GOP Healthcare DOA
Des Moines, Iowa
With both the heat and the humidity in the 90's on Friday, I felt like one of those infamous pork-chops-on-a-stick trudging through the Iowa State Fair (or was it more like one of the ever popular fried Twinkies on sale all around me?). I got precious little relief when I finally stumbled into the air-conditioned Maytag theater to hear the Republican presidential candidates debate "health care and financial security." What stretched over two hours could have been condensed into a couple of sentences: Other than cutting taxes and scaring the Bejeezus out of you with the specter of "Democrat-engineered-government-run-health care" we really have nothing to offer on either issue. No surprise given that after 6 years of Republican rule absolutely nothing has been done to extend coverage to the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance nor to cap skyocketing prices for those who do. Why expect anything different from another Republican White House (or a Democratic one for that matter).
I could barely be bothered to take notes at the Friday gathering. Fortunately, local blogger Dien Judge was sitting next to me and did an excellent job of live blogging the event which you can read here. No question that the affable Judge made much better company than the other two reporters on my immediate flanks: Byron York of National Review and Joe Klein of Joe Klein Inc.
There were a couple of high points that even I couldn't miss in my semi-daze. I sort of loved California Rep. Duncan Hunter (yes he's running for President) who suggested that the best way to cut health care costs was to "modernize" medicine and kick people out of hospitals quicker than they are currently shown the exit door. I also loved former Dubya Health and Human Services [sic] Secretary Tommy Thompson (yes he's running for President) hinting that a portion of social security contributions ought to be put in the stock market -- on a day in which the stock market threatened to evaporate. Not to worry; shortly after Saturday's Straw Poll and their expected miserable results, both Thompson and Hunter are likely to be former candidates.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who slimmed down a whopping 110 lbs. has understandably become a health freak if not a great health care policy maker. He did give a sensible notion of how we ought to be stressing preventive wellness over catastrophic intervention. True enough. But Huckabee offers no discernible program for how ordinary people are supposed to pay for all that well-care ( do you know that a full blood test, for example, gets billed at something like $400-700?).
Huckabee, by the way, has become a dark-horse candidate for coming in second in Saturday's straw poll. With Giuliani sitting it out and McCain self-eviscerating, Mitt Romney is a shoo-in for first. The only question is how big (or little) will his vote be (anyone who pays the $35 fee or is bussed in with a free ticket from one of the campaigns can "vote" in the day-long circus of BBQ's, speeches and music). Sam Brownback is also hoping for a second-place finish, competing with Huckabee for the social conservative vote. There's also been plenty of buzz about cranky libertarian Ron Paul's push with some analysts predicting he could stage an upset and break into the Iowa first tier. Personally, I doubt it. It takes money and organization to pack the Straw Poll with sufficient voters and Paul doesn't have much of either. But what do I know?
Iowa no-show Giuliani doe, indeed, have his own health care plan -- one that Slate completely dissects and discards.
At the end of the day, I did have a good little chat with Newt Gingrich who I bumped into next to a tractor display at the fair. More on that later but I credit Newt with having more or less the same disdainful views that I do of the major Republican candidates, albeit for very different reasons.
Have to get up early Saturday to go to Ames for the Straw Poll. I'm already yawning.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Healthcare is the Republican Achilles Heal, for sure.
Opponents of universal and nationalized healthcare frequently argue that the US has the best healthcare system in the world, but then ignore the dilemma of the working poor and minor welfare dependants, among others.
(Paying for healthcare or food).
Time to start thinking about what might be possible.
For example: if the law allowed Nurse Practitioners to practice medicine, for profit, poor people could visit and pay for professional medical advice and recieve prescriptions, without subsidizing the cost of MD student loans and luxury Bahama vacations.
No one will dispute that 90 per cent of medicine is preventative. Good nurse practitioners know their stuff, and the best healthcare I ever received was from a nurse practitoner, when I was uninsured and indigent.
If the Left could ever begin to take the market seriously, it could begin to propose solutions that would break various medical and monopolies and ologopolies, instead of hewing to the standard of Universal Medical Insurance or nothing, beyond the status quo.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
So Mitt is most likely GOP candidate to say, “I love the smell of high fructose corn syrup in the morning…”?
August 10th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Mitt is the one most likely to say “I must maintain this rigid posture and wooden smile or all is lost.”
