swimming freestyle

Long term health care costs and GOP vulnerability

In the real world, actions have consequences.  As it turns out, inaction has consequences as well.  Here's a chart from today's NY Times, projecting the effect past reform efforts would have had on health care spending:

Clearly, the earlier the reform had occurred, the better off we'd be now.  It doesn't take a math major to recognize the trend of that increasingly steep "actual" line. 

Nearly every mainstream analysis calls for medical costs to continue to climb over the next decade, outpacing the growth in the overall economy and certainly increasing faster than the average paycheck. Those higher costs will translate into higher premiums, which will mean fewer individuals and businesses will be able to afford insurance coverage. More of everyone’s dollar will go to health care, and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid will struggle to find the money to operate.

“It will break all of our banks if we do nothing,” said Peter V. Lee, who oversees national health policy for the Pacific Business Group on Health, which represents employers that offer coverage to workers. “It is a course that is literally bankrupting the federal government and businesses and individuals across the country.”

The Democrats have had the opportunity to sell health care reform a couple different ways.   First is the moral imperative of assuring all our citizens fair and equal access to health care.  Barack Obama raised it once, in his September address to Congress, but never brought it up again.

Perhaps Democrats thought talking about empathy and compassion pushed them too far into "bleeding heart liberal" territory.  But this argument that health care costs are unsustainable has never been fully asserted either.

Republicans may be a wee bit shortsighted here.  While this tactic of delaying reform may be paying some short term dividends for Republicans, health care costs continue to rise and folks become increasingly vulnerable to losing their insurance coverage.  There will be a tipping point when states can no longer fund Medicaid programs and enough people have either already lost their benefits or can no longer afford them and, at that point, they'll go looking for someone to blame and the fastest remedy.  

Republicans, God willing, would take the blame and the fastest, most sure remedy is a public option.  Now that would be some just desserts for the GOP.

'70 Million'

A very clever music video from Hold Your Horses!, playfully reconstructing famous paintings. 

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Homeless Romanian stuns art world

Ion Barladeanu is a 63 year old Romanian.  For the last twenty years, he's been homeless - sleeping on an old mattress in the garbage room of a tenement in Bucharest.  He did odd jobs and made his collages in secret.  Two years ago, Barladeanu showed his collages to an artist friend:

From that moment on, Barladeanu's days in the dump were numbered. "I instantly thought it was something very important, at least for Romania," said Dan Popescu, whose H'Art gallery specialises in young, little-known contemporary artists. With badly decaying teeth and a face ravaged by over 60 Romanian winters, Barledeanu was not young, and his anonymity would not last long.

Within six months, he was given his first exhibition, a flat of his own and a brand new set of dentures. In 2009, he made his first trip overseas and showed some collages at the Basel art fair. This week, he jetted into Paris, saw the Eiffel Tower for real and had lunch with the actor and fan Angelina Jolie, in town for her next movie. (Link)

Loving America and hating Americans

"Tough shit".  That was Sen. Jim Bunning's reply last night when fellow senator, Jeff Markley pleaded with Bunning to end his solo opposition to extending unemployment and COBRA extensions to 1.2 million Americans whose benefits expire this weekend.

Bunning claimed he doesn't oppose the extensions per se, but wanted funds to cover the extension to be taken from the stimulus money, rather than added to the deficit. 

This isn't the first time unemployment benefit extensions have been used as a political football by Senate Republicans.  The Senate finally got around to passing the last extension, due in November, four days late and by a 98-0 vote. 

I honestly can't imagine how pissed off I would be if I were unemployed, without prospects, and about to lose my unemployment and health insurance and some lone senator was making it his mission to delay an extension of benefits because that would offend his principles.

But that would be nothing compared to how angry I'd be to learn that the Democrats adjourned the Senate today without shutting Bunning down and extending the benefits.

Durbin pwns GOP on medical malpractice

Medical malpractice abuse has been identified by the GOP as the largest single contributor to rising health care costs.  After a number of Republicans at yesterday's health care summit had called for limits on malpractice awards, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin could no longer hold his tongue:

What about Dick Durbin for Senate Majority Leader?

Just pass the damn bill now

It's a shame that what will likely get the most airtime from the health care summit today was the Obama/McCain confrontation.  That video clip will, no doubt, be played in an endless loop on cable news because that's how politics is now portrayed - perhaps now practiced; as one gigantic cage match where the only objective is to pummel your opponent and emerge with his head.  

While the cable news show are busy showing the Obama/McCain clip, they won't be showing scene after scene of Republicans demanding that a years worth of effort on the health care bill be scrapped, their requirement that a reform bill include only their proposals, and regularly asserting they had no input to the bills despite repeated proof otherwise.

It didn't take but a few minutes to figure out how the day would go.  Demands, obfuscations and no new ideas from the GOP.  The Democrats would have been smart to let President Obama speak for the Party.  Given the strong reaction Republicans have to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, there would have been tactical advantage to keeping them away from the microphone and let the still very popular president run the show.

And, not unexpectedly, whatever movement there was today came from the president, but at the end a frustrated Obama said:

So the question that I'm going to ask myself and I ask of all of you is, is there enough serious effort that in a month's time or a few weeks' time or six weeks' time we could actually resolve something? And if we can't, then I think we've got to go ahead and some make decisions, and then that's what elections are for. We have honest disagreements about -- about the vision for the country and we'll go ahead and test those out over the next several months till November.

I'm not sure today was a smart move by the president.  On the one hand, he made the effort and I suppose he should get points for that.  But on the other hand, President Obama was pwned by the GOP today.  They're now able to crow that President Obama, for all his talk about changing Washington, failed yet again.

Democrats need now to just pass the bill by reconciliation.  Then sell the shit out of it to their constituents and remind them over and over and over that it was them, without a lick of help from the Republicans, that made it happen. 

This is where showing a bit of confidence in ones convictions goes a long way.

Pogo stick art

Some choose to use brushes...some don't.

The GOP doesn't really want to cut spending

I've now written a bunch of posts on this; the GOP's talking points that the federal government is too big and budget is wasteful and out of control.  Their argument tends to fall apart, however, when those Republicans are asked to make recommendations on what specific programs they would change or cut.  When the question isn't evaded, Republicans have been largely unable to provide any suggestions for substantive savings.

John Sides at Salon posted a chart today showing a percentage of conservatives who advocate spending cuts in specific areas.

The category getting the highest percentage, child care, received support from barely 1 in 4 Republicans.  It just seems increasingly clear that it's not big government that conservatives don't like.  It's having to pay for that "big" government that sticks in the GOP's craw.

Universal health care

Watching the health care summit?  Here's an illuminating graphic for some context:

Those light gray countries?  That's usually called the third world.

(h/t Michael Freeman)

A picture for the day

Men celebrated the Festival of Colors in Barsana, India, Tuesday. The tradition heralds the beginning of spring. (K. K. Arora/Reuters)