dagblog - Comments for "Make Me Do It vs Cut Me Some Slack"

Yes, I know, but in this

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 27 May 2011 02:18:27 +0000

In reply to PS: this may be the source of

Yes, I know, but in this whirlwind, I was getting lost and couldn't remember what the other thread was and was too tired to look. Thanks. I'll look at all this later. In the meantime, it's been very good talking with you. On the substance, I think you and I are in agreement. I think market mechanisms work well in some areas and not in others, including HC. Except perhaps when it comes to buying generic drugs, I don't believe make buying decisions the same way when their health--life--is at stake. So I agree with your skepticism.

PS: this may be the source of

Obey — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:06:06 +0000

In reply to Okay, dude. I like this

PS: this may be the source of our troubles in that his comment appears on a different thread. I couldn't find it on this one.

Here's the link to my original comment on TMcCarthy. And you responded to my comment there which is why I assumed you knew the context.

PS: I'd say Obama did NOT go

Obey — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:56:46 +0000

In reply to Okay, dude. I like this

PS: I'd say Obama did NOT go for a bigger stimulus, but would have gone for a PO IF he had thought it possible and it didn't risk ending the whole venture. He clearly felt the PO was ONE way to get to the big goals he had set out, but not the only way.

OB: Okay, so let's concentrate on the PO issue for now: if you read that NYT piece I linked to again on this thread, you see Obama sending signals in the spring of '09 that he'd be willing to throw out the PO for a deal with stakeholders, and he finalized that deal by the beginning of July of '09 - over the objections of Baucus. Again, that's the NYT's claim, not my speculation. So we know it wasn't a late decision. It was a very very early strategic decision, before any serious feelers were put out to test the waters, before any serious campaign for reform was up and running to see how much support there'd be for this or that measure. (By the by, Wilson shouted "you lie" concerning coverage for illegal immigrants, not anything about the PO. I don't remember if it was mentioned at all...?)

PS: Unfair and inaccurate to put single payer and the PO on the same playing field. No one except maybe Bernie and Dennis have advocated for single payer.

OB: Not sure why you think I put them on the same playing field. I'm not. Don't know where you got that idea. I'm saying the democratic party's strategy in the past was to expand public health care plans, not to lock in and subsidize private plans as with Obama's. I'm not saying that he sold out because he didn't jump for universal coverage under a single payer plan. I do regard it as deeply problematic that he didn't get any concessions on cost-control in exchange for handing providers 30 million new customers. He's expanding access to health care in the most costly way possible - the highest rates are those charged to insurers on the individual market, often double the rate they'd get through Medicaid, and much higher than a Medicare or Medicare equivalent.

PS: He felt okay doing it because he didn't think the PO was essential to his big goals and because a PO could be added later once the program was up and running and folks liked it...

Yes, and that's part of my diagnosis. There is no deep stark dividing line between liberals and conservatives, but they do for instance, and imho, lie along a spectrum according to their faith in the virtues of market mechanisms to cut costs and innovate new ways of cutting costs. Liberals will tend, rightly or wrongly, be skeptical, conservatives confident. So the importance of the PO will tend to wane the more you move right along that spectrum. I don't consider myself a raving socialist, but in the HC sector, I see no benefits coming from market competition among profit-seeking insurers in narrow state-by-state markets. There just isn't room for real competition, and with a mandate and subsidies, it's a perfect storm to send premiums (premia?) through the roof.

My thinking is that he is complacent about how likeable the exchanges will be when they're up and running. The subsidies will get cut, the actuarial value of the minimum plan cut, co-pays hiked, and the mandate will be loathed. But you will have a much more powerful insurance lobby preventing change. That is what I mean by the forward-looking dynamics not being favorable to a progressive vision for universal affordable health care. And my thinking is that there is a portion of ideological temperament or sentiment in the different degrees of complacency surrounding how well this works out. I hope it does. Don't get me wrong. But my liberal views come with a view of how people, society, markets work. And I don't see this one working. Obama does, and he saw the need for a PO to provide extra discipline as negligible. If he is right and I'm wrong well that just shows the conservative view on how the world works is right. Okay, then my bad.

