Could GOP Plan Make Single-Payer Health Insurance More Likely ?

I was one of those people disappointed in the health care reform plan passed by the Democrats. It's not that the plan didn't make things better than they were. It was a definite improvement. I just didn't think it went far enough in reforming our health care system. I believe we need a single-payer health care insurance system, and someday we'll realize that and do it (something like Medicare for everyone).

In the Bloomberg News a few days ago, there was an excellent article by Ezra Klein. Mr. Klein asserted that the current GOP budget plan (the Ryan Plan), which eliminates Medicare and throws the elderly back to purchasing private insurance plans (with a little government help) might actually hurry this nation down the road to passing a real single-payer government insurance plan. It's an interesting idea, and he just might be right. Here is a part of what he had to say:

Republicans have put all their eggs in the competitive-bidding basket. If that doesn’t work to control costs -- and versions of it have failed in the past -- they’re sunk.

Democrats, on the other hand, are promoting a slew of delivery-system reforms in the Affordable Care Act. They’re hoping competitive bidding works, but they’re also trying comparative-effectiveness review, pay-for-quality, accountable- care organizations, electronic health records, penalties for excessive readmissions and medical errors, and a host of other experiments to determine which treatments and processes actually work and how to reward the doctors and hospitals that adopt them.

It’s unlikely that the model in the Republican budget will prove sustainable. That legislation would repeal the Affordable Care Act, cut Medicaid by a third and adopt competitive bidding for Medicare. The likely result? The nation’s uninsured population would soar. In the long run -- and quite possibly in the short run -- that will increase the pressure for a universal system. Because Republicans don’t really have an idea for creating one, Democrats will step into the void.

As a result, Republicans’ long-term interests are probably best served by Democratic success. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed by the next president or rejected by the Supreme Court, Democrats will probably retrench, pursuing a strategy to expand Medicare and Medicaid on the way toward a single-payer system. That approach has, for them, two advantages that will loom quite large after the experience of the Affordable Care Act: It can be passed with 51 votes in the Senate through the budget reconciliation process, and it’s indisputably constitutional.

I urge you to go read Klein's entire article at Bloomberg News.

Any Idiot

Political Cartoon is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Voting Republican

Still No Justice In Racist Killing

It's now been a month since young Trayvon Martin was murdered for having the temerity to walk to the store for a snack while visiting his father in a predominantly white neighborhood -- and his murderer has yet to spend a single day in jail. The police (and some right-wing organizations) want us to believe the killing was done in self-defense -- a ridiculous assertion, since the killer outweighed Martin by over a hundred pounds and was armed with a pistol.

Then we have some denizens of Fox News trying to make other excuses. Sean Hannity asks if it was an "accident", and Geraldo Rivera says we must blame the victim because he was wearing a hoodie. Are they so worried about losing the large segment of their viewers that harbor racist sentiments that they cannot admit the truth? Trayvon Martin was shot because he was an African-American. If he had been a white youth, he would be alive today. Like it or not, this was an unnecessary killing spurred on by the shooter's racist tendencies.

But it's not just the murder that was racist. The police investigation has the same stink of racism as the killing. It was botched from the start, and very possibly intentionally botched. It stretches believability to the breaking point to suggest the "investigation" would have turned out the same way if the victim had been white and the shooter was African-American.

Thankfully, the federal government is now conducting its own investigation. That gives us some hope that justice will finally be done in this case.

For a fuller understanding of just what happened on February 26th in Sanford (Florida), Think Progress has compiled a list of 26 things that everyone should know about the Trayvon Martin killing. Here is that list:

The Dilemma

Political Cartoon is by Jim Morin in the Miami Herald.

Krugman Blasts All Four Of The GOP Candidates' Budget Plans

Here is what Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman has to say about the budget plans of the four remaining Republican candidates for president:

Mitt Romney is very concerned about budget deficits. Or at least that's what he says; he likes to warn that President Obama's deficits are leading us toward a "Greece-style collapse. 


So why is Mr. Romney offering a budget proposal that would lead to much larger debt and deficits than the corresponding proposal from the Obama administration? 