August 11th, 2007 at 4:26 am
Mitt is the one most likely to say: I love the war in Iraq. Let’s double it. And most likely NOT to say: my boys are safely ensconsed in air-conditioned Winnebegos comfortably cheerleading for the war and for me at the same time, not fighting it. Why worry about war when only the little people have to die in it and I’ll cut your taxes again, so you won’t have to pay for it either?
August 11th, 2007 at 7:44 am
do you know that a full blood test, for example, gets billed at something like $400-700?
I never cease to be blown away by American health care costs. People can quibble over what kind of socialization is neccessary…but any system that costs you that much to monitor blood…wow. That’s mind blowing.
August 11th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Cummings,
We’re in agreement on this. See this article (http://tinyurl.com/2wwwdn) for another example:
That’s it in a nutshell.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Marc, I do hope The Nation is paying for this …
Here is the New West Notes forecast .. Romney wins straw poll. One or two complete losers I never mention drop out.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:31 am
BTW, there was a smiley in that post. I don’t know what happened to it …
August 11th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Here’s the problem in a nutshell. Only one person in eleven in the good old USA has a passport. That means that less than 10% of us have ever been abroad. So all we know about the rest of the world has to come from the news media. Oops! It is hardly a secret that news organizations have spent the last 25 – 30 years cutting back on coverage of the rest of the world. So our view of the rest of the world is, shall we say, somewhat limited.
And what are we told? That we’re the greatest nation in the world with the highest standard of living. That our Medical Care System is tops – the most modern, the most cutting edge. And when Rudy rails against “Socialised Medicine” the papers duly report that charge and nothing else. So the average American “Knows” that foreign Health schemes are a combination of the DMV and the Post Office – with long waits and obsolete drugs and procedures. And, besides, you have to pay TAXES for it!
(Taxes = Bad; Premiums = the natural order of things)
I think our system will change when the number of uninsured hits 100 million – say in about 10 years.
“SICKO”? Well Michael Moore is a commie and he likes Castro and the Commies down there can’t do anything right. Right? Besides they’re 37th and we 35th or some such thing. See we beat Cuba! Cue the patriotic music!
Of course Moore and Kuchinich are right. You have to take the profit motive out of medicine but that won’t happen with the media sea our candidates swim in. Ted Marmor of the Harvard School of Public Health had a revealing article during the Clinton Health Care debacle. He recounts meeting with the President who agreed that something like a government single-payer system was the way to go. Problem was, Bill told him, he could never overcome the propaganda of the insurers that would inundate any such poposal. And that was before “Harry and Louise.”
I really don’t know the answer to this connundrum except to say that we are well and truly screwed.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:00 am
“No surprise given that after 6 years of Republican rule absolutely nothing has been done to extend coverage to the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance nor to cap skyocketing prices for those who do. Why expect anything different from another Republican White House (or a Democratic one for that matter).”
That last parenthetical is not even remotely credible, given what essentially every Democratic candidate for the White House has put on the table. It’s not even credible given the recent CHIPS voting. One can criticize the specifics of the Democratic candidates’ health plans – in that they mostly avoid pushing single payer head on – but that one-liner is a whopping example of anti-Dem dishonesty. (Of course, not to approve of blatantly bogus assertions one would have to be a “sHill for Hill.” Bring it on…)
August 11th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Reg
Could u take a moment abd remind us of the health care reforms enacted during the two years in 93 and 94 when dems controlled congress and white house? Not to mention the previous thirty years. Wouid u like to make a prediction as to how many americans will still be without coverage in 20012 assuming a dem sweep in 08. I will. 40 million minimum. What’s ur number?
August 11th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Might be time to suggest here that the whole “Chickenhawk” issue as per Mitt’s kids is a non-issue. Mitt is a Republican.
The Republican’s have made one thing pretty clear in recnet years: they perfer fake warriors to the real thing. The elected the Babe Ruth of Vietnam draft dogers and pissed on the record of a war hero. To these people, how you have lived your life means nothing: politcs is ALL. The fact that most of them never put their bodies where their mouths were conserning warfare doesn’t exactly hurt. Draft doging John Wayne is their icon and most of them have never heard of Audie Murphy.
