Hill: D.C. Dems Back Off Health Care Promises

In a stunning - if predictable - story, the Hill newspaper reports that congressional Democrats are now saying that they will effectively thwart any effort to create a national health care program. Here is the key excerpt:

"Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential candidates, saying that even if their party controls the White House and Congress, sweeping change will be difficult...Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), a member of Senate Democratic leadership and a key Hillary Clinton ally who also sits on the Finance Committee, said he is 'not sure we have the big plan on healthcare.'...'Healthcare I feel strongly about, but I am not sure that we're ready for a major national healthcare plan,' Schumer said...Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), a Clinton supporter who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, said "the money is not necessarily there right now" to enact the plans."

There's a lot to unpack here.

First and foremost, to those in Washington who say the nation should just wait for Washington to act on health care and wait for Democrats to win control of Congress and the presidency, this story exposes the glaring failure of that strategy - especially as states move forward into the breach. Health care reform has to be a dual effort - at the federal level and at the state level. And most likely, real reform is going to start in the states - in part, because Democrats in Washington are so afraid of their own shadow and bought off by Big Money interests that they are now acknowledging that they are no serious about fulfilling their health care promises.

Second, you'll notice the right-wing arguments being made by Democrats in this piece. Schumer, like a reliable Fox News anchor, tells us that America isn't "ready" for national health care plan, despite polls over the last decade showing strong support for such a concept. Likewise, Meek - playing right into the Grover Norquist "drown it in the bathtub" mantra, claims the federal government doesn't have the cash to pay for a health care overhaul - even as Congress continues writing blank checks to fund the Iraq War.

Finally, this reminds us of the need for progressives to focus on building a social movement, rather than exclusively on winning elections. Democrats are effectively saying that no matter how many elections are won, they will not move forward on the most pressing domestic issue. That's because there isn't yet a powerful social movement putting constant pressure on both parties - and instilling fear in both parties. The infrastructure that has been built in recent years is largely partisan rather than movement-oriented - that is, aimed at buttressing the Democratic Party, regardless of what it does. If we are to get health care reform, it will require a movement - not a party.

Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.

Comments

[Nobuks]

Sounds like the Clinton Senate supporters are staring to lay the groundwork to enable Hillary to avoid having to complete her promise of a National Healthcare Program. Nice.

[nawillyms]

I agree with "Nobucks" . . . the DLC (corporate Dems) hard at work . . . also harkens back to Edwards calling attention to Clinton's PAC and Healthcare Lobbyists' $$$ - more than any other candidate on either side - supporting her campaign. Mind you that Obama DOESN'T have healthcare lobbyists on HIS campaign - and none of his Congressional supporters are backing away from his plan.

[KELLI2L]

P.S. The new Dem congress was also put in place to end the Iraq war, but they haven't. < Coupled with the fact that they haven't secured the Southern borders yet and they don't want to give ALL of us affordable health insurance and they deny us a real living wage while raising their pay by thousand of dollars. It is time for a BIG change in our government. I'm not talking about Obama for he isn't going to bring us change in a good way, IMO. I'm talking about injecting a third party, possibly the Green party >.

[UnbiasView]

I agree with almost everything you said except for the:

" they deny us a real living wage"

Congress doesn't deny of of a living wage, you do. If you don't like what you are being paid, get educated or learn more skills so you can be compensated like you feel. Do you really want the government to set wages of private business?

[Wulfstan]

Wages are determined by supply and demand. Since there is always surplus labor, which is increased further by illegal immigration, outsourcing and off shoring of jobs there is an even bigger surplus of labor today. Wages have gone down in real terms except for the wealthy.

[chery]

Gee.. heck no! Let's all move our children to Dubai! Why wait til they remake the U.S. into a third world nation, when we can all have slave status today! Sure... the more poor people you have, the more profit you can make off their suffering and pain! All you need is population of low education, easily lead and lied to, too cynical to stand up for themselves! Top that off with the experiences of being beat down by watching their dreams die, and heck.. it's a shoe in! And we have a history of this already, if you go back to the robber barrons of the 19th century! Best hurry up though, before Newt rewrites that chapter as well! I always dreamed my grandchildren would have the chance to be characters from a Charles Dickens story.

