You have been sold down the river. So have we all.

We need to differentiate between healthcare reform and tinkering with health insurance. Yes, there is a difference. The entire burlesque these past few months has revolved around the tinkering.

A handful of congressmen offered HR 676, Medicare-For-All. That represents reform. All of the rest of our political entertainment has been farce and sleight of hand.

I will get to the parts that all of you younger folk are concerned about but first let me speak to one that is of more consequence to us geezers. That would be a part of the “secret deal” between al-PhRMA, the White House and Max Baucus – the do-nut hole.

I had the chance to do some more reading of the Senate version of healthcare. It really is quite interesting despite being written in a language no human has ever mastered.

For anyone unfamiliar with the do-nut hole, let me explain. Medicare Part D was a present from the Bush administration to the drug pushers and insurance companies. Not only was it unfunded, it costs the government more than any of the “reform” plans that came out of either house of Congress.

A senior has a choice of insurance plans covering most, not all, prescription drugs. In my case the choice was among 50-odd plans. You are required to pay premiums, deductibles and co-pays until you reach the hole. Once in the hole you pay 100%. Though you are still required to pay premiums, the insurer pays out nothing. It begins at $2,830 for 2010. As with everything connected to healthcare, there are substantial annual increases.

You can reach this amount fairly quickly because it includes all of the above items that you pay plus whatever the insurance company pays. However, getting out is just a bit different. The exit point is $4,550 but there is a catch. You arrive at that figure on your own. Payments made by the insurer are not included.

Now you must remember, this plan was not designed to benefit seniors. The government is forbidden to negotiate drug prices for Medicare. The VA is not so constrained and averages a discount of about 58%. This means that, having insurance, the drug dealers have more customers and they get the full retail price. That price is whatever they want it to be.

No, they didn’t forget the insurance companies. They are guaranteed against loss and receive subsidies from the taxpayer.

Now that you understand Part D, let’s see what the “secret deal” contains. It promises the drug dealers that Medicare will continue to be forbidden to negotiate. The drug dealers promise to help out with $80 billion, spread out over 10 years. Most of that will supposedly be going to reduce seniors’ costs in the do-nut hole.

To get that help, a 50% savings only while the senior is in the hole, you must buy brand names, no generics. Again, that is 50% of whatever the drug dealers want to charge.

Interestingly, al-PhRMA commissioned a study of what all of this will cost them. That study shows that, despite forking over $80 billion over a 10-year period, they will realize an increase of $137 billion in just the next 4 years. That, of course, is in addition to the windfall that Part D itself gave them.

They may have been too embarrassed to extend the study out any further, as a close reading of the plan shows that the do-nut hole will not be closed immediately. It will gradually be closed over a period of 13 years. Oh, lordy. They’re doing all of this for poor little me?

By the way, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us that there will be substantial increases in the premiums seniors will pay for their do-nut hole discount.

And, now we have just one more bit of information that might be of interest. While the drug dealers are generously offering a discount of $8 billion a year, they are raising prices. This year they have already raised the overall prices the greatest amount since 1992. That would work out to more than $10 billion already this year.

If that doesn’t sound bad enough, let’s look a little more closely. Since those $6,000 per dose drugs, and others up on the high end, are not being raised much, if at all, the bulk of the increases are on the most commonly used drugs. That makes the effect on most people even more pronounced.

The various plans that were developed had price tags from something over $800 billion to $1.1 trillion. That is tax money. That doesn’t count increased premiums, deductibles and co-pays. The government will pay the costs for those who can’t pay. They will subsidize small companies providing healthcare. They will also continue to subsidize the insurance companies. This is in addition to the subsidies represented by the present tax exemptions for health insurance benefits.

I have already covered many of the general problems of the various plans. While the elimination of bans for preexisting conditions is in the plans, there are ways for the insurance companies to circumvent that stricture.

Ms. Pelosi proclaimed the inclusion of the public option and spoke of the plan covering 35 million people. The impression was intentionally left that the public option would cover those 35 millions. Actually, that increase in coverage comes from requiring small businesses and some individuals to purchase coverage. The public option is estimated to be available to up to 6.5 million.

The public option will, therefore, not play the claimed role of competing with private plans so as to keep their prices down. The only potential positive that might come from the public option would be as a foot in the door. It might, only might, be a way of expanding its coverage at some point in the indeterminate future. Don’t hold your breath.

By mandating that more people buy insurance and not holding the companies’ price increases down, the industry will reap tremendously increased revenue and profits. Those will be born by the average Joe, by increases in premiums, deductibles and co-pays, as well as subsidies from the government, i.e., taxpayers.

Obama and the Congress took single-payer off of the table before the “negotiations” began. They gave the various parts of the medical industry places at the table while ignoring the public and the majority of physicians. Then they cowered and kow-towed before al-PhRMA, AHIP, the AHA and the AMA, which represents less than 20% of physicians and stands against the wishes of the majority of them.

I have difficulty comprehending how that can be described as change or leadership or reform. I am convinced that the better way is for the President to take charge, to declare the entire process and resulting mess a failure and to demand a new start based on Medicare-For-All. That would not just require leadership; it would actually be leadership.

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Do you REALLY want a democracy? The healthcare reform farce we see in Congress is proof positive that we do not actually enjoy a democracy in the United States.

Who is to blame? You and me. Who can bring back democracy? Only you and me. How, you ask. Well, that’s what I’m here for. I have the answer. While I have the answer, that doesn’t mean that I can do it alone. I need your help.

I recall a BC comic strip from during the 1968 presidential campaign. One of the characters was Peter. He had a stone couch and gave psychiatric advice. One of the other characters came to him complaining of a recurring dream. He dreamt he was in the voting booth and that there was only one name on the ballot. Peter asked what was the name. The response was Humphrey-Nixon-Wallace.

There actually was no choice. Corporations donated to all three campaigns. Things have changed. They have worsened.

Kent Conrad is the most prominent Democratic Senator opposing the public option. Yes, I know about Max Baucus. He says he is for it (he isn’t) but will not support it because it can’t pass. Anyway, back to Conrad.

The North Dakota Democratic Party held a convention. They voted, without dissent, to include the single-payer system as their healthcare reform policy. They sent a letter to Conrad, the state’s other Senator and to their lone Representative. That letter stated their policy and added that, if single-payer was not to be, their fallback position was for a public option.