It may prick their feelings a bit when they get razzed once in a blue moon, but it’s not going to come up that often. I mean, it’s not a big INCONSISTENCY, like a weathy man advocating livable wages for all.
Don’t expect Marc Cooper to bring up warror Newt’s non-service record. And wasn’t Marc Cooper the journalist who told us that he couldn’t help thinking getting more moral politcos who haven’t cheated on thier lives couldn’t help but bring us better goverment?
Let’s see in Newt gets asked about that….
August 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Nardy you are simply an idiot. My job is to interview newt and therefore I am now his supporter? Get bent, dope
August 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Marc – nice try, but if you can’t see a shift in the terms of the health care debate in recent years and role that it plays in CURRENT Dem politics, you need to find a new profession. And your prediction of what I take as Zero improvement in health coveage for ‘12 isn’t credible if a Dem gets in the White House and they sweep congress. But if the GOP – no dimes diff – get in, your prediction – or something very close to it – will certainly hold for ‘16. Sorry, but this is not analysis yous serve up, it’s bile.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Of course I hearthe differwence in rhetoric. But u drrmrd to have omitted ur prediction. A number please
August 11th, 2007 at 10:47 am
What’s the point of my playing a game with you ? You’re making a patently stupid, dishonest statement that there’s no more reason to expect improvements in health coverage from Americans from Democrats than Republicans. This Congress has already proven you wrong with their push for CHIP. You’re full of crap on this. It’s that simple.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:48 am
sorry .. “for Americans”, not “from”
August 11th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Well I’m not sure a prediction is in order for “20012″ as Lord Keynes rightly pointed out that in the long run we’re all dead.
But I’ll hold on to my prediction that until the number of uninsured goes north of a hundred million our friends at the insurance companies will rule the roost.
(please see the comments of Woody and GM Roper over at “WitnessLA”)
August 11th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Reg. U can do better than to call me stupid. I’m serious about my prediction. Apparenrtly your faith is more limited. I understand. its not that Reps and Dems are identical. Its that Dems have historicaly failed and little suggests that will change.
August 11th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Anyone want to answer my question on overcoming media ADD and the millions from the insurance lobby?
August 11th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Like this ? GM Roper – “We do NOT have a health care crisis, we have an insurance problem that won’t be solved by single payer (look at all the other countries problems that have tried that)”
That’s the statement of, not to put too fine a point on it, either someone who’s totally ignorant or utterly dishonest and fanatically ideological to the extreme of, say, the late Gus Hall. Or some combination of both. If Woody or Roper show up here with scare stories about European health care, they should simply be branded as they fools and/or liars they generally are in these discussions. After all, these are the guys who proclaimed how crazy it was to raise fundamental questions about the “mission” in Iraq and whether it was ill-considered and incompetently led, how successful those elections were, democracy on the march, freedom for Iraqis, blah blah blah. But these are increasingly marginal, isolated types. Fools of the first order who tend to speak to a shrinking circle of dead-enders. (A measure of the desperation among dead-enders is the promotion and support on FOX News of this crazy Philadelphia News columnist, hoping for another 9/11 attack to “bring the country together” – i.e. revive the political fortunes of the loons who brought us the Iraq war. Talk about a death-cult, hate-America Right, it’s in full bloom among the FOXoid, Drudged-out crazies.)
But on point, the real problem on health care is what richard notes – how much sway the insurance companies will have, and the correct answer is “a lot”. This is a problem among Democrats ranging from lack political and moral courage, to practical issues of strategy given the ground game that exists, for better or worse. But I don’t think its even remotely credible to predict that there is no reason “to expect” positive changes on the health care front starting in ‘09 through the subsequent election cycle from Democrats more than Republicans. That’s crap. Total and blatant.
August 11th, 2007 at 11:26 am
“U can do better than to call me stupid.” I can call some things you say stupid. This assertion that we can’t expect any more from the Dems to improve health coverage for Americans than from the GOP is stupid – both as a prediction and as a historical fact. Where the hell did Medicare come from ?
August 11th, 2007 at 11:39 am
“Anyone want to answer my question on overcoming media ADD and the millions from the insurance lobby?”
