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[pounds head on desk]:

Obama: Time for big banks to help small businesses
"[OBAMA] These are the very taxpayers who stood by America's banks in a crisis, and now it's time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs," Obama said.

Never mind that whatever actual program or policy, if any, that Obama has in mind will be, if results of his mortgage refinancing program are any guide, pathetically weak and unhelpful to those in need. Let's focus on the question of fact:

The Hill is reporting that Democrats are 'rebranding' the public option as 'Medicare for All.':

Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”

House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option.

Seems Congress has finally locked on to the fact that Medicare's pretty popular:

While much of the public is foggy on what a public option actually is, people understand Medicare. It also would place the new public option within the rubric of a familiar system rather than something new and unknown.

That's the title of an entry at Collectibles Today's site. And yes, it's adorable:

The ad continues:

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Available in 5 installments of $30.00 US

Those new to installments can click on a link that reads

*How do Installments work?

Which opens the following pop-up:

About Installments

Installments make shopping affordable!

Pravda has what looks like a fine report today on AIDS programs in Washington, DC. Here's how they describe it:

About this Investigation
Over ten months, the Washington Post analyzed the spending, services, and finances of every specialized AIDS organization funded by D.C.'s HIV/AIDS Administration from 2004-2008, an estimated 90 groups, building a database from tax returns, audits, lawsuits, real estate records, D.C. Council records, and corporate and police reports. The Post also obtained grant agreements, invoices and government correspondence for about 60 of these groups. The newspaper interviewed dozens of people with HIV or AIDS patients, their families and service providers, and visited more than a dozen offices across the city.

The largest possible sum at issue seems to be $25 million, since that's the total sum available to non-profits, where the problems seem to be concentrated.

So, one question:

Take a look at this photo. It's not begging for a caption. That smirk on a face non-Texans might not recognize belongs to David Medina. The one y'all might have seen before, over to the right, is Governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry. Back in 2004, when Perry refused despite receiving expert reports and evidence that Cameron Todd Willingham's conviction for arson didn't withstand a second look, never mind real legal scrutiny, Medina was General Counsel for the Governor's Office. It's entirely possible Medina and Perry sent an innocent man to death in Huntsville. A few years later Medina's house burned, and both he and his wife were indicted for arson; at trial they benefitted from the same kind of experts whose work Perry didn't consider when Willingham's life was at stake.

Great coverage of this continues at Northstar's place, at Dog Canyon, and at Burnt Orange Report.

I don't know

Angry Bear is runs the go-to series on Social Security -- you know, the "entitlement reform" that Versailles, including the administration, is so enthusiastic about. Bruce Webb, who covers Social Security, responds to the latest round of tendentious pearl-clutching from the usual suspects:

Now there are some valid questions about whether the U.S. can sustain a Public Debt load that is as of last Friday $11,920,519,164,319.42 and projected to grow at $1 trillion a year for the next 10 years. On the other hand people who are using legalisms to tell you that somehow the $2.5 trillion of that $11.9 trillion that is owed to current workers and retirees is in a junior debt position to the $800.5 billion owed to China are blowing smoke. Legally, morally and even more important electorally the claims of American workers and retirees are if anything better than those of the Chinese Central Bank.

AP has the following calming health care reform article: When Medicare is the piggy bank. Rob Peter to pay Blue Cross.

Via the terrific Interfluidity, this very important post. First, let's look at "vanilla products," in this case for financial services:

Vanilla products would be very popular, which is why they are so threatening. Financial services are an area where markets not only fail due to informational problems, but where participants are very aware of that failure. Consumers know they are at a disadvantage when transacting with banks, and do not believe that reputational constraints or internal controls offer sufficient guarantee of fair-dealing. Status quo financial services should be a classic "lemons" problem*, a no-trade equilibrium. Unfortunately, those models of no-trade equilibria don't take into account that people sometimes really need the products they cannot intelligently buy, and so tolerate large rent extractions if they must in order to transact.

