Tag Archives: health care

Political Rants

Resolved.

You’ve heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates – no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, “He’s over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!”)

And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points:

Romney: “I don’t want to cut our commitment to education”

Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I didn’t hear Romney advocate cutting anything. So… if he’s going to cut the federal deficit without raising revenue – in other words, reforming the tax code in a “revenue neutral” fashion – where are those cuts coming from? Not from defense – he’s adding many billions to that as he’s boasted many times. Apparently not from education. His intimations about Medicaid spending sounded like cheap sleight of hand; how does the federal government save money by block granting programs like Medicaid? You’re still spending the money, only without the knowledge that it’s being spent on what it’s intended for.

Romney: OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.

This counts as kind of a bidding war with himself. Romney’s people have been floating this notion of a $17,000 deduction cap on individual income tax. Wednesday night he worked that up to $25 – 50K. Do I hear $75K? Wait another week. Once again, caught advocating for a deeply unpopular policy of ending major deductions like mortgage interest, Romney is cycling backwards at lightning speed. We still have no information on where “loopholes” and deductions could be found to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts – 20% across the board, which he has endorsed.

Romney: It’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan. Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.

Say what? Since the hell when? A week ago, Romney’s plan was for sick poor people to go to the emergency room – that’s what he told David Gregory, anyway. And if keeping your kids on your “family plan” is common in the marketplace, it’s news to working people.

Then there’s the look. The patient, condescending smile while Obama is talking. It’s actually the same look Romney uses when people are saying nice things about him. Fact is, he uses that all the time when he’s waiting to speak. I call it his screen saver.

Barry: Here’s a free line for the next debate. “Hey, Mitt – glad to see you’ve finally come around to my positions on health care, education, and taxes. I’m thinking about asking you to join my administration.”

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Next round.

Sure, I’m surprised that the Affordable Care Act survived this past Thursday. I thought the mainstream media was going to talk it to death, frankly. Talk about wind-ups … by the time 10:00 a.m. rolled around, I was too bleeping sick of the issue to even care, and let me tell you – that’s quite a distance for me. It’s just that the horserace coverage of every political issue gets under my skin in the worst way. The merits of a given issue are never deeply examined; it’s always he said this, she said that. No way to work out which is closer to the truth.

They did this with health care, pretty much all day. After the decision was handed down, NPR had some guy from Cato and a policy wonk from the administration. Basically just put them in a room and watch them spar. Of course, Cato guy is much further to the right than the Obama person is to the left, so it’s kind of a straw man argument at best. How is this news? They pulled the same thing with the “Fast and Furious” faux-scandal. Even though Fortune Magazine blogger Katherine Eban blew a hole in the standard story about this a full day before, NPR, NBC, and other mainstream outlets were still framing the argument the same way – the GOP want documents, Holder and Obama say no. He said, they said.

What about the merits of the Affordable Care Act? I was never a big fan. It is, of course, a conservative idea, like cap and trade – market-based policy designed to head off something saner and more effective. Basically profit insurance in its purest form. Nevertheless, it establishes the concept of national health insurance for the first time, so that’s a minor step forward. The mandate requirement includes a penalty that the Supreme Court has called a tax; there’s a shocker. I wrote about this herein a few times, I think, most recently in March. Arguably any cost the government imposes can be described as a tax. I would go so far as to say that the failure to provide affordable universal coverage is a kind of tax, since everyone ends up paying through the nose as a result of its absence.

The G.O.P. is crowing because it thinks it has a tax issue for the coming election. All I can say is that, for all their bluster, they are responsible for the single largest tax hike I have ever had – their refusal to renew the “Making Work Pay” tax credit cost me $800 last year, as it did millions of other Americans. Where’s your tax issue now, boys?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Life and death.

This was a week when national health insurance was equated with cruciferous vegetables; when purveyors of deadly gun violence played the victim and had the law on their side. What a week, eh?

First, the Affordable Care Act being considered by the gang of nine (robes division). There are a great many things that might be said of the judicial theater we were all treated to this week, but from my perspective – a limited one, to be sure – they boil down to the following points:

Health Care: Still Not A Vegetable. This is one of those vacuous, tea-party type arguments that has been thrown around since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was considered by Congress. Jesus freaking christ on a bike, Justice Scalia … no, health care is not the same as freaking broccoli. You can live your whole miserable life without eating a single floret of broccoli, but god damn it you will certainly end up in a hospital at some point, and someone is going to pay for it. And no, it’s not a cell phone either, damn it. Some people have never used one; my 85-year-old mother for one. Neither cell phones nor broccoli are essential or inevitable like medical care in America.

Pick Your Constitutional Overreach. Justice Kennedy – a.k.a. he who will decide whether millions can see a doctor or not – appears to think that the ACA fundamentally changes the relationship between the government and the people. Many take this as confirmation that it is constitutional overreach. But even if it were, why pick that out of the crowd? We have undeclared wars that last ten years and more. We have routine violations of fourth amendment rights. Our government kills, detains, and spies on people at will without any discernible limit. Why aren’t these same people attacking those excesses? Or is it just that they are attacking the ACA because they disagree with it politically? Thought so.

Where’s Thomas? I’ve heard the audio from these sessions, mostly on NPR, and I have heard comments from every justice but Thomas. Every single one had something noteworthy to say except Thomas. Has someone tried shaking him or poking him with a stick lately? I’m not sure he’s responsive at this point. Strange, strange justice.

The outcome of this life or death question could take any of a number of shapes, but my money is on their striking it down, mostly because conservatives (i.e. reactionary statists) are in the majority, thanks to George W. Bush and the ignorant people who re-elected him. They showed their impartiality with Bush v. Gore and Citizen’s United … and it doesn’t bear close scrutiny.

Re: Trayvon Martin. The police video shows that Zimmerman is not only an extreme exaggerator, but also a good deal more athletic than we’d been led to imagine. But the real perps here are the Florida legislature, former governor Bush, ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and the NRA – authors of the “Stand Your Ground” legislation that has made such slaughter legal. Time to shoot the law, Florida. It’s a question of self defense.

luv u,

jp