Senator Conrad has received $2,362,436 in bribes from the insurance companies, health industry and lobbyists. I’m guessing that he didn’t share any of that with his state’s Democratic Party. A poll in his state shows an overwhelming support for the public option. Still, he is recalcitrant. Who does he represent? The people of North Dakota are missing that little thing called democracy. Remember the immortal words of Deep Throat, “Follow the money.”

Conrad was in politics before but he came to the Senate in 1987. He promised he would not run for re-election if the budget deficit was not reduced. It wasn’t. He ignored that promise. By the way, his present position is Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He is in his 23^rd year in the Senate. That is the problem.

He needs all of those bribes to pay for his re-election campaigns. No re-election campaign, no need for campaign funds. Without those bribes, he could vote the way his constituents want – for single-payer. Wow. Just think about that for a moment.

Term limits would solve the problem. But, what are the chances of them voting themselves out of office? Nil. That leaves it up to us, the voters, and those who are eligible but don’t vote.

That should be easy. While the approval rating of Congress is 9%, 95% of them get re-elected. We, you and I, are to blame. We are stupid, gullible, lazy, don’t care enough or some combination of those virtues. They won’t do it, so we must.

The corporations have a Congress. We don’t. So, the answer is obvious. Don’t re-elect incumbents.

While the overall approval rating for Congress is 9%, the majority has a higher opinion of the member from their own bailiwick. Or, maybe we are just more forgiving. That may explain why a Congressman can consistently vote against his constituents’ interests or even get caught lying, stealing or making trips to The Argentine and still maintain the support of many, possibly most, of the voters in his district.

About a third of Congressmen run unopposed. Incumbency, and the money that comes with it, keeps a lot of good people from running. We could have a peoples’ congress. And, it wouldn’t cost us a dime. All we have to do is vote against all incumbents.

Would the very few good ones get ousted? Yes, but I’m willing to bet that there are other good people in their district. Perhaps they, as Sarah Palin, can work more effectively for our benefit outside of the system, without the onerous responsibilities of office.

After one or two election cycles they might feel it to be in their interest to enact some term limits. I would personally prefer an individual limit of ten to twelve years of total public office, i.e., combining the time of holding any combination of offices, with no more than two terms in any one office. Also, no elected or appointed official should receive retirement benefits or any other benefit after leaving office. While in office there should be no benefits not available to average citizens.

Judges are required to recuse themselves if they have any relationship with either party. They implement the laws. However, Congressmen, who make the laws, are permitted to take money from various parties and still vote on those laws. What is good for the courts is good for the legislatures.

Pay for each Congressman should be based on the income of the average family in their district. If they maintain a residence in their own district plus one in the Washington area, they would get the sum of that plus the average income for residents of D.C. Their pay would be tied to how their constituents fare.

Ridding ourselves of career politicians isn’t just something that would be nice. It is absolutely vital to reestablishing this country as a democracy.

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This is not a prediction. It is only what I see as an optimistic scenario.

What’s going to happen with healthcare reform in Congress? Your guess is as good as mine. Because there is no leadership, no one knows what the outcome will be.

We do know a few things, however. Since it was given away before the issue was put on the table, there will be no single-payer system. In other words, there will be no real reform. My optimistic scenario really devolves into a hope that we get a couple of the crumbs that remain.

What remains will be an expensive mess that will further enrich the healthcare industry. Why? Because Obama learned the wrong lesson from Clinton’s failure.

Obama saw Clinton’s failure as being partly due to the opposition of PhRMA, AHIP, AMA and AHA. He decided to lure them into being allies. PhRMA agreed, if they could get his promise to accept their phantom concessions in return for increased looting of the national treasury, i.e., more subsidies and getting the government to guarantee them more customers. They got that promise.

The American Health Insurance Programs industry group is in a death match fight against reform, even though they would benefit more than anyone else from it. The AMA is fighting it but they represent only 20% of physicians. Fifty-nine percent of physicians support single-payer. Seventy-five to seventy-nine percent support the public option.

The American Hospital Association isn’t fighting quite as hard because they want to maintain communication, in the hope of getting greater subsidies. They are crying crocodile tears while still spending tons of money against reform.

The other lesson Obama thinks he learned was that the Congress didn’t go along because Clinton gave them a plan in which they had no input. That is only partially true.

What lessons should Obama have learned? There are two. One is that people respond to leadership, even when they are not in full agreement. Bush understood that. He called himself the decider and the Republicans followed. Even some Democrats fell in line. Obama started off by saying he would let Congress lead. I cannot, for the moment, think of a funnier joke. I doubt there is one.

The other lesson should have been that people are averse to complexity. A thousand-page bill offers the opposition a million points of attack. But it offers potential supporters only the opportunity to run around like a chickens with their heads cut off trying to defend against those attacks. Supporters are enervated by the effort to defend, leaving little energy or time to organize effective support. They are in a permanent defensive mode.

That could have been overcome with a simple Medicare-For-All bill of perhaps 10-15 pages. Then his primary tactic would be a constant parade of seniors extolling Medicare. A high degree of visibility for seniors would also intimidate Congress to some extent as seniors are much more likely to go to the voting booth.

Okay. Let’s get to my little scenario. There are 5 bills; 2 in the Senate and 3 in the House. Each house will combine its bills. There will be one for each. All except the Senate Finance Committee have the public option. It may end up in the Senate’s final bill. It may not. It will be in the final House bill.

Each house votes on their own bill. Then they go to the conference committee. Even if the public option is not in the Senate bill, it is likely the House will insist on it being in the compromise. The House will pass it. Obama must have something to show for his efforts. He will have to exert all of the pressure he can on Senate Democrats.

It will require going the reconciliation route if there are not 60 votes. Reconciliation allows the funding aspects to pass with only 50 Senators plus the Vice President. The other parts still would require 60 but a few Senators could vote against it on the funding part but for the other part. This would give them some political cover by saying that they voted against funding it.

It is still doable but nowhere near a certainty. Any public option that survives will be watered down. It will not be available to everyone. Various versions see it covering from 5 to 20 million of the uninsured.

Any bill will contain bans on denying people for preexisting conditions but that won’t be a problem for the insurance companies to find a way around by charging outrageous premiums or more subtle tactics.

They can avoid the ban on annual and lifetime limits by the same tactic. They don’t have to pay for people they don’t insure.

As I have contended all along, without a single-payer system, reform is little more than a catch phrase.

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President Obama is a politician. He is a Constitutional expert but, by and large, he is a generalist.

