Liveblogging the House Health Care Roll Out

Someone was just explaining how the changes in Medicare are good for seniors.

Now there is a congressman from Virginia talking about how the plan is good for small businesses. At least he isn't sliding over hudreds of billions in "savings."
My main impression is that this Virginia representative has a Northern accent. I knew Democrats were electable in Virginia, but I had no idea they were voting for yankee carpet baggers. Wow.

At the moment his accent is techno gorilla as I don't have the band width to do this.

Oh the techno garble was an actual small businessman. I am not watching the video and didn't notice any change in the audio.

This is pointless. I blame the Washington Post. Please don't click this link and use even more band width http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2005/04/12/VI2005041201139.html

Robert Waldmann

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.


Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.

Sorry for the link to Manu Raju at Politico who thinks that to support increased spending and deficits makes one a fiscal hawk.

Recently, a Lieberman aid publicly said he would vote for cloture. This is a stab in the back. Readers please use this link to share your views with the Senator.
Could you also copy your message to Sen Lieberman and post it as a comment here ? Don't bother if it is any bother, but I'd like a lower bound for the number of e-mails to Lieiberman

http://lieberman.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm?regarding=issue


Also some economic news Lieberman climbs Mt Aetna


For those who think Lieberman is a puppet of the insurance industry I say



And to those who think that they can claim to be fiscal hawks while demanding that more public money be sent to the insurance companies I recall Gary Larson's warning as posted on Doug Elmendorf's office door 20 years ago.

Tim Pawlenty Goes for the Unreality Based Base Vote

He is supporting conservative Doug Hoffman against Republican Dede Scozzafesta in the special election in NY-23. This is a delightful race in which the Republicans might manage to lose a seat which they have held in the predicessors of NY-23 since 1871 (I read that somewhere on the web).

To solidify his crazy-base Credentials Gov Pawlenty makes a totally anti-reality based argument

"We cannot send more politicians to Washington who wear the Republican jersey on the campaign trail, but then vote like Democrats in Congress on issues like card check and taxes," (via thinkprogress I can't find the permalink).

Dear governor, I don't think the word "more" means what you think it means. When was the last time a Republican in congress voted like a Democrat on taxes. I admit that Snowe, Collins and then Republica Specter voted for the massive Obama tax cut as part of the spending bill, but I don't think that Pawlenty means "voting for tax cuts" when he said "voting like a Democrat on taxes" (that would be too reality based). The last time the Democrats increased taxes was in 1993. They also cut taxes for the poor, but that doesn't count. That bill passed with a grand total of 0 Republican votes 0 in the House plus 0 in the Senate.

The fact is that Republicans in congress and especially Republicans in the House of Representatives are very disciplined. Their personal views just don't matter much.

That's why it is so wonderfully wacky that the right wing of the Republican party is willing to risk losing a seat over irrelevant ideological purity.

That anyone who wants to be the Republican nominee has to pretend to be totally delusional is excellent news for Barack Obama.


I don't think any Republicans have voted for card check. In fact, as far as I know, no Democrats have voted for card check either. I wasn't aware of any vote in any committee.

I agree with Lou Dobbs and Geraldo Rivera

I never expected to type that.

Lou Dobs said

Geraldo Rivera ... — This guy is nothing but a fiction of his own imagination and a figment of whatever he sees in the mirror.

[snip]

Geraldo Rivera wouldn’t know a fact if it hit him in the rear end — and that would probably be an appropriate place if you wanted him to absorb the information. … This is the kind of vile stupidity and ignorance that he spews everywhere he goes.

Yep.

Gerado Rivera said

Lou Dobbs ... discovered that one of the ways to get people to watch was to make of the image of a young Latino trying to get into this country a profoundly negative icon.

