No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Eric Holder's recent announcement on detainees was covered mainly for his decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) to New York for trial. Less noted was the designation of military tribunals for five others. Civil libertarians objected to it, with Glen Greenwald doing a fine job summarizing their argument ("what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict.")

Burlington Free Press

Sanders, an advocate for a more radical, single-payer solution to the nation’s health care problems, said he will offer an amendment calling for a single-payer system even though he knows it has no chance of passage. A single-payer system is one in which the government is the sole source of financing for health care services.

“It will lose,” he said in an interview. “What I am trying to do, and we have language in the bill to provide the option to states to go forward so they can consider a single-payer system. ... As long as you get the waivers that are necessary to go forward, that’s all I want.”

Michael Jackson "Work and Soul" (part 1 of 4); the whole series gives excellent perspective. My takeaway (and there are many others):

No indeed:

With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P. will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs. ...

In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he wants to be pressured.

“It’s time [NOW????] for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”

Well, you go on believing that.

Simon Johnson:

[Brit banking boffins] Haldane and Alessandri offer a tough, perhaps bleak assessment. Our boom-bust-bailout cycle is, in their view, a “doom loop”. Banks have an incentive to take excessive risk and every time they and their creditors are bailed out, we create the conditions for the next crisis.

Any banker who denies this is the case lacks self-awareness or any sense of history, or perhaps just wants to do it again. ...

The Haldane-Alessandri “doom loop” is fast becoming the new baseline view, i.e., if you want to explain what happened or – more interestingly – what can happen going forward, you need to position your arguments relative to the structure and data in their paper. ...

How can we believe that for the regulators, “next time is different“? Most likely, next time will be exactly the same, with different terminology: the financial sector “innovates”, regulators buy their story that risks are now properly managed, and the ensuing bailout (again) breaks all records.

Cue the wanking:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is open to having coffee with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose new book about the 2008 presidential campaign is stirring controversy.

“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee,” Clinton said from Singapore Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Crossposted at ZBlogs, Firedoglake and TPMCafe

How can we get repealing bans on first cousin marriage on the US legislative agenda?

I think it would clearly help in getting started to consider why it has not already been raised as an issue, given facts like that no other Western country prohibits it and that the genetic arguments have been shown to be hollow.

I can see at least two big reasons why it's been neglected:

That's the sting in the tail of this Golden Sacks report quoted at HuffPo. To GS, though status quo is best* (bien sur), the Senate Finance Bill is the "base" scenario, a watered down version of it the "bull" scenario_{MR SUBLIMINAL No shit} and the HR 3962 is the "bear" scenario. But remember the baseline on financial reform? That if the banksters aren't threatening to commit suicide, the reforms are too weak? Same here. If GS isn't saying the bills are the end of the world, they're too weak.)

A Goldman Sachs analysis of health care legislation has concluded that, as far as the bottom line for insurance companies is concerned, the best thing to do is nothing. A close second would be passing a watered-down version of the Senate Finance Committee's bill.

Haw.

A study put together by Goldman in mid-October looks at the estimated stock performance of the private insurance industry under four variations of reform legislation. The study focused on the five biggest insurers whose shares are traded on Wall Street: Aetna, UnitedHealth, WellPoint, CIGNA and Humana.

The Senate Finance Committee bill, which Goldman's analysts conclude is the version most likely to survive the legislative process, is described as the "base" scenario. Under that legislation (which did not include a public plan) the earnings per share for the top five insurers would grow an estimated five percent from 2010 through 2019. And yet, the "variance with current valuation" -- essentially, what the value of the stock is on the market -- is projected to drop four percent.

Things are much worse [that is, better for people who need health care], Goldman estimates, for legislation that resembles what was considered and (to a certain extent) passed by the House of Representatives. This is, the firm deems, the "bear case" scenario -- in which earnings per share for the top five insurers would decline an estimated one percent from 2010 through 2019 and the variance with current valuation is projected to be negative 36 percent.

What the firm sees as the best path forward for the private insurance industry's bottom line is, to be blunt, inaction.

The study's authors advise that if no reform is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated ten percent from 2010 through 2019, and the value of the stock would rise an estimated 59 percent during that time period.

And now, here's the sting:

audio by title hoosiers for a commonsense health plan single payer now

Senator Bernie Sanders:

In my view, the real solution to the problem of how to reform health care in this country is a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. We are going to try to at least give states the option to go forward and move toward a single-payer system. Whether it’s Vermont or somewhere else, if one state pulls it off it will spread around the country.