That’s a tough problem – but a large contingent of Democrats and an increasingly impressive and relevant contingent of analysts and advocates hooked into “new media” are gearing to take it on. I’m not in the business of predictions or dispensing good cheer on difficult issue. But I’m also not a fan of pessimism as a default. I never expected a mainstream mag like Newsweek to publish a full frontal assault on the mendacity of “Global Warming is a Hoax” folks funded by dirty energy companies and other “usual suspects”, but they just did. SICKO has helped. More can and will be done and a critical mass can be reached on this issue. The Democrats are poised to help push in the right direction.
Am I impressed with the Big Three health care proposals. Not deeply, although they’re vast improvements. Ironically I just read that John Edwards rejected the advice of Rahm Emanuel’s brother, a physician who he consulted with on health policy, to put a bolder proposal on the table that cut the insurance companies out of the picture in favor of his “Romneyesque” proposal (from when Romney was for Romney before he was against him.)
August 11th, 2007 at 11:42 am
U guys are dancing around the central question. Why don’t u phrase it properly …. Will the insurance lobby capture a Dem white house and congress? U already have my prediction. The only wild car factor is corporate america. It is more likely to force a larger govt medical role than the Dems.
August 11th, 2007 at 11:50 am
So the only political players left in America are corporate – insurance companies vs. corporations who are concerned about health care costs ? What a bleak notion. No wonder you’re willing to waste your vote on Nader and deny that there’s any possibility of change via electing more and better candidates in the Dem column. (And I hate to inform you, but wonderful idiosyncracies and personal/regional anomalies aside, Bernie Sanders is de facto a Democrat in the Senate.)
This strikes me as a form of nihilism…
August 11th, 2007 at 11:56 am
(yeah, it rhymes with “realism”, but one can be realistic without being cynical. This is, ironically, a mirror of the worst kind of Democratic thinking that presumes there’s no percentage in trying to shift Beltway conventional wisdom, engage the electorate at the grass roots around issues or move away from the centers of gravity that have already been set by the usual suspects.)
August 11th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Marc is right about industrial capital which does want socialized/national health care, but finance capital does not.
Anyone who believes the Democrats will do a thing in this direction is dreaming. I hope I’m wrong. Bernie Sanders may be de facto a Democrat, but so are titans of insurance/pharma lobby recipients.
August 11th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
reg –
Give me any empirical evidence that will point to the possibility of improvement under Dems. Cite me any real expansion of entitlements since the dawn of neoliberalism.
August 11th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
“any empirical evidence that will point to the possibility ”
When you use the term “possibility” you actually reduce your case to Laughable. But the CHIP vote, which I’ve alluded to several times already is empirical evidence that there’s a major difference, volumes of campaign rhetoric, bringing the issue to the center of their voter appeals, and extensive policy papers from every major Dem candidate aside.
Okay. This is getting boring.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Anyone want to answer my question on overcoming media ADD and the millions from the insurance lobby?
I don’t know. What do you do when you suddenly discover that the front wheels of your car no longer respond to the steering wheel? That’s what government and the media are beginning to feel like to this voter.
That said, I’m not sure defending or trashing the democratic candidates on their lame and limping health care proposals is the answer either. Doubtless, the middle class will put their shoulders to the wheel of the Democratic party in ‘08 on the slim hope, only to wind up on its back like Linus and the football. I suspect that, as Richard has intimated, it will have to get to the point where the uninsured have created such an enormous drain on our economy that politicians are forced to confront the fact we cannot afford not to insure everyone’s access to good health care universally.
I expect private health insurers will behave not unlike the oil companies. They’ll ride it for all it’s worth until they’re made obsolete. That is, the health insurance companies will fight tooth and nail to avoid any technological innovation (ie, policy) until it’s no longer a profitable option. This is where a tough talkin’ Daddy Party could make an unpleasant executive decision if it were inclined, but it’s too dependent on the Insurance Lobby’s sugar-tit. It’s also where jcummings’ distinction between industrial capital and finance capital is a notable distinction. Speaking of which aren’t we all going to enjoy bailing out the hedge funds? Would that only investment bankers have trouble getting jumbo mortgages be the worst of it.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Laughable to ask when since the nepliberal era Dems have actually passed any refornist/social-democratic legislation?
August 11th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I see that my major comment was “moderated” away and if it reappears I’ll rejoin the discussion. Until then I’ll let others hash it out as life is too short to have to repeat myself all the time.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
volumes of campaign rhetoric, bringing the issue to the center of their voter appeals, and extensive policy papers
Par 4 the corse but when have they “made a difference”?