Yep. They are doing excellent work analysing each other. Just so long as they leave the rest of humanity alone I am delighted.

update: uhm maybe I should have been more careful about that whole "rest of humanity business" because there is more insightful analysis from Mr Dobbs (very same link)

Last week, Dobbs ripped Fox Business News anchor John Stossel as a “self-important ass” with his “own brand of myopic idiocy” after Stossel told Fox News’ “rodeo clown” Glenn Beck that he does not support “the Lou Dobbs-kind of rants about immigrants wrecking America.”

Get the Lead Out II

About a year ago, I noted the hypothesis that lead from leaded gasoline causes violent crime. It has been proposed that the US shift to unleaded which began in 1973 caused the decline in violent crime in the US in the 90s.

This hypothesis suggests a later peak of crime in the UK which began the shift to unleaded later. I predicted a peak in violent crime in around 2008.

So how is that prediction holding up ?

Back then the most recently avaible data were from 2007/8. So I'm off to check the 2008/9 figures.

(tense pause)

According to a victimization survey there was a statistically insignificant 4% decline in violent crime in the past year (they don't use calender years so it is 2008/9 vs 2007/8 the study was published in July. Police recorded violent crime declined 6%.

I predicted about zero, so OK so far.

Opt Out is so Popular that even the fiery far left populist senator and diehard supporter of the robust public option supports it.

The American working man can trust the Senator who is determined to protect him from giant corporations who have managed to eliminate effective competition in many states-- John D Rockefeller.

History may be a harsh teacher, but don't try to tell me that it doesn't have a sense of humor.

Reid Opts for Opt Out !

Climate Science: What Went Right ?

The US Chamber of Commerce is tying itself into knots trying to deny that it denies the scientific near unanimous consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In notabe contrast, lunatics who claim that lower tax rates lead to higher revenues control the Repubican party.

What's the difference ? Sure the evidence for AGW is stong but the pattern that tax cuts are followed by huge deficits and that the Clinton tax increase was followed by a surplus is pretty clear too. Economists are about as divided as climatologists on the evidence.

So what's the differerence ? Well clearly climate science is accepted as science while economic science is considered an oxymoron. But is it really likey that J.Q. Public recognizes the solidity of climate Science. I would guess J.Q. is a bit vague on the difference between climatology and meteorology, and between forecasting the climate and forecasting the weather. The reputations of weather forecasters are similar to those of economic forecasters and astrologers.

I think the key factor is that J.Q. Public has noticed that the scientific community as a whole seems to be on to something. Scientists in other fields can recognise science when they see it. They have noticed that climatologists have evidence as solid as evidence in their own field and reason the way they reason and don't assume that they have a can opener. So the scientific establishment as a whole has endorsed climate science.

They also have let an economist or two into the National Academy of Science, but that is mere tokenism. I imagine they say the following

Yes yes we believe that, someday, there will be social science and oh of course the day is already dawning. Surely we will let some social scientists mingle with real natural scientists. Why ever not. Soem of my best friends are social scientists. I even let them use my bathroom.

A Case for Opt Out

The latest news is that Senator Reid seems to be planning to try to get the Senate to vote on a health care reform bill with a public option which allows states to opt out -- to deprive their citizens of the public option and that White House officially supports Senator Reid's efforts out -- to deprive their citizens of the public option.

So this post is probably un-necessary. However, since, on September 4 2009, I proposed a (probably unconstitutional) form of opt out, I want to explain why I think it is a good idea.

Obviously the main advantage is an opt-out clause is probably needed to get to 60 votes for cloture. This is not the only advantage however.

I assume that opposition to opt out depends in very large part on the desire to help insurance companies. There is no other reality based reason to oppose the public option. This means that many governors and state legislators would be very eager to not give people in other states the option to by public insurance. Opt out would not give them the power to do that. It would only give them the power to force their constituents to subsidize insurance companies. This makes a state level opt out decision very different from the decision by a Senator to vote against the public option. Senators can take the option away from people who aren't their constituents. Many senators are so eager to do this that they don't mind hurting their constituents too in the process.

I hope that the number of states which actually opt out will be lower than the number of States which send 2 anti public option senators to Washington. The decisions are different. The costs to their constituents are the same. The benefits for insurance companies are much lower.

