Obama Picks the Wrong Fight

Disregard for a second whether or not the specific points Obama made atMonday’s press conference about potential conservative judicial activism. Disregard for a second that Obama specialized in constitutional law while teaching at the University of Chicago. And, finally, disregard for a second that a poll of judicial insiders all predicted before last week’s arguments that there was only a one-in-three chance that the individual mandate would be found unconstitutional.

Read the rest here.

Obamacare and the Black Vote

In the one high-profile case of a Black member of Congress, Artur Davis (D-AL), running for Governor, the Congressman lost – and he lost big time. One major reason: he voted against the healthcare reform bill, now the Affordable Care Act and otherwise derided (depending on how you think about it) by conservatives as “Obamacare.” And when he lost, it was in a Democratic primary, no less.

Artur Davis wanted to be governor of Alabama and correctly realized that he needed a more moderate voting record. So he publicly cast a “nay” vote against health care reform. In response, Alabama’s Black voters made a decision that they’d rather have better, more affordable health care than their own first Black governor. As a result, they turned away from him in the primary in droves and Davis’s political career was over faster than disgraced New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s.

Read the rest here.

Republican-driven lawsuits against health care reform will particularly hurt blacks

Here’s just a sampling of the sorry state of black health in America from Kaiser’s Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity & Medical Care. People living in poverty are more likely to report being in only Fair or Poor health. Regardless of education, African Americans lead the nation in infant mortality. African American men and women have highest death rate due to heart disease. African Americans even lead in death rates by breast cancer, lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Twenty-three percent of working African Americans are uninsured.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Both Sides of The Loop: April 4, 2010

Check out the Both Sides of the Loop podcast. In this edition of Both Sides of The Loop Marvin King and Lenny McAllister discuss the March employment figures, black unemployment and why Artur Davis of Alabama didn't support health care reform.

Why Artur Davis Voted Against Health Care Reform

Now that the dust is starting to settle from the historic passage of health care reform, it is time to take an in-depth look at the health care reform vote and the intriguing vote of one Congressional Black Caucus member, Artur Davis of Alabama who did not support the legislation.

I ran some simple analysis and discovered regional support for health care reform in the U.S. House looked something like this:

New England- 95 percent support
Mid-Atlantic- 68 percent support
West- 65 percent support
Midwest- 51 percent support
Mountain West- 50 percent support
South- 31 percent support
Plains- 26 percent support

Read the rest at The Loop.

Georgia AG Faces Impeachment Threat for Doing His Job

Republicans threaten Georgia AG with impeachment after he refuses to file politically motivated lawsuit to kill Federal health care legislation.

The Fight For Health Care Reform Is Not Over Yet - U.S. Supreme Court Likely To Have Last Word

The U.S. Supreme Court will likely have the last word on the Health Care Reform legislation that was signed by President Obama today. John Roberts, along with Scalia and Alito are salivating right now.... especially Roberts. He loves being in this position at this moment. At the very least for Roberts, it's a chance to make Obama sweat. He has made it no secret that he is not fond of the Obama Administration, particularly after the spat about comments made by Obama at the last State of the Union address, criticizing the court for its ruling on campaign finance regulations in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Uncle Clarence probably can't wait either.

The lawsuits by State Attorneys General from across the Country (most of them Republican) will drag on for months. Writing in the Washington Post, Georgetown University constitutional law professor Randy E. Barnett breaks down the potential areas for legal challenges and the potential for their success. He concludes the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t likely to overturn the legislation - however, he admits that it is not out of the realm of possibility.

The courts won't be the only avenue that Republicans will use to try to kill the legislation. They will also try to interfere with the passage of reconciliation "fixes". If they can't find any traction there, they plan to continue to scare and misinform voters about the legislation. Yesterday, on one of St. Louis' local Right wing radio stations, callers were suggesting a move towards violence (with the host playing right along). On NPR last night... angry callers, brainwashed completely by the propaganda, talked about going to prison and the death camps they may have to endure because of the legislation (Ohhh yes, the Right has brainwashed the Hell out of Americans. You can do anything when you control media). Listen to the March, 22nd discussion on Healthcare from NPR's On Point. The GOP and Right wing media have been extremely effective at ginning up fear and using propaganda to turn public opinion clearly against Health Care Reform.

