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Over and out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/world/americas/11sheeran.html?ref=world

100 million uninsured? RLC, that’s really frightening. Thinking about Americas poor health; obesity & diabetes rates, that worse case scenerio shuts the country down.

Par 4 the corse but when have they “made a difference”?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This strikes me as a form of nihilism…