Why Are Some People More Authentic Than Others?

Yesterday, 6 protesters were arrested outside UnitedHealth Group headquarters in Minneapolis for blocking the entrance and refusing to leave during a demonstration. Here's some video of the arrests:


Watch Six Arrested For Stopping UnitedHealth "Business-As-Usual" in News  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Dawn Smith, the brain tumor victim who's struggles to get CIGNA to cover her treatments have become national news, is headed to the headquarters of CIGNA CEO Ed Hanway in Philadelphia, to get some answers on why she was denied coverage. She is live-blogging the trip and has some video on her site as well.

Stacie Ritter is also headed to confront Ed Hanway at his mansion:



Health Care For America Now has transformed the main homepages of UnitedHealth, CIGNA and WellPoint into virtual crime scenes, and they are mobilizing people to visit the headquarters of all these corporate bad actors with yellow police tape and declare them actual crime scenes. There are dozens of events in over 60 cities scheduled.

It is true that these events, scattered throughout the country, have been organized by health care advocacy groups. Of course, throughout the month of August, corporate front groups organized around town hall meetings, busing in folks from out of town and preparing them with talking points and rules to disrupt the events. Yet, in the eyes of the traditional media, only one of these two actions are seen as authentic:

For several months, HCAN—a national coalition of religious groups, community organizations, unions, senior citizen groups, health care professionals, and consumer advocates—has been organizing polite demonstrations, rallies, and public forums, trying to put faces on an industry that has spent multiple millions of dollars lobbying against reform, while angry protests at town meetings swelled August’s big national story. On Sept. 22, HCAN sponsored about 150 demonstrations at various insurance company headquarters around the country. The Los Angeles Times did not bother to report about the several hundred demonstrators at WellPoint’s California subsidiary office, located a few blocks from the newspaper’s office. Nor did The Philadelphia Inquirer note those who descended that day on CIGNA, nor The New York Times those outside UnitedHealth in midtown Manhattan.

The HCAN rallies did attract print and broadcast coverage in dozens of cities, but most reporters treated them as isolated local events rather than components of a nationally coordinated protest (its slogan, “Big Insurance: Sick of It”) and a burgeoning grassroots movement [...]

With Congress debating extensive health care reform, and companies like CIGNA, WellPoint, and UnitedHealth major protagonists, the organizers supposed that their protests would dramatize the exorbitant profits of the insurance industry and the imposing compensation they pay top executives (UnitedHealth’s Hemsley made $57,000 per day last year) while millions of Americans go without insurance or bankrupt themselves with medical bills.

HCAN was mistaken.

“At a certain point,” Indianapolis Star senior editor Jenny Green told us, the demonstrators are “not adding to the debate. They’re just one side saying exactly what you’d expect them to say.”

Her colleague, Greg Weaver, the Star’s deputy public service editor for business, maintained that the raucous town meetings of August, dominated by conservative activists shouting down Democratic Congressmembers, were newsworthy because they “are more of a public forum where you have many sides of the debate, whereas at the [HCAN] protest [at WellPoint CEO Bray’s house] you have only one side of the debate.”

“I did not think the protest at [Cigna CEO] Hanway’s house was news,” Philadelphia Inquirer business reporter Jane Von Bergen told us. “It was a staged event. It wasn’t real news. I avoid them. I can’t stand them. They don’t add anything. They don’t teach anything. If they go to his house, we don’t learn anything more about the health care debate.” The protest was “too manufactured,” said Von Bergen. “Just a bunch of people going blah-blah-blah.”

By contrast, said Von Bergen, who covered the rowdy town meeting in August where right-wing activists confronted Sen. Arlen Specter, the news value of that event was “readily apparent.” “It involved public figures”—members of Congress. So political reporters picked up the story.

Isn’t Hanway a public figure? we asked. He’s well known in the business community, she said, but not among the general public—a condition that HCAN is trying to change, but can’t do if the media won’t cover their events.

This is a revealing set of quotes, showing the true orientation of corporate-run media. They are willing to blind themselves to the corporate front groups who organize town hall meetings, but call demonstrations of insurance companies "staged events." This is not the work of a neutral arbiter in the debate; it looks more like one class is being protected while the other is being savaged.

I don't know what the value of street protests are in the digital age. But I certainly know they have little value if they go unreported. Apparently such protests can get coverage, but only if they feature people with tea bags attached to their hats and guns in their side holsters.

We Made Him Do It

I agree with most everyone that it's good to have this out there:

Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.

But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.

Among those regularly in the meetings are Obama's top health care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, aides to Reid, and Senate finance and health committee staff, both of which developed health care bills.

At the same time, Obama has been reaching out personally to rank-and-file Senate Democrats, telephoning more than a dozen lawmakers in the last week to press the case for action.

If the "left of the left" didn't agitate and activate folks throughout the debate, this story wouldn't exist. And neither would the public option. The White House is now trying to save face by getting something they can call the public option into the bill. They cannot not have it, at this point. The pressure has been ratcheted up too high.

So there will be a public option in there, I'm convinced of that now. The question is what will it look like? Chuck Schumer seems to be saying that Tom Carper's state-based network would maybe be the answer. That's really no worse than Schumer's level-playing field version. None of them will have the scale and scope to really compete with insurance companies. But all of them can be expandable. And that's what's important at this point.

It took several months of banging on these politicians just to get a weak version of a public option in a position to possibly succeed. Meanwhile some conservative can just say the word "ACORN" and get their federal funding revoked. There's a definite imbalance there. But progressive power is at least imaginable, and hopefully when this passes and the world doesn't go up in flames, it will get easier.

Sometimes We Win One

In a post at Brave New Films' blog about closing in on the insurance industry, I mentioned the case of Dawn Smith, a MoveOn member and CIGNA who suffers from a treatable brain tumor. She spent two years being denied treatment for her tumor, and has seen her premium costs rise consistently since being diagnosed, and then, CIGNA raised her medication a whopping 10,000%. Dawn wrote a letter to CIGNA's Chief Medical Officer asking how they could do this:

Dr. Kang:

As you probably know, your company has denied me needed care for two years while I suffer from a debilitating but treatable brain tumor. I pay my $753.47 premiums. I follow the proper procedures. But CIGNA refuses to give me the care I need.

Instead, you keep increasing my prices. First my premiums rose by hundreds of dollars, and now my prescription costs are going up by more than 10,000%.

What makes you think you can treat sick people this way? When will you stop doing this to me and the thousands of people like me who are suffering? And if you solve this latest problem, how do I know you won't do this to me again next week--that you're actually changing your ways and not just trying to make your PR problem disappear?

Please answer these questions. I need to know, for the sake of my health and my life. Many others have signed this letter too, to support me and make sure I get answers.

Respectfully,
Dawn Smith

MoveOn asked people to join Dawn in signing the letter, and over 100,000 did.

