Well stated Oleeb! Thanks for this post.

I am communicating with congress and white house every day on this issue now. I can't fax every day. I don't own a fax machine so I do call and email as well.

I had an idea. We can't stop using health care and medications in protest because it would compromise people's health.

We could however try to organize a day of 'no shopping'. We could plan a day where we all plan ahead and we do not shop in any stores or restaurants. If we could organize across the nation. Maybe we could circulate a petition type statement where people sign on to commit to this and choose a date that is far enough out to give the most time to gather support and yet a date that would have impact during the process.

If we could get labor, moveon, and DFA, and other organizations we might be able to get people to do this. Why? Because they don't have to go anywhere. Show up for anything... just sign on and participate by not shopping on that day.

The goal would be to have big numbers on the committed to demonstrate the numbers of people who refused to shop, eat out, etc. And it would be felt economically which is the only thing I can think of. Thoughts?

Hmmm....

"No Shopping Day in Support of the Public Option"

Pick a date.

Get it viral.

~OGD~

The only way a mandate is justifiable is if it is affordable which it totally is NOT in this bill. This is regressive taxation weighing most heavily on the working class.

It is impossible to be both liberal and a Democrat. Impossible.

No bill at all is better than anything we are likely to get. Obama is too weak to get it done. What we needed was a nasty old pol like LBJ! Americans are such idiots!

Good idea if we can sell it. Key is to not go off half-cocked. We can't be a headline on Fox/Beck about how it fizzled, so need to really organize it.

How feasible is it realistically? I am wondering...

Well in actuality the most important part would be getting a big enough number of people on board. Seems very feasible for one day.

I mean, can you go one day without shopping anywhere... forgoing McD's etc.? to demonstrate support for a public option?

I wish I could rec'd this about 1,000 times. The D's are being set up by the R's and their corporate owners to ensure any reform fails and for the near/mid terms puts the kabosh on any attempt to regulate the health care industry.

My take away passage from oleeb's outstanding post is;

"Our current, for profit healthcare system is more mercantilist than capitalist. No genuine competition between insurance companies exists nor does any substantive choice exist for consumers. So the beneficial aspects of a capitalist approach for society have been eliminated. Instead, we have a noncompetitive marketplace designed to guarantee profits for the broker (not the provider) of medical services and no other genuine choice for those who need to access the medical system."

That gets right to the heart of our problems and must be changed or the for profit health care industry will, morally and fiscally, bankrupt our country.

As Ezra Klein notes, this Baucus plan is more or less the same as the GOP plan of 1994, proposed by Chafee. Enough said, really...

On the bright side, now Baucus is no longer sitting on HCR until it dies. The bill will get voted on and then the game's in Conference. Hope Reid picks the right negotiators.

Great post Oleeb.

oleeb, I've parsed the first 15 pages of the Baucus bill and fired off a memo-for-record with my Senator.

I'm one of your supporters from Nevada and currently I'm working overseas supporting the troops in Europe. I would appreciate a bit of your time concerning the health care issue before Congress.

I've begun reading the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 bill put together by the Senate Finance Committee under the leadership of chairman, Senator Max Baucus. I'm quite unhappy with the contents I've read in just the first 15 pages. Sir, with all due respect, what I've read is horrible!

First, the bill discusses the spectrum of existing state rating limitations from pure community rating, to adjusted community rating, and then rate bands. I would have thought the pure community rating would have been the way to go simply because premiums would not vary based on any characteristic, including health, age or gender. However, this bill supports rate bands which allow premium variation based on health. These variations are typically expressed as a percentage above and below an established index. So if an established rate band is, say +/- 25 percent, then insurance carriers can vary premiums, based on health factors, up to 25 percent above and 25 percent below the index. It's extremely narrow in its' scope. That's not what the change the public are expecting when they hear health care reform.

Secondly, these rate bands still punish the public for health issues they have no control over, such as aging. Note in the bill that a smoker can be penalized 1.5 times more than the cost of the primary premium for the average person. However, if you're over a specific age, say 50, then you're penalized 5 times more than the cost of the primary premium for the average person. Odd isn't it that someone who elects to engage is a habit that is the known cause of serious health related issues later in life is only penalized a third to a fourth of what it will cost someone who just grows old naturally. Luckily being here in Europe where the socialized medicine keeps the cost of health care extremely reasonable, I only pay $365 a month for health care insurance - my COBRA was $275 until it ran out. Can you imagine what I would have to pay for health care insurance if I were in the States - I estimate, at 5 times what I pay now, it would be in the neighborhood of $1800 a month. That's not health care I can believe in.

Those are just two examples off pages one and two. I'm sure there'll be even more depressing Titles, Sub-Titles and Parts to weed through in order to fully understand just how much of the public trust has been left shipwrecked on the shoals corporate and capitalist lust and greed. At least Gilligan's Island was a comedy. This is seriously becoming a theatrical farce in the making. As a Nation, I know we can do better than this. Please don't disappoint me.

