TYT Interviews: Jane Hamsher On Healthcare, Obama & Deals w/ Industry

[ihavenobias]

Run time: 16:28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CQDppuqbo8   Posted on YouTube: September 11, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: September 13, 2009 By DU Member: ihavenobias Views on DU: 1912

 
Note: After you watch the above video make sure you check out this important interview (and the terrifying SC clip in the '5 Clips' section below): .

Summary: This video is from TYT's new YouTube Channel, . Cenk talks to Jane Hamsher of www.firedoglake.com about the incredibly discouraging deals with industry that have likely killed a public option and the potentially disastrous political ramifications for the Democratic party and president Obama. Is Rahm Emmanuel largely to blame? You can .

Also Watch These 5 Clips You May Have Missed:

1)-

2)-

3)-

4)-

5)-

PS---TYT is now on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks

[flyarm]

1. And Nobody Thought to Say “What Deal”? By: Jane Hamsher

And Nobody Thought to Say “What Deal”?
By: Jane Hamsher
Saturday September 12, 2009 1:03 pm

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/12/and-nobody-thought-to-say-what-deal/

David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times writes about the warring health care industry stakeholders, and their fight to carve up the medical industrial complex bailout pie. We are truly ruled by lobbyists:

Hospital lobbyists, like the drug makers, have a deal with the White House to limit their costs and are pushing hard to pass a bill. But the hospitals are haggling with the Senate Finance Committee over another proposal: a newly empowered Medicare oversight board that could impose payment reductions.

Two hospital lobbyists, speaking anonymously because the discussions are confidential, say their deal should protect them from further cuts the board might seek. White House officials dispute that, though when asked about the matter recently, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the hospital deal included cuts it might have taken a decade to achieve.

It's amazing how they can go from never inquiring about the deals made over the summer between the Baucus Caucus and stakeholders to the presumption that everyone knows what they are in one clean leap.

And still we get reporting like this:

Sept. 4, 2009: CNN has learned that the White House is quietly talking about drafting formal health care legislation after allowing Congress to work on its own for months.

How does "negotiating the deals with lobbyists who expect them to be memorialized in the Baucus bill" jibe with "allowing Congress to work on its own for months"?

[ihavenobias]

13. Thanks for the link

I hadn't seen this one yet.

[flyarm]

2. MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/11/maxtax-is-a-plan-to-use-our-taxes-to-reward-wal-mart-for-keeping-its-workers-in-poverty/

MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty
By: emptywheel Friday September 11, 2009 3:41 pm

I made this point in this post, but I'm going to repeat it over and over and over until it sinks MaxTax, the Baucus health care plan.

MaxTax is a plan that will use your and my tax dollars to reward companies like Wal-Mart for keeping its workers in poverty. Here's why.

In most cases, the MaxTax fines employers up to $400 per employee if it doesn't provide its employees with health care. The fine is absurdly small (less than half of what individuals, themselves, would be fined if they didn't get insurance), but it could mean a company like Wal-Mart would have to pay up to $560 million if it refused to provide insurance to any of its employees.

The other option is to provide crap insurance for your employees. MaxTax gives very few requirements for this insurance (and it allows you to charge employees up to 13% of their income in premiums). But assume Wal-Mart decided to provide incredibly crappy insurance at a cost of $2,500 an employee. It would then pay $3.5 billion a year to meet its obligations under MaxTax.

So Wal-Mart chooses between paying $560 million or $3.5 billion right?

There is another option.

The MaxTax offers this one, giant, out for corporations.

snip: and do read the rest at the linkkkkkkkkkkk!



A $1.25 billion reward to Wal-Mart--a competitive advantage it would have--for paying shit wages.And who will be paying that reward to encourage Wal-Mart to continue to pay shit wages? Why, that'd be our taxes, yours and mine.

[flyarm]

3. Joe Wilson and AHIP Team Up to Write Max Baucus’s Health Care Bill By: Jane Hamsher

Joe Wilson and AHIP Team Up to Write Max Baucus’s Health Care Bill
By: Jane Hamsher

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/11/joe-wilson-and-ahip-team-up-to-write-max-baucuss-health-care-bill/

Friday September 11, 2009 7:06 am


There really doesn't seem to be any limit to what the administration will do to pass Rahm Emanuel's neoliberal giveaway to the insurance industry. The "author" of the plan released by Baucus (and apparently by Mike Ross) is a former VP of Wellpoint. Now AHIP is boasting about their role in crafting it:

Many of the changes to the insurance system now under discussion are the ones that have been advocated this year by the insurance companies themselves, said Karen M. Ignagni, the chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group. "The industry has been the leader in creating the proposals everyone is about to endorse," she said.

No wonder insurance company stocks shot up after the President's speech.

But now we find, per John Aravosis, that Kent Conrad and Max Baucus are changing their bill to appease Joe Wilson:

"We really thought we'd resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President's speech last night we wanted to go back and drill down again," said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats in the talks after a meeting Thursday morning. Baucus later that afternoon said the group would put in a proof of citizenship requirement to participate in the new health exchange — a move likely to inflame the left.

