By lambert strether. Originally published at Corrente.
Rahm’s little brother Zeke has an Opinion piece in the Journal on ObamaCare. First, the state of play on the health insurance exchanges:
Read more...In this post I’m continuing the analysis of the final version of the basic application for ObamaCare that I began here. I’m going to look at how ObamaCare “nudges” citizens consumers into “opting” to renew their eligibility automatically for five years, instead of fewer years, or not at all.
In the US, business freedom means the God-given right to exploit the vulnerability of the public. The example slouching into view is more corporate control over the practice of medicine. And based on the previews, it will make the horrors falsely attributed to socialized medicine look pale.
Read more...By lambert strether of Corrente. Originally published at Corrente.
It looks like young Ezra (and, to be fair, everybody else) missed a major policy change in Obama’s shift to the new, shorter (for individuals*), final version of the basic application for ObamaCare.** As it turns out, the issue (or at least one of the issues; gawd knows what other time bombs are buried in the thing) wasn’t only the length and complexity of the form, though that was and is bad enough; the issue is the actual content of the form. Here’s what I’m talking about. It’s right in plain sight. I’m using a screen dump of the new, shorter, finalized form from Ezra’s article:
Read more...By lambert strether of Corrente.
Here’s another color-coded annotation of an Obama transcript (via Kaiser), this one from his news conference right after Senator Max Baucus warned that ObamaCare would be “a huge train wreck”. The contrast between Obama working from a prepared text (Inaugural, 2013; Hamilton Project, 2006) and Obama improvising at the podium is quite remarkable; we see no intricate verbal patterning at all.
Whereas the prepared texts are bright with color coding, Obama’s health care presser — and I know this will come as a shock to you — codes as equivocation (with one neoliberal code word, “market,” a little nonsense, and few lies). No secular religion or flights of populism whatever. Nevertheless, for all its banality and woodenness, the presser contains some remarkable passages.
Read more...Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Baltimore who advocates for a national single payer health system, Medicare for all, and Kevin Zeese, co-director of It’s Our Economy, an organization that advocates for democratizing the economy. Originally published at Real News Network.
Both Zeese and Flowers are long-time activists; I remember when Dr. Flowers got herself arrested in Max “Train Wreck” Baucus’s Senate hearing room because he’d scheduled no testimony from single payer advocates; and here they both say some things on health insurance and ObamaCare that are new to me.
Read more...During the protracted Congressional fight over the Affordable Care Act, its supporters kept stressing the importance of extending coverage to tens of millions of uninsured. But some observers, including your humble blogger, warned that having overpriced insurance that didn’t cover much was a headfake, not real progress.
Physicians for a National Health Care Program has gotten access to an editorial approved for publication next week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine titled Life or Debt. It which takes aim at the lousy job Obamacare does for the group it was billed as benefitting, the un- and underinsured.
Read more...You cannot make this stuff up.
Read more...Yesterday, we featured an important article by Noam Scheiber on how Obama insiders cash out on their connections once they leave the fold. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, we read of the Congressional version in terms of how a tip by a lobbyist (and former Congressional aide) connected to an investment research firm led to a Congressional decision being leaked to investors before it was announced officially.
Read more...I’ve taken off and on to writing about devolution, which is when the application of new technology winds up not producing net gains, but at best, questionable tradeoffs, and at worst, net negatives. The stealthy “technology” that has been applied across large businesses around the world is the relentless pursuit of efficiency, which too often takes the form of simple-minded cost cutting.
Read more...Over the past week, both houses of the Florida legislature have rejected the Medicaid expansion program endorsed by Governor Rick Scott. You may recall the huzzahs from the progressive world when Scott, a self-possessed anti-Obamacare warrior, decided to accept the Medicaid expansion. What didn’t get reported as much is that Scott’s announcement coincided with the go-ahead from the Administration for Florida to fully privatize their Medicaid system.
So what was up with the Legislature’s rejection? Tea Party politics? Some unlikely show of principle against crony capitalism and corporate welfare?
No. They just want a different kind of privatization.
Read more...At the end of 2011, Steve Waldman wrote:
Read more...Aiee! CNS News found this tidbit (hat tip furzy mouse), contained in IRS final regulations published on January 31. Now admittedly these are examples for the purposes of illustrating how to make various calculations under the new regulations, but the assumptions are pretty clear.
Read more...Now some new fodder for the gun-control debate that the horrid events in Connecticut suddenly stirred into a frenzy, though it had been snoozing through the daily drumbeat of murders in Oakland, CA, a few miles across the Bay from me, or in Richmond to the north, or really in any other city. The fodder is inconvenient, however. For both sides of the debate.
Read more...Econ4, which is a group of heterodox economists, has produced a series of videos for laypeople on major political/economic policy issues. Their latest release is on healthcare, or more accurately, our broken healthcare system.
Read more...