Of course I had to get out the axle grease and lub it up just to make sure it doesn't end up in the bit bucket as a crank e-mail of no concern. I'll post any substantial reply if they bother to send one.

I tend to disagree with one thing you stated here, Libertine:

The D's are being set up by the R's and their corporate owners to ensure any reform fails and for the near/mid terms puts the kabosh on any attempt to regulate the health care industry.

I'm afraid the D's are willing participants in this kabuki theater.

They have pretended to be in favor of legitimate health care reform, but they have offered tepid support at best for anything that might bear negative impact on the health insurance industry's ability to maintain rapacious profits. Indeed, perhaps the greatest puzzle throughout this health care reform debate has been the D's unwillingness to pursue single-payer or the public option despite polls showing overwhelming support for both. They have simply rolled over on anything like the public option, crying that the Repubs and the Insurance Industry just won't let them get it done.

"WE've worked hard at this," the Dems will tell us. "Let's celebrate the fact that we finally arrived at a bi-partisan bill."

And then they will wrap a bow around this stinking pile of shit and applaud the successful outcome of their health reform that looks like little more than a "Health Insurance Industry Profit Enhancement Act of 2009."

It is kabuki theater. The GOP opposes anything the Dems propose, especially anything that doesn't serve the interests of the Health Insurance Industry, This keeps their base happy and also keeps the health insurance lobby's dollars flowing into their coffers.

Meanwhile, the Dems advocate for health care reform, and work REALLY hard to achieve a bi-partisan health care reform bill, but are careful to not gain anything in that reform effort that negatively affects the interests of the health insurance industry. This keeps their base happy and also keeps the health insurance lobby's dollars flowing into their coffers.

There truly is a bi-partisan cooperation in performing the roles ascribed to the Dems and Republicans in this dance. And it truly is a win-win for both parties.

But this win-win bipartisanship is accomplished at great expense to the rest of us who so naively thought that Obama would at last bring a little "Change We Can Believe In" rather than the same old corrupt Washington politics.

Headline:

The Insurance Industry Profit Protection And Enhancement Act.

heh heh heh, quite accurate.

The public gets the screw and Cigna gets the driver.

I've managed to get through all 223 pages of the Baucus draft by skimming. It's a mixed bag of some very good proposals and some very inadequate ones. I particularly deplore the 5:1 ratio of permissible charges based on aging, and I find the premium subsidies for low income earners to be insufficient. I expect that negotiations with other committees in Congress may lead to some improvements.

Like others, I would prefer a public option to the proposed non-profit cooperatives, but as I've stated elsewhere on multiple occasions, I don't consider this issue central to reform efforts. I won't belabor the point here, as anyone interested can visit my blog for my reasoning.

Probably the point I believe most needs emphasis, because it's most often misunderstood, relates to the causes of our current healthcare crisis and the consequent need for reform. They can be divided into two categories - inequitability and cost.

Inequitability refers to denial of insurance to individuals based on health status, discriminatory rates based on health status for those insured, recissions, lifetime caps on coverage, and a number of other practices.

Cost refers to the unsustainable trajectory we are on, which currently causes the healthcare system to consume 17 percent of GDP, and which threatens to make adequate care unaffordable for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Inequitability is an insurance industry problem, and requires insurance industry reform (as proposed in the various bills).

Cost is a healthcare system problem and requires healthcare system reform, with the various bills taking only tentative steps in that direction.

To conclude that excessive cost is attributable to insurance industry excess is simply incorrect, and many of the current denunciations therefore seem to me to be mistargeted. Similarly, the current Baucus proposal, for example, can't legitimately be accused of designed to facilitate insurance industry profiteering. In fact, the insurance industry has consistently recorded low profit margins (about 3-4 percent of budgets, reflecting less than 2 percent of total healthcare costs), and their overhead costs, while higher than optimal, are not exorbitant.

It is true that insurance reform and health system reform are linked, in that insurers currently pass excessive healthcare system cost on to subscribers, but that vexing problem is one that requires complex long-term solutions that focus primarily on healthcare itself, and would not be solved simply by adding a public option, or otherwise squeezing insurers. There is some room for squeezing, but not as much as some commenters imagine.

Just found it. Nope it was from him. Rock on.

Agreed!

But Fred, let's be realistic. It isn't worth doing the incremental stuff without at least a public option because whatever benefits there might be are negated by the boondoggle of billions in subsidies paid as tribute to the political power of the insurance industry.

The politics of it all just suck for the people without at least a strong public option. It isn't worth the marginal gains that might be realized (there's no guarantee we'll see any of them) unless there is a direct benefit to citizens in the form of an alternative to private insurance and that is the public option.

The half measures otherwise proposed for the healthcare system just aren't worth doing from the perspective of the average citizen without the hope of a public alternative coming available to all in our lifetimes. A strong public option and only a strong public option holds out that promise. Anything less and it is as clear as can be that the public is going to get screwed and therefore any bill without at least a strong public option should be killed.

Good point, Sir. My mistake, you are right.