Lambert here. The 30 cents of every health care dollar that goes to health insurance companies is one such rent. "Progressives" believe that such "large rent extractions" are painless, and that we should not only tolerate them, but subsidize them for people who cannot pay. Single payer advocates believe that the extraction is not painless, but pernicious, and that we should abolish it entirely. Since health care insurance reform is the administration's signature domestic initiative, most of us have had our attention focused there. If the focus had been financial reform, a similar conflict would no doubt have played out, with the Neo-Broders seeking to ameliorate and preserve rent extraction by banksters, while the left would have sought to abolish it, through proposals like making banks into regulated public utilities, and so forth.

Vincent Navarro in CounterPunch:

Programs that are not universal (i.e., do not benefit everyone) are intrinsically unpopular. This is why antipoverty programs are unpopular. People feel that they are paying, through taxation, for programs that do not benefit them. Compassion is not, and never has been, a successful motivation for public policy. Solidarity is. You support others with the understanding that they will support you when you need it most. The long history of social policy, in the U.S. and elsewhere, shows that universality is a better way to get popular support for a program than means-testing for programs targeted to specific vulnerable groups. The limited popularity of the welfare state in the U.S. is precisely due to the fact that most programs are not universal but means-tested. ... .

Accept the principle that health care is a right, and truly universal coverage follows:

From the Baucus health insurance reform framework document: (p. 2)

Interstate Sale of Insurance. Starting in 2015, states may form “health care choice compacts” to allow for the purchase of non-group health insurance across state lines. Such compacts may exist between two or more states. Once compacts have been formed, insurers would be allowed to sell policies in any state participating in the compact. Insurers selling policies through a compact would only be subject to the laws and regulations of the state where the policy is written or issued.

I pray the progressives wake up soon and come out of their collective slumber before we help the Democrats pass a health insurance bail out. The reforms championed two years ago, that rested largely on providing Americans with a Medicare-like plan, open to all takers, has morphed into Romney Care. While the centerpiece progressives envisioned on health care reform rested largely on federal intervention via program, the Democrats have cleary gone the less contentious route of a federal roll via regulation. The idea seems to be create a federal role, and hopefully tighten regulations later down the road, which is laughable.

The CBO confirms today my long-held suspicion that the vaunted "public option" is not much more than a high-risk pool and forecasts that premiums will actually be slightly higher than private offerings.

Currently, private health insurance is available via the following mechanisms:



1. Large employer group coverage

2. Small group market (small business)

3. Individual market (self-employed, unattached)
  Read more…

I know we're supposed to be all health care all the time here, but the current national conservative effort to stop the President from being able to give a fifteen minute speech on the importance of staying in school, making good grades, graduating, as building a foundation for a successful professional life, just blows.

The Whole Delivery calls her the Orly Taitz of health care.

I saw the part of her interview on The Daily Show last night that fit in their broadcast window. Evidently I'm not the only one who wasn't impressed with her presentation.

You should really see the video. I understand the entire interview is on The Daily Show's site.

Joe Galloway:

As a parting shot, President Obama wrote an end to the only part of the Trillion Dollar Stimulus Plan that was visibly seen and felt by some ordinary American citizens — the $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program that took thousands of gas-guzzling old vehicles off the road and jump-started the moribund auto industry.

Funny how we've spent hundreds of billions rescuing the biggest banks and brokers and insurance firms, those bastions of free-market capitalism, with hardly a no vote on either side of the aisle, but Republicans tried to derail the piddling $2 billion addition to clunkers as a matter of principle.

But you know what my clunker is?

When he's not on MTP to save us from those dastardly insurance companies or to fiercely advocate for a public government insurance option, what does Tom Daschle do with his free time? Golfing? A beach getaway? Or perhaps,

Daschle, in his capacity as a high-paid consultant at the law firm Alston and Bird, is once again working closely with lobbyists for UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. industry player, aiding the company's effort to convince moderate Senate and House Democrats to, among other things, kill the public option and keep company profits high.

Gosh, it's like he's two different people or something!

The Death Panel issued its verdict on the fate of the public option: too expensive to keep on life support. "We've sent out as many emails with big DONATE buttons as possible, but this public option is no longer paying its way, and so it must go," stated a key member of the Death Panel, a representative from Wall Street. "Our politicians will carry out the directive," he added.

