From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers, they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is – and what it isn’t. They’ll have to finally acknowledge, this isn’t a government takeover of the health care system.
By far the best analysis I’ve seen on this total non-issue.
For the tl;dr sect: right-wingers have built a closed information loop based on false premises re: true cost of healthcare reform with regard to a key pre-existing condition that’s not addressed by the reform package at all (this being the annual “doc fix” legislation). A permanent doc fix, when and if it comes, will either be paid for or not; it won’t alter the cost or savings of the reforms as passed one way or the other.
This graph clearly requires some lightly paraphrased Diamond Joe Quimby:
You people don’t know what you want! I am flip-flopping!
Alan Grayson (D, FL) predicts exactly what was going to happen (that an amendment to the already passed healthcare bill goes through reconciliation alongside ping-ponged Senate bill), gets laughed out of the room by Chris Matthews. I’m oh so sure that Matthews is duly chastened as of this morning…
For the CSPAN caller last night claiming we were embarking on a $10T (as in trillion) spending spree. Not so, and never was. They have lied to you. Repeatedly. Systematically. You might want to make them pay a price for that come November.
James Fallows positively nails it:
the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)… TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.
-and-
this [set of reforms and all the attendant process arguments] will not seem anywhere near as poisonous seven months from now as it does today. Jobs jobs jobs is what will matter most then.
So very true. If unemployment is at or near 10% in 2012, Obama will not be reelected. Period. If the economy continues to pick up this year, Democratic losses come November will be not-so-bad…not that they’ll be presented that way, of course. Anything short of a 100 Democrat Senate will be treated as an Historic Upset of the “normal order,” which, of course, currently has many Democrats representing historically red districts. But, back to Fallows:
There are countless areas in which America does it one way and everyone else does it another, and I say: I prefer the American way. Our practice on medical coverage is not one of these.
Nancy Pelosi touched on this point last night in her floor speech: that losing the fear of living insurance-free will let a thousand startups bloom. Folks locked into their current jobs simply to maintain a safety net for their kids can now think solely on the basis of how good they think their idea is. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. This is where the much longed-after “new economy” will ultimately come from.
Memo to David Brooks: hey, what do you know, the House actually voted on the “Senate” bill, passed it, then actually voted on the House reconciliation package that goes to the Senate to be actually voted on using the increasingly aptly named reconciliation rule. Remarkable.
I don’t reckon Alex Chilton remembrances can get much better than this story:
The night of the Butthole Surfers appearance at the huge Pandora’s Box festival in the Netherlands, [bassist Mark] Kramer went to fetch [singer Gibby] Haynes for a sound check. “It is firstly most important to state that, on this night, Gibby had eaten an entire handful of four-way acid tabs and drank an entire bottle of Jim Beam before the sound check had even begun,” Kramer notes.[Guitarist Paul] Leary was furious at Haynes for getting wasted for such an important show. “Fuck that stupid-ass motherfucker,” he snarled to Kramer. “I hate this fucking band. I swear to fucking Christ on a stick, I hate this fucking band more than I hate myself. And that’s a lot. I don’t even care if we ever play again. If you can’t find him, fuck it. FUCK IT!!!!” With that, he began smashing a couple of guitars with his bare fists.
Haynes was only pretending he’d been knocked out, and as the hired thugs walked away, he rose to his feet and began screaming at them, “DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! GODDAMN FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY FILLED WITH NOTHING BUT FUCKING TURD BURGLING FAGGOTS!!!! I FUCK YOUR ASS IN HEAVEN AND HELL!!!! FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOU!!”
“The ensuing chase and capture was the stuff dreams are made of,” Kramer says. “Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody, and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the entire complex, down the halls, up the stairs, grabbing beer bottles from people’s hands as he went and throwing them down on the concertgoers below. A hail of beer cans, bottles, and miscellaneous garbage rained down upon the Dutch persons as I finally caught up with Gibby just as a throng of the biggest security guards I had ever seen caught up with him
[…] Haynes then made a successful run for the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. Kramer could hear Leary and Haynes screaming at each other inside, and when he finally worked up the courage to open the door, he found the two of them smashing guitars, bottle and chairs in what Kramer calls “the most potent example of bad behavior I have ever seen. To this day, more than fifteen years later, I have no more vivid memory of the effect a life in music can have on a human being.”
Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! Haynes screamed, eyes flashing in delerious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.
“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.
Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and guestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”
(Many thanks to merlin for bringing this story to our attention.)
Oh, and I guess we can’t end without
“Those fuckin’ Dutch,” Leary explains, “they kind of get you pissed off after a while, man.”
Burns: You know, Smithers, I think I’ll donate a million dollars to the local orphanage…when pigs fly! [They laugh. The pig sails across the sky before them.]
Smithers: Will you be donating that million dollars now, Sir?
Burns: Nooo, I’d still prefer not.
2007: WellPoint pledged that its charitable foundation would give $30 million in grants to help the uninsured
2010: “It was just not something that the company really wanted to do,” said one former executive, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be identified out of concern that discussing WellPoint could have adverse career consequences. “So it went by the wayside.”
Lemkin 