Now many opponents of the public option aren't reality based at all. Many people sincerely believe that the public option means death panels or something. The opt out debate will drive a wedge between the tea partiers and the reality based corporate stooges. As argued above, many corporate stooges who would vote to eliminate the public option nationwide will not be eager to shaft their own constituents. This will infuriate the tea partiers. Anything which separates the sincerely ideological from the mercenary tends to weaken the alliance of money and conservative ideology on which the Republican party is based.


Furthermore a patchwork in which people in some states have access to a public insurance plan, people in other states will be very irritated that premia drop at the state line. Public support for those non reality based state legislators and governors who opt out will suffer as a result.

I think opt out will make it clear to people if those in State government, who are supposed to be serving them, are, in fact, either bought tools of insurance companies, or ideological fanatics who can't see reality, or both.

Of course it is necessary that states be allowed to opt out of a centralized plan with a scale large enough for efficient administration and high bargaining power, or, better, one with rates linked to medicare and effectly immense bargaining power.

If they can opt out of a feeble tiny public plan confined to their state, they will, and it wouldn't matter much if they didn't.

The Return of the Trigger

People are talking about a public option with a trigger as a health care reform compromise. Alarmingly some work in the White House.

First What Ezra said

No one has ever seemed to have worked on a possible trigger as an actual provision of an actual bill. No one has sought political support for a trigger. I think that bringing up the trigger is equivalant to asking for delay. Both the trigger and delay are advocated by Senator Snowe.

Being sure that discussion of a trigger is a waste of time, I just can't resist.

I propose a trigger in which people in some state have access to a pubic option if for t = 2014 or later, fewer than f(t) % of legal residents have health insurance. To be a good policy, f(t) should rise to 100 % over time.

Aadding a trigger to the public option could be a disguised way of eliminating it. Certainly, if the Senate were required to pull the trigger, a trigger is like a no.

Adding a trigger could amount to nothing if, say, Barack Obama were the one to decide whether to pull it.

A trigger only makes sense if it is based on hard numbers and those numbers are crunched by an independent non political entity. I'm not sure how constitutional that would be, but let's assume it is pulled by the GAO or something.

Snowe is eager for a trigger pulled if people don't have access to affordable insurance. This is equivalent to no trigger, since the subsidies are designed to guarantee that all have access to affordable insurance. Snowe is not convinced that this means insurance is actually affordable, but it is declared to be affordable. Her position is just a gentle moderate sounding no to the public option.

OK so my proposal. I think it can be implemented. I mean it is not too hard to reliably estimate the number of people with insurance and the number of legal US residents in a state. It is hard to estimate the number of undocumented aliens, but everyone with power agrees that, for the purposes of health care reform, they don't count.

The point of my proposal is that an insurance company with a domminant position in a state would have a strong incentive to get people insured in order to avoid competing with a public option. This would give it incentives to chase after the uninsured *and* to charge low premia. The threat of a public option would work vaguely like a public option.

Effort to waste time completed.

But seriously Snowe is just delaying things, because when history calls she gets anxious. Go without her. Use budget reconciliation if necessary.

In Which I Irrespect Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias uses the word "irrespective" twice in 55 words spanning two posts (including the title of the older post).

I don't want him to feel irred* but I'm feeling unusually irrespectful of Yglesias's prose style. I mean "irrespective" is a fine word, but what's wrong with "notwithstanding."

By the way both posts are brilliant.

*people my age think we show how hep and kewl we are when we demonstrate that we know that "to diss" is a verb.

Mark Kleiman on Retribution

This post by Mark Kleiman is more interesting than an average Mark Kleiman post on crime and punishment, and that is saying a lot.



I can't summarize it, please just click the link.

To give it the whole college try, Kleiman argues in favor of considering retribution as a legitimate aim of punishment *and* that "the suffering punishment inflicts on offenders and those who care about them is always a cost and not a benefit, and therefore can only be justified by some good result." That's a tough square to circle (although the broadness of some good result helps).