Now that isn't the part where Obama sells out. That is a view of how the world works, and there is nothing bankrupt about going with the Chicago School where markets are concerned. The sellout is promising something and then after conceding it in negotiations pretending to your constituency that it's still in play. Sure, there are worse politicians who have lied in worse ways about worse policy. But it is what it is, it doesn't make him the worst man on the planet or anything. It does mean liberals could have done more to hold his feet to the fire, insofar as they believed the PO is important and not just an optional extra.

Again this isn't about whether he is a good person or not. It's about what liberals should handle their relationship with him: blind loyalty and obedience or pushing, demanding, campaigning for their voice to be heard.

PS: I've always seen him as a liberal centrist.

OB: What is that? I thought "liberal" and "centrist" were labels that gave you a rough left-to-right spectrum for Dems.

I am not sure I need to prove

tmccarthy0 — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:32:38 +0000

In reply to Okay, dude. I like this

I am not sure I need to prove much more. My research since 1988, for the Democratic Party has been all about health care, health care reform, the history of health care.

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/meme-s-your-head-why-you-mad-tho-struggl...

I have documented how we got to where we are right now, from 1912 - 2010. A bibliography is include in my blog.

You will not find my comment on this thread, because it wasn't on this thread, it was on another thread discussing the Cornell West incident. I just picked up on West believing the President is 11x awful and how the President could have achieved the elusive public option. It is my contention that the Senate was the key problem. That actually is the subject of my next blog.

Why Obey brought me up here I have no clue, because it leaves people not knowing the context of what I wrote as a comment in that other blog.

Okay, dude. I like this

Peter Schwartz — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:58:14 +0000

In reply to Okay, dude. I like this

Okay, dude. I like this carpet-bombing approach to internet debate. ;0)

Thanks for the serious consideration. Seriously!

PS: Let's see if we can shut down Dag's servers!

Let me try to back up a bit for starters, because I personally am losing a sense of what we're arguing about and who bears the burden of proof here. I started out reading TMcCarthy who said Obama advocated for the PO and advocated for a bigger stimulus yet just couldn't get them through because of the sclerotic senate rules.

PS: Okay, well this may be the source of our troubles in that his comment appears on a different thread. I couldn't find it on this one. Offhand, I'd say Obama did NOT go for a bigger stimulus, but would have gone for a PO IF he had thought it possible and it didn't risk ending the whole venture. He clearly felt the PO was ONE way to get to the big goals he had set out, but not the only way. He may even have said it in front of Congress when he was called a liar. So why is he called a sell-out for that?

My aim was then to say, hey, that's totally unsubstantiated. But that is slightly impolite just to call BULLSHIT and walk away. So unlike TM, I offered up some links. Not that I needed to, after all, Obama got exactly what he offered up as a plan in both cases, right? He wanted 800 billion, and pretty much got it. He threw out the PO in negotiations with private providers and insurers during the summer of '09. And at no later time did he push for its inclusion in any substantive sense (sure, he said he personally preferred to have one in an ideal world, much like personally he preferred a single-payer system in an ideal world. But fantasizing ain't wanting and wanting ain't trying).

PS: Unfair and inaccurate to put single payer and the PO on the same playing field. No one except maybe Bernie and Dennis have advocated for single payer. Rhetorically, you're sort of saying, "He got what he wanted because look at what he got." Your link on the stimulus shows that he was interested in size; she was interested in targets. So they each had a bargaining chip. Clearly, she tried to "budge" him on size, but he was unmovable, so she acquiesced in exchange for better targeting. But that doesn't mean she would have stood for 1.2 trillion--but who knows, maybe she would have, as you've argued somewhat convincingly.

As a result, I don't even bear the burden of proof here. The external appearance is that Obama got what he wanted, and did not come up against any outside - i.e. Senate - obstacle. What stopped Obama from getting a bigger Stimulus or a PO was himself not wanting it. There was no visible obstacle in those two instances, unlike for instance on judicial appointments, or on the Guantanamo closing, where he tries and fails.