Of course, Mr. Romney isn't alone in his hypocrisy. In fact, all four significant Republican presidential candidates still standing are fiscal phonies. They issue apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of government debt and, in the name of deficit reduction, demand savage cuts in programs that protect the middle class and the poor. But then they propose squandering all the money thereby saved - and much, much more - on tax cuts for the rich. 


And nobody should be surprised. It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it's all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams. 


O.K., let's talk about the numbers. 


The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently published an overview of the budget proposals of the four "major" Republican candidates and, in a separate report, examined the latest Obama budget. I am not, by the way, a big fan of the committee's general role in our policy discourse; I think it has been pushing premature deficit reduction and diverting attention from the more immediately urgent task of reducing unemployment. But the group is honest and technically competent, so its evaluation provides a very useful reference point. 


And here's what it tells us: According to an "intermediate debt scenario," the budget proposals of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney would all lead to much higher debt a decade from now than the proposals in the 2013 Obama budget. Ron Paul would do better, roughly matching Mr. Obama. But if you look at the details, it turns out that Mr. Paul is assuming trillions of dollars in unspecified and implausible spending cuts. So, in the end, he's really a spendthrift, too. 


Is there any way to make the GOP proposals seem fiscally responsible? Well, no - not unless you believe in magic. Sure enough, voodoo economics is making a big comeback, with Mr. Romney, in particular, asserting that his tax cuts wouldn't actually explode the deficit because they would promote faster economic growth and this would raise revenue. 


And you might find this plausible if you spent the past two decades sleeping in a cave somewhere. If you didn't, you probably remember that the same people now telling us what great things tax cuts would do for growth assured us that Bill Clinton's tax increase in 1993 would lead to economic disaster, while George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 would create vast prosperity. Somehow, neither of those predictions worked out. So the Republicans screaming about the evils of deficits would not, in fact, reduce the deficit - and, in fact, would do the opposite. What, then, would their policies accomplish? The answer is that they would achieve a major redistribution of income away from working-class Americans toward the very, very rich. 


Another nonpartisan group, the Tax Policy Center, has analyzed Mr. Romney's tax proposal. It found that, compared with current policy, the proposal would actually raise taxes on the poorest 20 percent of Americans, while imposing drastic cuts in programs like Medicaid that provide a safety net for the less fortunate. (Although right-wingers like to portray Medicaid as a giveaway to the lazy, the bulk of its money goes to children, disabled, and the elderly.) 


But the richest 1 percent would receive large tax cuts - and the richest 0.1 percent would do even better, with the average member of this elite group paying $1.1 million a year less in taxes than he or she would if the high-end Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. 


There's one more thing you should know about the Republican proposals: Not only are they fiscally irresponsible and tilted heavily against working Americans, they're also terrible policy for a nation suffering from a depressed economy in the short run even as it faces long-run budget problems. 


Put it this way: Are you worried about a "Greek-style collapse"? Well, these plans would slash spending in the near term, emulating Europe's catastrophic austerity, even while locking in budget-busting tax cuts for the future. 


The question now is whether someone offering this toxic combination of irresponsibility, class warfare, and hypocrisy can actually be elected president.

Bummer

Political Cartoon is by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Context ?

Once again The Atheist Pig cuts to the heart of the matter.

Jesus Candidate ?

You can click on the image to get a larger and easier to read picture.

Mr. Frothy Wins Big In Louisiana

Last Tuesday Wall Street Willie (aka Willard Mitt Romney) waltzed to an easy victory in Illinois. That means it was time for one of his opponents to win a state (seeing as how the GOP campaign has been going this year). And Mr. Frothy (aka Rick Santorum) did not disappoint last night. He easily took the Louisiana primary, winning by more than a 22 point margin (not just a whuppin', but an outright ass-stompin'). Here are the numbers:

LOUISIANA (99% reporting)
Rick Santorum...............91,133  (49.07%)
Mitt Romney...............49,433  (26.62%)
Newt Gingrich...............29,564  (15.92%)
Ron Paul...............11,422  (6.15%)
Others...............4,172  (2.25%)
TOTAL VOTES...............185,724

Now it's about 10 days until the next primaries are held (in Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia on April 3rd). Rasmussen has released a poll showing Romney with a sizeable lead in Wisconsin, but most of it was done before the Romney campaign's "etch-a-sketch" gaffe. Polls coming out about a week from now should be interesting, because they'll show if this latest gaffe is going to hurt him.

