@Simon A: 
To paraphrase DiNiro:
“Are you talkin’ ‘bout ME?!!”

The health insurance premiums for my family just went up another 31% this month.  That’s on top of a 37%jump last year. 
And a 17% jump the year before.
(and overall, we’re HEALTHY!)

Affordable health care?
Just another oxymoron.

Whether the democrats have won, or the republicans emerge victorious, it is the average american that ultimately loses out when healthcare costs rise too much, and people are not able to afford health care anymore. It is a loss to the entire nation if they are not able to find a good system that is able to provide affordable healthcare for everybody, without burdening the government’s budget.

that’s because OUR philosophers ain’t the German Idealists

Yes, well, at least our philosophers don’t go around saying ‘Hell is other Neptunians.’

Ana—- a truly other-worldly lack of understanding, but it reads really well.

I suppose there is a limiting factor in that a medical care industry cannot extract more than 100% of the wealth its host community produces, at least not for very long.  However, given the size of the handle, and the fact that many people will in effect vote for the largest bag of money to rule them, I don’t see why the American medical industry couldn’t increase its haul to a much larger cut of the GDP—it certainly ought not have much of a political problem. 

Now, up until the ACA, it was inhibited by the fact that forty or fifty million people could not or would not buy insurance, and as the industry tried to raise their prices more and more people fell into this category.  This is called ‘price resistance’.  Price resistance is now to be removed by force.  I don’t know what the next check will be.  At some point some of the other predators may become concerned that not enough meat is being left on the carcass.

Ana== they’ll stop because the law will change and the
insurance companies will be PUSHED out as the profit
margin in health insurance shrinks to where there’s not
sufficient money to be made and it’s more profitable to
insure other things.
profit shrinkage will be due to price controls,
requirements that they turn away no one and must offer
same capped-cost policies to people who will be
consuming seven-figure chunks of care and mandated caps
on what the companies can claim as administrative costs

Ed Romano, April 21 at 12:57 pm:

‘Hetero, I get it already. The problem I have with it is…why do the folks on the bottom always have to take it in the teeth in order for things to get better? ...’

By and large, they still believe in great leaders, elites, and the system, the state, the tribe.  Genetically or culturally they are predisposed to enable domination and exploitation.  Let us hope it’s cultural and can be changed.

heterochromatic, April 21 at 1:19 pm:

‘.... My gueess is that the insurance companies will take their windfall with the understanding that it’s a “golden parachute” as they’re getting pushed out of healthcare.’

I don’t understand the mechanics of your theory.  Usually, successful acquisition increases greed and aggression.  Getting the government to force everyone to buy insurance is quite an accomplishment and will doubtless greatly increase the industry’s take.  Why should they stop now?

Ed——the poor don’t always get kicked, merely too damn often…...

and while the Obama healthcare reforms pretty much suck, they were an
extraordinary achievement as they broke through the blockade opposed to ANY
reform….. My gueess is that the insurance companies will take their windfall with
the understanding that it’s a “golden parachute” as they’re getting pushed out of
healthcare.

Hetero, I get it already. The problem I have with it is…why do the folks on the bottom always have to take it in the teeth in order for things to get better? If Carville’s Savior had done the job he was elected to do we wouldn’t have a half assed plan that needed replacing in the first place. Your point is well taken, but the “proponents of reform ” had the nation behind them (according to the polls)last time and the job didn’t get done.I’d be willing to bet a little finger the medical insurance industry is not going to sit by while the “proponents of reform” dismantle their Cosa Nostra. In the meantime, the help that some people are getting, or are in line for, would disappear. Is this a country or what ?

Ed—Carville is suggesting that the overturn would put the proponents of reform
in a much stronger position and allow for the enactment of “better” measures ...
he ain’t “Scrooging”.

Wow! If taking away people’s ability to get health care is the best thing ever….imagine how great it will be when they take away their Social Security payments, minimum wage requirements, Medicare and Medicaid, their right to unionize and they get all the public schools, prisons and highways privatized. Again I say…Wow!

I live in Canada and public health care is under attack here in a big way. Since the election of a openly fascist party. That hi-jacked the old conservatives and managed to split the vote enough to get a majority things are changing rapidly. Last time I was in aclinic not only were there excrutiatingly long wait but the list of procedures and drugs that are no longer covered [delisted is the euphemism] ran to four pages I think public health care is pretty much over in North America as is the Green movement, which is now being run for profit like any other business.

By vector56, March 28 at 11:09

“Carville says, “I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party,”

I’m sick to death of these talking heads framing health care in terms of “how it will effect Obama’s chances for reelection, How it will help or hurt the Democratic party….

You took the very words from my mouth.  If nothing else tells us how little anyone cares about us, statements like that certainly should.

Thank you.