I'm sure it is a pure coincidence, but, in the post, Kleiman is, among other things, defending an apparently indefensibe* statement by Barack Obama

"Barack Obama supports the death penalty even though he believes it “does little to deter crime”. It is justified, he says, because it expresses “the full measure of [a community’s] outrage”. " Oh my Lexington has waved crime, punishment and Barack Obama in front of Kleiman's nose. He (or she) was asking for it.


Kleiman makes three arguments

1) ... when punishment expresses outrage in a way that changes attitudes about the wrongfulness of the underlying act – as more severe punishment of drunk driving and domestic violence surely has done – it has a crime-control effect not reducible to incapacitation and deterrence.

2) ... a light punishment reflects, and reinforces, the low value the community assigns to the person on the receiving end of the crime, and by extension to other people of similar background.

and

3)The shift from weregild or private revenge to punishment by the state no doubt represents an important social advance. But it ought to be thought of as a bargain, with the state standing in for the Lord and saying to the victim and his family, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” That bargain, once made, must be kept.



first note that argument 3 is in notable contrast to arguments 1 and 2. In 1 and 2 Kleiman argues that the state can and should shape public attitudes. Sounds alarmingly Marxist, but, like much of his thought, Marx owes this to Smitth who made the argument in "Theory of the Moral Sentiments."

Point 3 relies on the assumption that the state can only slake and not eliminate our thirst for vengeance. If a false dichotemy were a valid argument, then Mark Kleiman would be wrong and my grandmother would be my grandfather.

I think that Kleiman doesn't prove all that he seems to set out to prove. In particular, while I think that Obama's statement is fine as a political compromise needed to win elections, I don't think that Kleiman successfully defends it as a moral proposition. I will use it as an example, when discussing Kleiman's arguments.

OK point 1. This is an effect of punishment. In allowing it to be considered, Kleiman seems to assume that people who make the laws know more about right and wrong than mere citizens. He seems to think that the beliefs about morality which will be encouraged by the law are the beliefs of people like him and are true beliefs. I note that the law has also reinforced the view that the first amendment right to association doesn't apply to the Communist Party, that atheism and religious skepticism are depraved etc etc etc. Influencing opinions does not necessarily mean improving them.

Note the key weasel word "seems" in the paragraph above. Kleiman doesn't actually state that laws affect moral sentiments *and* this is a good thing. He just said that there is an effect of the law other than deterrence and incapacitation. I grant him his point. Everything has all sorts of effects direct and indirect and oh what a tangled web we weave when in consequentialism we do believe.

It is irrelevant to Obama's statement. Obama doesn't say we need the death penalty to convince people that some especially bad murders are really bad. He (and Lexington parapharsing say "expresses '... outrage'" not "creates a proper sense of outrage."

Point 2. Here it really seems to me that Kleiman is saying that utilitarian calculus must only operate within the limits set by rights including the right to equal protection under the laws, which plainly includes policing services and punishment which does not depend on the identity of the victim. I think point 2 amounts to saying that the state must act through anonymous laws. A benevolent dictator who was above the law might do better, but we don't have a benevolent dictator on hand. To live under the law and not under arbitrary authority, punishments must be regulated by laws. This means that judges will sometimes punish someone more severely than we would if they were absolutely free to punish as they saw fit. It sure doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with retribution. It has to do with the rule of law and the claim that laws must be clear and simple in order to maintain the rue of law.

3. Vengeance is mine sayeth the state. Here I can interpret Kleiman's arguments in two different ways depending on the meaning of "must." It is an imperative and it might be categorical or hypothetical.

Is he saying it is morally necessary to keep all social bargains -- that the historically existing social contract is morally binding ? Surely he doesn't believe that. The USA made a social compact with its White male citizens promising us that we would control the country and that it wouldn't arbitrarily deprive us of our property (including human property). It didn't keep that bargain. Kleiman can't be arguing that a promise made to our ancestors centuries or milennia ago is moral law. However, I think he definitely is appealing to the sense that promises should not be broken even if you can get away with it.