Being a Constitutional scholar comes in handy in the Congress and on the Supreme Court. It’s not necessarily a bad thing in the Oval Office but being a generalist can be a positive. It can also bring disaster.

A generalist needs to know his limitations. He needs to know when to call on the experts. But, he also needs to recognize the limitations of the experts.

I recently wrote a post about the “financial experts.” The gist was that establishment truth gets a place at the table. The iconoclast is blackballed. The President is getting only the opinions of those who have forsaken thinking in order to claim the rewards of fame, fortune and influence.

In the realm of healthcare reform, the in-house experts Obama wants and listens to are such as Nancy DeParle and Tom Daschle, each of whom has made millions from the industry. Also at the table are the leaders of that industry. The same forces that form the advice that the financiers give work to the same effect among the “healthcare experts.”

I attended a military prep school. I was enrolled in ROTC. I served in the army. Those probably don’t substantiate a claim to expertise on military matters. They did, however, provide some understanding of the military mission and the mindset of careerists, particularly the most successful of those careerists.

Military leadership wants victory. They are not satisfied with any outcome that is less than conclusive. Their expertise is necessary and has its place. There is a limitation though. Military force is but one aspect of the larger field of diplomacy. It is the final resort, when all other means have failed. It also must serve the political needs of the country.

The President is getting advice from the military that claims we need more troops in Afghanistan. That is true if the country needs a military victory. The problem is that what we need is far different.

Even if we were to attain a military victory, would that mean we are safer? Would it mean that country’s major export would be something other than opium? Would that mean our money to modernize that relic of the 14^th Century would be well-spent? Would girls be allowed to dream? Would Jeffersonian democracy flourish? Would it mean that our forces would occupy the country for several more generations?

The President needs different advice. He needs to clean house in at least those three areas. He recognizes his need for advice on these issues. He just has put his dependence in those whom the establishment tell him are the experts.

Elizabeth Warren, appointed to oversee the TARP mess, seems to be the only one in an area of responsibility for finance that makes any sense. She chairs the Congressional Oversight Committee. She is the one that proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. While the President has signed on to the idea of a CFPA, his economic team does everything it can to bar her from influence on all other financial issues.

Ms. Warren is a professor of law at Harvard. She doesn’t have the appropriate credentials to satisfy the denizens of Wall Street. All she has is intelligence, understanding and a devotion to the needs of the country and its people. They are pushing for her to run for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Why? To lose her in a crowd of 99 others, to dilute her influence and drown out her voice.

Why are she and Robert Reich not being considered for chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. Why are they not being considered to replace Tim Geithner at Treasury? There are plenty of intelligent and talented people out there who will not be considered because they don’t fit the mold.

Obama needs to toss his entire coterie of “healthcare experts.” There must be someone among the 59% of physicians who support a single-payer plan worth his attention. It may sound outrageous or even astounding but there are experts out there not owned by the drug pushers and insurance leeches.

In matters of how to employ our military, or not, there are people of wider experience, such as Colin Powell, or retired flag officers whose career prospects don’t color their advice.

These three areas are critical. There is little margin for error. Those the President is presently giving his ear all have an ax to grind, pockets to line, images and careers to protect. None can or will give priority to what is best for our people and our country.

The economic bind that the states find themselves in has led some to reduce their prison populations. Perhaps a few million from the federal government could be dedicated to subsidizing some of those empty beds. Most of those at the tables deciding our financial and health futures would be filling those beds in a just society.

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I finally received a response from Bart Gordon, my Congressman. He totally ignored my request for a debate. Now I know why.

I had challenged him before the August recess. As September has arrived, that means it took him a month to respond. It is obvious from his email that he would have had to come unarmed to any battle of wits. I will present that email as proof. Remember, he sits on the Health Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Dear Crawford,

Thank you for contacting me about national health care reform legislation. Like most hard-working Americans, I believe we need to make health care more affordable for everyone.  But, on an issue this important, it is much better to take the time and get it right than to get it done quickly.  That is why I helped ensure that no bill would be considered in the House this summer.

I am disappointed in his response to the concerns I expressed about healthcare reform. First, I offered to debate him in a public forum during the August recess. There is no mention of that in his email. Also, I find his email regrettable in its lack of consistency, facts and logic.

Notice also that he brags about delaying consideration of any reform bill. Let’s be honest. Delay is no more nor less than the favored tactic of the health industry. He is taking credit for following orders. Teddy Roosevelt  included a universal healthcare proposal as a part of his campaign platform in 1912. FDR proposed it. HST proposed it. JFK proposed it. Jimmy Carter proposed it. Bill Clinton proposed it. And, Bart Gordon thinks we need to take our time. How many have died and will die while Bart diddles?

Currently, we spend one out of every six dollars in the United States on health care, and the cost of health care is rising twice as fast as inflation with no end in sight.  Tennessee’s small business owners and other hard working people are telling me they can’t keep up with the cost of their health insurance premiums.  Insurance costs for small businesses have risen 129% since 2000.  If we do nothing, these costs will further strain families and businesses, and will threaten to bankrupt the country as well.  It will be impossible to cut the national debt unless we deal with health care spending.

So, small businesses, families and the national debt will just have to wait while Bart diddles. Also, notice how he begins speaking of healthcare reform but quickly changes the subject to health insurance.

There are several principles that I believe must be addressed in any health care reform measure: the package must be deficit neutral;

Other than single-payer (HR676), none of the proposals can be deficit neutral without significant tax increases or massive cuts in other necessary programs. Such “savings” as al-PhARMA’s $80 billion concession are silly promises from proven liars. The bulk of that $80 billion goes to seniors in the do-nut hole to buy brand name drugs instead of generics. It will be a bonanza for the drug companies. And, that is only $8 billion per year. The immediate savings of single-payer are more than $400 billion annually from one category alone. Every other plan increases the number of customers, income and profits for AHIP and al-PhARMA. Much of that will cost the government in massive subsidies. The other plans are not deficit neutral. Delay is not deficit neutral. Bart can’t count.

it must make health coverage more affordable for individuals and small businesses;

Eliminating preexisting condition bans will require higher premiums. Requiring small businesses to cover more people doesn’t seem to be a way to make it more affordable. The first point of this paragraph would also apply to individual coverage.

it must ensure coverage is portable when you change or lose your job;

He wants to maintain our traditional method of employer-based plans. Can you imagine the complexities and inefficiencies of making these portable? Will your new employer provide the same plan, or any? Will the government or your former employer pay for your policy while you are unemployed? Some will lose a gold-plated plan along with their job. Others will lose a less attractive plan. Will both plans be maintained? Will there not be cries of that being inequitable?

it must end barriers to coverage for people who get sick or have a pre-existing medical condition; and it must ensure that insurance companies are not able to deny, limit, or specially price your insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

The insurance companies publicly and explicitly promised the Congress that they would accomplish universal coverage and eliminate preexisting condition prohibitions in 1993. Who will guarantee that if not the government?