In the comments to the post asking people to co-sign Dawn Smith's letter, a representative from CIGNA responded in the comments:

CIGNA has spoken with Ms. Smith and successfully resolved the issue pertaining to this matter. We originally filled the prescription as prescribed by Ms. Smith’s doctor.

CIGNA learned through a third party political organization that Ms. Smith’s prescription mistakenly did not specify “brand name needed”. We have been in contact with both Ms. Smith and her physician and have corrected the inaccuracy. Customer service and satisfaction is important to us, we remain committed to working with our customers and physicians to ensure they receive the highest level of service.

Without that third party political organization - MoveOn - raising the profile of Dawn's case, there is probably no chance CIGNA would have responded so swiftly. But there's more to do. CIGNA may have agreed to lower the drug costs, and allowed various tests to go forward, but she is not giving up the fight. She wants answers about why she was denied treatment for two years, and why she and so many others have to suffer because CIGNA wants to maximize their profits. Dawn talked about her story in this video, and how it's not unique, but sadly the norm for a rapacious insurance industry that happily takes premium cash but resists giving it out in health care costs.



You can help Dawn by adding your name to a statement of support for her that will be delivered to CIGNA CEO Edward Hanway.

Fighting the insurance industry is a game of inches, but a collection of voices can make a difference. With some help from Congress, we can move toward a system of health care that doesn't involve ganging up on the insurance industry to force them to do the right thing.

Closing In On The Insurance Industry

Lots of groups are taking action against the insurance industry and their attempts to get a forced market for themselves and increase their profits at the expense of their customers.

Health Care For America Now has a new ad spotlighting Stephen Helmsley, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, and his $57,000-an-hour lifestyle, contrasted against the thousands of families who have experienced a medical bankruptcy:



In connection with that, SEIU is encouraging supporters to take out Craigslist ads seeking to rent a room in an insurance company CEO mansion. They have the Craigslist sites for Philadelphia (CIGNA's Edward Hamway), Minneapolis (UnitedHealth's Stephen Helmsley) and Indianapolis (WellPoint's Angela Braly), and sample "room for rent" ads to work from. A sample:

Bankrupt Mother of Two, Seeking Room @ Insurance CEO Mansion

I'’m seeking a room to rent in Cigna CEO Ed Hanway’s $13.6 million dollar mansion. (We'’ll take a room in one of his three beach homes, too.) My family would be very quiet and courteous housemates, and given the size of Ed's mansion, he won't even hear us! I'll be bringing along my two twin girls, both of whom were diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. CIGNA is refusing to pay for the human growth hormone they need to grow properly - and the out-of-pocket expenses for this treatment are…

This is the Craigslist ad of Stacie Ritter of Philadelphia, who is literally holding a protest outside Ed Hamway's home as we speak, standing outside until she gets the care she needs from CIGNA.

MoveOn member Dawn Smith is faced with a similar struggle from CIGNA. They raised her prescription drug costs for her treatable brain tumor by 10,000%. She is writing to CIGNA to seek answers, and you can sign her letter.

What makes you think you can treat sick people this way? When will you stop doing this to me and the thousands of people like me who are suffering? And if you solve this latest problem, how do I know you won't do this to me again next week--that you're actually changing your ways and not just trying to make your PR problem disappear?

Please answer these questions. I need to know, for the sake of my health and my life. Many others have signed this letter too, to support me and make sure I get answers.

The truth is starting to leak out. Even the traditional media is covering stories about insurers denying coverage by calling a broken wrist a pre-existing condition. This is an industry that is doing whatever it can to maximize their profits, even though they know a public option wouldn't bankrupt them. The more people understand how the industry works, the easier it will be to get a health bill that works for all of us.

Bass On Activism And The Legislature

This Los Angeles magazine interview with Karen Bass is really illuminating about her life and her early activism, which she says started in middle school during the civil rights movement. Bass, a student organizer, antiwar activist and advocate for the poor in South LA, has a deep connection to the grassroots world outside Sacramento. And yet she is boxed in by circumstance and the minority rule in California to do things that directly conflict with her personal interests. This is a fascinating passage:

Why did you start the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment in South L.A.?
In the ’80s, crack cocaine took off as an epidemic, and I became obsessed by it. It was the first time that a drug impacted across class lines in the African American community, and it was also the first time in history a drug trend impacted both genders equally. It was really beginning to reshape the landscape in the inner city. I wanted to find a way to address the drug problem that did not involve massive incarceration—that could get at the root causes—and at the same time I wanted to build an organization that would help create, recruit, and train a next generation of activists. We’ve been around for 19 years.

Does the coalition show up at your office to protest what you’re doing in the legislature?
Absolutely. They’re organizing a protest right now. They are nice enough to call me up and tell me when they’re going to be protesting.

Would you be out there with them if the job didn’t preclude it?
No question. One thing that’s a little funny, if you don’t mind me going off the record—OK, I’ll say it on the record. I would have been protesting, but even when I was making these decisions, I was still in contact with the groups that protest to tell them to continue, because I understand better than ever how important those protests are. So it is quite interesting to be in a position like this.

There's a very good reason why Bass' current position feels unnatural, beyond just the inside v. outside dynamic. It's because she thought she was going from a position of weakness, as an outside activist, to a position of strength, as a legislative leader. However, the truth was the opposite. At least as an activist she was free to advocate and maybe make substantive gains. As a leader in this legislature, she cannot. By rule. Because the minority holds sway.

Anyway, I found it to be a very interesting article.

Baucus Deep-Sixes The Gang Of Six?

Yesterday the White House basically shut down the Gang of Six talks, when Robert Gibbs said that Mike Enzi's comments over the weekend showed that he had "walked away from the table." In truth, they probably knew this for weeks, and were just looking for an excuse to end things. Now Max Baucus is largely saying the same thing, that this months-long process has been something of a charade, and that reform will happen with or without the GOP.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana says a health care overhaul will happen this year even if Republicans back out of bipartisan talks under growing public pressure and that the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy could help hold together a compromise deal [...]

"I think the chances are still good," Baucus told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "I talked to them, and they all want to do health care reform. But the sad part is a lot politics have crept in. They are being told by the Republican Party not to participate."

If it falls apart, Democrats will have to turn to the "nuclear option" — forcing through an inferior bill through a process that only requires 51 votes instead of 60, Baucus said.

Using budget reconciliation is not a "nuclear option," it's been used dozens of times in the past, including to achieve Republican tax cuts and other goals. That's just the AP accepting Republican frames.

But overall, the content here is a good sign. While Baucus still believes that a bipartisan bill would be superior to something pushed with a majority - I don't know why he thinks that, though I have some theories - he acknowledges that something must pass and he cannot wait forever. Indeed, as the Republicans have basically vowed to derail any reform bill, there is no such thing as the "superior" bipartisan option. So we're looking to reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Mark Begich kinda sorta supported the public option yesterday, meaning we're that much closer to the necessary votes in the Senate. There are issues with using the reconciliation process, which I'll get into in a later post.