This will be a serious problem for Obama and the Democrats. They act as if this is a real victory... and it may be. But it may be an even bigger victory for Republicans who still control the debate... in fact, they control public opinion. Progressives have failed monumentally in the information war.... and it is showing. They have time to debunk the lies and recover somewhat.... but I don't think they have a clue regarding how to do it, and I don't think there is even a willingness on their part to do it, and because of that they will pay dearly in November.

The Democrats still have the problem of the economy, which was destroyed by Bush & Co. The public....real folks down on the ground... are concerned more about the economy and jobs than anything else. This is why Obama and the Democrats should have been more focused on jobs over the past year. Their interest in jobs and the economy have been luke warm...and people have noticed. This is why voters, misguided and vulnerable to Republican propaganda, will choose Republicans this Fall.... the same Party that is largely responsible for getting the Country into its current economic mess.

The Republicans will now run their campaigns using Health Care as their rallying cry. They will run on repealing it....and stupid voters (the targets of Right wing propaganda/lies) will respond by punishing Democrats. Of course Republicans won't be able to repeal it as long as the Democrats are in the White House. But a President Mitt Romney (or some other Republican President) is likely to sign legislation repealing it in 2013, before the bill has a chance to kick in completely. Stupid American voters are likely to give us a Republican House and Republican Senate (possibly this year) and a Republican in the White House in the 2012 elections.

Could they do this realistically? I don't think so.... but it all depends on how well they maintain their brainwashing. If they can continue to effectively misinform the public and continue to win the argument.... then a repeal is a possibility. Republicans have undisputed control over information and public opinion in this Country.... despite the fact that most evidence shows that their core principles and values are losing propositions. Their theories on politics, social policy, economics, and foreign policy have been proven failures. Yet, because they control the battlefield in terms of PR and information.... they can continue to be successful. It pisses me off that Progressives seem to be unable to understand the importance of winning the information war. They don't seem to get it.... even after all of these years... after 2000, and after John Kerry in 2003-04... they still don't understand what the Hell is going on. You can have the best policies in the World...and you could have better programs for improving the lives of voters...but none of that matters if you can't win the information war.

So all of this celebrating might be premature.

Exact Changes You Can Expect From Health Care Reform

Devona Walker at The Loop has an excellent bullet point list of exactly what changes are in store for you due to the health care reform just passed by the House

Democrats Did The Right Thing On Health Care

Yesterday, House Democrats took their boldest, most responsible action in years by passing health care reform. The Democratic bill will expand coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans. Yes, there will be a mandate that people acquire health care coverage, but this does not constitute a government takeover. The private insurance market will actually get larger. With an enlarged customer base, premiums for pre-existing customer should not rise at nearly their current rate of increases.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Also check out my podcast discussion of health care reform with Lenny McAllister.

The Right Attacks 11 Year Old Boy and His Family, Slamming His Effort To Support Health Care Reform In Mothers Memory

But the Right found a reason to attack Marcelas Owens and his family....
Lawrence O'Donnell talks to The Nation's Chris Hayes.

From Media Matters:

Right-wing media set sights on family of 11-year-old who spoke about his mother's death at health care event:
Right-wing media have recently targeted 11-year-old Marcelas Owens and his family for attacks after he appeared at a health care reform event to speak about his mother, who reportedly died after losing her health insurance. These attacks follow a history of media conservatives attacking or mocking the uninsured, and previous attacks by right-wing media on the family of a 12-year-old who spoke in support of SCHIP.
Read on...

Health Insurance Company Targeted HIV Patients

An example of the kinds of abuses that Health Care Reform (Reorganization) is supposed to stop.

The story of Natoma Canfield was also pretty troubling. Of course I knew of these kinds of abuses.... but the scale of the corporate insanity in the Canfield story was pretty bad....even for the insurance industry. You would think that the CEO's would be embarrassed.

Health Care Re-organization Bill Headed For Vote

I think it's probably better than nothing. But it could turn out to be a flop as well. It will be a few years before we will know the verdict on the legislation.
With few federal workers to monitor and enforce the provisions in this Bill...and with insurance companies left in charge...and with them knowing that no one is guarding the hen house... I suspect the results will be a mixed bag.

But Dems have to pass it first. Pelosi is a little on the inept side...so I won't believe it until I see it. Sometimes i'm not sure if she can even count to 216. Luckily she has James Clyburn. But even if it passes this weekend... the Republicans aren't giving up. They are revealing their mafia tendencies.

Michael Moore, in his appearance on Countdown, spelled out pretty well why Progressives are not exactly jumping for joy.