It seems he is arguing that the unsatisfied thirst for vengeance can lead to crime and that it is welfare maximising to take this it into account. William Douglas said no man is more than x meals away from a felony (I think X was 6 which is clearly to low). Similarly, one might argue that we must punish a criminal, because if we don't the victims will.

This really doesn't seem to get us to the death penalty. We must kill this man, because someone else might, doesn't strike me as a sound argument.

I'd say Kleiman has made two major valid points. First, one has to decide between the rule of law and attempting to optimize dterrence and incapacitation for a given level of total punishment. Hardly a shocking conclusion, but convincing. Also that punishment has effects in addition to effects via incapacitation and deterrance. His examples are that it promotes a proper outrage and sooths dangerous outrage. Not at all a logical contradiction, but, again, the argument that actions have many different effects and forecasting is difficult is not really novel.

In the end, I think it is clear that Kleiman has something in mind which I haven't grasped. After being provoked to thought, I have come around to the conclusion that his arguments are obvious and amount only to respect for the rule of law and the complexity of humanity. I must have missed something.

But what ?


* update: I actually want to defend Obama. I claim he was lying. IIRC The statement appeared in "The Audacity of Hope." It appeared in the context of Obama arguing for more safeguards to reduce the probability that innocent people are sentenced to death and for less and less arbitrary application of the death penalty. Notably Obama's amazing legislative achievement in the Illinois senate was convincing his colleagues and Gov. Blago... to require that all police questioning of suspects of capital crimes be videotaped. In practice he managed to achieve something that restricts the death penalty and that is rare. Obama's claim that he doesn't oppose the death penalty as such, makes perfect strategic sense. This would be true even if his only aim in life were to reduce the number of people put to death.

The people of the USA (and of Illinois) will *not* be convinced that the death penatly is always wrong. They will ignore all statements about the death penalty by people who say that it is always wrong. When I read the passage I wasn't disturbed at all. It seemed obvious to me that Obama was making a obligatory gesture of feigned respect for vengeance.

In contrast, I was outraged when he praised welfare reform. Again, I'm sure he did that, because one loses ones electability (and status as a serious non DFH) when one criticizes welfare reform. However, the facts are the facts, and Obama's claims about the pre-reform welfare system are falsehoods.

Big Government

A comment on something I read quoted by Digby.

When you comb the serious academic evidence about how and why economies grow, you will find that no case can be made that big government or even high taxes impede economic growth over time.

I hate to type this but I don't agree with "you will find that no case can be made that big government or even high taxes impede economic growth over time. "

In fact, I don't think you can find any case that high taxes impede economic growth. That much is true.

However, high G (government spending other than transfers like social security) is very robustly correlated with low growth in every cross country data set which I checked.

Both can be true. The evidence is very strong that deficits are terrible for growth.

Now these are cross country regressions and most countries are in the third world. It isn't necessarily relevant to the USA.

There is strong evidence that high public spending on education is good for growth (not neutral good). High Transfers (like social security) are correlated with high growth.

Public health care spending is correlated with good health and private health care spending isn't This is not just the result of the USA with huge private spending and not so great health. It is true if you drop the USA from the sample.

High infrastructure spending is correlated with high growth. Believe it or not high military spending is not correlated with low growth.

Huh !?!? so what's left ? Well I'd say some countries actually have bloated bureaucracies. The USA sure isn't one of them. No one proposes bloating up our bureaucracy. We have been fighting bureaucratic bloat for my entire lifetime (born November 9 1960).

We won. The federal government does much more than it did when I was born and Federal civilian employment is a much lower fraction of total employment.

OK sure we got some Blackwater's in the bargain, but basically the USA shows that the public sector can be efficient -- more efficient at many things than the private sector.

This means the sad fate of third world countries with bloated bureaucracies (compared to what they can afford) is not relevant to our case.

