Two weeks ago, centrist Democrats introduced a series of better-than-nothing compromises that we’ve beentracking; these were apparently designed to appeal to Republicans, making a bipartisan solution possible, but their inability to cooperate has left at least one Democrat angry. CBS reports:
Behind-the-scenes attempts to get a deal with Republicans on nonprofit co-ops as an alternative to a public plan have led only to frustration. . . He and his colleagues may have to go it alone, said Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Along with the public support visible in recent polls, this makes one think the Democrats would take Schumer’s advice and begin the push for a public plan, but centrist Democrats still seem weary. Diane Feinstein, who appeared on “State of the Union” this weekend, said that she thinks it will be difficult to control health care costs, adding, “I think there’s a lot of concern in the Democratic caucus.” In addition, some have suggested that some special interests could be behind the uncertainty surrounding the public option. All in all, it looks as if there is a sizable number of Blue Dog Democrats who are “determined to party like it’s 1993.” So, how can the Democrats save Health Care?
By pulling out the big guns: Ladies and gentlemen, here comes Mr. President.
On June 25, thousands of people gathered at the Upper Senate Park in Washington DC to rally for health care reform. Speakers such as DNC Chairman Howard Dean and actress Edie Falco, who played Carmela on HBO’s The Sopranos, gave inspirational speeches and led the crowd into chants that echoed over the Capitol. The national rally took place in the early afternoon and was followed by lobby meetings and town hall meetings with constituents who traveled by the bus load from around the country to demand health care for all from their members of Congress.
The rally was organized by Health Care for America NOW(HCAN), a national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations representing 30 million people. Among the unions, community organizers, and national and local advocacy groups, Campus Progress stood strong to represent young people and ensure the youth voice is heard in the health care debate. We spoke to several young people about their personal stories with the current health care system and distributed facts about young people in the health care crisis:
Yesterday I sent off a Tweet saying: “Tired of Waxman compromising. Admiring Peterson for standing up for his constituents (ag). Wish Markey would too. #ACES” just to receive a bunch of responses along the lines of: “I don’t understand what you’re talking about” and realized maybe it’s time for a non-wonky update on why our future (might) not be as rosy as it could be.
The Waxman Markey bill (aka American Clean Energy and Security Act, Clean Energy Jobs bill, Lightswitch Tax,Clean Coal Billetc) started out as an ambitious proposal in President Obama’s budget which called for the United States to once again find its greatness and power through an overhaul of the way we use electricity. It called for us to generate large amounts of renewable energy (i.e. energy that doesn’t run out and doesn’t harm the health of surrounding communities), to stop wasting electricity by modernizing our distribution networks and a plan to put a price on carbon and redirect revenue to help low-income Americans cope with increasing energy prices and help mitigate effects of the climate crisis throughout the world among others.
The pressure from the American public may sway the debate over health care reform taking place in Congress right now. According to the latest New York Times/CBS poll, Americans strongly support a government run public health insurance plan, which is the most critical piece of the health care debate and the key to whether legislation can be considered real reform or not.
The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.
We have to keep up the momentum. Congress should feel the pressure this Thursday June 25th when thousands of health care reform supporters travel from across the country for a national rally and lobby day hosted by Health Care for America NOW: Health Care Can’t Wait ‘09!
Health Care. The two words that are on the tip of many a tongue this month, but can be quite a spiral of (sometimes) nonsensical debate, complicated proposals, and opposing arguments. This fantastic guide posted in the New York Times is probably the best I’ve seen thus far for breaking down the key challenges in the health care debate, including specific proposals that will have an impact on how strong the reform will be, those opposing the proposals and why, how we’re going to pay for reform, and how the final legislation will make it through Congress and to Obama’s desk:
Create an exchange where people who are unable to obtain coverage at work and are ineligible for public programs can buy coverage from private plans or a new public plan.
White House: Wants a public insurance plan
Senate Finance Committee: Leaning toward an insurance cooperative
Senate Health Committee: Leaning toward a public insurance plan
House: Wants a public insurance plan
2. Individual and Employer Mandates-
Requires individuals to have a minimum level of health insurance. Requires employers of a certain size to offer insurance or help pay for coverage of their employees.