I do not support a single-payer health care system.  Health care reform must preserve the employer-based health care system so Americans can choose their own doctors and hospitals. No one, including the government or your insurance company, should be able to make life-and-death decisions for you.

Here is where Bart proclaims his devotion to employer-based plans. Why? So that we can choose our own doctors and hospitals. In the past 6 years I have had more than 30 doctors and more than 15 surgical procedures. Nashville is known as a national center for healthcare. Medicare has never questioned any choice of doctor or hospital. I have friends whose private insurance has refused to pay for certain doctors or hospitals. I consider myself knowledgeable enough to find the best doctors in the area. Such nonsense as Bart is spouting are mere scare tactics straight from the lobbyist-supplied playbook of talking points. He is on a government-run healthcare plan. Does it deny him his choices? I think not.

As here, I frequently hear, explicitly or implicitly, that we must preserve our private health insurance system. However, no one has dared to say why. The reason for that lack of an answer is that there is no reason. No health insurance company has ever cured a single malady. They are, however, responsible for innumerable deaths through denial and other forms of rationing. I don’t give a fig for the insurance companies. They add absolutely no value to healthcare.

The best analogy I can come up with for the health insurance industry is the Mafia. If someone comes in and insists that you must pay them 30% of the value of your inventory for protection, you consider that a protection racket, a criminal enterprise. That analogy fails because the Mafia will actually protect you as long as you make payments.

The private insurance companies commonly make life and death decisions for their customers. I have yet to run into that with Medicare. It seems unlikely that people on Medicare would rate their plan more favorably than any other group if the government was trying to kill them. The intended inference is that only single-payer will take those decisions from you. Bart is full of bat feces.

There has been a great deal of misinformation out there.  AARP and other organizations are working to clarify this information. To read about myths and facts related to health care reform, you can visit AARP’s health page at http://www.aarp.org/health.

True. There is a great deal of misinformation out there, and in his email. He and his owners are the ones responsible for promulgating it. He suggests checking with AARP. Does that make sense? AARP receives the bulk of its income from selling insurance and publishing ads for the health industry.

There is no single bill before Congress right now, there are five different health care reform proposals in the House and Senate and several more steps in the legislative process before any legislation will be enacted.

Actually, there are only four bills. The Senate Finance Committee members, aside from the Gang of 6, have been complaining of being kept in the dark. Their bill has not surfaced. Again, Bart can’t count.

Passing no bill at all is better than passing something that makes things worse.

That is a truism. It’s difficult to imagine creating worse than what we presently have but politicians such as Bart are fully capable of pulling it off.

I hope that we can improve the health care system for everyone, and will continue to work with my Democratic and Republican colleagues to accomplish this.

Other than the select group of Blue Dogs, I see no evidence of his working with the Democrats. I hope he is not wasting his time working with the Republicans on this issue.

Thank you again for contacting me.

G

How cutesy.

Sincerely,

BART GORDON

Member of Congress

It should now be obvious why he fails to respond to my challenge.

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Aren’t you somewhat bewildered when you hear the story of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of porridge? How could he be so stupid? How could he trade away his inheritance, his special place, for a bowl of soup?

He isn’t the first one. He won’t be the last. Former Senator Bill Bradley caught my attention by getting involved in a battle that I doubt he understands. That’s not a put-down. Most people don’t realize what the issue really is. Bill, as many others, throw around numbers that they can’t support.

I knew they were wrong but I didn’t have the real numbers in front of me. I had to go back and look them up again.

The purported issue is malpractice, its cost and how to solve the problem. That’s what everyone thinks they know.

The actual issue is a Democratic/Republican food fight. The Republicans are upset that the trial lawyers give the Democrats so much in campaign donations. They want to impoverish the trial lawyers so they will have less to donate.

Lawyers may not be among your favorite members of the animal kingdom. That’s a sentiment I share. But, that doesn’t mean they don’t come in handy in certain situations.

Redress:

Noun:

1. The act of redressing; a making right; reformation; correction; amendment.
2. A setting right, as of wrong, injury, or oppression; as, the redress of grievances; hence, relief; remedy; reparation; indemnification

Verb:

1. To put in order again; to set right; to emend; to revise.
2. To set right, as a wrong; to repair, as an injury; to make amends for; to remedy; to relieve from.
3. To make amends or compensation to; to relieve of anything unjust or oppressive; to bestow relief upon.

What would you do if a drunk driver plowed into your brand new clunker replacement? What if you had to miss a couple of paychecks? What if your drunken neighbor shoots some fireworks into your home this coming Labor Day?

Do you just turn the other cheek? I’ve always said I was willing to turn the other cheek but not all four.

There are situations that need to go to court. The federal government and all of the states except Louisiana base their codes on English Common Law. The rights represented therein took hundreds of years to develop. Are you ready to throw them away? They are a part of your birthright. Men both lived and died for them.

Louisiana bases their legal system on the Napoleonic Code, which traces back to the Code of Justinian and its Roman precedents.

They say that one industry needs special protection. We need to give up the right to redress grievances, the right to be made whole when harmed, just for this one special industry. Some say we just need to put caps on awards. Ask the family of a child that will need nursing care and expensive treatments for the rest of his life if $100,000 or $250,000 is a lot of money.

You trust your peers in a jury to rule on life and death in criminal trials. But they tell you that your peers cannot be trusted to make a judgment for monetary compensation. By the way, that jury of peers that can’t be trusted includes you. They are saying you are too irresponsible or too stupid to come to a rational judgment.

The example that always gets mentioned is the “McDonald’s Coffee Suit.” Her name was Stella Liebeck. She was 79 years old. Her grandson was driving but pulled over in the parking lot to allow her to add cream and sugar. She spilt it in her lap. It soaked her sweat pants. She was taken to the hospital where she was kept for 8 days, undergoing skin grafts. She sustained burns over 16% of her body. She later relapsed, requiring her daughter to quit her job to care for her mother.