But it's there in the cross country data. I could *not* make the apparent effect go away (I checked for my own information. I don't mine data then write it up as if I hadn't mined the data. Honest).

A Totally Dishonest Quote Produced by Cutting and Pasting

People who object to being quoted often complain that their remarks were taken out of context. They aim to insinuate that the meaning of the quotation was distorted by removal of needed context. Usually, this insinuation is bogus. However, it is possible to misquote someone using cut and paste.

For example (and I really don't recall many examples this egregious of the top of my head) Ben Armbruster uses cut and paste to make the careless reader believe that Ivan Volsky wrote something definitely different from what Volsky wrote. I quote Armbruster misquoting Volsky.

Regardless, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky notes that the opt out provision won’t lower costs like a stong public option will:

But a state-based approach won’t have the ability to significantly lower health care costs or change delivery patterns.

[snip]

Volsky did indeed write the quoted words in that order. However, he was definitely explicitly *not* writing about opt out. The quote in context clearly refers to trigger not opt out

At this point, Reid may not have the votes to move a national opt out off of the floor; he is introducing a national opt-out with the understanding that it would become a state-based ‘trigger’ when the Senate formally takes up the measure. The maneuver is meant to satisfy progressives — Congress tried — but the final bill will include a mechanism that triggers a state-based public option if a certain affordability threshold is not satisfied (if 5% of the state population does not have access to at least two “affordable” options, for instance). The policy will then be presented as ‘the best deal we could get’ and embraced by both Reid and the White House.

But a state-based approach won’t have the ability to significantly lower health care costs or change delivery patterns.

I don't see how Volsky could possibly have made it clearer that the quoted criticism was *not* a criticism of the opt out compromise but a criticism of the different bill which Volsky claims that Reid predicts would pass if Reid were to propose opt out.

I think Armbruster could have run the quote past Volsky ? The both work for CAP and the Volsky statement and the totally distorted misleading quotation appear on siste web sites.

At this point, I think CAP is not up to Fox News standards. I mean Fox News tends to quote Fox News correctly.

Begging the Question II

It is very unfortunate that many people use "begging the question" to mean "raising the question." It is less important that I personally have my personal definition which is "making an argument which is so vulnerable to a counterargument that it begs someone to make that counterargument." I think the standard definition is assuming what one seeks to prove.

OK so I'm third in line for "begging the question." That raises the question "What ever am I to do ?" The answer

read Daniel Davies who wrote

"playing a little crossword-puzzle game where the answer was “”. " That's it. An apparently convincing argument which is absolutely vulnerable to a question is playing a little crossword-puzzle game where the answer was "what about [question]"

In the case in question, a single word is enough. The word is "consensus" and the counterargument is "are you saying there was a consensus as there is now ?"

Also, by the way, it is not usually a good interprative strategy to assume that Mr Davies means literally exactly what he writes. He uses a rhetorical technique called "irony". So, for example, he did not really confess that the main aim of most of his writing is to annoy people when he wrote "The whole idea of contrarianism is that you’re ... setting out to annoy people." He really meant "part of the point of contrarianism, but not the whole point, is to annoy people." I have seen on the web someone (pretend to ?) take the sentence seriously.
Either more good irony or a bad interprative strategy.

I made a fool of myself over Karen Ignagni

When I was young and stupid (last week ok middle aged and stupid) I wrote a post entitled "A Defence of Freakonomics." It got a lot of attention. Maybe I am addicted to contrarianism and just want attention.

Now I am going to argue that the true hero(ine) of US health care reform is not Ted Kennedy, not Ron Wyden, not Barack Obama, not even Elisabeth Edwards, but Karen Ignani.

She is head of the health insurance lobby AHIP. One would expect her to be leading the resistance to universal health insurance. Of course, she claims otherwise -- in fact she says she supports health care reform provided it is universal.