I thought that knocking down this coersive and illegal health care strategy was always part of the Obama caculus ,to aquire a second term. If the looting of the treasury hadn’t been completed and the new security apparatus hadn’t been completely deployed. Moving onto this issue [triangulating or pivoting as slick willy called it] as the electon nears covers his other more horrible crimes against the citizenry. I think Carvil has a real future as a stand up comic.

Ana——closing the banks and brokerage houses in Year
One would have caused an absurd amount of damage and
was entirely impossible to do while pursuing your other
goal of saving jobs…..and it’s a dream to think
otherwise.

Right.  If we don’t have crooks like Larry Summers running the economy, it’ll just die.

Ann O’Conner aka Ayn Rand did what was “best” for her in the end…....

  … it was revealed in the recent “Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott
McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute)
that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well.

An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss
Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss
Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments
which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank
O’Connor).

As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she
could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government
programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government
interference and felt that people should and could live independently…
She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”

Bet she had to carry insurance [ as required by law/government] to drive
her car to the movie studio.

Carville said it wasn’t a spin?

Wow, gosh. 
Would have been a great one.

Ana——Year 1, you focus on busting the bankers and brokers and on saving
people’s jobs and mortgages, not bailing out the rich.——

good point…. you focus on destroying the rest of the US economy and insure
that no one has a job and then sure, quick as a wink, you can pass single-payer
and don’t a have a care in the world that you can’t possibly have a tax base to
pay for it.

but

I was asking about the real world and the options available for people hoping
to pass single-payer under realistic conditions at that time.

The Congress of 2009-2010?  Sure, but it would have required forceful, focused leadership and probably a lot of pretty Machiavellian maneuvering and arm-breaking.  Year 1, you focus on busting the bankers and brokers and on saving people’s jobs and mortgages, not bailing out the rich.  Year 2, you go for Single Payer.  If the Republicans etc. obstruct, you make the 2010 election a referendum on it.  Something like 2/3 of Americans supposedly favor a Single-Payer system.  Sure, it would be a long shot, a sort of coup d’etat against the existing ruling class, and one who did it might well wind up not only losing but being terminated with extreme prejudice.  But it’s a high-stakes game anyway.

Instead we got someone who preferred to hire the likes of Larry Summers to tell him what to do.

vec—- you’re right about that, but i do believe that Carville starts out saying that
an overturn would be generally a bad thing….and then goes on to discuss
implications of that bad thing.

“Carville says, “I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party,”

I say, to hell with Carville and the Democratic Party!

I’m sick to death of these talking heads framing health care in terms of “how it will effect Obama’s chances for reelection, How it will help or hurt the Democratic party or if it will hurt the Republications! The Corporate Media loves to play this game of treating health care as if it were nothing more than a tool to gain political advantage.

Ana—- are there any reasons why you think that single-payer could have been
passed through that Congress/ I was paying a bit of attention at the time and I
thought that there wasn’t a hope in hell of it.

As I was saying in another thread, Single Payer is fully Constitutional, whereas the mandate is pretty dubious.  I think it (Single Payer) could have been put over, too, but only by a more aggressive and less bought and compromised politician than Mr. O.  For instance, he and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership could have timed the debate—and, we can assume, the Republican - Lieberman obstruction—so that the 2010 election would have become a referendum on Single Payer or whatever Mr. O was calling it.  If the Democrats won, they would have won, and if they lost, the Republicans would be tagged with the failure.  Meanwhile, Single Payer would begin to glow with the aura possessed by all lost causes and unrealized fantasies.  Much better to hang the Republicans directly with the albatross of its death, than via the Supreme Court.

I advanced this theory to a Chicagoan who has long observed Mr. O and her laughed and said if I knew the man I would not bother talking about such a strategy.

balkas—— early ‘08 i did write in dissident voice [maybe other sites or even td]
that voting for obama wld amount to voting for greater
evil.——-

and, unsurprisingly, you were wrong.

i am not sure that the left wing of the goose ever wanted or even now wants to pass into law with zest or otherwise universal
healthcare for all americans.
and even canada does not have ‘free’ healthcare for all. we have to pay a yearly sum for it and finance it from sale tax.
which means we all pay for it. so, it is not free.
==
early ‘08 i did write in dissident voice [maybe other sites or even td] that voting for obama wld amount to voting for greater
evil.
and i added, i think, not because obama wld be elected, but because of changing conditions; such as planet getting poorer, U.S
or the TWENTY PERCENT needing wars more than ever, etc.
i also spoke that US/nato wld wage more wars and not fewer; regardless who get’s the presidency.
and i was ‘predicting’ [ok, just guessing] that after iraq next country to be attacked wld be syira.

attack against libya and support for islamic rebels came as a big surprise. i don’t know what france, UK, and US gained from
that venture. probably worse an enemy than kaddhafi and his regime.
can we then expect a revisit there in, say, 10 or 20 y? yes, i think so.
wars must go on. cutting freedoms at home must go on. keeping amers bewildered, at sea, stunned, frightened, in silence
must go on.
so, expect worsening in daily living even for most americans let alone ‘aliens’.
recall, please, that power is the worst and most harmful addiction…and the daily doses of i must be even increased and not
just maintained.
let’s stop crying about it—let us the 80% unite and fight back. this means we have to get political.

