10.16.09
Friday Stuff
Via the AAS, state unemployment rises slightly, to 8.2%, and Austin job loss rate moderates. Press release and full statewide numbers [.pdf] from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Paul Krugman has a great article today in the NY Times on the disastrous Insurance lobby study from last weekend and why it might actually help get reform passed, A Hatchet Job So Bad It’s Good.
Last weekend, the lobbying organization America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, released a report attacking the reform plan just passed by the Senate Finance Committee. Some news organizations gave the report prominent, uncritical coverage. But health-care experts quickly, and correctly, dismissed it as a hatchet job. And the end result of AHIP’s blunder may be a better bill than we would otherwise have had.
[...]
Which brings us to the ways in which AHIP may have done health reform a favor.
As I said, the individual mandate probably should be stronger than it is in the Finance Committee’s bill. But there’s a reason the mandate was weakened: fear that too many people would balk at the cost of insurance, even with the subsidies provided to lower-income individuals and families. So why not address that cost?
Aside from making the subsidies larger, which they should be, there are at least two changes to the legislation that would help limit costs. First, health exchanges — special, regulated markets in which individuals and small businesses can buy insurance — can be made stronger, in effect giving small buyers a better bargaining position. Second, the public option — missing from the Finance Committee’s bill — can be brought back in, giving private insurers some real competition.
The insurance industry won’t like these changes, but that matters less than it did a week ago.
There’s also another point, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stressed. Part of the opposition to a strong individual mandate comes from the sense that Americans will be forced to buy policies from a greedy insurance industry. Giving people, literally, another option — the right to buy into a public plan instead — would defuse that opposition.
Even with stronger exchanges and a public option, health reform would probably increase, not reduce, insurance industry profits. But the insurers wanted it all. The good news is that by overreaching, they may have ensured that they won’t get it.
That’s a great way forward on health reform.
Keep in mind that health reform with a robust public option in it cannot be stopped by Republicans. There must be support from inside the Democratic caucus in the Senate to stop it, Harry Reid abdicates his leadership role.
So much for 60. Still, don’t ask Harry Reid, Democratic Leader, Senate Leader, and the party’s #3 leader to actually start leading.
Senator Harry Reid’s office is now going on record pushing back hard against a campaign by the left to compel him to force Dem Senators into line on health care, with Reid’s spokesman sending me a statement claiming the idea is unworkable and a non-starter [...]
“Senator Reid is focused on crafting a health care bill that will overcome a Republican filibuster. Stripping Democratic Senators of their leadership titles is a decision that would be left up to the Caucus, not Senator Reid. In light of this reality it’s unlikely that the Caucus would ever go along with this idea.”
So that’s that. The notion of “leading” is clearly a non-starter for Reid, according to his office. Well, glad Reid’s office has admitted as such. Time for new leadership.
And take special note of this sentence:
Senator Reid is focused on crafting a health care bill that will overcome a Republican filibuster.
Republican filibuster? Democrats have 60 votes. There is no Republican filibuster, just a Democratic one. The problem is Reid’s inability to keep his caucus together. His office can’t even be honest about Reid’s leadership failures. Fucking liars.
I’ll take a Chuck Schumer-run Senate with 57 Democrats (bye bye Reid, Lieberman, and Lincoln) than a Harry Reid-run one with 75 Democrats.
There’s more on this here (If Harry Reid Allows The Silent Filibuster, It’s All On Him) – sign the petition, and here (Health care bipartisanship lives!). There are reports out today that Reid may be Working The Inside Game For A Public Option.
And watch what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had to say about the public option earlier in the week.