[mcartri]

Why would that Political Whore House on the Hill "Put out" for free. Congress represents Congress. The People be damned. K-Street is a Red Light District frequented by "Bought and Paid For" congressman. The King Pimp is George W. Bush. Want National Health Care in your lifetime? Move to a country that has it. You can choose from every industrialized country on Earth, but one. Any guesses?

[Spoons]

We the people mustn't allow those who are supposed to be OUR representatives get away with what they're doing to us (or not doing to protect us). Most of us realize by now that we could easily create a higher quality, far less expensive but much more equitable, sustainable, and moral health system simply by eliminating the outrageous profit-taking of the private health insurance industry. The only thing we lack is the political leadership (that means a political leader who has the public's ear AND would even bother to try to explain the truth to the people). We the people would believe the truth if either Obama or Clinton would give it a try, for a REAL change.

Any politician on either side of the fence who says "it will cost too much" to fix our broken health coverage is willing to compromise not only the truth, but also morality for money, and sacrifice people for profit. The emperor is naked and Democrats are going to look pretty silly if they are left holding the health reform bag when the health insurance cat comes out of it.

[UnbiasView]

What's wrong with the "it will cost too much" theory? Is there another country around that is the size of ours that has a system like this? Also how do you plan on rolling this out? How do you charge businesses and individuals?

[Wulfstan]

Medicare for all is the answer. Cut the Pentagon budget and we can well afford it. The so called War on Terror is just propaganda.

[KELLI2L]

< This is such crap - Dems were elected to the Congress to get the illegal immigration problems fixed, they haven't. Now we are going to elect a Dem president in the hopes of universal health policy FOR ALL (not just a few), and they don't want to give us that either. Sounds like we need to teach both major parties a lesson and vote-in a third party, and I'm not kidding >

[UnbiasView]

You thought a Democrat was going to fix illegal immigration? The party that acts on only feelings and feels sorry for those poor illegals?

You had to see this coming when Democrats decided they weren't going to use the term "illegal immigrants" because it's mean.

[Wulfstan]

The Republicans and Democrats are the same Pigs at the Trough party.

There is no real choice.

[chery]

The problem is fixing itself! Unemployment rising, good paying jobs leaving the country to be replaced by minimun wage retail jobs, housing starts down, constuction down, credit tight, mortgages unreachable for the common man, inflation going up, in a tax free fantasy government with no entitlement programs! Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see which way the flow of immigrants will go from now on!

[WASanford]

Doesn't anyone see the dissonance between our being able to spend $12 billion/month keeping our occupation of Iraq and our putative inability to afford health care for all of our citizens? The health insurance industry has us by the balls and we're going to have to slap the crap out of them before they'll let go.

[TheBlackCat]

But the reason we're able to do that is that we're NOT paying for the war. Do you think the American public would stand for it if we were actually LOSING that kind of money each month on war costs? We're borrowing it, all of it, to hand the debt to our children. The war is not as big an issue as it should be because we're not footing the bill. There was a time in which when there was a war, the whole country fought the war. Everyone paid and everyone sacrificed. Now it is only the soldiers (like my husband, airborn LT, Iraq veteran, due to go back) and their families who have to fight the war, and so each day Iraq is covered a little bit less in the news. Each week it slips a little bit further down voters priority list. And not many people really care. Sure they write on blogs like this one - but not much else. They don't write their congress, they don't protest, they don't volunteer for the USO. They don't sign petitions or join active anti-war groups that lobby congress. They say "awww, isn't that horrible" and go back to American Idol.

We steal from the past in our pillaging of resources, and we steal from our future with massive debts to pay for a war to make neocons rich.

"Everything that came before is all the same" -E.L. Doctorow

[Opus007]

Why don't we revoke health care for elected officals and make it a level playing field.

[mojopo]

How do we begin to strip medical benefits from Congress? If they are not prepared to work for us, as they were elected to do, I don't think we owe them anything.

This is infuriating. I thought the previous do-nothing Congress was pretty horrible, but these scared little grubs we have in office now might be even worse.