The jury scoffed when they were first told of the case. The facts caused them to award more than was asked. Rumors put the award as high as somewhere over $30 million. The award was actually $160,000 in compensatory damages plus $2.7 million as punitive damages. That represented two days sales of coffee by McDonalds. The award was reduced to $640,000 but settled out of court for less than $600,000.

She had originally asked for $20,000 to cover her medical bills. Her lawyer offered to settle for $90,000 and later for $300,000. McDonalds had already had more than 700 claims against them for this problem. Her attorney had already successfully gone against them more than 70 times.

McDonalds served their coffee at a significantly higher temperature than other restaurants. They knew they had a problem. An executive testified that it wasn’t a big enough of a problem to do anything about it. McDonalds had the jury on their side, until the facts, and their cavalier attitude, were known.

Malpractice suits and awards have decreased considerably in the past ten years or so. Premiums have skyrocketed. The malpractice insurance companies are the worst players at the Wall Street casinos. The premiums had to increase to cover their gambling losses, not malpractice costs.

How much does malpractice cost us? Remember, there actually is malpractice going on out there in McMedicineland. Bill Bradley said 10% of total healthcare expenditures. Wow! That is a lot. The only problem is that it is wrong. Dead wrong.

That number is a favorite of one side but is based on the discredited work of two professors at Stanford from 1995. For some reason they chose to use data from 1980. After all the static about their first study, they did another study about 2003 or 04. It came in at under 3%.

A recent study by an actuarial firm puts the number under 1½%. The Congressional Budget Office puts it at less than 1%. These numbers purportedly include premiums, court costs, awards and the practice of defensive medicine.

There is a problem right here. All of the tests that physicians order are not defensive medicine. Many are needed for diagnosis. Of those otherwise unnecessary for diagnosis, defensive medicine comes in third place. What? How could that be? What are numbers one and two?

Number one seems to be due to our system. In many cases physicians are compensated for the tests they order. They can make more money by ordering more tests. Also, many labs, perhaps most, are physician-owned. All labs and clinics need to be independent.

The other has to do with where you are. There is a great variance from place to place in how many tests are ordered. Physicians can be shown to largely follow the established custom of their fellows in a given area. If their peers order lots of tests, so will they.

Let’s think about this problem just a mite more. Would other industries be content to see this one industry get off the hook? Would they not push for a similar privileged status? On what grounds would you deny them? If a 60″ flat screen television fell on your head at Walmart, should they be protected from a suit by you?

We are being asked not to sell or trade our birthright. We are being asked to just give it away. A single-payer system would allow physicians to entrust the payment of awards to the government and the government could enforce reasonable guidelines for that protection.

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In 1865 Lewis Carroll wrote a classic for children. However, the logic contained therein seems to be the basis for present political discourse.

A firestorm was kicked up this past weekend by comments from Obama and Kathleen Sibelius. Has his “requirement” of a public option itself become an option, a dispensable element of a plan he is willing to accept as a victory for reform?

Senator Conrad of North Dakota, a less than staunch supporter of the President, appointed himself head head counter. He told everyone that there are not enough votes for a public option. He claimed there never was.

Not counting a few who once declared for a public option but are now going the other way, there seems to be a fairly firm potential 54 to 55 votes for it in the Senate. There are certainly enough to filibuster its absence. The Senator, as senators are wont to do, forgot that there is another chamber of Congress.

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner came forward to remind everyone that there is a letter, signed by 57 members, that they will not vote for any bill that does not contain a strong public option. Seven others have said they fully concur. Only 40 of them need to stick to their guns. One should realize that almost all of these Congressmen are from overwhelmingly Democratic districts. Their position reflects the feelings of their constituents. They are unlikely to cave,

It just came over the ticker that the expected next president of the AFL-CIO is warning Democrats that, without a public option, the unions could sit out the next election cycle. The loss of their money and manpower could hurt lots of incumbent Democrats.

I am not alone in thinking that Obama will take anything he can get that can pass for reform. He seems to understand a failure to get any bill this year will mean large congressional gains for the Republicans in 2010 and jeopardize his chances in 2012.

It’s time for the Blue Dogs and other Democrats in Congress wake up and smell the Budweiser. They will give him a public option or he gets nothing and they return to the minority, or such a slim majority as to stalemate Congress.

Just what is this co-op plan that Conrad is touting? Basically, it is a sham. It would be organized on a state-by-state basis. At the claimed viability level of 500,000 members each, most states would not be able to sign up enough members. Credible actuaries, not politicians, expect fiscal viability to come at a much higher number.

These co-ops would require very large subsidies from the government for start-up costs. Most or all would be too small and have too limited financial resources to really compete with the private corporations, much less cause them to reduce prices.

Some of you may have heard of Blue Cross. They began in the deep, dark past as nonprofit co-ops. They have morphed into standard insurance companies. Some have actually been reorganized as for profit corporations. They could not survive purely as co-ops. The proposed co-ops are to be free from government control. In other words, there is nothing to stop them from following the Blue Cross path.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a study of 5 co-ops in the year 2000. Their assessment was that the idea was essentially very much less than a success. As I stated earlier, co-ops are a sham. Those promoting them are at the top of recipients of health insurance lobbyists’ generosity. The insurance companies know that they don’t represent a danger to them, or even a low hurtle.

If you haven’t considered this one aspect of co-ops, you might give it a moment’s thought. Co-ops have more than a passing similarity to communes. The basic concept is the same. Make one of these Regressive’s head explode by connecting their support of co-ops to their support of communism. Then, just stand back and be entertained.

Regular readers know that my opinion of the proposed public options are almost negligibly more positive than of co-ops. They will not be open to everyone. They fail to address the problem of those who have an employer-paid plan if they change jobs. They will have to charge unnecessarily high premiums to allow the private plans to compete. This is a subsidy by public plan participants of the insurance companies’ profits and administrative costs.

Back to Alice and the logic she confronted in Wonderland. The Regressives were adamant that the taxpayer should not save the automobile industry. They were incompetent. They brought it on themselves. They deserved to be consigned to the junk heap of the “Free Market.” Though failing to take into account all of the relevant factors and oversimplifying an industry that generates about 10 percent of our economy, it was consistent with their flawed economic religion.

That position would seem to require them to render the same judgment on the health insurance industry. They are the ones primarily responsible for a far greater screw-up of their industry than the automobile moguls could hope to attain. This fiasco was achieved despite the myriad of government subsidies they have suckled on for decades.

The Regressive support of the health insurance industry is inconsistent with their proclaimed faith. Perhaps the failure of the automobile industry would destroy union jobs, unlike failure of the health insurance industry. I know that those driving the automobile industry are far less generous to politicians than is the health industry. They never came close to the level of six lobbyists for every congressman.

