Public Health Before Wall Street Wealth

Wonderful. The 13 Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee get one faintly rational Republican to join them in a meaningless stab at health care reform and it throws the media into a titillated frenzy about what it all means. It means very little.

The main thrust of the proposal is to forcibly submit even more customers to the tender mercies of the insurance industry while doing nothing significant to cut costs. Insurers will now pretend that the burdens on them are onerous and will demand concessions to make this an even bigger boondoggle for the medical profiteers than George W. Bush's prescription drug coverage initiative.

The insurers' leverage with the few moderate Republicans and with conservative Democrats will prevent the merging of the Baucus bill with the more serious attempts at reform in other Senate and House proposals. While President Barack Obama was celebrating Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, for being "extraordinarily diligent" in working with the Democrats, she was already proclaiming the exit strategy she will use if the bill becomes worthwhile. "My vote today is my vote today," Snowe said Tuesday. "It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow."

The health care debate has become a convenient distraction, for both political parties, from the far more pressing issues surrounding the banking meltdown. As important as health insurance is as an issue, representing 16 percent of the economy, and with so many uninsured, no sane person can deny that the current system is a sorry mess that needs to be changed. But why now and not after a growth economy has returned?

The answer is that politicians from both parties just love the health care game because it allows them to assume reflexive but irrelevant postures in that tired old debate about "socialized medicine" versus "free-market choice" although it has nothing to do with either ideological fantasy. Consumers do not have meaningful choices as it is--many have no coverage and others are frozen into some company-sponsored plan--and it is insulting to the social democracies of Western Europe to suggest that anything significant is even under consideration in the U.S. Congress.

The health care issue should never even have been brought up at a time when the economy is reeling and we are running such immense deficits to shore up the banks. Instead of fixing the economy by saving Americans' homes and jobs, we are preoccupied with pie-in-the-sky rhetoric on a hot issue that should have been addressed in calmer times. It came up now because, despite all the hoary partisan posturing, it is a safer subject than the more pressing issue of what to do with Citigroup, AIG and General Motors, which the taxpayers happen to own but do not control. While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plots in secret with the top bankers who got us into this mess, we are focused on the perennial circus of so-called health care reform.

There is an odd disconnect between the furious public debate over health care reform, with its emphasis on the cost of an increased government role, and the nonexistent discussion about the far more expensive and largely secretive government program to bail out Wall Street. Why the agitation over the government spending $83 billion a year on health care when at least 20 times that amount has been thrown at the creators of the ongoing financial crisis without any serious public accountability? On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that employees of the financial industry that we taxpayers saved are slated to be paid a record $140 billion this year.

If you want to know who actually runs this country, just look at the phone logs, released by court order last week, revealing Geithner's nearly constant calls to solicit the advice of the fat cats who caused the banking implosion. It's the same as when he was chair of the Federal Reserve in New York, before Obama appointed him to his current job. Only back then, as he blithely ignored the impending financial meltdown, it was easier to have lunch with the bankers as well as to chat by phone.

In an earlier Freedom of Information exposé, The New York Times reported in April: "An examination of Mr. Geithner's five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street's giant financial institutions. His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry's interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records."

Nothing has changed since then. Meanwhile, we all get in a tizzy about fake efforts at health reform as immense decisions are being made to ensure the health of financial institutions that should have been left to die.

 

 

Comments

[mjc]

Doubt if Obama or his advisors ever really intended there to be "health care reform" in the sense that there would be more health care available for all Americans and at a lower cost. The economic mess was always the top concern for Obama because they are the ones who hold the MONEY, the value of this country and the success alone of the big boys justifies giving them money when their overworked derrivatives go bust. Health care reform is campaign rhetoric, pure and simple. The Baucus bill is health insurance for the insurance companies. There will be cuts...CUTS in medicaid for sure and no doubt certain programs covered by medicare. That is the idea of reform guys like Geithner and Emanuel AND Obama mean. Reading some of the post here I sense the same depression from them that I feel. Our country has been bought and sold by the successful, by the corporations and the insurance firms. Unless there is a single-payer, universal health care proposal that can be passed, we ain't going nowhere...except perhaps down.

[Stockbroker38]

As a handsome 38-year-old stockbroker, I must say I'm quite pleased when our leaders talk about faux health care reform. So long as they don't talk about deriviatives, I'm happy. I don't even think they know what derivatives are.

