Democrats will go it alone on Health Care Bill
It’s about time the White House and Democratic Congress figured out that there is going to be no bipartisanship when it comes to health care reform. Republicans have made it obvious they aren’t interested in compromise…..their idea of bi-partisanship is Democratic capitulation. Franky, the Democrats seem a little slow on the uptake. I thought it had become obvious what the Republicans had in mind when Senator DeMint, R. SC, said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” (see Health Reform foes plan Obama’s Waterloo)
I’m Negotiating for the Republicans
It became even more obvious that bipartisanship isn’t possible when MSNBC’s chuck Todd asked Sen. Chuck Grassley if he was “willing to be one of just three or four Senate Republicans that support an eventual deal if you get what you want out of the Senate Finance Committee and it’s an agreed upon deal with the Gang of Six.” Grassley’s reply? “Certainly not. [snip] I’m negotiating for Republicans and if I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a very good representative of my party.”²
Change?
When the country voted for change in the 2008 election part of the platform of change was health care reform and that’s exactly what the Democrats need to band together and deliver up. Any bill they deliver should include a public option for health insurance in spite of the efforts of the insurance companies to sabotage the public option. I found it quite interesting that on the announcement that the public option might be dead the stocks for insurance companies went up. And that IS what all the opposition is about – a possible loss of obscene profits for insurance companies.
Executive Salaries of Insurance Companies
Let’s face it, it is definitely in the best interest of insurance CEOs to have no public option. More competition means lower profits and lower profits might eat into their grossly bloated salaries. Here’s a look at what some of the big insurance company executives make:
NAME, TITLE, COMPANY ANNUAL COMPENSATION
H. Edward Hanway, Chair/CEO, Cigna Corp., $30.16 million (Cigna is one of the financial backers of the Manhattan Institute that Betsy McCoughey was a part of.)
Ronald A. Williams, Chair/CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834 (2007)
David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million
Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million
Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc., $20.06 million
Jay M. Gellert, President/CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million
Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529 (2007)
Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp., (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million (in 2007; up 78% from 2006)
Angela F. Braly, President/CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771 ¹
Yes, I think it’s high time for the Democrats to do what they were elected to do. Just because the opposition to health care reform is loud, it doesn’t mean it’s right or the majority of Americans.
WASHINGTON — Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.
Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.
“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
August 19th, 2009 at 6:58 am
The reference:
Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp., (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million (in 2007; up 78% from 2006)
represents only 4 BCBS plans including Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas BCBS.
So there are many more Blue Cross CEOs who are raking it in.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Obama said this on July 1st …
“In a lot of other countries, a single-payer plan works pretty well, and has eliminated private insurers and the associated administrative costs. Here’s the problem, he says: The way our health care system has evolved, it’s based on employer provided insurance, WHICH REQUIRES THE INSURANCE COMPANIES TO STAY IN PLACE.”
In a more recent Town Hall, (I think the one out in Montana with none other than Max Bauccus (the Senator who had advocates of Single Payer-Universal Healthcare arrested twice during the Senate Finance Committee Healthcare Hearings, or it might have been in the Town Hall in Colorado in which Obama said, (not quoting verbatim here but contextually correct):
The way they do Universal Healthcare in Britain is that everyone is insured by the government owns the hospitals and hires the doctors. That is not what we want here, he said.
The way they do it in the Netherlands is that everyone is insured but hospitals and doctors are not owned by the government, he said.
Here in America where insurance is based on employer provided insurance we need a truly AMERICAN healthcare plan, he said.
(And his true AMERICAN HEALTHCARE PLAN is a true insurance bail out plan under the disguise of public option. THE ONLY TRUE HEALTHCARE REFORM PLAN, as Dennis Kucinich has said, is UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. The only block to that is GREED!)
leslie Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 7:19 am
I believe he also said something about it being “messy” or “too disruptive” to change the system.
I believe what he meant was “I made a deal with the insurance industry – who contributed heavily to my campaign – that they would not be touched if there were any changes to the nation’s health care system”.
skyagunsta Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
too, “messy”? “too disruptive” …
What a putz! I have to beieve that Truman would have stood up to all those vested interests. He actually did. I also have to believe that Kennedy and Johnson would have too. Johnson actually did. Kennedy was killed before he could.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Why is it that Republicans will rubber stamp nearly every single increase for defense spending without knowing whether or not we’re going to get something out of it, but when we talk about needed reforms that could actually help normal Americans lead better lives, well, a big fat NO to that.
Shouldn’t we have the same right to our health as we do with our public safety?
Sage Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
What’s interesting is the whining about how immoral it is to make them pay for health care reform they don’t want, never giving a single thought to how we who find war repugnant and immoral have our taxes used to kill people. We’re unAmerican and unpatriotic if we protest…….they of course are great patriots when they protest. Conservatives seem to think that war is good – they spend trillions to engage in it and crow about “freeing’ people, even if they have to kill them to do it. But, God forbid they invest a dime in health care reform to help their fellow citizens.
By August 2008 the U.S. had already spent $48 billion in reconstruction in Iraq. SOURCE
The cost of waging war in Iraq has reached over $675 billion and the war in Afghanistan has reached $224 billion. SOURCE
There is one book that puts the cost of the Iraq war at $3 TRILLION so far. SOURCE
But NOW they are worried about the deficit because of health care reform?
skyagunsta Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
And they explicitly blame MEDICARE and MEDICAID for our national deficit. never once mentioning the trillions of dollars spent on what they claim is the Iraq reconstruction … much of which, I believe I read once or twice, they don’t know where the money went to. Anybets?
August 21st, 2009 at 11:15 am
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. The people voted BO in on the health care platform. If the big pharma companies and insurance companies can pay the senators enough to stop the bill, then I have to say, who really runs this country?
Here’s what Deepak Chopra has to say:
http://bit.ly/aq7tn
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:57 am
If the adminstration were to push for single payer healthcare would be absolutely impossible to achieve. The economy is just about as bad as it can get and real people are suffering without full employment. As nice as single payer might be, do you really think eliminating all those companies and jobs is going to do moregood than harm? You thinkthe crazies are out in force now…just try eliminatingmollions more jobs. Healthcare is important but it doesn’t trump food on the table anda roof over your head. Obama is a pragmatist we’ll get the plan that is achieveable now… No more…no less.
Sage Reply:
August 23rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
You are, of course, absolutely correct. Our system is so entrenched in the insurance business that going single payer would virtually shut health insurance companies down resulting in thousands of unemployed. I’m fine with a public option that will help to reign in the health insurance industry’s abuses.
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:58 am
Sorry about all the typos… Typing on a phone… Big fingers… Tiny buttons.