tales of copper city

Going backwards

Paul Krugman in his NYT column, "Missing Nixon" makes the essential point regarding health care reform and much else: we were closer to a well-ordered policy debate in the Nixon era than we are today. 

That's a shocking point but I think he's right.  He recalls again how close Nixon, Kennedy, and Wilbur Mills (the Arkansas Democrat who was chair of Ways and Means)  were to an agreement on national health insurance that is better than we will get under Obama, 35 years later.  Even the name, national health insurance, has vanished from discussion. I remember that Governor Cuomo refereed to the issue as "national health insurance," and it was refreshing to hear a national leader use the language national reform deserves.

The health care reform flow chart long overdue

Nick Beaudrot of Donkeylicious has produced a flow chart that explains with exquisite simplicity the health care reform process.  Bravo!  The chart can be expanded so that people with tired old eyes like me can read it. Or it can be passed out to friends and neighbors.

(Note: be sure and use the final version of the chart in Beaudrot's piece, which is at the bottom of the article. I worry that a lot of people won't do that.) Here's the Flickr link to an expanded version of the accurate chart.  You will have to paste this link to your Firefox or Safari or Internet Explorer; it's not a live link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/electoral-math/3831797463/sizes/o/

Also, the flowchart demonstrates with pellucid clarity the minimal size of the public option (s) and the foolish, foolish uproar that has accompanied attacks on it.  This is what the Blue Dogs are afraid of, come election day.

I wonder how many members of Congress understand even one tenth of what's on that chart. 

I also wonder if the White House will find a way to use it to simplify the debate.  If they do, they just might manage to recapture the day.

Of course, almost immediately someone---likely Betsy McCaughey---will produce a different version to prove that this is the road to serfdom.  And the media will put that version up every where because, well, it's edgy and its show biz!!!

The swiftboating of health care reform?

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has written an excellent piece on the swiftboating of health care reform.  Like Cohn, when I heard White House officials act surprised at the outrageous claims being made about reform, I was astonished that anyone in the White House would be surprised.

Where have these people been?  Given the birther movement, why shouldn't the White House staff be ready for everything, because everything has already come their way?

Two ways of thinking about health care reform

We all know who are opposed to health care reform: the insurance companies, the drug companies (if it means negotiating drug prices), many (but certainly not all) doctors, and  many hospitals.  We all know why these groups oppose reform---as Brad Wright reminds us: rising health care costs are someone else’s income, often someone very powerful, like insurance companies. Self-interest is a very old, obvious, and accurate way of explaining much of American politics.

But wait a minute, let’s recall something. In the 1970's we had a very different health insurance system. Blue Cross-Blue Shield was prominent everywhere and dominant in many states and Blue Cross was a not-for-profit, community-rating health insurance system. Remember, Blue Cross was started by the hospitals of America.  When I entered the field in the early 1970s, many in the Blue Cross world thought we were moving toward national health insurance and welcomed the shift, because they would likely play a big role as “carriers” for a nationally uniform health insurance.  Today nearly all Blue Cross plans have gone over to a for-profit basis.

Brad Wright's new blog, Wright on Health

Check out Brad Wright's new blog, Wright on Health.

A disclaimer: Brad is a former student and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina where I taught for many years, and for a class or two when we returned to North Carolina in 2005. It was in one of these last graduate classes that I taught that I met Brad. 

His blog is a very good balance between analysis, evidence, politics and imagination, and that ain't easy to pull off. He will soon be cross-listing with Huffington Post  and is beginning to be noted by other prominent political bloggers. We can say we knew him when. 

Let's hope he remembers to finish that dissertation.

Chilling out

Matt Miller's column, "Take a Chill Pill," in The Daily Beast has it about right.  The critics (and that includes yours truly, quite often) need to stop wringing their hands and start acknowledging that we will likely get a health care reform bill this year, probably later than we want but almost certainly this year. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight also agrees and gives detailed reasons why.

As Miller, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress points out, the critical move will come when the Senate finally reports a bill and then it goes to conference between the House and the Senate.  That's when the White House and President Obama will step up with a full court press, marshaling supporters that have been at work for over a year, and hitting the hustings to galvanize public opinion.

Sarah Palin's "death panel" and Rush Limbaugh's, "Obama's a Nazi," and the hubbub at the town hall meetings are the rantings of a core within the Republican Party that's totally out of control and totally out of the picture, and they know it.  And a lot of Democrats in Congress know they can't possibly let this group shout our futures down.

Which is better? The Daily Beast or Huffington Post?

I am more and more looking at The Daily Beast instead of Huffington Post.  I find that Tina Brown's site has   more bite and Ariana's rag  has too many "the baby born with two heads" stories. 

They both have a celebrity slant which sometimes gets on my nerves but I'm not immune to a juicy celebrity story. Well see