Here's a clue: there's $1,000 trillion of them worldwide. It will be tough to bail all those out, but I'm willing to let our government have a go at it, believe me.

[upriser]

The White House aides are meeting right now with Baucus, Reid and Dodd to merge the HELP and Senate Finance Committee bills. I hope they understand how they will be toast if they give another windfall to the insurance companies. The Dow is up to 10,000 today, unemployment hovering around 10%, no strong jobs program coming from the White House and all the uninsured will be forced to buy private health insurance. This is what I would call the PERFECT STORM in favor of a massive Republican takeover of Congress next year. And Obama will be a one-term President. I am a progressive Democrat who will be laughing hysterically at Democratic losses next year if a ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION is not adopted in the health care reform bill. I will still be a progressive, but I will no longer be a Democrat. I will no longer even bother to vote. That is because our democracy will have died. A CORPOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP HAS OVERTAKEN US. That is, corporate capitalism, will have been firmly established in the USA. Actually, it has already been established. Next year will seal the deal. So sad. Time to move to Canada.

[plumnelly]

Good article.

[blueken]

Seems to me that the banking industry is acting like a compulsive gambler. What does a gambler do when you give him enough money to get out of debt? He heads to the casino. The banking industry seems to be going to the casino with the tax payers money. The worst part is, they are takeing a limo.

[plumnelly]

No, their private jets.

[overd0g1]

That's because we the people are just as responsible as Wall Street for creating the crisis. And we know it.

[plumnelly]

You're still drinking the right wing kool-aid. Predatory practices like the mafia had nothing to do with it? The serfs really don't own the Fed, the banks do.

Capitalizing profits and socializing losses wasn't done by main street, it was done by wall street, Rip Van Winkle.

[blueken]

Look it, I'm conservative enough not to be taken in by the sub prime/granite countertop/walk in closet/crown moulding/plazma tv scam. Apparently enough people bought into it to crash the economy, so they need protection. Not for thier benifit, but for the rest of us. So don't say we. I sold my trophy house and bought a house I could afford. I paid off my fixed rate mortgage on my affordable home. I don't own a plazma tv and I don't owe anything on my one credit card. Yet I saw my home loose 30% of it's value and my 401K take a 28% hit. My $50,000 in bonds made $87 last quarter. I'm 60 years old and I don't have a lot of time to recover. Could we please avoid the next bubble?

[Stockbroker38]

As a handsome 38-year-old stockbroker, I have to ask, what crisis? Ben Bernanke said the recession is over. He told me so when we were hanging out in Bangkok together at a dress party last week.

[jumperpin]

I wish that was the worst of it.

As a determined no-show on fair trade, parceling off our mfg/tech base to the lowest bidding offshore sweatshops is Obama's way "to avoid a trade war" (that we're already losing).

Well, with more jobs here "still years away", he's managing expectations - not the economy.

[skye26]

So Geithner schmoozes with Wall Street, who was bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers, and buried in Senator Max Baucus' (D-Mt) version of the "health care bill" is the provision for union workers to be exempt from taxation for the socialized medicine plan. I guess it's the old "perks for campaign donations to the Democratic party" arrangement. .

So for the 52.9% who voted Democratic in 2008, you don't get perks. Hmmmm...taxes raised over here to reduce health care costs over there. A "for the greater good," altruistic, shell game health plan that apparently the AFL-CIO, for one, wants no part of, (along with the 47.1% who did not vote for the Democrats).

By the way, the shell game, also known as Thimblerig, or Three Shells and a Pea (according to Wikipedia's description), is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud. In confidence trick slang, this famous swindle is referred to as a short-con because it is quick and easy to pull off.

Yup. I just love the smell of big government in the morning.

[krocklin]

Why haven't there been a debate on these rising costs of healthcare insurance before now?
Even Ted Kennedy never made his case strongly enough - or at least the medie didn't cover it.

[blueken]

The media didn't cover it. My dad was a doctor 20 years ago. He had pitched battles with Ted about socialized medicene. Today doctors, nurses and hospitals are coming over in droves to universal single payer health care. They want to get back to healing people instead of filling out forms for insurance companies and seeing people denied the care they need, because it isn't profitable. I think the biggest problem is people thinking that because thier employer pays for health insurance it is free to them. Every dollar that goes to health care insurance is a dollar your employer can't pay you.