Why would anyone believe her ? Well for one thing, she has been working for universal health insurance since Barack Obama was in college. I hand the mic over to Matt

Look at her bio:

Prior to joining AAHP in 1993, Ms. Ignagni directed the AFL-CIO’s Department of Employee Benefits. In the 1980s, she was a Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, preceded by work at the Committee for National Health Insurance and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

What’s the Committee for National Health Insurance? Well:

The Committee for National Health Insurance was organized in 1969 through the efforts of UAW President Walter P. Reuther

.

You have to admit it answers a whole lot of nagging questions.

Now like Matt (and Paul) I don't really think the commically mendacious PWC analysis was a deliberate attempt to shoot the health insurance industry in the feet. My theory in the post below.

I do think that Ignagni has consistently not gone all out attacking any universal plan and did attack the first non-universal proposal to appear. My reading of the event was (and is) that it is just not possible to satisfy both Snowe and Ignagni.
I'm glad that Reid appears to have decided to satisfy neither, but I do think that Ignagni and Snowe have irreconcilable differences.

Look if someone repeatedly says something, if that statement fits with the entire history of their professional life and if her actions are explained by the hypothesis that the statement is not a lie, one might consider the possibility that it isn't a lie.

Back Commenting on Black

Atrios wrote

Hopey


Like Digby, I can't predict the future but remain (very) cautiously optimistic about the end result of HCR. I was worried for awhile there, when I realized that it seemed that one thing many of our very important senators had forgotten to consider was that people actually have to kind of like this plan, and forcing people to buy shitty insurance would probably not make voters happy. I get the sense (not that I really know) that it's become a bit more of the conversation, and hopefully that'll lead a few more people to understand that pleasing Olympia Snowe and AHIP can't be the only considerations.



I comment.

I think you are unfair to Snowe and AHIP. I think very important senators Baucus and Conrad have even worse ideas about policy than Snowe or AHIP.

Recall that Snowe's watchword is "affordability" which sure makes it sound like she shares exactly your concern. Also note that she supported the Wyden amendment.

Or what about AHIP (which is not identical to the insurance companies which it claims to represent -- principal agent problem anyone). AHIP/PWCs commically dishonest assault on the Finance Committee bill was an assault specifically against the Finance Committee bill and, in particular, the fact that the individual mandate was not universal.

I think it is possible that AHIP really does consider non-universality the one deal breaker. Certainly they have been saying exactly that for over a year. A possible story is that Baucus balked on universality and AHIP told PWC sicc him. Attack dog PWC then mixed metaphors and went whole hog shooting themselves in the foot (hey they're accountants. What do they know from metaphors).

Frankly, I'd say that one reason why the very important Senators are now focused on writing a decent bill is that Baucus is no longer the most important Senator. Another reason is that they have discovered that they can't satisfy both AHIP and Snowe and trying to satisfy both they will satisfy neither.

Why do they public option oponents rage ?

I think everyone knows this, but I will repeat it here. Senators who claim to be moderate are willing to threaten to block reform if it includes a public option.
Bloggers ask how they could possibly have such extreme views on one narrow issue ?
(before I linked to Yglesias via Benen without linking to Benen so I am making up for it). Long enough ago that I don't have a link, Ezra Klein noted that all of the public options under discussion are hobbled, because people who get insurance from their employers will not have the option. So what's the big deal.

Many people (links forgotten again but I suspect Kevin Drum) have explained that public option opponents assume that it is stealth single payer. That if everyone can opt for public insurance, everyone will, and that all limits in the current bill will be swept away when people find out how much they can gain if they have access to the public option.

As proposed it is narrow but it will be Wydened (that it the only appropriate word for eliminating the barrier which keeps people who get insurance from their employers as proposed by Ron Wyden). This is actually fairly clear. In his efforts to block the Wyden amendment in the Finance committee, Sen Max Baucus declared it out of order on the grounds that it had not been scored by the CBO even though it had been scored by the CBO.

To opponents, the only ways to stop the public option from growing into single payer are to block it entirely or to cripple it so that it won't be able to charge low premia.