PS: I think you're on safer ground with the stimulus in terms of your thesis. But there were many obstacles in the way of HCR, two of which were private providers and insurance companies. Based on past failures on this issues, it was important to get all the stakeholders onboard because they had proven their ability to scuttle the whole works. So if I accept your rendition of events and timeline, then I might say he overcame an obstacle by bargaining away the PO in exchange for other things that were important to the passage of the bill. He felt okay doing it because he didn't think the PO was essential to his big goals and because a PO could be added later once the program was up and running and folks liked it and weren't freaking out about death panels and gulags and the Republicans didn't have the ability to tell monstrous lies about it.

PS: After all, Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare, but they still can't come out against it, because people like it. They don't even think it's a government program. So once HCR had achieved that sort of cruising altitude, it would be relatively simple to improve with a PO inasmuch as the tide of established public opinion was on that side. This is the history of many big social programs, and he probably saw this program going down that path.

But some people here are so convinced Obama is a liberal, and has the same priorities as liberals (full employment being more important than inflation risks, the right to affordable health care being more important than protecting private enterprise in the HC insurance market), so that they just refuse to imagine that Obama doesn't share their values, and that there must have been a super-secret obstacle somewhere in the process.

PS: I think he looks at these issues from a non-ideological standpoint: How can he help the most people and keep the train running. He's basically a liberal, but not an ideological one. He didn't/ doesn't feel he could dismantle the private insurance market. He clearly does feel that everyone has a right to affordable health care. The question is, how do you get there given all the obstacles presented by our current situation.

Note, again, the absence of evidence. It's just blind faith that he's a liberal. So I decide to go the extra mile, I provide the links showing two points where he could have kept the PO in play, and decided not to: at the beginning of the process during closed-door negotiations with the HC lobby, and at the end. At the beginning of the process one of course can't talk of vote-counting, because so much depends on how positioning and rhetoric move the electorate and so votes in congress.

PS: No one but liberals (and maybe Richard Nixon) have seriously attempted to create a universal and affordable health care system in America. There is your evidence. It CLEARLY would have been MUCH easier for him to have followed his advisors and not brought this up. IOW, ignored the issue; that's what conservatives and moderates do. Now, ALL of the noisiest people in the country disapprove of him and what he did. Either he's a socialist or a sell-out.

At the end I've got only Lieberman and Nelson 'expressing concerns' about the Medicare Buy-in version, which was the most viable version, so that leaves 57 people not overtly concerned. And of course there were diluted versions of the Medicare buy-in that could have aleviated most concerns.

PS: Don't have time to excavate the timeline and who struck John, so I can't accept or deny this. You might be right.

On the stimulus I show evidence on an across the board consensus on Stimulus estimates, and the desire on Summers' part NOT to have a stimulus capable of closing the output gap.

PS: You also show a marvelous faith in the "maths." If we've learned anything, we've learned that economists get it wrong. That 2+2=4 always, but that the economy doesn't always obey. There is also academic work that "shows" that tax cuts have a higher multiplier effect.

Now let's look at the state of the debate at this stage. Someone says something totally unsubstantiated. I say, hey that's based on sand! But just out of a supererogatory kindness, here's a refresher on what the administration did behind closed doors and out in the open, and they never express a serious desire for either of those progressive policies. And at this point you walk in, load up your sawed-off with some buckshot, and spray vague nebulous doubts all over my evidence.

PS: Oh, Obey, I did a better job than that.

Well sorry Mr. Fancy pants if the dish just ain't up to your standards!

Seriously man. you won't believe me about Summers' judgment, because that makes him sound, gosh, not liberal. He openly makes a judgment that only a conservative would make, and because it's a judgment a liberal wouldn't make, THEREFORE you decide he couldn't have made it and you won't believe my claim he isn't a liberal.

PS: I believe that that was Summer's judgement. But you want to ADD that they KNEW that the 800 billion would be inadequate to getting the economy going. And that's really what you have to show it seems to me. Otherwise, you're stuck with a thesis that says something like, "Liberals do liberal things even when they think they aren't the best course of action." Who needs a liberal like that? Obama is a liberal, but he's also thinking, "What will work best 360 degrees? What is possible?" He's less concerned that everything he does fit under someone's idea of a label and more concerned with what will do the most good (in his estimation, obviously).