Where were all of those fiscally conservative Republicans and Blue Dogs when Medicare Part D passed? That program is more expensive than any of the plans proposed by the Democrats this time. They also forgot to enact any spending cuts to compensate for the costs of Part D.

Of course, if the Regressive religion is really based on the size of received donations, they are being imminently consistent.

As an added little morsel to think about, I offer this. Some are touting al-PhARMA’s putative contribution of $80 billion. Just remember that is only $8 billion a year for 10 years. Single-payer would save considerably more than $400 billion. By the way, that is almost $500 billion each year. The savings to be realized from permitting Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies also dwarf that puny little $80 billion.

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A few of us are unfortunate enough to be able to remember the decade of the 1950s. I’ll refrain from naming names. But, I will if I have to.

There was a major scare back in that strange, misbegotten decade. The “Bomb,” of course. No. Even scarier. The Communists had an even more devious plot to destroy the US of A.

What was this nefarious plan? It’s almost too horrible to relate, even after more than half a century.

The plot involved the fluoridation of our water. Yes. Can you believe it? They actually wanted to put fluoride in our water supply. Not just our drinking water. They even wanted to put it in the water we used to wash our most precious possessions: our cars.

Those Communists were so sneaky they tried to trick us by putting fluoride into their own water. Our leaders in government let it happen. Look. See what has become of us. Cruelly, most of our children miss out on the experience of tooth decay, of dental caries.

Not all terrorists ride around on camels. We were terrorized by the regressives here in our own country. For their own purposes they scared us with the threat of good dental health.

In the next decade they threatened us with abortion. Then came prayer in the schools. And they even sneaked in sex education. Now it’s death panels. When will we ever learn?

The regressives told us Roe v. Wade meant that the government eventually would decide whether your own fetus would be permitted to survive. Your kids would be forced to fornicate in class.

They told us that Christian children would be put in prison, or worse, kicked out of school for praying instead of studying before a test. They warned us that kids would have to memorize passages from the Koran, or even worse, learn to read the Apocrypha in Latin (Southern Baptists only).

During the past 40 years that these have been used as wedge issues, those dastardly Democrats have held the White House only 12 years. The Republicans have had control of the Congress for a number of years. They have had both at the same time. Yet, abortions have not been terminated. Schools are at least as secular as ever. There are more teenage parents than ever (The rate is even higher in church-run schools).

If anything, the situation in all of these areas is worse from the standpoint of those who focus on these issues. Why? Because politicians cynically use those issues specifically to make people angry. It is easier to motivate people to action through anger than through logic and positive appeals to enlightened self-interest.

Dealing with those issues in a way that accomplished their goals would merely eliminate the threats that the politicians have for manipulating those people. They have neither desire nor intent to see those putative goals realized.

The politicians use social issues to mobilize the masses. They need numbers of people sufficiently motivated to actually vote. With these angry, motivated voters putting them in office and not paying attention to what they are actually up to, they are free to work on behalf of the corporations that fund them, that fete them, that tell them how to vote.

If people begin to actually look at these other issues, look out; here comes another scare campaign.

Most of the politicians in Washington and all of the corporate lobbyists there see the players as being divided into two teams: tools and fools.

Obama desperately wants something he can call healthcare reform. He also wants bipartisanship. It appears he thinks both are possible. What did he get for those three Senate votes on the stimulus package? He got 40% of that $787 billion as stimulus, and that not focused on the most effective ways. He got most of that 40% delayed until next year. Yea! bipartisan team.

Now he’s working with six centrists, 3 Republican Senators. 3 Blue Dog Democrats, or whatever they are. He has met secretly with them and the president and vp of PhARMA. To get $150 million of Harry and Louise supporting some vague reform he gave up single-payer. He gave up a public option. He gave up Medicare negotiating drug prices (worth far, far more than $80 billion). He gave up re-importation. He gave up rebates to Medicare. He gave up his promise to put all negotiations on C-SPAN.

Sure he got a promise, for whatever their word is worth, of some possible $12 billion tax increase on PhARMA members. Even if this were to see the light of day, it would probably be more than offset by increases in the subsidies the government already provides them.

What about the $80 billion they agreed to? Well, they actually agreed to no more than $80 billion over 10 years. This is about 2% of what the government is expected to spend on drugs over the next 10 years. Most of that is a 50% discount on brand name drugs only for seniors in the donut hole of Part D. Only the promised $12 billion tax cut would be applied to the trillion dollar plus cost they are talking about.

None of the agreement provides for any way to ensure that PhARMA actually contributes a penny. And, every plan being considered by the House and Senate, except HR 676, the Medicare For All Act, with 93 co-sponsors, provides greater income for members of PhARMA.

On Tuesday, Obama praised two Republican Senators. Charles Grassley, the Republican point man in these backroom negotiations stabbed Obama in the back the very next day by claiming his opposition to “death panels” in the reform plans.

Since only one of three House plans and none of the two Senate plans have been written, it’s hard to know where he found those panels. The fact that they don’t exist didn’t bother Charley.

Johnny Isakson (R-GA) was praised by Obama for co-sponsoring what is being mis-characterized as death panels. The next day little Johnny rejected Obama’s praise by saying that Obama lied. It turns out someone was lying, and it wasn’t the President.

Grassley, as one of the three Republicans involved in the negotiations, did all of the damage he could do in those talks. It was necessary for him to sabotage Obama publicly to ensure the continuance of those millions of dollars of bribes from the healthcare industry. Anyone who has even casually watched his career was not surprised that he had no intention of crossing the aisle. A dead giveaway was the lack of criticism Charley received from his fellow Republicans while supposedly cozying up to the dreaded Kenyan citizen.

If these are the friendly Republicans, can bipartisanship be far behind? Every amendment that we know has been offered as part of any of the reform plans has, at a minimum, increased the costs. Many have been designed simply to fatally damage any reform. Obama’s quest for this unholy grail has required him to bar those who support his campaign rhetoric from the table. He declared single-payer off the table before any reform talks commenced.

How about a perspective you don’t normally get? An internal poll of the Republican National Committee showed that 54% thought we have “the best health care system in the world.” That’s surprising only in how low the number is. In response to another question, this poll showed 70% felt that the system is “badly in need of reform.” Does it seem strange to anyone else that the best system in the world is badly in need of reform?

