Needlenose

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports tonight:

President Obama is planning for “a new season” of more hands-on advocacy for his troubled domestic priority, an overhaul of the health care system, according to his advisers. Among the likely steps would be a nationally televised speech that close allies have urged, and a 10-year price tag for the overhaul below the $1 trillion mark.

Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with advisers including Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and David Axelrod, a senior strategist, to prepare for Congress’s return to work next week after a month in which many lawmakers have been spooked by contentious townhall meetings and polls registering slipping support for the president and his health care plans.

. . . The White House recalibration in part reflects how patience has run out with the efforts of the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, to reach a bipartisan deal after two of his three Republican negotiating partners—Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa—in recent days attacked the Democrats’ efforts publicly.

Of course, anyone with any sense knew from the start that the Baucus “bipartisan deal” effort was a waste of time (in fact, an intentional one).

In the Washington Post, Norman Ornstein offers a lame rationalization reasonable-sounding explanation of why Obama & Co. put up with it.  I’m not sure that it’s more convincing than the competing theories (e.g., sheer stupidity, or fealty to corporate interests), but I’m sufficiently traumatized — yes, still — by the 1994 debacle to sit back and let the results, or lack of them, speak for themselves.

Phoenix Woman wrote at Firedoglake yesterday (actually, twice) about the emerging Village contention that, why, of course Ted Kennedy would have swiftly and gleefully traded away the public option to pass something that could be called healthcare reform legislation, however useless the end result might be.

The latest attempt to make this leaden trial balloon fly comes from columnist Steven Pearlstein in this morning’s Washington Post:

Asked about his greatest regret as a legislator, Ted Kennedy would usually cite his refusal to cut a deal with Richard Nixon on health care.

. . . [in 1971], Nixon asked Congress to require for the first time that all companies provide a health plan for their employees, with federal subsidies for low-income workers. Nixon was particularly intrigued by a new idea called health maintenance organizations, which held the promise of providing high-quality care at lower prices by relying on salaried physicians to manage and coordinate patient care.

At first, Kennedy rejected Nixon’s proposal as nothing more than a bonanza for the insurance industry that would create a two-class system of health care in America. But after Nixon won reelection, Kennedy began a series of secret negotiations with the White House that almost led to a public agreement. In the end, Nixon backed out after receiving pressure from small-business owners and the American Medical Association. And Kennedy himself decided to back off after receiving heavy pressure from labor leaders, who urged him to hold out for a single-payer system once Democrats recaptured the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Thirty-five years later, the single-payer dream of Democratic liberals still remains politically out of reach. . .

The simple lesson from this story — and certainly the one Kennedy himself drew — is that when it comes to historic breakthroughs in social policy, make the best deal you can get, leaving it to subsequent generations to perfect.

But not so fast.  As anyone who saw Sicko might remember,  what Pearlstein describes as Kennedy’s initial reaction was, in fact, an entirely accurate assessment of Nixon’s motivation in promoting HMOs — as confirmed by a taped conversation between Tricky Dick and aide John Ehrlichman: (transcript condensed to remove cross-talk)

Nixon: “. . . You know, I’m not too keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This is a private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. . . . I had Edgar Kaiser come in [and] talk to me about this, and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.”

Ehrlichman: “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

Maybe any deal that a leading Republican politician and his corporate allies would have signed off on in 1971 wouldn’t have been worth agreeing to.  Maybe that’s still the case now.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

You know, Huckleberry really had me fooled on the campaign trail.  I thought he was a decent, if misguide fellow.  This pronouncement shows that he is just as evil and self-serving as any Repug – just a better actor:

“The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show on Friday that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.”

via Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare.

The barrage of bullshit that has been the Republican-corporate-psychotic wingnut counterattack against the prospect of healthcare reform has many historical echoes, from the swift-boating of John Kerry to the “partisan spit” the same villains drowned Bill Clinton’s healthcare proposal with in 1994.

But maybe there are some lessons that can be drawn from the most recent parallel — the avalanche of lies, feigned outrages, and scurrilous rumors that John McCain’s campaign unleashed on Obama in last fall’s presidential race.

You remember that, right?  “Lipstick on a pig”?  TV ads insinuating that Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarten students?  In the end, it didn’t work, and Obama overcame an early September deficit in the polls to win the election.

Of course, some factors that helped then aren’t around now.  It’s unlikely that a major, unexpected event like the sudden economic collapse of late September will boost Obama’s political prospects now.  And he doesn’t have the advantage of running as an either-or choice against the increasingly implausible duo of John McCain and Sarah Palin.  (Whatever you may think of Obama’s first seven months, can you imagine having those two in the White House?)

But really, the main element that helped Obama survive last fall’s mudslinging was his ability to dominate the airwaves, thanks to his campaign’s enormous fundraising advantage.  Then, as now, you had random, stray fact-checks in the media that debunked the lies.  But the crucial multiplier was Team Obama’s ability to leverage those into hard-hitting ads that defined McCain far more vividly than the GOP’s smears did Obama… even as the Democratic campaign was protecting its own image with an equally heavy onslaught of positive commercials.