The bipartisan circle jerk is falling apart. More lawmakers are signing on to the public option. Health care events are ramping up throughout the country.

I wouldn't say the tide is turning, but there are slightly better signs.

Lower Your Sights

Paul Starr tells us all to give up on the public option. Paul may be very smart and right on the merits, but he fails to understand the political contours of the debate.

Because the public option has stood no realistic chance of being enacted in the form it was conceived, its main value all along this year has been as a bargaining chip. The proposal will now have served a valuable political purpose if, by sacrificing it, the White House is able to provide enough cover to Democratic senators from red states to get a bill out of the Senate Finance Committee, through the upper chamber, and into conference with the House.

The Republicans have focused their opposition on the bugaboo of "government-run health care." By jettisoning the public plan, swing Democratic senators can tell their constituents that they prevented a government takeover. This argument will not sway die-hard right-wing voters, but it may suffice for many others and thereby help give those senators confidence they can vote for the bill.

Some liberal members of Congress are still insisting the public option must be part of health reform. They should continue to say so -- their protests may make the ultimate concession all the more valuable. But if any of them actually do vote against the final bill and prevent it from passing because it fails to offer a public option, they will help to ruin the best chance in years to put health care on a path toward reform. And they will do severe damage to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Um, it hasn't swung one Republican, who keep talking about "Trojan horses." This is why the leadership has now resorted to talking about splitting the bill.

Furthermore, this idea that liberals are pawns in Paul Starr's Great Game just will not sit will with the only people out there fighting for this bill. As we saw in polling yesterday, support for reform collapses without a public option. That's the reality of the situation, folks, and to try and decouple the public option now will just remove all the energy from the fight, all the support, leaving the White House in the unenviable position of trying to pass something without any public engagement on their side. The legislation is shaky enough as it is, before cutting all the public support off at the knees. That would be suicide for the bill.

Max Baucus has been saying that the public option is a bargaining chip to get insurers to embrace other reforms since March. There's no question that he and the White House saw it that way. But we're now in August, and support is collapsing, and the only thing holding this bill together are progressives, who don't really want to be humiliated anymore. Especially when we know that offering an individual mandate without a viable public insurance option would be political suicide.

Keeping in mind that this anonymously sourced report could be total bunk, it's worth pointing out that axeing the public option and requiring individuals to purchase coverage under a private health insurance plan would be a horrible political miscalculation. If you think we're having problems selling health care reform now, just wait until we try to explain why all adults under 65 will be required to purchase health insurance from the private sector with no public option.

Oh, you're not interested in making that argument? I didn't think so.

When coupled with a public option (or the sort of rigorous regulatory regime which isn't under consideration), a mandate achieves universal coverage and cures the free-rider problem. But without the public option, the private sector will have a monopoly on a product the public is required to buy, and over the long-run you'll almost certainly see premiums skyrocket and quality of care plummet.

Progressives don't support a public option because they're four year-olds and they reflexively support anything conservatives oppose. They support it because they want to see an end to the private insurance monopoly that's put the squeeze on them for decades. And no, the bill as designed currently wouldn't do that to the degree it must to reverse incentives, because it firewalls out those who get coverage from their employers; but these kinds of things have the tendency to evolve over time, and it's crucial that it's put into place now. Without doing so, Democrats are once again putting themselves at risk with losing a generation.

But on a political level, the left has been betrayed over and over again on the things that matter to us the most. The village is pleased, I'm sure. But the Democratic party only needs to look back eight short years to see just how destructive it is to constantly tell their left flank to go fuck themselves.

In 2000, I recall standing in line to see Al Gore speak here in LA and I was inundated by a bunch of young, impressionable lefties, inspired by the globalisation movement and Ralph Nader's message. We sparred for some time, me telling them how third parties don't work, and them having none of it. They had no political experience except what they saw as a betrayal of liberalism and they found Nader's analysis of the two parties as being in bed with corporate interests extremely convincing. And it was very hard to argue that point, although I did try valiently, knowing as I did that while both parties were corporate whores, the Republican Party, being insane, wanted to actually kill large numbers of people in foreign countries, put the church in everyone's bedroom and give everybody's money directly to the wealthiest people in the nation. But I didn't convince any of them. And we know the result.

At the time nobody believed that an incumbent Vice President in a roaring economy would have a race so close that the Republicans could steal it. But we know differently now don't we? And you would think that the Democratic establishment would also know that because of that, it may not be a good idea to alienate the left to the point where they become apathetic or even well... you know. It can happen. It did happen. Why the Democrats persist in believing that it can't happen again is beyond me. Perhaps they internalized all the villager CW about Al Gore being a bad candidate, but the fact remains that if a slice of the left hadn't been so disgusted by the New Democratic, mushy centrism of the Clinton years, he would have won.

Obama mobilized a whole lot of young people who have great expectations and disappointing them could lead to all sorts of unpleasant results. Success is about more than simply buying off some congressional liberals or pleasing the village. It's worth remembering that a third party run from the left is what created the conditions for eight long years of Republican governance that pretty much wrecked this country.

And that's where we're at right now. Obama can pretend Chuck Grassley is acting in good faith and renounce the public option in the name of bipartisanship (that's a really brilliant move by Grassley, by the way, he's playing in the big leagues), or he can support the people who elected him and believed in his message of change. I think those 60-odd million are more important than Sen. Grassley's feelings, but what do I know, I don't live in Washington.

I do know this: alienating your key supporters right when they're needed the most is a recipe for disaster.

The Guns Of August

Now that Mad Max Baucus has dropped his pile of dung into the health care debate, it's an open question whether allowing the August recess to happen may be the only hope for the bill at all. The story of conservatives bird-dogging their representatives and striking the fear of God into them so that they never think about passing health care reform again is only one side of the story. Sure, the RNC will spend money on the air in certain Congressional districts, but so will the DNC, and key allies like MoveOn and Americans United for Change. And the ground efforts by teabaggers and right-wing front groups can certainly be matched throughout the country by heavy hitters like OFA. Robert Reich may be despondent but this could be the part where the game gets fun. However, the principles we're fighting for need to be delineated, and that's where things might break down. Calling for vague "reform" will get you vague reform, and also probably health insurance choices that are benefit-poor, unaffordable and too few in number. Everyone's idiosyncratic, but I think that Reich's options are a decent place to start:

First, the House must enact a bill before August recess even if the Senate is unable to -- and the House bill should include the four key elements that have already emerged from House committees: (1) a public plan option, (2) a mandate on all but the smallest employers to provide their employees with health insurance or else pay a tax or fee (so-called "pay or play"), (3) a requirement that every individual and family buy health insurance, coupled with subsidies for families up to 300 or 400 times the poverty level in order to make sure it's affordable to them; and (4) a small surtax on the top 1 percent of earners or families to help pay for this subsidy ("tax the wealthy so all Americans can stay healthy.")