You constantly hear the claim that the majority are satisfied with their health insurance coverage. Just what does that mean? Let’s break it down. Fifty-nine percent of those with private plans get it through their employer. Most pay little or nothing out of pocket. Most have never used it for anything other than maternity and the occasional cold or flu. What’s not to like? Also, they don’t complain about the government subsidizing ALL of these plans.

The highest satisfaction rate is among those with Medicare. There are only two ways I can think of to lose your Medicare coverage. Either move out of the country permanently or die. Private plans can be lost when you lose your job. Private plans have annual and lifetime spending limits. Private plans constantly ration care. Averaging more than two operations a year since being on Medicare, the spectre of rationing has never appeared.

They also seem only to ask for the opinions of people who still have insurance. There are other problems with the methodologies employed by the quoted polls. That may be influenced by the fact that the polls you are most likely to see were paid for by the health insurance industry.

Are you scared yet?

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Who’s in charge? Here is an article from the New York Times illuminating the real role that al-PhARMA is playing and how the administration is prostituting itself, unnecessarily.

Be prepared to be sickened. Understanding what they are doing and how they are doing it spotlights just who is in control and why the final result of “reform” will end up costing far, far more than needs be.

August 6, 2009
White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal (emphasis added) to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

They are assuring the drug dealers of their intent to keep their promises. This while caving on their promises to those who elected them. Obama pretends that he is standing back and letting the Congress develop the plans but, as that sentence says, he is prepared to interfere with the Congress by blocking their efforts – not that Congress is doing us many favors.

It is important to understand the $80 billion concession the drug dealers have promised. First, that is over 10 years. The bulk of it is directed at the Medicare Part D donut hole. When seniors reach $2,700 (composed of their premiums, deductibles and co-pays plus what the insurance company has paid) the donut hole appears. The senior pays 100% while in the hole. To get out of the hole $4,350 must be reached. This upper level is composed of only the seniors’ expenditures, so a senior must pay much more than the $1,650 you get by subtracting the first number from the second. The seniors still must pay their premiums while the insurance company is paying nothing. Few get out of the hole.

The drug dealers have agreed to only charge 50% of retail to seniors while they are stuck in the hole. But, this applies only to their brand names. They will continue to make obscene profits at that reduced rate and hope to entice seniors to stay on brand names rather than purchase generics.

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

This is the key. al-PhARMA wrote the Part D bill. They included the prohibition on Medicare negotiating any pricing. The Veteran Administration has been negotiating all along. They pay about half of what Medicare pays. Since Medicare is by far the largest purchaser of medical goods and services, you might imagine keeping that provision is worth far, far more than $8 billion a year. Individual companies have paid fines in the neighborhood of $1 billion for fraud against the government. While we think that is a lot of money, they consider it the cost of doing business, pocket change.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

Notice that they feel they can demand the administration do their bidding. They are willing to make the “behind-the-scenes deal” public in order to hold Obama’s feet to the fire. Have you ever tried to demand that the president follow your demands?

“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”

Billy Tausin was the one responsible for shepherding the Part D bill through Congress. He then left Congress to become president of al-PhARMA, at a salary of $2 million per year.

A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.

“The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”

Why anyone would want to bring the enemy, those who created the mess, to the table for planning the strategy of the battle is beyond comprehension, beyond the realm of sanity.

The new attention to the agreement could prove embarrassing to the White House, which has sought to keep lobbyists at a distance, including by refusing to hire them to work in the administration.

Is there any doubt that they deserve to be embarrassed?

The White House commitment to the deal with the drug industry may also irk some of the administration’s Congressional allies who have an eye on drug companies’ profits as they search for ways to pay for the $1 trillion cost of the health legislation.

But failing to publicly confirm Mr. Tauzin’s descriptions of the deal risked alienating a powerful industry ally currently helping to bankroll millions in television commercials in favor of Mr. Obama’s reforms.

Go ahead. Alienate them. Requiring negotiations and a few more easy changes could pay for at least half of that $1 trillion, a number that is artificially and unnecessarily high anyway. Their power will become more of a nuisance than a threat.

The pressure from Mr. Tauzin to affirm the deal offers a window on the secretive and potentially risky game the Obama administration has played as it tries to line up support from industry groups typically hostile to government health care initiatives, even as their lobbyists pushed to influence the health measure for their benefit.

Are the drug dealers really on Obama’s side? Do you think that the largest, most powerful lobbying machine is sitting on its hands. Before this reform issue came to the fore, al-PhARMA had 638 lobbyists on Capitol Hill. They outnumbered the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. They are angling for more. Universal care gives them more customers. You’ve heard that 47 million have no coverage. That figure is old. The latest number is 52 million and growing daily as more jobs are lost.

In an interview on Wednesday, Representative Raul M. Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who is co-chairman of the House progressive caucus, called Mr. Tauzin’s comments “disturbing.”

“We have all been focused on the debate in Congress, but perhaps the deal has already been cut,” Mr. Grijalva said. “That would put us in the untenable position of trying to scuttle it.”

He added: “It is a pivotal issue not just about health care. Are industry groups going to be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie and we just fight over the crust?”

Congress needs  to wake up.

The Obama administration has hailed its agreements with health care groups as evidence of broad support for the overhaul among industry “stakeholders,” including doctors, hospitals and insurers as well as drug companies.

Everyone is at the table but the people. They are not working on healthcare reform. They are modifying insurance coverage.

But as the debate has heated up over the last two weeks, Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats have signaled that they value some of its industry enemies-turned-friends more than others. Drug makers have been elevated to a seat of honor at the negotiating table, while insurers have been pushed away.

“To their credit, the pharmaceutical companies have already agreed to put up $80 billion” in pledged cost reductions, Mr. Obama reminded his listeners at a recent town-hall-style meeting in Bristol, Va. But the health insurance companies “need to be held accountable,” he said.

“We have a system that works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn’t always work for its customers,” he added, repeating a new refrain.

He needs to realize that it works even better for the far more profitable drug industry. Prescription drugs, taken as prescribed, are the 4^th leading cause of death in this country.

Administration officials and Democratic lawmakers say the growing divergence in tone toward the two groups reflects a combination of policy priorities and political calculus.

With polls showing that public doubts about the overhaul are mounting, Democrats are pointedly reminding voters what they may not like about their existing health coverage to help convince skeptics that they have something to gain.

“You don’t need a poll to tell you that people are paying more and more out of pocket and, if they have some serious illness, more than they can afford,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser.