Is the famed “bully pulpit” of the Presidency going to be enough to replace that?  Obama’s campaign advertising enabled him to play good cop and bad cop at the same time.  We know he can still do the former; Obama has an almost limitless ability to present himself as reasonable and above the fray.  But how is his soft-spoken calm going to drown out the noise machine — and define and discredit them the way his campaign was able to do last fall?

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

In December 1944, the German army tried to reverse the tide of World War II with a last-gasp offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The goal wasn’t victory per se, so much as delay — if the Allied onslaught could be held at bay for a few extra months, the tensions between the U.S./Britain and the Soviet Union (which would later result in the Iron Curtain and the Cold War) might cause their coalition to fray enough that Germany could negotiate a separate peace deal.

Succeeding at first, the Nazis quickly surrounded the Belgian town of Bastogne. They sent a gloating letter to the American general there, saying “The fortune of war is changing…” and recommending that his forces surrender. Famously, the general (Anthony McAuliffe) sent a one-word reply: “Nuts!”

That’s basically what happened this afternoon in the healthcare-reform debate in Washington, D.C., as several members of the Narcissism Caucus in the Senate sent a letter urging that congressional leaders delay their consideration of reform legislation. President Obama then hastily pre-empted a scheduled press briefing to give a direct statement to reporters, insisting that “now is not the time to slow down,”and, “We are going to get this done. We will reform health care. it will happen this year.”

Hopefully, Obama’s confidence is as justified as Gen. McAuliffe’s was. Because another historical echo of the Senate faux-centrists’ letter is August 1994, when uber-wanker Sen. Bob Kerrey made a similarly ostentatious plea for delay and supposed moderation, insisting that although he wanted reform, he didn’t want the debate to be “covered in partisan spit.”

In fact, though, Kerrey’s feigned desire for bipartisanship provided the Republicans with the political cover needed to kill the 1994 reform effort — and that’s clearly the model that the current “gang of six” is trying to duplicate.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post reports:

In a meeting with House Republicans at the White House Thursday, President Obama reminded the minority that the last time he reached out to them, they reacted with zero votes — twice — for his stimulus package….

Obama also offered payback for that goose egg. A major overhaul of the health care system, he told the Republican leadership, would be done using a legislative process known as reconciliation, meaning that the GOP won’t be able to filibuster it.

Congress has until October 15 to pass health care or student lending reform under the normal process. If it doesn’t, reconciliation can be used to eliminate the 60-vote requirement.

Commenting on the same news, Chris Bowers at Open Left says:

Without the filibuster available to Republicans, it is highly likely that in 2009 Democrats will succeed where they failed in 1994. This might be the biggest legislative victory for progressives in, well, about as long as I can remember.

However, Grim at HuffPo notes that the Repubs have a plan to counterattack — by whining!

A GOP source familiar with the meeting said that the president was extremely sensitive — even “thin-skinned” — to the fact that the stimulus bill received no GOP votes in the House. He continually brought it up throughout the meeting.

Look for the “thin-skinned” meme to start getting heavy airplay at Drudge and establishment media outlets near you.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

I guess we have to credit the genius of the free market — the same entrepreneurial spirit that brought us tranches of collateralized debt obligations, and Enron’s energy derivatives before that — for this innovation, reported yesterday by the New York Times:

For these economically uncertain times, the UnitedHealth Group has a “first of its kind” product: the right to buy an individual health policy at some point in the future even if you become sick.

Called UnitedHealth Continuity, the product is not actual medical insurance, but is aimed at people who may have insurance now but are worried they may lose it — and may not be able to obtain replacement insurance on their own. They may expect to retire early, for example, before they qualify for Medicare. Or they are worried about the possibility of losing their job and their health coverage.

People who are already sick will generally not be eligible for the new product. Those who do pass a medical review, will pay 20 percent each month of the current premium on an individual policy to reserve the right to be insured under the plan at some point in the future.

“What this product is designed to do, for a very modest premium, is to essentially protect your insurability for the future,” said Richard A. Collins, the president of UnitedHealth’s individual insurance unit, who says he is the first policy holder. His monthly fee is $50.

Some health policy experts question whether UnitedHealth Continuity is a good way for consumers to spend their money. . . . if changes to the health insurance system do occur under the Obama administration, they say, UnitedHealth’s new product may become obsolete.

“As an individual, you’re betting against health reform,” said Peter V. Lee, the executive director of national health policy for the Pacific Business Group on Health, a California group of employers who provide health coverage for their workers.

Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Plan snarks:

In a plan that only the innovative private marketplace sector could devise, the UnitedHealth Group, without providing any insurance benefit whatsoever, has created a way of selling us the the right to health care at some time in the future, but a right that you can purchase only if you are healthy and don’t need care.

I suppose that the punch line here is that by buying one of these pseudo-policies, you’re not only “betting against health reform,” as Peter Lee says, you’re helping fund UNH’s ability to fight against it.  Corporate creativity in its highest form, you might say.