As John says, if Wilson's outburst turns out to be successful, it'll keep happening over and over again. And it will work every time.

If you want to stop this travesty from going forward -- and it's turning into a complete travesty -- ask these members of Congress from strong Democratic districts, all of whom have cosponsored Single Payer in the past and know better, why they aren't pledging to vote against any bill if it turns out to be nothing more than an insurance industry bailout:

read the rest at the link..........

.....................................................................

Reid Endorses Wellpoint’s Co-op Plan
By: Jane Hamsher Friday September 11, 2009 9:46 am

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/11/reid-end...

The Senate Majority Leader endorses the Mike Ross/Kent Conrad/Wellpoint authored co-op plan:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) endorsed the concept of health insurance cooperatives Thursday, siding with centrists in the House and Senate who want healthcare reform but oppose a public option.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also hinted she could accept that approach a day after President Barack Obama delivered an address to a joint session of Congress that offered encouraging words for both centrists and liberal Democrats who have demanded a public insurance option.

I think I may have to adjust my prediction for the co-op "squeeze play" on July 20:

The easiest political path to passing health care is still running the "co-op" crunch. Regardless of what the House does, the Senate can pass Conrad's shitty fake co-op. The Blue Dogs band together and refuse to vote for anything else, and that's what comes out of conference. There's a PR blitz to sell it as a "public plan" (which is why we've worked so assiduously to define it as NOT a public plan), and in a rush to get something passed, Rahm starts twisting progressive arms -- which have been historically very easily twisted.

Blue Dog Mike Ross presciently submitted virtually the same co-op plan in a July 31 amendment that finally emerged this week in Max Baucus's Senate plan. But since it now looks like Pelosi is on board with co-ops, that means the Blue Dogs aren't going to have to take the hit.

[Mithreal]

4. K&R This is a must listen. nt

[ro1942]

5. Sacrilege

The Obama movement is a fraud. Same bush prosecutors, Bill Gates and more war, Rahm is there by design, nobody is above the law but we need to look forward. With the exception of a few things any democrat would have done, what has really changed? It's not going to get any better for the Palestinians or Iran. Look what happened in Honduras. Obama is the perfect pick for the American empire.

[Mithreal]

19. There isn't an Obama movement.

He may have tried to subsume actual movements but his White House looks to the little people like politics as usual not that he isn't 1000 times more inspiring than the last piece.

[dotymed]

6. No UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER

No Deal. Heath care is a RIGHT not a privilege.

[nightrain]

7. knr. Excellent post. Thank you for the links--as distressing as they are....

[NecklyTyler]

8. Don't these guys ever sleep?

They just keep coming out with one good video after another, all day long

[NecklyTyler]

9. K&R

[Thornleylv]

10. Yes we could, but won't

We just have to keep plugging away! Even if that means some
other Dem. In 2012!

[Mithreal]

21. Need to be thinking NOW more locally and 2010. nt

[nansocal]

11. Is Rahm Emanuel....

the political "centers" carl rove.? does he design the white house actions.?

[Mithreal]

20. Rove was willing to break laws. Big difference. Otherwise agreed. nt

[debbierlus]

12. Kick - this is the video that EVERYONE on DU should watch

[Mithreal]

22. Strong agreement. Some very good insights and potentially

explains what is going to come to some as a shock to many when a strong option disappears. Political calculations were made and the President was not willing to be an actual 1 termer fighting for a public option, he wasn't even willing to risk his majority. I still think Progressives have fight in us and can change things but now we know they sold us out from the start and why.

Explains why all of a sudden one of my Senators came out for the health care reform and why I saw PhRMA running ads for her on O'Reilly's show while I was at the gym. I don't have cable and wouldn't get near that show but when I saw her image pop up had to watch. Called her offices twice about having that ad run on FOX, a disgrace that they claimed they had no control over.

[ihavenobias]

26. I agree. n/t

[democracy1st]

14. K & R

[flyarm]

15. Grijalva: Baucus Bill Has “No Legitimacy” By: Jane Hamsher

Grijalva: Baucus Bill Has “No Legitimacy”
By: Jane Hamsher

Sunday September 13, 2009 6:30 am

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/09/12/grijalva-baucus-bill-has-no-legitimacy/

Amy Goodman asked Rep. Raul Grijalva, leader of the Progressive Resistance, what he thought about the Max Baucus bill crafted by former health insurance lobbyists:

REP. RAUL GRIJALVA: I think the product that has come out from his committee and himself, I really believe that it has no legitimacy in this debate. It’s an insider product. It’s there to protect the industry. It is not there to try to look for that middle ground. He is key in holding up deliberations, has been key in trying to work on a consensus, but everything you see in his legislation had to be approved by the industry before it became part of the plan. So I don’t think it’s legitimate. I think we’re struggling with real issues in some of the other pieces of legislation from the House and even from the Health Committee. And that’s where the focus of the attention should be. I consider Senator Baucus’s proposal to be essentially an insider trader move to protect an industry and really doesn’t have validity at all, both political validity or content validity.

