We won!
When President Obama signs the health care reconciliation bill on Tuesday, we can crow about a robust public option -- en route perhaps to a more inclusive, cost-effective single-payer system. Soon, private profiteers (and subsidies to them) will be sidelined, and the government will save taxpayers billions by providing service directly to Americans in need.
I'm not hallucinating. We should savor this victory.
Unfortunately, it's not a health care victory.
Attached to the health care reconciliation bill is an unrelated college loan measure that goes in the opposite direction of health care reform. The loan measure sidelines private profiteers -- the banks -- and saves taxpayers money by making the government something of a "single-payer" which will soon be directly issuing most college loans in our country.
Direct lending by the government will cut out the middleman and save taxpayers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, $61 billion over 10 years -- with $40 billion in savings being redirected to higher education in the form of more Pell grants, more aid to minority-serving colleges and more aid to lower-income graduates for paying off their student debt.
What a concept!
Instead of moving to subsidize a bulky private industry and its waste, profits and exorbitant executive pay (as the new health bill does by mandating that millions become new customers of corporate insurers), the college loan reform reduces bureaucracy, profit and streamlines the system.
Yes, the right wing in Congress yelled "government takeover."
And, yes, corporate lobbyists put up a fierce fight to stop this common-sense approach that ends years of wasteful subsidies to private banks.
But Democrats in Congress stood up to them -- passing a measure in the public interest that can easily be explained and justified to the public.
It's a far cry from the backroom deal-making Obama and top Democrats engaged in with lobbyists as health care reform got watered down, as even a weak public option got jettisoned and as private insurers and big pharma deepened their control over the system.
I want to be happy at a time like this. I keep hearing everyone from liberals to mainstream media to right-wingers hailing this health care bill as a world-historical event. Sort of like the first man walking on the Moon.
To the skeptic in me, it's more like "one small step for humankind, one giant leap for private insurance firms."
But, today, it's great to be able to crow about some good news - college loans - where Congress put the needs of the public and students and families above the needs of private interests.
Jeff Cohen is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and a former board member of Progressive Democrats of America.
Follow Jeff Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffcot
you are a Fox Robot.
What do hateful creeps like John Boehner or Phony Palin tell you
about the Republican Party?
That facts and civil discussion do not matter. They see fellow
Americans as The Enemy, and want to divide us. Disagree with
them, even as a moderate Republican, and you are a target.
This is a road to destruction and making the US weaker. THEIR
Iraq war has done plenty of that in several ways.
Or will you stand up and help defeat these ideological fanatics?
We can replace hard working Hoosiers with more DC bureaucrats. What a wonderful victory.
This proves what I've said for over a year: threatening to remove them en masse is the only way to get them to act in our interests. The pressure on them needs to remain intense or this will be the last meaningful thing they do this year.
The demand to Congress for the rest of 2010 has to be "Bank regulation with teeth this year or you're fired.". That includes breaking up any financial institution which is too big to fail.
you got that right - obama's "Health Care" "reform" bill IS A SOP to PROFITEERS.
< The loan measure SIDELINES private PROFITEERS - DA BANKS -- and SAVES TAXPAYERS MONEY BY MAKING the GOVERNMENT something of a "SINGLE-PAYER" which will soon be DIRECTLY ISSUING most college loans in our country. >
This is one of the first genuinely liberal, "democratic," and progressive bills we have seen come out of the Obama White House, and goes a long way to RESTORING some of America's ACCESS to HIGHER EDUCATION, before Right-Wing Republicans and Corporate "Democrats" handed that financial need over to the PROFITEERING banksters and financial operators.
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/workingpapers/67/
The tuition argument is a common theme in economics regarding unintended economic consequences. I suggest reading Crashproof by Peter Schiff. It is brilliant.
Admin Overhead ---(exponentially less paperwork...AMA hates this)
Malpractice Insurance---the largest component of Malpractice suits disappears...future medical...single payer is its own tort reform
Workers Comp---basically becomes an unemployment program
Auto Insurance---the medical liability folds into the system
BUSINESS expenses would decrease dramatically.
Pension Plans become an IRA account.
We could then use the insurance paper pushers in actual medical care where they are needed for the Booming Baby Diaper generation.
As scholarships, grants, and loans grew, the person receiving the service has not been the person paying for it. Universities found that there was little resistance to higher tuition levels, so they just continued to raise them. Money flooded in. But instead of passing the money on to teachers and professors, they invested in land, administrative staff, and buildings. Just ask any college professor if their salary comes close to that of anyone in the bloated admin staff.
This education bill will mean more tuition hikes.
I really didn't need to spend $2,800 on a literature class that the local Community College offered for $300.
Etc...
I already have encouraged a lot of other students to do the same...and they HAVE.
We all need to do this so that the general buying public REALLY knows there are often equivalent goods for sale at a much cheaper price.
The interest on mortgages goes almost exclusively to the rich, increasing their share of US wealth. Their need for constant return on investment forces them to increase credit, including to people who will never pay it back.
Mortgages are profitable; why doesn't that profit pay our taxes?
And please, don't give me the "Fannie and Freddie are that". Those institutions messed up because they are private. They have shareholders that demand profit, even if it means bad loans, so they wrote them. They are no different than a commercial bank. They should go away, or the government should buy up all the stock and make them public.
Or that they loan to banks, now at zero interest, which banks loan to us at a profit.
So-called "printed" money.
The government can and does create money all the time.
Right now it gives it to banks and financial companies at low/zero interest.
Then they lend it as mortgages and take all the profit from the interest.
It's just cutting out the middle man, the banks who profit by lending our money.
was good, for rich and poor, under Democratic Bill Clinton !
Not a single Republican voted for his economic reform package in 1994,
that helped create that dynamic climate. Just like now, they march, dare
I say it, like Stormtroopers, or sheep, to whatever bull... their leaders
demand.
Nihilism..
In what areas do we subsidize programs (and individuals) that require assistance? How can we best do this? And what part of the limited fund of government money and manpower should we commit?
Ok, fine. Explain and justify the regressives that just enshrined MORE inequality into federal law by singling out traditionally black colleges and hispanic colleges for millions upon millions of dollars.
At what point will so-called "progressives" finally stand up and act like they want a color blind society and equality under the law?
I work for an HBCU in a community where - in the first decade of this century - several fifty year old citizens who were denied a public education during the height of the civil rights movement - were finally given compensation and a formal apology. The public schools in an entire county closed down rather than let minorities attend.
That's why.