand J Street and its supporters as anti-Semites, in order to demonize them, in the same way they try to demonize everyone else who so much as utters a criticism of their policies. How's that for democracy?

And yes, if any of these people are reading this, I too must be a rabid anti-Semite. How dare I speak?

The progressive community needs to give them all the help they need along the way. Don't let the "pro-Israel" label turn you off, because they aren't using it in the same despicable way the neocons and AIPAC use it. They are showing that AIPAC and the hardliners have absolutely no monopoly on supporting Israel, and they are showing that Israel is better served through peace and understanding.

I wish them the best of luck.

And please take the time to check out their site, sign up for their updates, let's give them the support they need to make a difference!

Progressives Agree: Hillary Sucks

Politico and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a presidential straw poll over the three days of the just concluded Take Back America conference in Washington, DC, where around 2,000 progressives came together to discuss all of the most important issues facing our country. Among the many things the progressive activists agreed on was that Barack Obama was not only the best choice for president, he is also clearly the most electable. Here is an overview from Politico:

Barack Obama is the overwhelming favorite for president among progressive activists, according to a Politico.com straw poll conducted at the Take Back America conference held in Washington this week.

Seventy-two percent of those polled preferred to see Obama nominated as the Democratic party’s presidential candidate, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton claiming a scant 16 percent of support and 12 percent of respondents saying either would be fine in the general election against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain. The poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, surveyed 413 respondents from March 17 to 19.

Obama is also viewed as the Democrat most likely to defeat McCain, with 69 percent of respondents believing he has the best chance of beating the Arizona Republican, compared to just 15 percent who believe Clinton can defeat McCain.

Though support for Clinton’s candidacy was tepid, 48 percent of those polled said they would be “satisfied” with Clinton as the nominee. Forty-one percent said they would be “dissatisfied” with her candidacy, and an additional 9 percent said they hadn’t decided. Obama, on the other hand, claimed near complete fealty from conference participants: 86 percent said they would be satisfied with him as the Democratic nominee, compared with only 8 percent who said they would be dissatisfied.

The anemic support for Clinton at the conference reflects lingering discomfort with the New York senator among attendees. Two years ago while speaking at the event, she was booed in large part for her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war. Neither Clinton nor Obama spoke at the convention this year.

So to recap, progressive activists, arguably the most knowledgeable and politically engaged segment of our society prefer Obama over Hillary 72% to 16%. Also, all but 15% realize that Hillary is not electable, which is what I've been saying all along. 15%, ouch!

The Clinton Civil War (Repost)

[I apologize for not doing much more than a few reposts the last few days, I've been very busy, but hopefully the reposts have entertained and educated enough that no one is too let down. Here is a good one, in response to silly Hillary supporters who have moved past whining about the media, and have gone on to whining about the netroots being "anti-Hillary", as if we have some obligation to handicap ourselves with ignorance just to make sure 50% of us support Hillary no matter what. Enjoy:]

The Clinton Civil War
by kos

Al Giordano, on the laughable Clinton-supporters "strike" of this blog:

There was always something incongruous about the self-proclaimed “Hillary Bloggers” trying to use Daily Kos for their purposes. DKos has been defined as a meeting ground not for every Democrat, but for the kind that wants to change the party to be more grassroots oriented, adhere to a 50-state strategy, stop the war in Iraq, and blunt the influence of lobbyists, PACs and the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). That’s the glue that has always held the DKos community together and made it so large and strong.

Given that candidate Clinton is a member of the DLC, voted to authorize the war, accepts federal lobbyist and PAC money, clearly thinks that a lot (if not most) states “don’t matter,” and epitomizes a 1990s style top-down form of doing politics, it’s no surprise that for all of 2007 Clinton never exceeded 11 percent support in the monthly Daily Kos users straw poll.

I would add one more item to the list above -- this site has also been hostile to the corrosive consultant class that gave us our timid and weak party until Howard Dean shook it up in 2004.

Now I'm willing to stipulate that on the consultant front, there's likely not much difference between the Obama and Clinton campaigns (I don't know if it's true, but I assume it is). But on everything else, Clinton fails the test of the guiding principles of this site, and of my first book, Crashing the Gate.

Clinton isn't just a member of the DLC, she's in their leadership. Obama, by the way, repudiated the organization three times (it's a great story, which I tell in my forthcoming book).

Clinton hasn't just rejected a 50-state strategy, she has openly attacked it. CTG has a great quote from former Virginia Governor and future senator Mark Warner on this very topic:

The Democratic Party is in the upswing in the Mountain West and the South, in places like Montana and Virginia, because Democrats there have made a serious effort to compete for votes everywhere, rather than make a nominal effort to be an "also-ran" outside the Democratic-density areas. As [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner asks, how many more times will the Democrats run presidential campaigns where they abandon thirty-three southern and western states and "launch a national campaign that goes after sixteen states and then hope that we can hit a triple bank shot to get to that seventeenth state?"

Well, given Obama's map-changing 50-state mindset, it's clear that the answer to Warner's question is "one more time" if Clinton is the nominee, and "never again" if Obama is the nominee.

Clinton didn't just vote for the Iraq war and refuse to apologize for it, she voted to give Bush the same authority on Iran.

And if we want to talk about which party is the most grassroots-oriented, it's no contest. We've seen it in the caucuses, we've seen it in the netroots, and we saw it in the Iowa county convention this Saturday. The party's activists are busting their butts for Obama, while Clinton's campaign is counting on low-information Democratic voters selecting Clinton based on little more than name ID.

But I could deal with all of that, really, if Clinton was headed toward victory. I see this as a long-term movement, and I've always expected setbacks along the way. Clinton isn't the most horrible person in the world. She's actually quite nice, despite all her flaws, and would make a fine enough president.

If she was winning.

But she's not, and that's the rub.

First of all, the only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate.

She knows this. That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup.

Yet a coup by super delegate would sunder the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

If the situations were reversed, and Obama was lagging in the delegates, popular vote, states won, money raised, and every other reasonable measure, then I'd feel the same way about Obama. (I pulled the plug early on Dean in 2004.) But that's not the case.

It is Clinton, with no reasonable chance of victory, who is fomenting civil war in order to overturn the will of the Democratic electorate. As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve "fairness" on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with -- those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately.

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

Meanwhile, Clinton and her shrinking band of paranoid holdouts wail and scream about all those evil people who have "turned" on Clinton and are no longer "honest power brokers" or "respectable voices" or whatnot, wearing blinders to reality, talking about silly little "strikes" when in reality, Clinton is planning a far more drastic, destructive and dehabilitating civil war.

People like me have two choices -- look the other way while Clinton attempts to ignite her civil war, or fight back now, before we cross that dangerous line. Honestly, it wasn't a difficult choice. And it's clear, looking at where the super delegates, most bloggers, and people like Olbermann are lining up, that the mainstream of the progressive movement is making the same choice.

And the more super delegates see what is happening, and what Clinton has in store, the more imperative it is that they line up behind Obama and put an end to it before it's too late.