Shame on them! Shame!

[metamars]

The 800 pound gorilla in the room is the corporations that want to maximize their profits. There's actually lots of money for national health care, but not for a system that doesn't control costs.

The public needs to force the issue by, for starters, getting everybody to watch http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/main.html

Then they'll really get furious.

In this day and age of viral videos, I see no reason why the frontline program can't go viral.

[naugiedoggie]

Actually, I think Schumer is right. There's many a slip between cup and lip. As has been pointed out in other contexts, many citizens rebel against their own high heathcare costs but that does not translate into a rebellion against the lack of access for the 47 million or so that have no care at all. They are not the same issue.

That is a problem. I am in the process of shopping for personal healthcare insurance right now, having left the corporate world to become part of an independent consultancy. The cheapest useful packages (dental, medical, eye & prescription) run $450 to $650 PER MONTH. To get down into the $300 range, you have to accept huge deductibles, in the $1500 - $5000 range -- basically useless except for major crises. So I'm looking at that expense problem directly. That is not the problem for the individuals who just can't pay that kind of money. And they are the ones whose issues are being most directly addressed by the candidates.

Sirota is right -- we need a movement for change across the board. I don't see any evidence that such action is even bubbling below the surface.

Thanks.

mp

[MourningDude]

"the federal government doesn't have the cash to pay for a health care overhaul - even as Congress continues writing blank checks to fund the Iraq War."

It's not just about Iraq. It's not just about 2008 or 2009. It's about 2020 and 2030 and 2050.

As it is today, the OTHER national health insurance plan you may have heard of (Medicare) is spiraling out of control. Over the next 75 years we face over 40 TRILLION DOLLARS in unfunded liabilities to Medicare. That's how much we would have to plop on the table TODAY to make the books balance. To pay for it permanently we'd need to scrounge up roughly 75 TRILLION today.

That's more than the entire net worth of the American people. We could all sell our houses, cars, empty our bank accounts, and our retirement accounts, and we still couldn't come up with enough to pay for it.

Iraq spending this year or next year or even in total PALES in comparison.

So the question every responsible person must ask is, if we can't even pay for the health insurance we already offer to one small segment of society, why would we be able to afford extending health insurance to the rest of them?

[clembo]

You miss the real key question: Why can't we afford health care? Sky-rocketing costs that serve to enrich the corporate elites (BigPharm / HMO's / Insurance Co.). I agree with Obama's message that we must first focus on getting a handle on costs. We will not be able to convince Americans to invest in a national health care system until the federal and state governments effectively get costs under control. It has to be a sequential approach if we are to make reform work.

[chery]

And that's the key to turning this into a movement! It's not that we can't or won't do this, it's that we have not taken on skyrocketing costs and profits! Each decade, we helplessly watch as medical inflation which isn't even factored into our economy, takes its toll on society. Each decade we hear more propoganda about how our companies can't compete with the global economy if they have to pay for health care costs! Did they forget to mention that this global market is filled with slave labor working for pennies on the dollar? It's all smoke and mirrors, and we sit here watching the show! Well, decades of deregulation have cost us dearly in all aspects of life! We depend upon imports that are cheap enough, but have no safety to speak of. Like it or not, this is the contract with America we heard about not that long ago! Like it or not, this is the outcome of the Clinton years!

[MourningDude]

This isn't the first time Dems campaign on one issue and then do a 180 degree about face once they're in Washington.

They did the same thing in 2006. Paleo-losi and the Dems screeched over and over in 2006 about how they had a 'common-sense plan' to bring down gas prices. Now that they have had power for almost 2 years, no such plan has been offered, let alone considered for passage.

What happened to their fabulous plan? Why aren't they offering it now, as gas prices rocket toward $4 per gallon?

Let me guess... more empty campaign promises from the compulsive liars leading the Dems.

[Overd0g]

Wow. They must really want to get elected.

[MourningDude]

So let me get this straight. Rural states tend to be more conservative, and tend not to want nationalized health insurance. States with big metropolitan areas tend to be more liberal and do want nationalized health insurance.

You say that health insurance must be a cooperative effort at the state and local level. Why is that?