To: No_Man’s_Land,

For your information, the Democrats never had a super-majority. It takes 60 in the senate to stop a fillibuster, and they had a majority but not a super-majority. That enabled the Republicans to block them from doing much of anything.

But yes, the Democrats are terrible. Republicans are so much worse. We have a two-party system and both parties are in the pockets of big business. The framers of the constitution fretted endlessly about how it would turn out if this were to happen, and it is indeed happening.

Every other modern democracy and many dictatorships have managed to overcome obstacles to pass universal health care. Even Iraq had a more progressive healthcare system than we do when it was under Saddam Hussein. Contrary to what you might hear, socialized medicine works. We pay more for healthcare by far than any other country. We get far less. Entrenched interests in the health care and insurance industries like it just fine the way we do it, of course. They’re getting rich off of it. They don’t want anything to change.

To: No_Man’s_Land,

For your information, the Democrats never had a super-majority. It takes 60 in the senate to stop a fillibuster, and they had a majority but not a super-majority. That enabled the Republicans to block them from doing much of anything.

But yes, the Democrats are terrible. Republicans are so much worse. We have a two-party system and both parties are in the pockets of big business. The framers of the constitution fretted endlessly about how it would turn out if this were to happen, and it is indeed happening.

Every other modern democracy and many dictatorships have managed to overcome obstacles to pass universal health care. Even Iraq had a more progressive healthcare system than we do when it was under Saddam Hussein. Contrary to what you might hear, socialized medicine works. We pay more for healthcare by far than any other country. We get far less. Entrenched interests in the health care and insurance industries like it just fine the way we do it, of course. They’re getting rich off of it. They don’t want anything to change.

@Hetero

There is nothing to amend it toward if the mandate falls. The only option,
as the population becomes more disenfranchised from its healthcare
system, is single payer. Sausage or no sausage, easier or not. That said, it
will probably take another decade or two. The dems had their shot when
they had a super majority. They proved themselves cowards, so as fat as
I’m concerned, it’s irrelevant if it’s good for their party as Carville notes.
Many of them were rightly voted out in 2010, even if it was under false
pretenses. Party operatives appearing on CNN is not reason in itself to
highlight them.

Carville is correct. Every time someone dies or suffers because there is nothing there, every time rates increase and every time someone is denied health care, Republicans will be to blame.

This health care law could have been better. Certainly there is collusion on both sides of the aisle but that does not mean that it is equal in apportionment, however… Republicans will be the party at fault every time someone dies, suffers or is denied, there’s no getting around that, just like Paul’s campaign manager.

Paul, A REPUBLICAN, gave a real heartfelt “how do ya do” regarding it…... “Like so many in our movement, Kent sacrificed much for the cause of liberty. Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family.”

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/ron_pauls_campaign_manager_die.html

I’m certain family and friends of Mr. Snyder are dumbstruck with this type of Republican well-wishing…......

No_Man’s_Land -  Well said on both posts, I, for one, am incomplete agreement.

NML——and do you think that single payer will be more likely or less if the that
mangled thing that was so difficult to pass is ruled verboten?

will it be easier to amend it or easier to start over?

Peter,

It says a lot that you’ll personally respond and to be honest I am still a loyal
reader both Chris and your father. They are both much too unsung. I can
also sympathize with an audience’s need for constant and dynamic content.
The point I hope to make, and it’s one that I wish more outlets would take
to heart, is that for eight years under the Bush administration we endured
a “my party above all” form of both reporting and governance. The damage
from that time is acidic and real. Truthdig was a beacon of its namesake
through much of it and if we’ve learned anything it’s that the tolerance of
damage for the sake of partisan hackery must be called to task whether it’s
the standing operating procedure of the right wing, a cartoon, James
Carville, Eugene Robinson, EJ Dionne or those who give it a platform.
Truthdig is still where I come for the cerebral commentary of Chris and
your father, but I would be remiss, or much of a truthdigger myself, if I didn’t call it
out.

Seriously Truthdig? More defense of Obama’s giveaway to the insurance
industry? Carville is right about one thing: this IS the best thing that could
have happened but only for the cause of single payer, not the democratic
party. They lost me (and a hell of a lot of us) when they failed to end the
wars, prosecute war crimes and torture, expanded the surveillance/police
state, refused to prosecute wall street or help homeowners, threw labor
and immigrants under the bus, and of course, when they passed this
golden little Max Baucus nugget without even allowing single payer a seat
at the table. Can’t have your occupy and sing mandate too, Truthdig…