This American Life teamed up with Planet Money this week and served up some interesting historical perspective and the usual quirky take on our health care system. But for listeners who stayed with the whole show, or tuned in at the end, there was a poison pill for the public option, and hence health care reform efforts.
With overreaching contrariness, Sarah Koenig interviewed Princeton Professor Uwe Reinhardtin the fourth act and the economist points out that scale, and the clout it brings in negotiations, is what drives down costs , not competition. The hype for the segment on the TAP website says “ this reasoning contradicts President Obama’s argument for what will lower health care costs.” Reinhardt says he wishes he could have a half hour to talk to Obama about the President’s comments about how the public option would provide “competition.”
Unfortunately the more salient point is just tacked on afterwards- they then go on to say, if the government uses the Medicare reimbursement rates (and the vastness of the Medicare provider network) to negotiate lower costs, then the hospitals will shift costs to the private insurers.
So this journalistic mumbling afterwards is actually the key point. If the public option is tied to Medicare rates and the Medicare provider network (a key detail) it is the politically viable path to single payer. Because, as more people become unemployed they will be thrust into the exchange, and as the hospitals shift costs to private insurers, the public option will be comparatively advantageous and will capture more market share. We already have about 45% of the nation in government health care (Medicare, Medicaid, VA). And with this growing public option, within a generation, insurance companies will be marginalized and left to lobby for the privatization of the administration of public health care insurance .
But because Obama can’t say “the public option is a Trojan Horse to eliminate the private insurance sector” he is stuck mouthing faux economics reasoning.
And, unfortunately, because This American Life is so beloved and trusted by progressive minded people, it is an opinion leader in this country. The fallout of this show could seriously undermine grassroots support for the public option. And with the Left even more lukewarm on the public option (“it doesn’t even drive down costs!”), then why bother with a health care reform package that just hands over money to insurers.
Ugh!
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Ethel Dix at the Fair Share Rally last year. Notice the clipboard in her hand (for signing up people).
Ethel Dix died last week. She had just participated in the Peace March over by Driving Park and Dewey. Ethel is the only person I know who bridged so much social change territory. She was organizing neighbors around Adams Street, was on a first name basis with half the elected leaders in town, and stood up for Mumia Abu Jamal. Whether it was Dick Gregory or Mayor Duffy, everybody respected Ethel Dix. She provides us with a role model and I know that I want to learn from her example.
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I’m going to be a contrarian here and ask some tough questions. At least three of the demonstrators were wearing masks/bandannas so at least several people came ready to rumble (red and black flags flying, chanting “Whose streets, Our streets!”)
Let’s just assume that the organizers of the march weren’t so stupid that they 
thought that they could just march in the street without a permit. Given that the organizers of the event knew that they were breaking the law and confronting the security apparatus of the state: 1) Did they prep the participants for civil disobedience techniques? 2) Did they plan and prep the crowd for a retreat? 3) Did they set up a legal defense team?
Setting aside strategic questions (how does this kind of tactic help push the White House and Congress to end imperial occupation of Afghanistan?) this was clearly a planned confrontation with the police. Why are people surprised that the police went into billy-club-crowd-dispersal mode? The end was predictable.
Let’s hold the police accountable but let’s also hold ourselves accountable for our own actions. And let’s think of tactics that actually move public opinion and overcome Obama’s intransigence on Afghanistan.
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As I’ve written previously, Sandy Parker’s Business Council and its Rosemary’s Baby, Unshackle Upstate, are congenitally incapable of truthtelling. Their obsession on vanquishing public sector unions is all consuming and leads them to pure distilled demagoguery.
Their latest report rehashes their old musty trope that New York State’s economy is circling the drain because of a bunch of fat and lazy state workers who are sucking up All Our Tax Dollars. The report stirs the unfocused anger of New Yorkers who feel that they are working harder and falling behind, and directs that anger at… State Workers! Let’s set aside the small matter that the report just isn’t true and address the broader dynamics of the matter.
Check it out, the chambers of commerce all pushed to allow Wall Street to pedal predatory loans to working families and then sliced and diced those bad mortgages, hiding the risk. They then went on to get triple AAA ratings on these bad loans, leveraged MASSIVE side bets on the action and these Wall Street Masters of the Universe made millions on this worthless crap. And when the whole house of cards came crashing down the entire planetary economy got sucked into the vortex with it.
But the problem in New York, according to the bankers who fund Unshackle Upstate, the problem in New York is that state nurses and engineers work their entire lives, earn a living wage, and get to retire with a fucking pension.
I shit you not.
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