Violet today reiterates the warning signs that led us to a day where House Democrats voted through a health insurance reform bill that effectively bans abortion, and reminds us what we need to do:

Word to the wise, girls: if a guy calls you a filthy cunt or a whiny bitch, if he says Hillary Clinton is a hag from hell, if he calls her supporters the dry pussy brigade, if he talks about punish-raping the rebels, this guy is not a feminist. Which means that he doesn’t really give a shit about women’s rights. Which means that his commitment to your reproductive freedom is about as firm as a tomato seed. Which means he will sell you out. In a god. damn. heartbeat....

Plum Line:

Now we know — at least 41 House Dems are writing directly to Pelosi, telling her that they will not vote for anything “that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.”

I’m told that the letter is still being circulated for even more signatures, and I’ll bring you a list of signatories when I have it.

The Stupak amendment, of course, would sharply curtail the availability of abortions, which many insurance plans now offer, and was added in order to win the support of moderate Dems. That pro-choice Democrats are now drawing such a sharp line against the amendment will make the politics considerably more difficult going forward.

So, based on performance on the pledge for [a|the] [Federalist?] [public|consumer] [health insurance]? [option|plan], how many of those 41 are going to deliver?

Masthead

The Corrente Review Of Games is published on the first Saturday of the month.
Posting is done in rotation by the following contributors:

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(See Wampum, as usual.) Italy arresting CIA agents for kidnapping really is a big deal. Scott Horton concludes:

This is a copy of the long reply that Maggie Mahar made to my post "Why Is Maggie Mahar Lying About Health Reform?" at TPMCafe. I've now gone through in turn and posted responses to her statements. I will not have time to do another round of replies, but hopefully this will be enough. I suggest that people show up to the Firedoglake book salon on November 9 and ask her to stop saying that the public "option" is anything at all like "Medicare E (for everyone)."

I am, of course, not lying about Health Care reform.

They came, they sat, they chanted:

8 Protesters backing a universal health care system briefly occupied Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning.

Protesters were arrested, one by one, and dragged out of his office amid chants of "Everyone in and noone out, universal healthcare now!" and "Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!"

Activists hopefully moving the Overton Window - in our case leftward - because too many Democratic party politicians were too stupid to do that on their own at the start of the healthcare debate.

Really. Could access bloggers, progressive boiz, and the FKDP be giving women the big "Fuck you" any more obviously? The Nation:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological "well visit," leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from "cost sharing," which means that, depending on what's in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets. So far, mammograms and Pap tests are covered in every version of the legislation.

Granted, Congress can't--and shouldn't--get into the business of spelling out every possible cause for a trip to the doctor. No one wants the process to collapse under a mountain of requests from special interest groups à la the Clinton mess in 1993. But women, half of all adult patients, are not a special interest group. And since both the House and Senate bills include lists of specific services that must be covered by health insurance companies and be provided without asking patients for additional money, it's hard to understand [really? Why?] why all the services provided in a basic well-woman visit to the gynecologist isn't on them along with maternity care, newborn care, pediatric dental and vision services, and substance use disorder services.

Well, women have no place to go. That's the problem.

Knock me over with a feather. Anyhow, front-paged:

[I]n August at Netroots Nation when I asked progressive strategists and activists to think ahead to the end game, and about what our reaction ought to be when Members who'd apparently pledged to oppose any bill without a "robust" public option claimed they needed the latitude to do some other thing, ranging all the way up to... doing the exact opposite of that.

To some extent, this is a function of there being no universally accepted definition of either the public option or what it means for one to be "robust," at least not at the time that the pledges were solicited and the letter was signed. But there can be no doubt about the intent of those efforts. It was quite obviously an early effort to guard against public declarations like McGovern's, and to at least preserve the plausibility of the claim that the Progressive Caucus was in a position to demand concessions the way Blue Dogs always have been.

Single payer advocates pointed out at the time that it was useless to get people to pledge to a policy that wasn't defined, and were derided for their pains.

Via ThinkProgress, both the Baucus Bill and the plan put forward by Pelosi will enroll some more people but most will not be in the Public Option and it will not cover everyone:

CBO: Public Option To Attract Only 6 Million Enrollees & Doesn’t Offer Lower Premiums

The public option would attract about 6 million enrollees by 2019 and charge premiums that are “somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.” This is because the public option would “engage in less management of utilization” by its enrollees and “attract a less healthy pool of enrollees,” the office concludes. Moreover, since the House bill expands Medicaid up to 150% of the federal poverty line, it’s possible that the enrollees that would have enrolled in the public option went into Medicaid instead.