White House: Open to mandates, with some exceptions
Senate Finance Committee: Mandates likely, with some exceptions
Senate Health Committee: Mandates likely, with some exceptions
Young people are worried. We have a future ahead of us that is overshadowed with a troubled economy, no jobs, no health insurance, possibly no social security, and a society that is addicted to destructive fossil fuels. We’re focused on Congress as they debate our future in health care, clean energy and green jobs. But so far, after seeing the weakened Waxman-Markey bill and the draft health care reform bill leaked from the Senate Finance Committee today, it seems that both attempts to address these serious crises – climate change, the need for green jobs, our broken health care system – are simply “better than nothing” proposals. As Igor Volsky and Ezra Klein pointed out in regards to the draft health care reform legislation:
I think Ezra Klein is right to argue that the leaked version of the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform legislation is somewhat of a nothing-burger. It’s not well done, it’s not rare, it’s just medium well.
Individuals and families up to 300% of Federal Poverty Level (FPL) would receive tax credits to cover the cost of coverage and small businesses would be eligible for a temporary small business tax credit. Again, the subsidies aren’t great, but they’re better than nothing.
That’s it?! Better than nothing?? Don’t we deserve better than that?
Nothing is what some of these proposals seem to offer. The most significant omission in the leaked health care reform legislation from the Senate Finance Committee is the absence of the public option. In its place is the co-op proposal, introduced by Senator Conrad (D- N.Dakota). Mother Jones does a good job of summing up the ugly compromise:
What is in the Finance Committee’s draft, and slated for further discussion, is a scheme for health care “co-ops” that would pool individuals and businesses together into consumer co-operatives to purchase health insurance and services. (Kaiser Health News has profiled one existing co-op in Seattle.) Baucus [Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee] has been talking out of both sides of his mouth on the public plan for some time, and seemed to quickly latch onto the co-op idea as means to having it both ways.
Co-ops are a weak alternative to the public plan and have been tried before, after the Great Depression, and failed.
We can’t afford weak alternatives. Congress should be writing the strongest proposals possible, but are instead releasing watered-down bills, drenched in industry money and influence, and all we can say is “well it’s better than nothing.” This is unacceptable. Our futures deserve better. For example, why not single-payer health care? Yes, Campus Progress, along with many other health care reform supporters, has been advocating for the public health insurance option that will provide quality, affordable health care for all. However, if single-payer health care were on the table it would be the more progressive plan to fight for.
So why isn’t single-payer health care on the table? Well to start, Conservatives are painting this option as “socialized medicine” or “government take-over”. And the insurance industry strongly opposes the plan because it would mean the end of their glory days. But let’s get one thing straight, single-payer health care is NOT socialized medicine. I liked the Daily Kos explanation of the major differences between the two terms that are getting, conveniently for those opposing it, tossed into the same boat too frequently:
Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the means of providing medicine. Single-payer health care is not socialized medicine. It’s a system in which one institution purchases all, or in reality, most, of the care. But the payer does not own the doctors or the hospitals or the nurses or the MRI scanners. Medicare is an example of a mostly single-payer system, as is France.
So if we just understood the difference between the two and made sure Congress knew that we demanded single-payer health care, could it be an option? Would it actually get passed? The answer, unfortunately, is not likely. Even Obama rejects the idea, but for less selfish reasons than the industry:
“If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense,” Obama said in response to the questioner in New Mexico, echoing comments he made during his presidential campaign. “The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch. . . . We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into health-care reform where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.”
It just seems that there is no chance for single-payer health care to pass through Congress because it is too radical of a change. So, if we have to take incremental steps to get there, so be it. But we will not settle for “better than nothing” alternatives.
Call your Senators today and demand a stronger health care bill, with NO Co-ops, NO Triggers, and NO “better than nothing” compromises!
Confused about all this health care talk, especially the rhetoric being spread by those opposing real reform? Check out this helpful guide to deciphering Eleven Health Care Reform Myths by The Wonk Room and CAPAF:
MYTH: Being uninsured is not a problem; it’s people’s own fault. During an interview with the independent student newspaper of Tufts University, former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) downplayed the number of Americans without health insurance. “However, 11 million of that total are illegal immigrants. Ten million more are people who can buy their own insurance. Finally, another 10 million are people your own age who think they are never going to get sick or hurt and are not vulnerable,” Dole argued. [Tufts Daily,12/04/2008]
REALITY: Americans are uninsured because they can’t afford the high costs of insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), most Americans who lack health insurance “come from working families and have low incomes.” About two-thirds of the uninsured “are poor or near poor” and are “less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage.” [Kaiser Family Foundation, 10/15/2008]
This is it; The next few weeks and through July both the House and Senate committees drafting legislation for health care reform will be releasing details of their plans and holding hearings and mark ups (allowing amendments and such to the proposals). These committees include the Health Education and Labor and Pensions (HELP) and Finance Committees in the Senate, and the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor Committees in the House.