If a tax on insurance company policies (which would really just incentivize them to offer less expensive ones, getting the federal government off the hook for the giant employer deduction) sells easier and raises as much money as a surtax on the wealthy, so be it. I think America is worth paying for, but YMMV, and you have to actually make the argument about progressive taxation to lay the groundwork. The public plan option, IMO, must be available to as many people as possible by breaking the firewall and allowing people with employer coverage to opt into it. It also needs a provider network. And the subsidies have to be at 400% FPL on a sliding scale.

The trouble is that nobody's working off the same script. What's most likely to happen, if successful, is that Congresscritters become terrified at the prospect of passing nothing, but pass something inadequate. That could have very negative consequences, or actually positive ones, considering there's four years until full implementation to rework what's bad and make it good.

Why Postponing Health Care Hurts Climate Change

Another factor to breaking for a three-week recess before finishing work on the health care bill is that it pushes everything back in the queue. There are serious efforts to arrive at legislation on financial regulation, as well as the Senate's version of a climate and energy bill already passed by the House, that now necessarily get moved aside. And in the meantime, energy and activist attention goes away from those priorities. It gives know-nothings like George Will more time to sow doubt and throw up meaningless statistics to make verifiably false claims about the condition of the planet. Even people who are on the side of doing something about climate change have contributed to this by raising unfounded fears about speculation in the cap and trade market and the dangers of Wall Street involvement (simply put, there are mechanisms to ban derivatives in Waxman-Markey, and the survival of the planet outranks the desire to deny profit to those trading carbon). It gives lobbyists more time to marshal their forces against anything but the status quo. And unlike with health care, where the progressive movement has focused for some time, on climate change the denialists are much further along in their activism, and delay actually will sap the fortitude of lawmakers.

The opposition to Waxman-Markey did a good job with phone calls to House members. They at least matched the calls that enviros and progressives delivered — though I’m told an analysis shows that most of their calls were out-of-state, while most of ours were in state. Still, that’s one reason we didn’t get more votes.

The climate destroyers are keeping up their attack on vulnerable House members — even if it means eating their own (see “Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy”).

The good news is that The Hill reports, “A coalition of labor, environmental and veterans groups is spending serious money to make sure Democrats who supported the cap-and-trade legislation have political cover.” Very important stuff, for sure — after all, the House is going to have to vote again on some House-Senate conference version of this bill in early 2010 assuming the Senate acts.

But we should be equaling, if not beating, calls to key senators right now. Heck, I’m told that Senators who aren’t even really swing votes are getting more than 100 calls a day opposing climate action. And those matter too, in terms of how even Senators on our side gauge public sentiment and how much they are willing to fight for the strongest possible bill.

That has a cumulative effect, even if members of the Senate want to pass good legislation. And hanging House members out to dry who voted for Waxman-Markey with nothing to show for it will damage them in 2010. Right now, the Senate is engaged in a zero-sum game, and at the end of the year, they might welcome having those three weeks back when they look at what they failed to produce.

Should CA Progressives Challenge Members To Vote Against The Budget?

What I'm hearing from grassroots progressives in this state is basically unadulterated anger at the craptacular budget deal passed. If they're not out in the streets they're calling representatives and finding every opportunity to make themselves known. Karen Bass posted a statement on her Facebook page about the budget deal and it has been hammered by critics. Some negative comments have been deleted. I'm getting practically an email a minute from some progressive group or another talking about stopping this budget.

I think what we have here is, to analogize, a union shop steward bargaining without the support of its rank and file. Whether that will matter to the legislators who vote on this on Thursday is unclear. But if you took the pulse of the activist community, they would argue for one of three things:

(1) send the leadership back to the negotiating table with the mandate that this deal isn't good enough.
(2) send new leadership back to enforce that message, fire Steinberg and Bass
(3) only agree to a deal if Republicans ensure every one of their members will vote for it, so they can own the policy

I don't want to really speculate on what will happen. But I can pretty confidently say that the movement which has become engaged over this budget fight will not be likely to shut up if the Democratic rank-and-file goes along willingly with the leadership and votes this budget into law. They will want to fight and it will probably be those same rank-and-file lawmakers that bear the brunt of it, perhaps even with primary challenges.

As I've said repeatedly, the current structure of government in the state is designed to produce bad outcomes. We can get mad about it, we can mourn the real suffering this will extend throughout the poor and middle class, or we can organize. And the desired end state, IMO, is not just to get a marginally better near-term budget, with maybe an extra billion for an oil severance tax here, or a reduction of borrowing to local governments there, but to get a far better structure inside of which to run government responsibly. I don't think that can possibly end with a fight on this budget, though it may begin with it. Because at some point, progressives do need to reject being taken for granted.

Anyway, thought I'd open it for discussion.

...here's Dave Johnson arguing for option #3, which I think is among the best practices. We have this assumption that any deal must be voted on by all Democrats, with just enough Republicans for passage slinking along. That's not etched in stone.

In addition, let me remind everyone that this budget does NOT require a 2/3 vote. The budget has already been passed; revising it requires only a majority. However, that means it would take effect after 90 days, and only a 2/3 vote will allow it to take effect immediately. Obviously, delaying by 90 days reduces the savings of the deal. But we're probably coming back to this soon enough anyway. And without all Republicans in support, I think you have to allow some Democrats to vote their conscience.

(In addition, budgets are voted on in various multi-bill packages, so any one vote could go down as well. That could be a consideration.)

The Role Of Grassroots Action In Policy Debates

I've seen a lot of buzzing about this story from Harold Meyerson, about the faltering of Barack Obama's online army when it comes to health care:

Organizing for America (formerly Obama for America), which maintains that list within the confines of the Democratic National Committee, has asked those 13 million Obamaites to "create a conversation within their communities," in the words of one DNC official. Specifically, the DNC has asked them to collect health insurance horror stories and put them online, to support a set of broad health-care principles, and to go door-to-door among independent voters in their neighborhood and talk to them about those principles. On June 27, some activists participated in what the DNC termed a "day of service," working in blood banks, volunteering at health clinics, raising money for medical research.

All very commendable, and about as likely to affect the outcome of the health-care deliberations as the phases of the moon. "What made the presidential campaign so potent were clear goals and a strategy that made sense to people," says Marshall Ganz, one of liberal America's foremost organizing geniuses (who led training sessions for Obama campaign staffers and volunteers last year). Such goals and strategies are hard to discern today, and the participation of Obama volunteers has declined accordingly.

Even when the battle for health care finally comes down to a single bill, the plans to activate Obama supporters are conceptually modest. "We can't target individual members of Congress," says one DNC official. "To tell people to target certain Democrats puts the party in a weird position." Not even 13 million supporters, apparently, can instill party discipline into a political culture that scarcely knows the meaning of the term.