[krocklin]

When Snowe comes out in favor of the public option that would be news. In the meantime the perception is that this is better than nothing, which it may be.
But it bodes ill that this means that more economic collapse is required before we get rid of the insurance companies. That will mean years - and years more for economic recovery.
All it mean is that private interests are still too strong and Snowe knows that. So probably does Obama.

[batguano]

Absolutely on the money Robert. The masters of illusion have created yet another straw dog to distract us from the real enemy within. We have become wage-slaves on a grand scale and the super-rich enjoy obscene wealth and advantage at the expense of the true strength and security of our nation. Our Congress and nationl "leadership" has been largely bought and paid for by the ability of vast wealth to buy the votes of our "elected" representatives via the power of campaign contributions. Our civilian priorities have been subverted and de-funded to feed Wall Street greed, military adventurism and police expansion on an unprecedented level. Just as the police state must have a steady supply of "perps" to justify their numbers and toys, the rich and powerful must have a steady supply of diversions to befuddle us and turn our eyes from the truth, and the beat goes on.

[bgoodric]

Scheer, health care reform can't wait. It's costing innocent American lives everyday. That's why Obama jumped in now. It's not a distraction; it's a matter of life and death.

I agree with you that the economic situation is also critical, and is being grotesquely mishandled due to corporate control.

These are parts of the same problem. The same corporate corruption that is preventing single-payer and fighting the public option in the one instance is preventing reform in the finance sector in the other instance. But we have to get at least a very strong and broadly used public option before the economy will be fully repaired.

We need to be fixing BOTH at the same time, immediately. And the only way to fix either is to break the corporate stranglehold on the economy, which will pave the way for fixing both. Whether it's even possible to do this is another question, but we have to try.

I'm hoping that perhaps, perhaps Obama will be another FDR in the sense that he'll learn that vested economic interests don't negotiate in good faith and won't give up power easily, and that he'll be radicalized by this knowledge, fire the compromised Geithner et alia, and take on the corporate hierarchy. (By the way, did you know that FDR faced a _coup_ for his relatively moderate reforms?!?! The military guy chosen by the corporations turned the plotters in, and FDR didn't prosecute them in return for their grudging cooperation.)

[babaann]

Plus, getting some of the excessive health care money back into the hands of the people will help the economy.

[mjc]

Don't hold your breath on either prospect. Obama is no FDR. He's not interested in emulating Roosevelt either or he would have long ago seized the reins of some of the "too big to fail" bad boys and broken them down or eliminated some of them. Our Federal Reserve isn't inclined to do any of that.

[WmC]

On the other hand, maybe the Repubs are right: i.e.that this is really the first step in the direction of a single payer system. If that proves to be the case then, maybe, health care reform is not such a terrible distraction.

[overd0g1]

Single payer is good: every single person pays for themselves.

[jbatch]

Mr. Sheer, you note that the media -- including the "liberal" NPR -- is reporting this as some kiind of breakthrough, yet it doe little but make the now voluntary fleecing by the insurance industry mandatory.

You rightly compare it to Bush's Pharma deal, in which Bush gave up the opportunity to lower drug prices by as much as 70% through negotiation.

Here's the thing: Obama did the same deal with big Pharma to get them on-side. As for praising Snowe? It's a crime. And because Obama has sacrificed principles for the hollow victory of a Bill -- any Bill -- and the mediaereports on the food fight and not the meal, no one really understands how much of a rip off this bill is.

Look, bi-partisanship is not an end , health is-- with the majorities we have, we should be able to deliver a good bill that helps people, not corporations.

And yes, this probably is a three card monty scam to keep our eyes off something far more pernicsious -- the corporatization of American governance.

Say goodbye to Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison. That's so old school.

[Carl Caroli]

"The health care debate has become a convenient distraction, for both political parties, from the far more pressing issues surrounding the banking meltdown."
Exactly - and for some ungodly reason Obama brought this distraction to the forefront to cover up the fact that he, Geithner and Summers are doing nothing for the people about the Wall St. mess and giving them money rather than busting them up. More and more I'm concluding they own him like they own all of congressmen and women. Until we get the lobbyists and corporate money away from our legislators, we will never see any meaningful legislation of any kind.

[plumnelly]

Campaign finance reform! It's the only way to take our democracy back.