Congress is hard at work to bring health care reform to fruition. However, today House Republicans released their health plan which may not actually be eligible to be called a plan :
House Republicans presented a four-page outline of their health care reform plan Wednesday but said they didn’t know yet how much it would cost, how they would pay for it and how many of the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance would be covered by it.
The “non-plan” seems like more of a collection of talking points:
On the whole, the plan does very little to cover the uninsured, protect individuals from predatory insurance practices or extend coverage to more Americans. The draft “encourages states to use new and existing programs to guarantee all Americans, regardless of pre-exising conditions or past illnesses, have access to affordable coverage” and helps Americans eligible for employer-based plans to enroll in coverage.
I’m not a big fan of Mad Money, and certainly don’t recommend their investment advice, but they had some pretty smart things to say when it came to the legitimacy of much of the for-profit higher education sector.
This sector certainly needs a look by the Department of education. While they are at it, maybe they could also look into regulating irritating sound effects on cable television shows.
Rendered image approximation of completed FutureGen facility
News broke today that the Obama administration restored funding to the controversial government research project FutureGen. Funding had been cut by President Bush in an unusual (though inadvertent) act of environmental sanity.
For those of you not in the loop, FutureGen was supposed to be the Government’s demonstration project to research and prove the viability of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CSS). CCS is a magical and mystical technique (is it a spell? a potion? no-one really knows) to capture carbon dioxide spewed by coal burning power plants, liquify it, and then bury it underground. Proponents of this fantastic technology claim that it would solve a whole slew of problems by dealing with the climate crisis while protecting the coal industry’s profits, ensuring the continuation of their ability to buy coal state politicians and maintaining King Coal’s feudal-like grip on Appalachia and other coal-mining regions.
This was the whole premise of Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Unfortunately, things aren’t as rosey as its proponents claim. Cost estimates for FutureGen are steadily on the rise and most studies doubt the technology’s ability to produce electricity at a competitive price. In what should have been a final nail on the CCS coffin, the country of Norway which is well known for pioneering the technology, is increasingly worried that sequestered gasses just aren’t staying underground. All evidence suggests that taking greenhouse gasses, liquifing them and sticking them underground hoping that they won’t leak is like dealing with an approaching asteroid by having every human being on the planet blow air at it.
Unfortunately, coal industry astroturfing and copious lobbying expenses managed to convince most politicians that a magical world powered by ‘clean coal’ is possible and right around the corner, prompting the Obama administration to restore copious amounts of funding to FutureGen. This is what Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois had to say:
“In my time in Congress, I can’t recall a project that has greater scientific and practical significance than FutureGen, not to mention the enormous economic benefit it will have in Illinois”
Not one? Possibly that’s because there just haven’t been any programs of similar proportions for the real solutions to the climate crisis. All that money would go very far in helping to develop breakthroughs in cheaper and more realistic technologies such as enhanced geothermal (which could be deployed anywhere, uses similar technology to oil drilling and would help transition workers from fossil industries), hydrokinetic (using waves, currents and tides), and advanced efficiency measures (which provide the cheapest, cleanest form of energy).
This is what is most disconcerning about the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This bill is supposed to lay the strategy for our epic fight against the climate crisis, but what it mostly ends up doing is bailing out fossil intensive industries propping them up to fight for continued handouts while drawning out efforts from emergin firms to innovate the way we produce, distribute and use energy.
There will most likely be a floor vote in the house about the American Clean Energy and Security Act in about two weeks. Now is the time to get active in your community. Call your representative, visit his or her district office and tell them you will not stand for a warming world, that the future of our planet is worth more than the FutureGen gamble tell them you want them to introduce amendments to:
Axe the $500 energy tax earmarked for ”clean coal” development and divert the giveaways for coal plants and oil refiners to clean energy research, development and deployment.
Strengthen the Renewable and Energy Efficiency Standards to 30% by 2020 with a at least a >2% carveout for solar.
Strengthen emission reduction targets to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 as science demands.
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
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for June, 2009.
The pressure from the American public may sway the debate over health care reform taking place in Congress right now. According to the latest 
The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.
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Confused about all this health care talk, especially the rhetoric being spread by those opposing real reform? Check out this helpful guide to deciphering 