Meyerson thinks we need a mass movement strategy to win the day on health care. Well, that can never possibly come from inside the party machinery. In a 60-vote environment, Republicans have no part in the debate. It will rise or fall based on the actions of conservative Democrats. And a DNC-based organization, as the official says, won't go after Democrats, at least not in public.

Now, Organizing for America has built a large list of health care horror stories that activists can use. And their architecture of calling and canvassing tools is more than available to anyone to start their own independent push toward particular legislators. In fact, I know that some grassroots groups have already done so, whether OFA likes it or not. And they are really in a capacity-building phase right now, and there's going to be a learning curve. Things are happening that columnists in Washington might not see.

As for the efforts by outside groups to push recalcitrant lawmakers, Meyerson thinks they are pursuing a legislative strategy and not a movement-building strategy. Well, that's not entirely true. There are health care rallies at Congressional offices tomorrow. Health Care for America Now put 10,000 people in Washington for a rally. I don't really know what he wants. Meyerson hints that single-payer advocates are actually building a movement, one I believe will endure no matter what reform bill passes, but it currently lacks critical mass.

Even if we grant Meyerson these points, I'll say this. Health care is a maddeningly complex topic. Everyone's for fixing this broken system but they have about 100 different ways to do so. If Meyerson thinks that ordinary Americans can actually impact that debate at the granular level, I'd love to see his blueprint. When elements of reform - like single-payer, like a public insurance option - have been used to stand in for reform, it has moved a couple legislative mountains. I believe in movement politics, but on health care reform that movement, unlike with "civil rights now" (the 1960s) or "We're in a Depression" (the New Deal era) there's just no bumper sticker for health care reform that's going to turn it into a mass movement. You're seeing the best digital-age equivalent of it - online organizing, grassroots ads, etc. - but it doesn't throw people into the streets.

I don't totally disagree that OFA isn't a great model, it being situated inside a party infrastructure. But I really fail to see a vision of a million people on the Washington Mall shouting "national health insurance exchanges with subsidies up to 400% of the poverty level now!" And, activism circa 2009 is different than activism circa 1963.

Fighting Back

The structure of California government makes rational solutions impossible. But the people who bear the brunt of the pain from a structure wired to drown government in the bathtub have an option. They can stand their ground and refuse to be moved.

And so it begins. As Anthony Wright is tweeting, a group of disabled activists have taken up positions in the Capitol building and are refusing to leave until the health and human services cuts are reconsidered:

Wheelchairs blocking the Governor's office for the last two hours over the budget cuts.. CHP threatens arrest, they say they are prepared...

Over 100 folks protesting cuts in the hall outside Governor Schwarzenegger's office. Gov is at Mason's having lunch... maybe Jacuzzi later?

CHP threatens not just arrest-and-release, but taking disabled protestors to county jail. They say they rather be in jail than nursing home.

Outside Gov's office... Several Dem legislators came down to talk to/cheer on the disabled protestors: Cedillo, Perez, Beall, Skinner, etc

Budget protesters call out "hold the line" when someone tries to pass. The wheelchairs effectively stop any traffic in hallway.

Bad budget boon for Blimpie's: Food arrives for protestors with disabilities, as thet settle in for the long haul in front of Gov's office...

UPDATE: The protest organizers, the "People's Day of Reckoning Coalition" (an offshoot of the IHSS Coalition) have explained their actions to the media:

Caregivers and people with disabilities are furious that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for more cuts to California's in-home support services.

About 100 protesters said they successfully blocked the entrance to the governor's office Tuesday. The People's Day of Reckoning Coalition organized the protest.

The coalition sent a letter to Schwarzenegger in June, asking him to come up with a budget solution that includes new sources of income and not just cuts to services.

"We are calling for a budget solution that is based upon shared responsibility and shared sacrifice -- not a solution that falls squarely upon on the shoulders of children, people with disabilities, elders, the chronically ill, the unemployed and the impoverished," the letter said.

The People's Day of Reckoning Coalition represents human services, health care, community improvement and educational interest....

John Campbell, a caregiver, said claims of fraud are exaggerated, calling the governor's remarks "just a bit of political theater."

The California Highway Patrol cited about a dozen protestors. They'll be back, to coin a phrase.

The long story of Governor Stogie and In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) is here. The short version is that Arnold up and decided, after months of budget negotiations, that there was massive fraud in this program (there isn't), which allows the elderly, disabled and blind to receive in-home care rather than being consigned to a nursing home, and he demanded that anti-fraud provisions immediately get adopted as part of a budget deal, adding a massive, complex policy shift 24 hours before the budget deadline. There's more about how ridiculous this all is at the link.

What's important here is that those with a stake in Governor Stogie's ruthless cuts - the people who actually feel the effects - have had enough. The structure makes decent solutions impossible, but the only way to fix that structure starts with activists like this, literally blocking the way to right-wing shock doctrine tactics.

Gary Kamiya On The California Crisis

I'm sure many political observers will laud this New York Times magazine article on California's crisis and the men and women who seek to solve it, but I found it oddly pedestrian. The profiles of the candidates reveal little of substance, and aside from displaying the salient fact that Arnold has no interest in the well-being of his constituents, I didn't see the point.

“Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.”

Overall, I saw too much focus on personality in dealing with what is essentially a problem of process.

Actually, while I didn't agree with all of it, I thought Gary Kamiya had a much smarter take, and it didn't mention Arnold Schwarzenegger or the names of any of his potential replacements more than once. The headline, "Californians are sinking themselves," doesn't seem to match the bulk of the article, which focuses on the dysfunctional governing process.

The immediate source of California's financial problems is a lethal combination of ideology and rules. It is deeply politically divided, and its governmental mechanisms are completely broken. Bay Area leftists stare at Orange County conservatives across an unbridgeable abyss; a large and potent group of anti-government libertarians faces off against an equally powerful group of pro-tax, proactive government liberals. If California, like most states, required only a simple majority to pass its budget, the disagreements between these camps could be worked out; after all, the Democrats control the Legislature. But California requires a two-thirds majority, which gives the GOP, now dominated by anti-government, anti-tax ideologues, veto power over the process. The result is deadlock.

Compounding this problem is California's notorious initiative process, which allows voters to bypass the Legislature and place initiatives directly on the ballot simply by gathering enough signatures. The initiative process was originally passed by voters in 1911 to circumvent the power of the oligarchic railroad trusts by restoring direct democracy. And it still offers citizens a chance to take control of important issues. But it has gone out of control, abused by powerful interests who hire people to collect signatures and ram through bills that no ordinary citizen can be expected to comprehend. By sidelining elected officials, it achieves the worst of both worlds: It gives ordinary citizens, who lack requisite expertise, institutional memory and accountability, too much power, and then forces legislators to clean up their mess -- except that because of ideological gridlock and the supermajority requirement, they can't.

Kamiya looks at the three strikes law and in particular Prop. 13, which he views as the ultimate manifestation of the Two Santa Claus theory, that California can have endlessly lower taxes with endlessly more social services.