Sicko - Watch Full Documentary

This documentary is always worth a second or third look. I've watched it at least twice...and being the documentary junkie that I am... I will watch it again.
It's particularly important now, because Americans should see the situation that they have decided to stay in; a choice that the corporations and corrupt, spineless politicians have basically made for them. This is why I mentioned Canada and Denmark in recent postings. Americans are so idiotic.

Race, Obama And Health Care

Researchers at Stanford and UC Irvine have demonstrated to be true what President Jimmy Carter asserted to be true: many of those opposing Obama and his health care proposals see him differently because of his race. Here are Ezra Klein's thoughts on the matter.

The study shows that when measuring implicit levels of racism, as opposed to previous (and unorthodox) measures of explicit racism, those opposing Obama and his health care panels exhibit much higher levels of implicit racism.

Analysis
While this does not prove Carter's claims (remember, correlation is not causation) it does lend credence to the not-so-farfetched notion that elements of the vitriol aimed against Obama do have race as a motivating factor. And, to think, some had the nerve to suggest Obama's election would usher in a new post-race society. Wrong. Tsk, tsk.

Public Option Stripped from Healthcare Reform Bill

I have mixed feelings about this.... It's not what most Progressives wanted to see, yet I expected something like this would happen. In order to garner enough support in the Senate, I knew the legislation would have to be watered down even more than it already had been.

The new approach would basically leave private insurance companies (yes the ones that have been gouging and defrauding the American people for all these years) in charge of healthcare at all levels. The Fox has been put in charge of guarding the Hen House. And tonight, the Fox (the insurance industry) is laughing its ass off all the way to the bank. Why? Because this is a giant corporate giveaway.... like none other. Millions of Americans will be pushed onto private insurance rolls, strengthening the bottom line for the insurance industry.

Harry Reid (one of the worst Senate Majority leaders in modern history) wants to give us the illusion that what is left is still very much a "public option".

Essentially, this plan will allow the insurance industry to collude... to artificially set prices higher, etc, so that the industry could continue to make the same killing (pun intended) profiting from cutting corners on Healthcare that it does today. It will be very difficult to get any real competition under this plan. I am not arguing that it can't be done....apparently the new system will rely on a not-for-profit program...so it's possible. But I am pointing out that it will be difficult. The likelihood of success has gone down significantly in my opinion. Because the private insurance industry is going to naturally act in its own monetary interests....not in the interest of public health. I don't trust can't trust this industry to act in my best interests and compete effectively against itself. And with this approach, there is no real threat of consequences that would effectively deter insurance companies from trying to create workarounds and returning to some of the same abusive practices that they engaged in before.

This plan basically replaces the Public Option with a co-op. I believed that a combination public option/co-op could have been a workable compromise... but this is a much bigger scale down... a capitulation in a sense.

Perhaps the most interesting twist in all of this is the fact that Senators want OPM to run the new program. For those not familiar with OPM.... this is an organization that can't even handle its core mission very well, let alone a new complex program. Essentially OPM isn't all that good at running OPM. This agency has been underfunded and understaffed for years. That was the second red flag for me (the first came with word that the public option as it was structured before was dropped from consideration, and Harry Reid was refusing to make a statement).

Despite all of this, I hope the new plan will work as intended. This is probably the best that Obama and the Democrats could have accomplished under the circumstances. And perhaps it will could be something to build on later. If you think about this in the context of incrementalism... this is a pretty impressive accomplishment.

So despite my grumblings, I have to give the legislation a thumbs up.

Still learning more about everything that is in the new plan.

_____________


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Okay, I'm just gonna have to go all Doctor on you now

No, it doesn't mean that I'm going to charge you for reading this. :-)

I've talked about healthcare reform over and over again (I don't see how Joan does it every day without going insane). I've talked about healthcare from an emotional standpoint and from an American legislative standpoint. I've talked about all the benefits of healthcare reform. Well, I'd like to take a different tactic. I would like to review the medical literature. I've picked several studies which I will describe over the next several days. The one thing that all of these studies have in common is that they point out that health insurance is a predictor of outcome. On Wednesday or Thursday, I'm going to review an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association which clearly states that having a unified health program has survival benefits (we don't have a coordinated, organized healthcare system in the United States).