The insurers, however, have also stopped short of the drug makers in their willingness to cut a firm deal. The health insurers shook hands with Mr. Obama at the White House in March over their own package of concessions, including ending the exclusion of coverage for pre-existing ailments.

This is just one of their broken promises to Congress in 1993.

But unlike the drug companies, the insurers have not pledged specific cost cuts. And insurers have also steadfastly vowed to block Mr. Obama’s proposed government-sponsored insurance plan — the biggest sticking point in the Congressional negotiations.

The drug industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also opposes a public insurance plan. But its lobbyists acknowledge privately that they have no intention of fighting it, in part because their agreement with the White House provides them other safeguards.

Mr. Tauzin said the administration had approached him to negotiate. “They wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else,” he said. He said the White House had directed him to negotiate with Senator Max Baucus, the business-friendly Montana Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Tauzin said the White House had tracked the negotiations throughout, assenting to decisions to move away from ideas like the government negotiation of prices or the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The $80 billion in savings would be over a 10-year period. “80 billion is the max, no more or less,” he said. “Adding other stuff changes the deal.”

They don’t need to be in a position of making demands. They need to be the target of demands.

After reaching an agreement with Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tauzin said, he met twice at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; Mr. Messina, his deputy; and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the aide overseeing the health care overhaul, to confirm the administration’s support for the terms.

How many people mentioned in that paragraph represent your interests? The answer is zero.

“They blessed the deal,” Mr. Tauzin said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was not bound by any industry deals with the Senate or the White House.

But, Mr. Tauzin said, “as far we are concerned, that is a done deal.” He said, “It’s up to the White House and Senator Baucus to follow through.”

As for the administration’s recent break with the insurance industry, Mr. Tauzin said, “The insurers never made any deal.”

- 30-

So, we have deals in the back rooms and under the table. We have a primary culprit in creating our healthcare mess making demands and threats. The President is going to force Congress to its will (ironic when they are showing no backbone) as a part of his bipartisanship, I’m guessing.

I am disheartened. I am sick. We are no longer citizens. We are subjects. Plutocracy rules.

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Someone recently asked me what the objections to single-payer are from those opposed. I’m glad they didn’t specify that it had to be rational objections. That would leave me searching for another topic.

My job was made somewhat easier by a column in the New York Times by Randy Cohen, former writer for David Letterman. Mr. Cohen suggests that Congress needs a Debate Umpire. He likens that position to a judge in a courtroom. The judge can rule and overrule to require participants to maintain certain standards as to logic, honesty and ethics. He assures that anyone using disingenuous arguments is called to task.

When it comes to trying to maintain the present system, or leach even more from us, the opponents of real reform have been most industrious in creating confusion, distortions, distractions and lies. I will paraphrase and take slight liberties in adapting his efforts to this post.

He addresses their objections to a public option. They say it would be unfair or destroy private options. That is not so with education. Private and parochial schools exist despite a public school option. The University of Tennessee has not driven Vanderbilt out of business.

FedEx, as he puts it, tolerates the U.S. Postal Service. He observes that no one is calling for closing down Yosemite because Six Flags is in bankruptcy court. Public libraries have not chased Barnes & Noble out of the mall.

Here I will simply quote Mr. Cohen, “In his critique of the public option, Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, invoked the inability of his 7-year-old daughter’s lemonade stand to compete with McDonald’s. (You’d think she’d thrive, incidentally, what with lemonade not being on the McDonald’s menu.) “It’s impossible to have a level playing field with a public plan,” Ryan said, asserting that private insurers could be driven out of business by the unfair competitive advantages enjoyed by a government-sponsored insurer.”

Further down, he writes, “In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove concluded: “If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state.” This is a slippery-slope argument, the sort of thing that should set off warning bells. If we impose a 65 miles-per-hour speed limit, we’re on the way to a 55 m.p.h. limit, then down to 5 m.p.h., and ultimately to mandatory driving in reverse.”

You shouldn’t be too surprised if a Congressman couldn’t come up with an appropriate analogy. Nor should it be a shock that the former political genius finds it more convenient to avoid logical arguments. The purpose of both was not to enlighten. Actually, neither were they seeking to debate. They were falling back on their mainstay – fear-mongering.

Some object to single-payer because it would mean the end of bribes. The government isn’t supposed to grease the palms of Congressmen. Others object because it would cause a major spill from their gravy train.

Then there are the true believers. They believe that government forced all those working for the Wall Street Casino to destroy the global economy. They believe that Halliburton-built showers in Iraq that electrocuted several of our troops were absolutely necessary to accomplishing the mission. They believe that Lockheed’s F-22 could fly in the rain if they were only allowed to sell us more of them. They believe that PhARMA, the AHA and the AHIP are being patriotic by forcing people into bankruptcy court and canceling 14,000 policies every day.

They believe that there is such a thing as a “free market.” They believe that a plutocracy is a democracy. They believe that the collusion of a few corporations is capitalism. They believe their simpleminded economic theology is more important than the lives and welfare of you and me and millions of others. Are you ready to die for their ignorance?

They claim that the government will ration healthcare. Unless lots more people start donating organs there will continue to be rationing of transplants regardless of who pays. I hope rationing means I don’t get a prescription for Nexium. I hope someone saves me from taking an ineffective, expensive, dangerous drug when Pepto-Bismol works better. I hope I don’t have some clerk in an insurance company rationing my healthcare because he wants to impress his boss or meet a quota. We have rationing. We will have rationing. The government is not going to ration care to increase profits or impress Wall Street.

Look at all of the lost jobs if we eliminate the health insurance companies. Two things. There will still be health insurance companies. They will be much smaller but people on Medicare buy medigap policies to cover the 20% that Medicare doesn’t. Those with enough money will be able to buy concierge service. They have that in the UK. It doesn’t improve the outcomes vis-a-vis the National Health Service but some people with money are willing to pay extra to feel that they are special.

Healthcare reform that provides universal coverage, or nearly so, will create far more jobs. These jobs will mostly be involved in caring for people rather than just taking their money. Not a single insurance company treats a single malady.

Whether public option, co-op, Aetna or any other plan, if it isn’t single-payer, it is not economically or fiscally viable. Each is a sham. Each is a diversion.

As I implied earlier, there are no real, honest, logical arguments in favor of any other option. Therefore, the opponents have put forth their efforts to attack single-payer and create fantasies about the plan that makes them wealthy, keeps them in office or assures them their 72 virginal Ayn Rand look-alikes in paradise.

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