Below is a comparison of the relevant provisions in the House and Senate Finance Committee legislation:

	CBO Score Of House Bill	CBO Score Of Baucus Bill
Costs	Reduce deficits: $104B/10yrs Cost: $894B/10yrs Spends on subsidies: $605B/10yrs On Medicaid/CHIP: $425B/10yrs On Small Employer Credit: $25B/10yrs	Reduce deficits: $81B/10yrs Cost: $829B/10yrs Spends on subsidies: $461B/10yrs On Medicaid/CHIP: $345B/10yrs On Small Employer Credit: $23B/10yrs
Insured	Uninsured reduced by: 36M Uninsured in 2019: 18M In Exchanges: 30M | Public Plan: 6M In Medicaid: 15M	Uninsured reduced by: 29M Uninsured in 2019: 25M In Exchanges: 23M In Medicaid: 14M
Revenue	Mandate penalty: $33B/10yrs Pay-Play penalty: $135B/10yrs New taxes: $572B/10yrs	Mandate penalty: $4B/10yrs Free rider penalty: $23B/10yrs New taxes: $196B/10yrs
Medicare and Medicaid	Total savings: 426B/10yrs Medicare Advantage: $170B/10yrs	Total savings: 404B/10yrs Medicare Advantage: $117B/10yrs

With a Single Payer solution it would be everybody in and nobody out - AND it would save a heck of a lot more money for everyone.

The difference is not just everyone being covered but HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of DOLLARS saved every year:   Read more…

Get a load of this:

As currently drafted, the Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009 (released by the House Financial Services Committee on 10/27/09) contains several important elements for reducing systemic risk. It aims (1) to identify systemically dangerous financial firms, (2) to apply heightened regulation to these firms, (3) to establish a stabilization system to prevent or quell panic during periods of systemic distress, and (4) to create a resolution mechanism that would wind down complex financial firms when necessary. These could represent very important steps forward.

Unfortunately, these reforms may ultimately be undermined by one very significant weakness – the explicit requirement in the bill that the identification of systemically dangerous financial firms by federal regulators remain entirely secret, and never be revealed to the public. This is the bill’s Achilles heel.

So, the problem isn't that our rulerz put the taxpayers on the hook for $22 trillion with no transparency and no accountability. The problem? The taxpayers know the names of the firms their money went to.

[pounds head on desk]

HuffPo:

[SANDERS] One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don't end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

In order of appearance:

---
Seminal Diary at FDL

ACTION: Senator Reid does the American thing, puts a public option in the Senate bill. Support him, by Jason Rosenbaum (aka HCAN employee, aka I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now).

Link included to sign "thank you to Sen Reid".

----
FDL Action post

Excitement over Public Option in Senate Health Bill Leads to Premature Congratulations, by Jane Hamsher

I know it’s fun to get he pom-poms out, but what exactly is everyone celebrating?

[snip]Health Care for America Now was championing Reid for “standing up” and doing the right thing, collecting more than 20,000 signatures on a thank-you petition to the leader.

The price of everything in the real economy is collapsing, and the banksters are going to use the money we lent them to buy it all up, including whatever the cash-strapped states privatize (starting with the highways). That's one reason they're not lending our own money back to us (which was the putative reason for the bailouts). Something to look forward to; I've always enjoyed Snow Crash.

Via Wired:

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

[chart stolen adapted from the incomparable Ian Welsh]

You've read/heard the phrase bending the [cost] curve [downward] once or twice by now, and in case you've been a tad confused [or not] about what that means, basically it's what Canada did in 1970 when single payer went completely nationwide there.

Never let it be said that the scientists who publish in dry, staid medical journals lack a sense of humor. That resurrecting dead patients line is the title of an article that appeared in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] a few years ago, and beyond the fact that it provided me with a snappy headline, gives me the chance to post one of my favorite lolcats [again], and is cited in another article in another journal, it has no further bearing on this post.

The another article in another journal, Looking Forward, Looking Back: Assessing Variations in Hospital Resource Use and Outcomes for Elderly Patients With Heart Failure, is monumentally less gripping than, oh, the last installment of Harry Potter, or even the labels on cat food cans, but it's nonetheless an important data point in the present health care deform reform debate.

To back up for just a moment, the Dartmouth Atlas Project is a massive gathering of data gleaned from Medicare spending records over many years. Mapping the data has produced the realization that Medicare spending varies widely throughout the country. Peter Orszag, President Obama, and Tom Harkin, to name just a few personages, are all quite taken with it, and with the Dartmouth researchers' assertions that the patients in higher-spending regions fare no better than those in lower-spending regions.

If only those spendthrifts in Miami and McAllen could be made to behave more like those prudent paragons living in Minnesota, we could save hundreds of billions of $$$$$ in health care spending every year.

Not so fast, corpus breath. The Dartmouth Atlas only catalogs dead people. The researchers looked back over the patients' lives for the 6 months [and for some purposes, 2 years] before they died. Concluding that since they all died anyway [duh!], the ones who got more care [and therefore cost more money], didn't really need all that extra care [and therefore we don't need to be spending that extra money on them].

It's an attractive notion, but one of the things the Dartmouth researchers didn't do so much of was looking forward.