This was, in effect, a mass outbreak of cognitive dissonance, an up-yours delivered to government with the public's left hand, while its right hand reached out for Sacramento's largesse. Now, 31 years later, the bill has finally come due. There is no free lunch. If you want good roads, parks, decent schools (California's schools, once the best in the nation, are now among the worst) and adequate social services, you have to pay for them.

Out of this, Kamiya points his finger at the people who voted in Prop. 13 and failed to modify it over the ensuing 31 years, who are "self-centered" and have "not decided what it thinks about the New Deal, or government itself." They need to "grow up," Kamiya says.

I think this ignores the fact that Californians have traditionally been offered precious few choices to rectify the broken system. The Democratic Party essentially has made a pact with themselves to nibble around the edges for three decades instead of confronting the great unmentionable crisis of governance. People see the dysfunctional politics play out year after year and become rightfully disaffected with the system. And they are never told anything from anyone in a position of power to counteract the Two Santa Claus theory, and so they necessarily believe it. I don't blame citizens for responding to their leaders. The problem lies with the leadership itself, or more to the point the lack thereof.

I was 5 years old and on the other coast of the country when Prop. 13 was passed, and I'm not about to bear the brunt of the blame for that decision. I would blame myself if I continued to live with the failure of the political leadership to confront the root causes. But Californians are starting to use movement politics to go around the leadership and force the necessary solutions. The sheer enormity of the problem and the size of the state makes this a difficult option. But the alternative, to acquiesce and wait patiently for the leadership to figure things out, is unthinkable.

Change Happens From The Bottom Up

Ceci Connolly overheard the President telling Senate leaders that he would prefer the progressive hits on Democratic members of Congress to stop.

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

I'm wondering how Connolly knows this much about what appears to be a closed strategy call. My assumption is she knows what the White House wants her to know. So going on the assumption that it's true, I'll say this:

Of course this is what Obama would tell Democratic leaders in the Senate about attacks on Democrats in the Senate. He doesn't want those attacks to have his direct sanction, these are lawmakers he has to work with now and in the future, and so it makes perfect sense for him to play good cop. He can take the pose of just wishing these attacks would stop, without intervening directly in the activities of outside organizations (which would be illegal, I believe). It's a classic Obama middle path.

At the same time, this is also nothing new. He essentially drained progressive groups of funding during the 2008 campaign. So that past set of actions is part of this statement, too. It's one thing to make the idle "I wish they'd jump in with the home team for the big victory" comment, it's another to make it secure in the knowledge that he could move it from "I wish" to "do this or some of your biggest fundraisers might get a phone call."

Obama wants to control message and have all these outside groups pushing alongside him for "reform." But his vision of that reform includes a broad set of principles and a glaring lack of specifics. The Presidential candidate who said "change begins from the bottom up" should be the last one as President to expect his supporters to follow him blindly.

What's more, progressive pressure has worked.

But there is no question that these hard-hitting campaigns representing breast cancer survivors and others have been successful, and they have been instrumental in backing Ben Nelson and Kay Hagan off their opposition to a public plan. The memberships of these organizations are in clear support of their efforts, and with 76% of the country in support of a public plan, the President seems to be one of the unhappy few who oppose their tactics.

I could probably find about 1,000 quotes from candidate Obama about how it's time for Americans to once again participate in their government, and how we are the change we've been waiting for, etc. You cannot empower people for months and months to take action and then try to stage-manage that action. Activism doesn't have an on/off switch.

I was actually at this event where Maxine Waters expressed admiration for the DFA ad against Mary Landrieu ("I'm going to be in New Orleans this weekend, telling everyone about it") and said, "Let me just say to all of our friends out there, that a sustained effort, directed at public officials, demanding no less than a public option, can be very successful. So go to work." I believe this work will continue, even if it makes the President uncomfortable. He didn't create this monster, but he certainly drafted off it during 2008. People want to be actively engaged in politics again. It's a shame for anyone to try and cut them out.

...as expected, progressive groups won't be stopping their ad buys anytime soon. Via email, DFA's Charles Chamberlain said that his group hasn't received any calls from the White House to pull back, nor will they be doing so, and he thinks that "this article is a very good sign that what we are doing is working. If Senators and Reps weren't afraid of us, they wouldn't be asking for us to stop."

Dianne Feinstein Would Like You To Respect Her Authoritah

California's senior Senator has heard the talk, has heard the voices of her constituents, and basically doesn't care.

"We are getting to the point if people aren't going to respond to the patience and openness of Senator Baucus, we should begin to make a different plan," said Andrew Stern, president of the 2 million-member SEIU.

Stern said his organization issued a release chastising Feinstein last week, because she should "put her foot on the gas, not the brake" on health reform.

"The gas pedal to go where?" Feinstein replied, explaining she has questions about how a broad expansion of health coverage will be paid for.

"I do not think this is helpful. It doesn't move me one whit," she said. "They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive."

What we have here is a difference of opinion over the nature of representative democracy. Are politicians elected to reflect the will of their constituents, or are they elected to provide their own enlightened opinion on public affairs and public policy? Sen. Feinstein has already given her perspective before. She acknowledged that public opinion in California was sharply against authorizing the war in Iraq, but she voted for it anyway, arguing that she knew things her constituents didn't know (namely, hundreds of lies told by the Bush Administration). On health care, she has the same perspective; we, the citizens of California, had an "accountability moment" in 2006, Feinstein was elected, and now we can all STFU as she applies her own reasoning and belief on health care and other topics.

Needless to say, I don't agree with her perspective. It sounds to me like something that a member of the House of Lords would say rather than a politician in this country. Not to mention the fact that it cuts completely against the trend of participatory democracy that has energized the Democratic side of the aisle since Howard Dean's campaign in 2003-04. Dianne Feinstein thinks your role as a citizen is to vote for her and then keep quiet for six years and she bequeaths her wisdom.

If you don't agree with her, contact her office. I'm sure her staff will file that away somewhere.

Here Comes The Cavalry On Health Care

The best part of today's press conference came when President Obama strongly defended the public plan on the policy merits, and questioned the intellectual honesty of his opponents.

OBAMA: Now, the public plan, I think, is an important tool to discipline insurance companies. What we've said is, under our proposal, let's have a system, the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do, where we call it an exchange, but you can call it a marketplace, where, essentially, you've got a whole bunch of different plans....As one of those options, for us to be able to say, here's a public option that's not profit-driven, that can keep down administrative costs, and that provides you good, quality care for a reasonable price as one of the options for you to choose, I think that makes sense.

QUESTION: Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?

OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

Now, the -- I think that there's going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly that over time they can't compete with the government just printing money, so there are going to be some I think legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape.

But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal, that defies logic, which is why I think you've seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan.

You cannot make the argument that government-run health care would cause long lines and bureaucrats in charge of health decisions and also make the argument that such an undesirable outcome would BANKRUPT the private insurance market. Either a public plan sucks and nobody will use it, or it does not suck and everybody will use it. Make up your mind.