Well, the normal explanation is that rural states cost more to insure per capita, so the tax base of these rural states is unable to cover the expense without federal intervention. In other words, you take money from the big states and shift it to the small states.

But wait just a second! The rural states don't WANT nationalized health care in the first place. The big states can afford to implement their own health insurance programs themselves without Uncle Sam involved. In fact, if they did so they would be BETTER OFF, since their tax dollars wouldn't be siphoned of to help pay for the rural states.

This is a monumental disconnect in the liberal mind. They say we MUST nationalize, when the only reason to do so is to pay for nationalizing those who don't want it in the first place.

-boggle-

[RoloTomassi]

You are boggled because your argument is false, and it is false because at best it makes gorss assumptions about what others want [for which you have no data], and at worst you are simply pulling those assertions out of nowhere, strickly to have something to say that ultimately means nothing.

[MourningDude]

The only reason I've ever heard for doing it nationally is to defray the disproportionately higher cost of providing rural health care.

Since none of the plans presented force everyone to join one plan, it can't simply be about economies of scale. Do you have a better explanation? At least I made a rational argument for why state/national cooperation is "necessary". This blog never even bothered to do that, it just throws it out there without any explanation whatsoever.

[BigTuna]

"This is a monumental disconnect in the liberal mind. They say we MUST nationalize, when the only reason to do so is to pay for nationalizing those who don't want it in the first place."

I see. As long as you have at least a 50% + 1 majority in those states, there's no reason to give a damn about the other half. Let' 'em rot.

(For the life of me I can't figure out why conservatism's popularity is in steep decline...)

[MourningDude]

Riddle me this...

- If universal health insurance is SO fabulous, and

- if big states like New York and California want it SO bad, and

- if it's actually CHEAPER for NY and Cali to implement their OWN system than to subsidize rural states through a nationalized system, then

WHAT are they waiting for???? They should have implemented this a LONG time ago.

[stupidforum]

I've said since Hillary brought up her "national" healthcare proposal, she'd find a way to stab us in the back.

I think Sirota has some pretty convincing evidence here.

[jhNY]

Do you see Hillary Clinton's name anywhere in this piece attached to any quotes about putting off a national health care package? Turn off your home projector. It's interfering with the actual words in the aticle you imagine you're reading.

On the other hand, the reliably execrable Chuck Shumer, that is, the other NY senator, offers up a weasly quote that is hyper-typical of his wormy brand of fecklessness. Perhaps it is to him you mean to refer...

[KELLI2L]

Excuse me 'stupidforum' but it isn't only Hillary - I believe this article said that neither candidate is talking about their health care plan anymore - not just Hillary. Why do you focus only on Hillary in a negative manner?

[thesimulacra]

"Schumer, like a reliable Fox News anchor, tells us that America isn't "ready" for national health care plan"

I'm sorry but did you get your degree in journalism from a vending machine?

Chuck Schumer is about as far from a "reliable Fox News anchor" as one can find in the U.S. Senate, and the fact that you've interpreted this comment the way that you have tells me either you don't know how to read or you're just out to slander Senator Schumer.

If you read the statement he made when he said "we're not ready", the "we're" he's talking about is not America, but the U.S. Senate. What he said there was that there aren't enough heads in Congress ready to sign on to a national healthcare plan. That's not the same as saying that "America isn't 'ready' for national health care plan" at all. Please correct your article by removing these false accusations and assumptions.

[jhNY]

Had no idea you'd have time, given your heavy responsibilities in the nation's capital, to write in to HuffPo, Chuck!

[Citizen54]

Speaking as one of Schumer's so-called constituents, I have to say Sirota is right. Schumer is a Republican, really. He almost always votes for whatever is good for the corporations, then tries to justify it with that mythical Long Island couple he quotes as being typical Americans. Not one piece of progressive legislation bears his name.

[jdenham]

I guess that since the Congress already has healthcare they are not concerned about giving others healthcare. Or could it be their contributions from the healthcare industry has changed their minds. Maybe if they are unemployed this next January they will see what it is like to be without healthcare. Lets just vote these incumbants out of office. Maybe the new guys will think we need healthcare.