Primary physician Conrad, Nurse Sebelius and Second Opinion Barack "there's always hope, that's very important" Obama will assist progressives with end-of-life counseling for the public option.

They advise five stages:

Denial: Barack Obama strongly supports a robust public option! He said so!

Having bailed them out with billions of TARP dollars, we must now allow them to make even more money. Reuters:

Wall Street banks and lawyers could collect nearly $1 billion in fees from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and American International Group Inc to help manage and break apart the insurer, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday, citing its own analysis.

Morgan Stanley could collect as much as $250 million, the newspaper said, citing banking experts and documents released by the New York Fed.

Single payer censor Nancy DeParle, via Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama may accept nonprofit health-insurance cooperatives in place of a new government-run plan as long as consumers are guaranteed [how?] more choice and competition in buying insurance, a top aide said.

“We would be interested in that” if those conditions are met, Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff” airing today.

DeParle said she expected Congress to pass health-care legislation on a bipartisan vote “around Thanksgiving.”

Well, I'm re-assured that it's still important that The Crazy Party still has a veto power over the process.

I haven't been able to debunk this further than to note that the article the commenter linked to (on which I posted earlier) doesn't cover this claim. So could somebody please tell me where the idea comes from that Universal Health Care will actually discourage people from going to medical school and becoming MDs? I mean, the impression I get is this is soft, greenish-brown, stinky and sticky...

There a many reasons this won’t work, but here’s a big one nobodies talking about:
Under his plan a nurse practitioner (ARNP) is considered the same as a family physician (MD). When you hear the term "Primary Care Provider" please realize Obama means MD OR ARNP. The Primary Care Medical Homes will be staffed by either an MD or ARNP and Obama has legislation in place to grant ARNPs the same privileges, scope of practice as an MD as well as pay them as an MD. On top of this, nurse practitioners are now earning a "Doctor of Nurse Practitioner" license and are legally allowed to refer to themselves as "Doctor" in clinics/hospitals.
Don’t get me wrong, nurse practitioners offer an enormous value wherever they work. They are a wonderful help. BUT, to a young medical student who is under $250,000 in debt and who will accumulate >20,000 hours of supervised training in med school/residence (NP programs are ~500 hours) it feels like we’re cheated to be put in that position.
Med students go into debt big time to just complete medical school. A PhD chemist on the other had makes as much as a general practioner, but get a stipend that covers his living expenses and tuition. You have to be a saint to go into general practice with that kind of debt hanging over your head. Unless the governmetns wants to subsidize the training of general practioners, fewer and fewer med students will be going into that.
"Capitalists tax things. Communists ban or cap things. Bans and caps never work because there’s always a way around them.

The way to stop this is to drastically increase the personal income tax rate on the wealthy, while, simultaneously, drastically lowering the business tax rate. This will discourage the "personal jackpot" mentality and encourage the wealthy to keep their wealth in their business.

I also have this horrific sense that this is something drawn from/about to go "mainstream"

Dean Baker:

As part of his health care package, President Obama proposed creating an independent commission of medical experts [IMAC] that would determine the medical procedures for which Medicare will pay. The reason is that patients now receive many costly procedures that provide little or no medical benefit. If we can reduce this waste, we can have large savings, while possibly even improving health outcomes. President Obama describes this as promoting good medicine.

The Republicans are pushing the idea that the fight for health care reform could be Obama's Waterloo. Everyone keeps refighting the previous war. The whole of Versailles thinks that it is still 1993.

I don't think so, I think the debate over health care reform is Versailles' Sarajevo, the debate that collapses a decrepit political order. Arguably that was the Iraq debate, which is still playing out.

"Two sides"? Are you shitting me?

Nurses National Movement has a diary at MyDD on the proposal to tax employee health benefits:

Ordering everyone to buy insurance, however, is a little messy. Especially in a deep recession when many are losing their employer coverage, premiums have soared four times faster than incomes in the past decade, and 62 percent of personal bankruptcies are now linked to medical bills.