And with that, Democrats became more energized for this fight. While Obama did not draw a line in the sand on the public plan, he offered enough support to give space to Democrats to argue forcefully for it. Sen. Reid's office released this set of talking points today that sound similar to the President:

RHETORIC: Health Care Reform Will Decrease Competition, Limit Patient Choice. Republicans want Americans to believe that reforming health care will decrease competition in the health care marketplace and limit choice. Senator Alexander: "Well, putting a government-run and subsidized plan in competition with our private health insurance plans would be like putting an elephant in a room with some mice and saying: OK, guys and gals, compete. I think we know what would happen. The elephant would win the competition and the elephant would be your only remaining choice." In fact, the opposite is true - a public option and health care exchanges will lead to more competition in the marketplace. [Congressional Record, 6/16/09]

REALITY: Reforms Will Increase Competition by Increasing Choice. Right now, competition in the health care insurance industry is lacking. "A recent American Medical Association survey found that a single private health insurance company controlled more than half the market for insurance in 16 states and a third of the market in 38 states." By creating a national health insurance exchange, private and public health plans will directly compete for business and open up the marketplace. ["Competitive Health Care," Center for American Progress, 3/25/09]

To briefly explain the concept of a health insurance exchange, and the Urban Institute does it better than I do, the government would essentially bust the trusts that monopolize local markets by creating an exchange that would provide a wider menu of options. Obviously, fostering more competition will tend to lower costs. The same with a public option, one that can potentially deliver health care more efficiently and at better cost. A good private company will figure out how to compete with that, by lowering their own administrative costs. And because strong consumer protections would be inserted into the bill, insurers would not be able to get there through rescission and other immoral means.

(Incidentally, for those who think Jake Tapper caught Obama in a "gotcha" moment by asking a hypothetical about employers who go on the public plan and then change the health care of their employees, Obama's answer to that, as Jon Cohn notes, was fine. If we do nothing, employers will be doing a whole lot of "changing employee's health care" by dropping coverage entirely out of an inability to afford it.)

I'm starting to see a lot of activism around health care reform. Democrats and advocacy groups are tearing into Dianne Feinstein for intimating on CNN over the weekend that Democrats "don't have the votes" on reform. SEIU put together an amusing video rebutting conservative scaremongering. And Firedoglake is taking a whip count for the public option in the House, with the goal of finding enough House progressives to commit to "not vote for any health care bill that does not have a strong public plan," to upset the dynamic where the Ben Nelsons of the world have their say on the legislation.

We're still going to have a lot of hurdles, like terrible media reporting on the subject, conservative scaremongering and the disinclination of Democrats to deliver for their constituents. But people are moving in the right direction now.

Paul Begala Calls Out The Media

Yesterday I wrote about the shocking video of a Congressional hearing where health insurance CEOs, having admitted to canceling customers after they turn in claims for treatment, refuse to stop doing so. I'm pleased to report that we got up to 11,644 views as of this morning, and the video is already the #30 top rated of the week in the News & Politics section of YouTube. Keep going, keep retweeting, keep using Digg and Reddit to vote it up, use the Health Care for America Now page to email it to your friends. We can get this out.

And we have an ally in Paul Begala.

It's unusual for Begala, a longtime commentator for CNN and a member of the traditional media, to excoriate his own industry so forcefully for failing to inform the public. But he does exactly that here, in writing about this specific hearing, and the relative lack of attention paid to it.

You probably have never heard of Robin Beaton, and that's what's wrong with the debate over health care reform.

Beaton, a retired nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, had health insurance -- or so she thought. She paid her premiums faithfully every month, but when she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, her health insurance company, Blue Cross, dumped her.

The insurance company said the fact that she had seen a dermatologist for acne, who mistakenly entered a notation on her chart that suggested her simple acne was a precancerous condition, allowed Blue Cross to leave her in the lurch.

Beaton testified before a House subcommittee this week. So did other Americans who thought they had insurance but got the shaft [...]

It was as dramatic as congressional testimony gets. Yet it got no airtime on the networks, nor, as far as I can tell, on cable news, although CNN.com did run a story. Time's Tumulty was all over it, as was Lisa Girion of The Lost Angeles Times. But the story did not make The New York Times.

Nor The Washington Post, which found space on the front page the morning after the hearing for a story on the cancellation of Fourth of July fireworks in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, but not a story on the cancellation of health insurance for deathly ill Americans who've paid their premiums.

I know the right wing is outraged by ABC News airing a health care town hall meeting with President Obama next week, but isn't the real outrage that such prime-time coverage is the EXCEPTION and not the RULE? Shouldn't we have lots and lots of news and information from the biggest megaphones about a domestic policy issue that faces every single American? Shouldn't everyone have access to that debate, and all the perspectives contained therein? Since when is the fact of a television network allowing an hour of coverage on the issue that means life or death to everyone in the country something to be reviled?

And that's basically Begala's complaint here. The media is failing in their job. In a way, so is the Administration, because they need to bring the spotlight to their most important domestic issue. Robert Reich argues the same thing, that Obama needs to drop as much as possible and focus like a laser on health care in order to get it done.

Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal health care. By pushing everything at once, you take the public's mind off the biggest goal, diffuse your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you're trying to take over the private sector.

You have to win this.

But I cannot let the media completely off the hook here. The story of rescission makes the health care issue personal. It exposes the mission of insurance companies, the "murder by spreadsheet" dedication to profits over people. And until their incentives are changed, until they need to compete on price and quality instead of competing on how to get out of paying for medical care, absolutely no reform can possibly work. But that requires the facts to be delivered by a media simply resistant to them.

Fortunately, we live in an age of two-way media, where citizens can force discussions into the national conversation. And that starts with you making everyone you know aware of this video exposing the agenda of the insurance industry. I recognize that it lacks a certain amount of context; I am working on a project this weekend to provide that additional context. But I think it does make its point well enough. And when you send this to friends, you can explain it even more.



Let's keep working on this. Let's go viral.

We need 10 million views of this YouTube by next week

I mentioned earlier John Dingell bringing up the hearing in the House on rescission, the practice of insurers dropping people the moment they get sick, sometimes for technical violations on their applications like misspelling their name.

I know a fair bit about rescission, because in California, it's become a major issue. Former LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has doggedly pursued those companies, like Blue Cross, who have engaged in the practice, and to date insurers have agreed to pay over $37 million dollars in fines. Another case is about to go to trial. Blue Cross encouraged this with performance bonuses for employees who found a reason to cancel coverage for the sick.

Now check out what these insurance CEOs said after being confronted with all of these examples of them denying coverage to sick people.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period [...]

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show "intentional fraud."

The answer from all three executives:

"No."

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that a public insurance plan should be a part of any overhaul because it would force private companies to treat consumers fairly or risk losing them.