John Chait wrote a good article a while back about the differences between liberals and conservatives: Conservatives tend to stick with their principles even when their principles are achieving bad results. Liberals abandon (or feel they should abandon) programs they see aren't working. Keynes said, When facts change, I change my mind. Maybe you and I just have different ideas of what "liberal" means.

Read that back to yourself. That is some tortured shit, my friend! I really can't help you if you can't get the assumption of Obama's - and Summers' - liberal cred out of your head, if you won't accept evidence that they aren't liberals because they just gotta be.

And remember to look at the opposite side of the argument. I propose a nice little set of links. what's the other guy got? - nada, bupkis, absolutely zero. Just faith.

PS: Mind if I skip over the last two paragraphs?

When we get to Snowe and Collins, you demand a quote with them saying "hey, Boo, if y'all want more, just go ahead and ask". That's the only thing that would seem capable of moving you. I mean, of course they prefer less than he's asking. That's their job - they're the opposition, they're there to discipline the governing party. So they would be crazy to say "hey, have some more!" The most one can expect of the opposition when that opposition is under clear pressure from the popularity of the incoming president, from their own party's manifest incompetence, from the crisis facing the nation, the MOST one can expect is "the president should get what he needs...", a certain reserved deference, despite their own preferences. Again, any possible real world evidence just isn't good enough for you.

PS: I agree just based on my sense of how these things work that he could probably have gotten more. Unfortunately, your quote really does nothing to advance that thesis. Sorry. You have to read all kinds of things into it--use explanations like the above--to "show" that he could have gotten whatever he wanted. Do this experiment: Do you think he could have gotten $4 trillion? According to your theory, he could have, maybe with a $100 billion knocked off.

But yeah, I think he wanted $800 billion and that's what he got. But all your add-ons about how he sold out the people because he isn't a true liberal, etc., well, those are add-ons supplied by you. And they are based on the notion that all liberals want X in every situation and the "maths" prove more money would have worked or otherwise been better. I admit, you supply evidence. But at this point, I'm skeptical of predictions by economists, even ones I agree with. One eye is that of a true believer; the other eye keeps asking questions. So perhaps I've put an unfair burden on you.

Again, as a liberal, if you're confronted with a choice: Do X, the liberal thing. Or do Y, the thing your advisor thinks will work best. Which one do you do AS A LIBERAL?

Let's keep in mind that providing evidence isn't even my job here. It's the job of those claiming, despite appearances, that Obama's reasoning involved a lack of votes. So here I am bending over backwards, and you're saying naah, ain't enough. What do you mean "enough", you ingrate?

PS: This is silly. The default position that occurs in most legislation is that it's the product of compromise, often many of them. So to assume, based on the outcome's appearance that that is all what the initiator intended, wanted, or bargained for is silly. I wouldn't assume that. So yes, TM has to prove his case, but so do you. Legislation is not like a novel where you assume that every word was intended by the author. It's the ultimate committee project.

Okay, "ingrate" is a bit much, but, c'mon! I don't know where this skepticism comes from. Obama was the most centrist of the three Dems in the primary. In his own written works he comes across as a moderate centrist. In government his rhetoric has been moderate centrist. He and his spokesmen exhibit a remarkable contempt for the left. His executive branch policies - i.e quite independently of legislative vote counts - is incredibly corporate friendly across the board - finance, oil, communications. His corporate funding is unparalleled - there are no GOP candidates because few corporates in seriousness wish to oppose a gold-mine in terms of deregulation, subsidy, low taxes, and easy money like Obama. But somehow people are convinced he's a secret liberal. it's as preposterous as the right-wing theory he's a secret Muslim. There is no evidence for either claim - but in both cases ... that just reinforces the faith of the true believers.

PS: Then why were all the lib/progs SO excited about him and are now SO disappointed? Your assumption must be that he was lying or putting on a face--a big fat face--simply to get all them lib/progs to hand over their money, their lists, their time, etc. I personally put up four young Canadians who came to campaign for him. I've always seen him as a liberal centrist.