Rep. Grijalva is doing what we always ask progressives to do. While others stood by and watched Van Jones and Yosi Sergent and a huge piece of progressive infrastructure swept away by capitulation to Glenn Beck's McCarthyist tactics, he's fighting.

Let him know we need more of that.

[miloaxon]

16. Bummer

If this is true then there's really no point. There's literally no such thing as reforming the American health care system without a public option. Anything less just leaves the door wide open for more insurance industry abuses of patients. These companies are teflon, whatever we do to them legally isn't having an effect because it's not in the best interest of politicians to bite the hand of one of their biggest collective campaign contributors. At least they're not still blaming him for Bush's economy.

[Cleita]

17. So in order not to risk losing their majority to the Republicans, they

have decided to hand the majority over to the Republicans instead. Well, good luck on that when they lose big to a third party in 2010 because that's how people are thinking and talking these days. The real debate should have been between the insurance company representatives and the backers of a real national health care plan. That should have been out in the open in the committees and in the White House. Let the best plan win. However, to invite the monied interests to the table and to cut back room deals, while shutting out of the debate the health care more than 50% of the nation wants, will invite a really huge election disaster for the Democrats IMHO.

[JDPriestly]

18. "Democrats. We used to be Republicans, but the Republican Party left us."

That's what my grandmother said when I asked her what political party she belonged to way back in the 1950s.

I'm beginning to understand what my grandmother meant. When I watch the way Obama and his version of the Democratic Party making deals with big business, I feel like they are leaving me.

There will be no health care insurance reform without a robust public option. It’s the only way to pressure health insurance companies to save money on administration.

Obama's plan to end fraud in Medicare in order to save money will not work. First, stopping fraud will be expensive. Obama will have to hire investigators and prosecutors. Meanwhile, he will not be able to focus on the real job of supporting good healthcare providers in their work. He will alienate the best people in the medical profession, the ones who go the extra mile because it is the right thing to do. That is not smart, not smart at all. As for ending duplicative or unnecessary medical tests, the savings will not begin to make a dent in the ransoms the insurance companies will take for themselves once every American has to buy their products.

Democrats are punch-drunk because the Republicans are in disarray right now. Obama and Rahm Emmanuel think they can’t lose. They think they can outsmart big business.

Remember when Bush and Cheney were on top of the world. Rove was talking about the permanent Republican majority. Big Pharma was their buddy, as were big insurance and big weapons manufacturer, and above all big media and big oil.

Did you see how fast the Bush/Cheney team fell as the election approached? Who do you think chose Palin, the least attractive candidate since what's-his-name who ran against FDR? Do you really think it was just because they were stupid? Maybe partly, yes. But also because big business dropped them. Big Business can pick any horse in any race and make that horse win. The faster they switch horses, the more money they make in the game.

Big business fixes the races. It picks the winners – in every election. But before big business decides which horse it will pick, it gets bids from the contenders on what its take from the winning horse will be. That's how elections are fought and won in the United States.

This bidding war explains why Obama has reversed his stance on so many issues. He was against the Iraq War -- before he was for it. He was for renegotiating trade agreements --before he decided that wasn't a good idea. He was against torture -- until he decided that it wasn't a crime worth prosecuting. He was for the public option -- before he abandoned it. Now he supports non-profit health insurance. Non-profits are great for big business and corrupt politicians. They are weak and perfect for laundering political donations. They create great jobs for political and big business cronies. Know any politicians who can no longer win elections? Tom Daschle anyone?

I've heard DUers say that Obama hasn't really turned coat, but that instead, we-centrists-called-leftists-by-big-business just projected our own extremist ideas on him during the campaign.

Not true. Obama really has turned coat. He has double-crossed us. At least so far.

And I predict that Obama will take what is left of the Democratic Party structure down with him even worse than Bill Clinton did. All the Republicans have to do is follow the money, the corruption that is taking hold in the Obama administration. They know that if there is one thing Democratic activists hate it is corruption. And the Republicans see Obama drowning in it.

The Republicans won’t have to get a majority to the polls in the next election. All they will have to do is to point to the corruption in the Obama administration and Democrats will stay home.

And don’t worry. The Republicans will find the corruption – just like we found the corruption in the Bush administration. Big business knows how to leave tracks. You can’t deal with big business without being blackmailed. Besides, big business’s big money is an addiction. Once the Obama administration starts using it, it won’t be able to give it up. That’s how corruption takes hold of good people, good movements.

If you think the Tea-Baggers are bad, wait until the core of the Democratic Party wakes up and realizes what is happening -- the backroom deals, the bargains, the pay-offs. That's when you will finally see real change, and it won't be Obama’s version of change.

[slipslidingaway]

24. "...Big business fixes the races. It picks the winners – in every election..."

Exactly why we saw the shift in health care dollars to the Democrats, they knew the Republicans would not be in power.

Good post.

[slipslidingaway]

23. Who was invited and who was excluded from the discussions should

tell us quite a bit, instead people make excuses to protect the For Profit companies.

[20score]

25. That is depressing. Until we have public campaign financing and we fix the media,

we're screwed. We will continue our downward slide.
K&R

[pleah]

27. I agree with Jane 100%.

If Obama screws the people over this the Dems are toast in the next elections.