Etch-A-Sketch Mitt

Political Cartoon is by Bruce Plante in Tulsa World.

Majority Of Congress Has Ethical Problems

If you follow politics much at all this probably won't surprise you, but it should make you mad as hell. It seems that the "fat cats" in Congress are using their position in government to enrich themselves (and their family and friends). I'm not talking about the money they get from corporations and lobbyists (although that is still a problem). I'm talking about them using the federal treasury as their own personal piggy bank to enrich themselves, their families, and their friends.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did a survey of every member of the House of Representatives. They found that at least 248 members of the 435 member House (about 57%) was guilty of using their position to enrich themselves and their families in such ways as paying family members with congressional or campaign funds, getting family members jobs as lobbyists, earmarking government money for family businesses, funneling money to campaigns of other family members, and other ethically problematic behavior.

Personally, I was surprised that CREW found only 57% of the House members were engaged in these ethically-dubious financial transactions. I had thought the percentage would be much higher. The bad news is that this shady behavior is not limited to any one party. Republicans and Democrats both engage in it (105 Democrats and 143 Republicans). That should irritate the rank-and-file members of both parties. Here's some of what CREW found:

82 members (40 Democrats and 42 Republicans) paid family members through their congressional offices, campaign committees and political action committees (PACs);

44 members (20 Democrats and 24 Republicans) have family members who lobby or are employed in government affairs;

90 members (42 Democrats and 48 Republicans) have paid a family business, employer, or associated nonprofit;

20 members (13 Democrats and 7 Republicans) used their campaign money to contribute to a family member’s political campaign;

14 members (6 Democrats and 8 Republicans) charged interest on personal loans they made to their own campaigns;

38 members (24 Democrats and 14 Republicans) earmarked to a family business, employer, or associated nonprofit.

If you would like a more in-depth view of some of the worst offenders, you can go here.

Bad Law

Political Cartoon is by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Vanishing Middle Class

Right after World War II, the American society had a huge growth of the middle class. This middle class growth benefitted all Americans (it gave the rich more customers with money to spend, and the tax revenues from this growth helped lift the poor up). Much of this growth was due to what right-wingers called socialist policies (strong unions, GI Bill to help with college and buying homes, etc.) But that has changed since the Republicans have managed to institute their "trickle-down" economic policy (which emphasizes giving more money to the rich in the hopes some of it would trickle down to the rest of America).

To say this Republican economic policy (started by Reagan and thrown into high-gear by Bush II) was a failure would be an understatement. It cost Americans millions of jobs and threw the country into a serious recession (which still continues for most people in this country). It has also had another devastating result -- it is destroying the middle class. As the chart above shows, the number of middle class households in the United States has been reduced significantly since 1970.

Every 10 years since 1970 the country has had roughly 2 million households disappear from the middle class -- and those households are not moving to the upper class, but down to the working class or even to poverty level. A recent census report showed that half of all Americans now live on an income less than 50% above the poverty level.

The Republican economic policy has been very successful in helping the rich to get richer, but it has hurt the rest of America badly. Alan Krueger, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors puts this shift in wealth and income in stark terms. He says it is the equivalent of moving $1.1 trillion from the 99% to the 1% every year for the last three decades.

That may sound great if you're in the 1%, but it can't be healthy for the country's economy. It is the reason we're in the current economic mess. And what is the Republican solution? To give the rich and the corporations larger tax cuts, and pay for that by taking more away from the other 99% of America. That simply makes no sense, and we can no longer afford these kinds of brain-dead policies.

It's going to be a long and hard fight to cure our economic ills. But if the Republicans are re-elected in large numbers this November, there may not be any recovery at all -- in the short or long term.