That's for the general picture as I see it.

Regarding the particulars of the March '10 vote on the HCR bill:

PS. They didn't want the whole effort to fail on the basis of one part, especially as they felt that the broad goals of the reform didn't absolutely require it. So I think we can fault Obama, perhaps, for negotiating with himself. For not trying and thereby failing.

Okay, here we have a very different perspective on the narrative. From my perspective lefties started with a 50 year gradual expansion of public HC programs leading eventually and inevitably to the only viable system: single payer. So up to and including Kerry the standard position was expand coverage through public programs.

PS: But I don't think any of the candidates in my lifetime advocated for single payer. Maybe I'm wrong in this, but this has been a non-starter. That's why Obama didn't start from that position.

Obama then says, okay, let's add to expanding public programs some private sector regulations. And everyone goes "sure, we can do that as well". Then there's a bait and switch and the public plan becomes a public 'option' and the centerpiece of the whole HC expansion effort is private insurance market reform. And then there's a further bait and switch where the public option becomes ... optional. Hey, our priority is insurance reform. Whoa! How did that happen? And then, it turns out, he sold out the public option before negotiations in congress even began.

PS: Again, I don't know that anyone running for office advocated for single payer--but perhaps I'm wrong about this. Obama clearly felt from the beginning that single payer was not doable. If he had thought it was doable, he would have gone for it. But since we'd failed to do that for XX years, he decided to go a different route. That's my reading.

Don't know your definition of bad faith, but he's running right up against that line between mealy-mouthed horseshit and bold-faced lie when he spends the late summer and autumn still saying 'yeah we'll try/we'd like to include a PO'.

PS: My view on this is covered above.

In my story, you had three parts to a decent HC package - medicare savings, medicaid expansion, and a paying self-financing public plan for those in the middle - above the poverty threshold but denied affordable private insurance (through rescission, pre-existing condition, age, what have you). The third part was replaced by a plan to shore up and subsidize private insurers - thereby forestalling any future expansion of public plans. That's a bill straight out of the GOP's playbook. And somehow liberals are supposed to be happy because the public option was never central to HCR. That sounds like a bad faith alternative narrative to me. Not only was the PO central, the whole justification for the insurance exchange crap was as a concession to get the PO, to give the private insurers half a chance against patently more efficient more cost-effective public plans.

PS: I can't argue with you on the substance of the PO, because I agree with you. But that isn't the argument we started off having.

Ezra Klein is, imho, a washington insider captured by the WH. He helped shape this narrative where the PO is an optional luxury, that can be tacked on later, when - somehow - insurers and providers flush with subsidy cash will cave to Unions who, because of how this bill undermines their hard-earned HC plans, will lose even more power and membership. It's not an optional luxury, and future changes to this bill will be harder, not easier, to make as we hold no bargaining chip against insurers and providers. They've got a universal mandate to buy their product, and a regressive tax subsidizing the purchase of their product. We've handed them all the goodies up front, in the hopes that someday they'll decide they don't want crazy high profits and do some cost-cutting. out of charity. or something.

PS: I disagree with you on Klein, but as to the rest, you may be right. I'll have to think further on what you say here. You make some good points.

So when I say a diluted version of the PO matters. It's not that it's a nice cherry on a beautiful insurance-exchange-reform cake. It's that the Insurance exchange reform is worthless. Less than worthless - when it comes to cost-control. And any kind of PO gets a foot in the door on further expansion of cost-effective public plans.

PS: It's fair to say we don't really know how well the program will work, but participation in the exchanges does come with cost-control strings, including the judgement of the advisory panel. If, in fact, they don't work and costs continue to rise, then what is to prevent the government from saying, "This isn't working out. We have to put in a PO to give you a serious run for your money." Almost all social programs have been opposed by corporations, but that hasn't prevented the government from expanding them. Assuming you believe in the power of your government at all-- which you sort of have to in order to believe that a PO was possible to begin with--see original argument--then you have to believe the government is capable to setting and enforcing the rules for the exchanges, including cost, and of adding a PO later on.