August 11th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Hey, Marc. Tell us about Romney and the Iraq vet.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I wish you were right, reg (regarding the Dems actually passing worthy reform on health care). But I’m afraid Marc’s probably correct. When we see H. Lee Scout or Richard Wagoner doing PSA’s for national health insurance, we’ll probably have a better shot.
100 million uninsured? RLC, that’s really frightening. Thinking about Americas poor health; obesity & diabetes rates, that worse case scenerio shuts the country down.
August 11th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
um, that’s “H.Lee Scott” not Scout.
August 11th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Slightly off topic but always relevant to any thread that points out the cynicism of conservative solutions to human problems. Bush’s pick to head up the UN’s World Food Program is sadly a moonie with a Horatio Alger complex.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/world/americas/11sheeran.html?ref=world
August 11th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Well its back and so am I. I hope that Reg is right but I fear that the Dem who enters the WH on Jan 20 09 will have a knock down and drag out fight on his or her hands. And we better understand that now.
Marc likes throwing rocks and thats OK. But he should remember that HL Menken who was so important in the twenties became irrelevant in the New Deal and I sense another activist period coming. No thanks to the media.
August 11th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
“the Dem who enters the WH on Jan 20 09 will have a knock down and drag out fight on his or her hands”
I agree – except I don’t think they are all equally disposed to a fight so much as looking for some compromise in the near term that appears to satisfy those seeking reform and those who inhabit the status quo.. The biggest problem IMHO isn’t that the Dems can be expected to do nothing, but to what degree the treasury will become a piggy bank for insurance companies in the course of efforts to expand health coverage to “universal”. That, more than the failure to pass some Massachusetts-style reform in the foreseeable future, is where unwillingness to engage in a “knock-down-drag-out fight” is most apparent and most discouraging.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
What I DO see is a window open in the public and political spheres to move the national debate on universal coverage forward. How far forward and how satisfying the results will appear to someone such as myself who’s 100% for single-payer, I’m not predicting. But the prospects for some significant movement look very favorable. My larger point is that the repetition of “can’t/won’t” has a nasty tendency to become self-fullfilling. And in some cases perhaps, where there’s a vested interested in riding certain ideological hobby-horses into the sunset, wish-fulfilling.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
“life is too short to have to repeat myself all the time”
I thought that’s what most of us were here for. I doubt that I’m alone in thinking that I could, by myself, write a comments thread comprising several dozen posts using an array of familiar “handles” that would be virtually indistinguishable from any other.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
“Marc is right about industrial capital which does want socialized/national health care, but finance capital does not”
This is a facile distinction that doesn’t really make any sense when you look at the reality of “finance” and “industrial” capital being intertwined. (Is General Electric finance or industrial ? Actually it’s both.) Obviously the insurance industry and those heavily vested in it don’t want to see single payer. But banks are increasingly service industries – they don’t even call their outlets banks anymore, but “stores” – that employ a very large workforce, some of whom actually have pretty good health coverage. I don’t know what the CEOs of various banks think about health care reform, but I do know that retaining employees is a very big issue and offering health care benefits is major in this regard. Which is costly. The point being that I wouldn’t make any glib assumptions about who might be tempted to support universal health coverage and who might not among the corporate elite. The head of General Mills, who was the Business Roundtable point man against Hillary back in the day has joined the Safeway CEO in pushing for universal coverage (not single-payer, of course, but they’d probably buy into an Edwards-style plan.) So, yes, industrialists and retailers that rely on a very large workforce have a rational interest in health-care reform. Some of them are even smart enough to comprehend that fact. I do know that if Walmart decided to join an aggressive campaign for universal health coverage, the insurance industry and its allies would be put on the defensive and would engage Plan B, which I’m sure they’ve already painsteakingly plotted out, to ensure that any reform allows them to keep – maybe expand – what they’ve already got. Of course in the long run, making the government the ultimate guarantor – even in a watered down plan – undercuts them and moves discourse and oversight of the system in a direction they’d like to avoid altogether. Which is why I don’t sneer at Edwards-style reforms, but cosider it incremental progress.
August 11th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I should say manufacturing capital.
Over and out.
September 30th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
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