"This is precisely why we need a public option," Dingell said.

Here's the YouTube of that hearing. It should have 10 million hits by the end of next week.



Here's a Splicd version of the moment where they all refuse to commit to stop rescinding people when they get sick. In the above YouTube, that comes in around 4:47.

TEN MILLION VIEWS.

Here's the Twitter message I put up about this.

Health insurance CEOs refuse to stop screwing their customers: http://splicd.com/_29CCVI1ao4/288/371 please RT! #publicoption

Email this to everyone you know. Retweet. Put it up on Facebook. Do whatever you can to get this in front of people's eyeballs. Without a public option, we give our health care future over to people who have vowed not to cover you if you're sick. Politicians can stand with people, or with these insurers.

Thanks.

...Health Care for America Now has a page up with this incredible video. You can forward an email to a friend with the video using their page.

ACTION: Get It In Writing From Boxer and Feinstein On Health Care

You may know that health care reform is in a fair bit of trouble. The defenders of the status quo in Washington, often a bipartisan lot, want to deny consumers choice, force them into a market monopolized by private insurance companies who have shown through their actions over the past several decades that they are concerned about profit and not people, and scream that we cannot afford giving all our citizens high-quality and affordable health care, while spending trillions on banks and military weapons. It's the tragedy of the bipartisan elite consensus that currently rules the roost, and not even the greatest economic crisis since the Depression has so far been able to dislodge it.

The bipartisan elite consensus that governs this country is quite simple. First, deficits and high taxes are always the basic cause of economic stress or the biggest threat facing a recovery, no matter the circumstances. (The corollary is that cutting taxes and spending are the ultimate answer to every economic challenge.) Taxes on the wealthy (excuse me "the most productive") must be kept as low as possible, the military cannot be subject to any budgetary constraint and the national security state cannot be held accountable, business and industry must always be given top priority and all other government expenditures are legislative bargaining chips regardless of their impact on the lives of average Americans. Nobody questions that consensus or even suggests that some other set of priorities might be useful from time to time.

This consensus flies in the face of known public preferences, both in this state and around the country, for a full overhaul of the broken health care system that turns lives into data points on a balance sheet.

The health policy survey of 1,207 registered voters showed that 88 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of nonpartisans and 55 percent of Republicans agree that the health care system either needs significant restructuring or should be completely rebuilt.

"There is bipartisan agreement that the health system needs some fundamental changes, and there is greater impatience that this should be done now," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll.
The poll, funded through a grant by the California Wellness Council, comes as President Barack Obama is calling for overhauling the health care system.

His insistence on a government program to compete with private insurers is infuriating some conservatives, who fear such a plan would drive insurance companies out of business. It is also drawing scorn from some liberals who want a single-payer, government-run program.

But 85 percent of respondents to the Field Poll said they support the general concept of allowing people a choice between privately run and government-run health plans.

"They're not necessarily endorsing the public plan or saying that they would choose it," DiCamillo said. "They just like having alternatives. The introduction of a public plan is supported because it would provide greater choices."

You cannot get Americans to agree with 85% consensus on whether the sky is blue. But this they understand: the system is broken, the pharmaceuticals and the insurers and the HMOs cannot be trusted, and choice to force them - through could old market economics - to compete on price and quality is deeply desirable. Later in the poll, Field finds differences on how to pay for reform, an outgrowth of the Two Santa Claus Theory. But giving people a policy they can support will certainly allow them to swallow the mechanisms for paying for it.

So at this point we need to ask our legislators if they support what 85% of Californians support - a robust public option to compete with private insurance in the health care system. Frankly this is the very least we should have, but without it, we cannot call anything coming from Washington real reform. Open Left and DFA have created a whip tool. Simply put, we need to email our Senators - and the Senate is where health care will be won or lost - to answer four specific questions about whether or not they support the public option:

Write a short note in your own words on why you support a public healthcare option:

A public healthcare option is crucial to controlling costs, the heart of the healthcare crisis.
A public healthcare option will keep private insurance honest.

Then ask your Senators these four questions:

Do you support a public healthcare option as part of reform?
Do you support a public healthcare option that is ready on day one?
Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to our government?
Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

Conclude by reminding your Senators that you are a constituent, and you expect answers to these questions in writing, via email.

Right now health care reform is reeling. We need this whip count to know where everyone stands and put pressure on our lawmakers to adopt the position of 85% of the public. Please take action today. You can see where Sens. Boxer and Feinstein stand here. This is the most important domestic policy of this generation, and we cannot wait another year.

Grassroots Progressive Action on Repairing California

It's taken the proposed destruction of practically the entire social safety net in California for progressives both inside and outside the political system to fight back. I'm actually more heartened by the work done outside it. I expect Lenny Goldberg to come up with a great alternative budget calling for tax fairness, and end to corporate welfare and a government for all the people instead of the rich. I expect Jean Ross to do the same, as well as AFSCME. They're all good proposals, but this is what they are paid to do. What I don't expect, and what I haven't seen, is a citizen's movement to rival the institutional and advocacy machinery. The Fix the California Budget Facebook page is really one of the first such grassroots pushes I've seen in recent memory.

Californians deserve real solutions to the budget deficit. Responding to our economic crisis with an all-cuts budget will only make the state's problems worse. Deep cuts to vital programs undermine our economic recovery and President Obama’s investment in economic stimulus, disproportionately harm the most vulnerable Californians, and go against our core values.

More than 70 percent of voters sat out the May 19 special election because it is the Governor and Legislature’s job to fix the budget. Polls show the defeat of the initiatives was neither an endorsement of an all-cuts approach nor a rejection of raising revenues.

Under Governor Schwarzenegger, we have suffered $23 billion in spending cuts in the current budget year alone. Additional drastic cuts will irrevocably change the state we love. Californians support and deserve a state that provides for the common good and the needs of our residents, and we need to pursue realistic revenue solutions that will protect our shared priorities. Cuts are not the only option!

Our state needs courageous leadership. We will support those who stand against an all-cuts budget, speak out for fair ways of raising revenue, and work to deliver a budget that invests in our future and protects all the people of our state. True leaders get their strength from the people they represent. We pledge to be that strength, and mobilize to support a sensible budget solution.

The specific action items are to call your lawmaker and provide that counter-weight to the internal pressure to support the all-cuts approach. They reference the majority-vote fee increase as a legitimate option that must be put before the Governor in place of the worst cuts. County Democratic Chairs and local activists are actually driving the pressure from below, rather than having solutions imposed upon them.

This represents an opportunity. It doesn't mean we win this fight - we're going to lose more than we win at first. And in a way, this is the corporate "reform" community's worst nightmare - the Bay Area Council and California Forward would rather drive the reform process themselves and keep it within their own particular boundaries. But we can build a movement of a newly-roused core group of activists committed to setting California on the right path by restoring democracy, eliminating the conservative veto and reforming the broken system. This is a first step.