Ultimately, you have to have faith that government can act in the people's best interests--otherwise, there's no point in arguing about any of this, is there?

In short, if you believe in market-based solutions in health care, go for it. But the kind of liberal I had in mind is one who has a certain amount of skepticism regarding the possible virtues of market-discipline as a tool in this particular arena at least. Obama is not of that ilk.

PS: I disagree with this for all the reason I've stated above. Any reasonable person today would be skeptical of both the free market's and the government's proclivity and power to "do the right thing." Any government with the power to grant you something--like the PO--has the power to take it away or diminish it beyond usefulness. Any government with the power to provide a PO also has the power to enforce the rules of exchanges and institute a PO if the exchanges aren't delivering good and affordable health care.

But I think we've strayed from the original question and into the substance and attractiveness of the bill...

Yup. Like this? Ya done

we are stardust — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:07:31 +0000

In reply to The finance thing is both

Yup. Like this? Ya done good; I gotta get out in the garden; nuff o' this horsin' around. ;o)

The finance thing is both

Obey — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:58:18 +0000

In reply to 'Lying' flies around these

The finance thing is both incredibly complex and incredibly simple, isn't it? On the one hand the details of how to structure viable reforms is really tough to grasp, and the nature of the crimes committed is quite complex as well. On the other hand the fact that ... all the criminals still run these firms ... that should be ample proof that things ain't fixed, right? Don't need to be an economics phd to figure out that this solution won't work out too well.

As for the "lying", I dunno. The democrats are no longer the reality-based party anymore. Totally and unapologetically faith-based at this point. Should win some votes in the bible-belt, perhaps...

With all due respect to ArtA,

Obey — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:44:55 +0000

In reply to True, but "they" seem to

With all due respect to ArtA, this isn't about comparing Obama to a hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidency. This is about liberals taking a less passive attitude towards the president, whether it is Obama or Clinton.

ArtA even agreed with me emphatically that Obama wasn't a liberal, and that it was silly and irrational of liberals to think he was. But we seem to have different conclusions about what strategy liberal groups should adopt given that fact.

True, but "they" seem to

Peter Schwartz — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:22:52 +0000

In reply to Besides all of that, there is

True, but "they" seem to think it was, but Obama secretly didn't like pie even though he had campaigned on it. Now he's telling lib/progs to go eat cake.

'Lying' flies around these

we are stardust — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:03:13 +0000

In reply to Hi Brew.I love this drama

'Lying' flies around these parts pretty easily these days. Brew seems to think evidence isn't...proof. Without his belief in proof, you're...lying. Brilliant; you're taking the insult better than I did. That accusation irks the living shit outta me.

I get left wondering why anyone thinks that it's in any of our interest to misrepresent any of these histories. For the love of birds, the issues we tracked closely as bloggers were ones we wanted to turn out right! And too much of this stuff does have evidence that's not that hard to dig up after the fact.

Fin-reg's different, I admit. I don't know many blogs and comments you and I and others did when info came out from the various economists and insiders who were reporting which amenments Obama and Geithner were tanking outright, and which legislation was watered down by the White House, and which elements were left to written at a later date, as most of the regs on financial instruments and end-user language never have been.

I'd think that even if Person X never followed along for all the months and months of the process, friom the phony Angelides Pecora-not Commission (late in its establishment anyway) to the final contents of Dodd-Frank and all the mega-frustrating ways the WH negatively intervened, the evidence of failure to prosecute financial crime involved, or even to uphold the regs which now ARE law would be evidence enough of what this admin's been up to.

(By the way, I'm writing this part to you so as not to engage Brew myself.) Thanks for your astounding recall on the health care issue; it wasn't something I paid direct attention to until the end games were afoot.

You write that Obama is a moderate Dem; now you know I've totally lost what any of those designations mean any longer, they seem to have morphed so much over the years. But on finance and Wall Street and banking in general, I wonder if political designations have any meaning at all. Even Papa Bush's people put thousands in jail over the criminal S&L enterprise. And what do we get after similar criminals ruin the economy and regular Americans' lives and financial futures? Austerity measures.