As a trauma surgeon, I don't like to talk "shop" with people who are not in the medical profession. As soon as you start mentioning cytokines and mitochondria DNA, most people's eyes glaze over. But, with watered-down legislation creeping through the Senate at a glacial pace, I thought it was important for me to go over some of this literature. The literature makes approximately the same point that Keith Olbermann made approximate monthly go when he talked about having health insurance being life-and-death.

In trauma, we, trauma folks, would like to think that we treat patients all the same. Many states have trauma systems, in which an injured patient, is shunted away from small hospitals that probably cannot help that patient and toward trauma centers who have the expertise and the manpower to help. This move has been shown to save lives. Most, if not all trauma centers have protocols which are then individualized for a particular patient. We have found through numerous studies that these protocols help save lives. Therefore, you would figure that the outcome of a patient who was seriously injured in a car crash would be directly related to his or her injuries which is true for the most part. A recent study has thrown a wrench in this.

A study, which was published in The Archives of Surgery in 2008, investigated over 400,000 patients which had been entered into the National Trauma Databank. One thing that we have known for years is that socioeconomic status does influence your outcome. As expected, mortality rates for Black and Hispanic patients were higher than those of White patients. Patients with insurance had a mortality rate of approximate half of those without insurance. Now, for the shocker -- both Blacks and Hispanics with insurance who were injured had a mortality rate less than Whites without insurance.

This was a very surprising result. Numerous studies in trauma patients over the years have shown differences in outcomes amongst the races. As more and more studies have been done, it is clear that race is a surrogate for multiple other factors including eating habits, living conditions, and other things that can affect outcome. It is also clear that insurance acts as a surrogate for those same kind of factors. People with insurance have jobs. People with jobs drink less than people without jobs. People with jobs tend to live in better conditions than people without jobs. What was surprising is how strong insurance is as an indicator of lifestyle.

So, if every American has health care coverage will they all have better outcomes from trauma? Well, this question is somewhat hard to answer. On one hand, just having insurance does not get you to live in a better house, in a better neighborhood with better indoor plumbing and a refrigerator that works all the time. On the other hand, one of the huge problems that we have in the trauma community is that we have to send many people home from the hospital, after their hospital stay is over, when they should go to a rehabilitation center for more therapy but they can't qualify because they don't have insurance. These patients will instantly do better. Getting adequate health care coverage to all Americans is a step towards better equality.

I would like all members of Congress to read this article. This is important. This is what we're fighting for. We're fighting for a more equitable society. I'm not trying to take away any healthcare from anybody but instead, I want to add healthcare to those who don't have it.

Tomorrow, I'm going to review an article called health insurance and mortality in United States adults. This article expands on the concept that insurance is a marker for outcome.

Thankful for health care access, not for reform opponents

America is a bountiful country, and I am so thankful to live here. We have the best of so much and much to be proud of. We have a fantastic fighting force of volunteers who put their lives on the line to defend us from enemies.

I am so thankful for the fantastic collection of colleges and universities that are without a doubt the best in the entire world. I am lucky enough to have attended a few and taught at a few more, and I know firsthand the value of an affordable public education.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Higher Taxes Are The Right Thing

Unfortunately, few politicians have the cajones to admit it. Instead, politicians and the public continue to delude themselves into believing that we can bail out the banks, reform health care, and fight two wars simultaneously without raising more funds.

Read the rest at The Loop.

Kennedy Replacement is Announced

After a week of maneuvering by the Massachusetts legislature, Gov. Deval Patrick has named a temporary replacement for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Attorney and powerbroker Paul Kirk will get the appointment.

Meanwhile the GOP is doing what they do best - obstructing. They are doing all they can to stop the appointment.

But unfortunately the Democrats in the Senate are not truly at 60 votes and have never been, at least not when it comes to the issue of Healthcare Reform. As I have mentioned before, the magic number of 60 has always been sort of an illusion for Dems in the Senate. So I don't think it will have all that much of an impact on the Healthcare question, particularly in terms of the public option. The issue remains.... will enough Blue Dog Conservative Democrats (approx. a dozen that will have to change their minds) be persuaded to support legislation that includes some sort of public option between now and a final vote?

Sick For Profit

These are the folks who Republicans and even Democrats like Max Baucus want to keep in charge of the Healthcare Industry.



Watch other videos about this issue from Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films website.

I also suggest that you take another look at the movie "Sicko". (btw, most Canadians love their Healthcare..... one of the things that has perplexed me about this non-debate is how the Canadian system has been so vilified by the Right).