Limits on who has access such as the unWydened current provision or state level opt outs just won't stop it. Breaking it up into many little public or cooperative options will, because most of low costs will be due to piggy backing on medicare's bargaining power.

Opt *in* might OK for them. If it starts slowly and never take off. Opt out, not so much. Even if roughly half of states opt out, they won't stay out when people get angry over how much premia fall the instant you cross a state line.

Even if it is a little aspect of reform now, it can't be kept from growing except by strangling it in its cradle.

Senator Mary Landrieu Proposes a Poll


NPR asks her a question

Asked about polls showing public support for a government plan, Landrieu said the questions should be phrased differently.

"I think if you asked, do you want a public option but it would force the government to go bankrupt, people would say no," she said.

Yep Senator Landrieu sure knows more than Joe Public about the public option, and she knows way more than the CBO which predicts that it would cut $ 100 B off the Federal debt over ten years. I don't know how exactly that would bankrupt the Federal Government.

As Matt Yglesias notes, Sen. Landrieu shows no hint of knowing what the public option is.

I recommend you just click the link and skip the rest of this post.

The relatively charitable explanations of her repeated claims that it will be subsidized by taxpayers are beginning to be implausible. She does not phrase them as predictions about what will happen no matter what the CBO says. She claims that the public option is just like taxpayer financed programs such as medicaid and medicare

Describing the public option as a "government-run, taxpayer subsidized, national insurance plan," Landrieu said it would likely replicate the problems faced by Medicare and Medicaid.

""Why don't we fix the two public options we have now instead of creating a third one," she told NPR's "Tell Me More."

Her count is off (she forgot her own health insurance for example) but more to the (unoriginal) point, there is nothing optional about medicaid. You pay for it via your 1040 or else.

The charitable might assume she is lying, but I am getting the horrible sensation taht she is honestly ignorant.

Comments on a post at Rortybomb

Go read the post

My comments

I have a lot of comments and can't be brief.

1) You seem to assume that if one advocates geoengineering then one must decide to at least reduce efforts to cut emissions. This does not follow logically. I am ignorant and my opinion doesn't matter but I sincerely believe that we should do everything politically possible to reduce emissions and send sulfate precursers up 18 mile long tubes. The discussion of the effects of geoengineering has become linked to opinions about cap and trade and carbon taxes. This is illogical and ideological.

2) relatedly, some people seem to use the logic "If Bjorn Lomborg says it's good it must be bad." This is not completely reliable. Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn.

3) acid rain -- the amount of Sulfur Dioxide under discussion is less than one half of current US Sulfur Dioxide emissions (which are a modest fraction of the world total). The acid precipitation will be spread over the world not concentrated at lethal (to spruce trees not humans) levels (like the smoke the US used to send across the border to Canada)The claim that that amount of Sulfur Dioxide will directly cause serious damage to the environment tends to be contradicted by the scientific analysis by Kravitz et al (pdf warning http://tinyurl.com/yzyw2cm). I am ignorant and their conclusion might be contested. However, the confident claim from a non expert that they are definitely wrong does not impress me.

4) Moral hazard and hurting a billion people. The two points don't fit together comfortably. As noted in another paper the same group at Rutgers (and others) predict that the main problem with sulfur based geoengineering is that it will cause reduced precipitation in India and China. This (unlike acid rain) is a real problem. It does not, however, create a moral hazard problem. The USA can honestly tell India and China

"we want to stop global warming. If you don't reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, then we will feel forced to send millions of tons of Sulfur Dioxide up 18 mile tubes. We really don't want to do this as it will hurt you badly. That's a nice monsoon you have there. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it."

I don't mean to be flippant. Reduced rain in India and China is one of the climate changes which would do the most to incrrease huiman suffering. That, and not acid rain, is the serious problem with Sulfur based geoengineering.

5) "Moral hazard" is a very respected phrase. However the logic of the moral hazard argument is Leninist "The worse it is the better it is." Now Leninist is not a nice word, but what exactly is the difference in the reasoning. Of course a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn and Lenin's argument might be valid in this case.