Category: Uncategorized

Smell the Joementum!

TPM is reporting that Lieberman is at least open to the notion of the Medicare buy-in as a replacement for the public option:

Lieberman said he’s open to both the Medicare buy-in idea, and a separate proposal to extend the private system that insures federal employees to individuals and small businesses.

On the Medicare buy-in–which has significant appeal among liberals–Lieberman was open, but non-committal. “I’ll take a look at it,” Lieberman said. “I think the good news is, however, that the current bill will, for the first time, provide people 55 and over who are not yet eligible for Medicare with subsidies to go on to the exchanges and buy, so they can buy for a lot less than it costs them in the marketplace now.”

“I’m open to looking at it,” Lieberman told reporters. “But I want to make sure that we’re not…adding a big additional burden to the Medicare program.”

Seeing as Snow has already dumped on this idea as pure crazy-talk, this statement by Lieberman counts as real progress. He’ll go back on it by tomorrow morning, but at least we’ve got tonight.

Opting Out

Paul Starr argues that, because of the potential for real public backlash, the individual mandate should contain an opt-out provision. In a nutshell, you could choose to opt out of coverage…on the condition that you couldn’t easily opt back in for a five year period afterwords.

I agree with Starr that the mandate is the thing that will really burn people up come, oh, 2075 when the last provisions of this damned bill actually go into effect. And that, if the compromises continue, what you’ll have is a mandate to buy today’s overpriced, under-provisioned insurance…now: with a guarantee of coverage! And but so I tend to think a different kind of solution is necessary when talking about the mandate.

Instead of a fine, you automatically enroll mandated but uninsured individuals into Medicare at whatever the premium cost is for a person of their age (and, yes, I’m therefore proposing here that Medicare-based coverage would/should then be open to anybody of any age that fails to procure private insurance; this doesn’t change the fact that it’s a terrible idea that the smelly hippies will hate, hate, hate). That’s the fine: that you have paid for coverage the hard way…through your tax return; but you’ve ultimately just paid for coverage. The end. No further fines, certainly no jail time, just coverage. Whether you like it or not. If you choose not to decide: you still have made a choice.

Ultimately the opt-out only allows for that most dangerous of impulses: the free rider. I won’t pay until I’m really sick or hit by that bus. It just can’t be allowed if we’re to have any chance at all of containing costs. In many ways, it’s precisely this sort of non-covered coverage that is already driving costs today.

If the Republican party gets back to that [conservative] base, I think our party is going to be stronger and there’s not going to be a need for a third party, but I’ll play that by ear in these coming months, coming years.

Sarah Palin, discussing whether or not she’ll run as a third party candidate.

File under: oh, God, please please please please. Best possible outcome.

Obama and his Telepromter

squashed:

jgh writes,

Since when do politicians not read from Teleprompters? Obama has written many of his own speeches. I’m unsure of what this talking point is supposed to be about.

Can somebody help?

I think it’s mostly the logical paradox of a man who these folks a priori distrust and despise (for an assortment of reasons that are left as an exercise for the reader) being quite capable of delivering a speech, more or less on demand, that’s as good as anyone’s heard out of an American politician in quite some time. So he’s merely a speech reader, likely a secret illegal immigrant from Kenya, and etc… That he (on several occasions) largely wrote the speech, or when that devil the teleprompter is on occasion non-functional and said speech was delivered entirely from memory never seems to enter into these calculations. After all, these are the same people that think Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s books based on the joint use of “crazy” words like “ontological” or some-such.

What bothers me most, though, is that these same folks are the ones systematically referring to W. Bush as a tragically misunderstood genius…who, on teleprompter, mind you, gave us such quotes as:

put food on your family

vulcanize society

make the pie higher! make the pie higher!

just to name a few. So, if Bush presumably couldn’t reliably read a speech properly, and definitely couldn’t give a canned one “off the cuff” either, then exactly where on the intellect scale does he rank relative to Obama, the putative “reader”?

And, going beyond that, how do you square the “he’s only reading” canard with Obama’s own, oft-criticized press conferences (which the press finds soooooo boring, natch), in which he departs on a 30 minute disputation about policy concerns relevant to some sub-issue of the question? No teleprompting there. Secret earpiece, no doubt.That or an ancient form of Kenyan mind-control that makes us think he’s answering at length. Again, square this with Bush’s press conference performance which generally involved a chuckle, a reference to the nickname of the questioner, and the odd personal attack on a blind man for wearing sunglasses.

All this before you even begin to consider that running for President requires, absolutely requires the candidate to give innumerable speeches off-prompter, every day, with YouTube lurking in the wings 100% of the time. But we won’t consider that either, apparently.

The reductions in Medicare Republicans are now decrying are more equitable, better targeted, and not even half as large as the ones many of those same Republicans endorsed in the ‘90s.

Jonathan Cohn,
writing for The New Republic, and creating a little koan for us all to recite. Also, keep in mind that John McCain himself pushed cuts in the neighborhood of $1.3 trillion just ~8 months ago during the campaign. And is now all worked up over revisions that total $487 billion (mostly from dumping the idiotic and wasteful Medicare Advantage program by which the government pays insurance companies to provide Medicare benefits…at higher cost than, uh, Medicare). Unconscionable. And they will be allowed to do it. And then go back on it. Again and again.