Jello Jay Gets Into the Act
After the insurance industry started squawking when Henry Waxman started demanding more details about their business practices, Jello Jay Rockefeller has gotten into the act (h/t Susie).
A U.S. Senate Democrat asked the top 15 health insurers to explain what portion of premiums go to profits versus patient care, putting further pressure on the companies to explain their business practices as Congress considers sweeping health reform legislation.
In letters to the companies on Friday, Sen. John Rockefeller also asked for information about how insurers disclose financial practices to customers.
If nothing else, Waxman and Jello Jay are keeping the AHIP schlep trying to accuse them of being mean busy. At some point, Robert Zirkelbach will have the credibility of Baghdad Bob.
"Some in Washington are trying to shift the focus to the insurance industry rather than talk about solutions to the health care concerns raised by the American people," Zirkelbach said.
Let’s just hope Jello Jay and Waxman figure out a way to collect—and use (or, barring them collecting it successfully, using that) this information as things heat up next month.
I might yet have to ditch the moniker Jello Jay.
Wow! A Waxman-JayJay House-Senate tag team?
Dayum, Emptywheel — one would think that progressive Dems in both houses had started to learn the value of strategic thinking and planning and stuff.
Ooooh! And what might he look forward to? “Rammin-Jammin-Joltin-Jay”? “Jay the Erect”? “Jay the Spineful”?
Maybe a carrot dangling from the end of that stick would do the trick. Hey, you never know.
Edit: More entendre in there than I had intended. Maybe I had better back off on watching BBC “Coupling” reruns for a bit. Sorry. *blush*
Naw, keep watching “Coupling”, one of the funniest things my kids ever showed me — thank heavens for Netflix ;-))
But yes, in this instance I’d go with a little more appreciation for Sen Rockefeller, and good on him for showing such determination!
Maybe “Jello Jay when it comes to National Security Issues”?
Jello Jay would very much like us to forget what he did/didn’t do during BushCo.
He’s got the same problem Waxman does: He lacks the votes to subpoena and there’s a very real chance he’d lose a court challenge.
But he’s got the same weapon Waxman does, bad publicity at exactly the wrong time.
Boxturtle (Gee, I wonder if the two of them have been talking?)
Zirkelbach is quite wrong.
The questions/requests from Waxman & Rockefeller are setting up documentation to back regulatory measures to protect consumers.
Which, by the way, is all about health care concerns raised by the American people. Concerns due to actions by the health care industry.
Bwhwahahahahahah….
Imagine shifting the focus to the insurance industry!
The nerve of Sen Rockefeller and Rep Waxman!
Zirkelbach evidently just hates it when the peasants and the politicos fail to stay bound, gagged, and stupid.
imo ..we just need to rewrite an old shakespeare line to “first . kill all the lobbyists ..” .. and if we can’t kill ‘em .. then we should at least put a 100% tax on lobbying expenses by for-profits if they spend over a certain percentage … you want to spend 5 mil on lobbying .. senda check to treasury for 5 mil as well .. i’m tired of them using my gov’t to pick my pocket to advantage their clients ..and using tax free funds to influence the debate as well as buy off “my politicians” ..and then getting a write off for all of it ..
hows about we make all lobby efforts be approved by a vote of the corporate shareholders .. on a case specific basis ..
same goes for the think tanks .. if they’re non -profits .. when they get involved in partisan political fights and take a side and begin advocating .. they ought to lose their non-profit status [can you say: heritage foundation]
What you said!
Heh, like the idea but think you have First Amendment free speech restraint issues with that.
You know, I often feel my First Amendment rights are restrained by corporate lobbyists and think tanks when it comes to trying to have a voice on legislation.
Left you a note on the last thread.
Just came over here b/c I found a sensationally good item over at Col P Lang’s Semper Tyrannis. Social psychology, personal ruin, and intellectual dishonesty on the way to Iraq War. Quite the read, and I suspect you’d find it worth your while.
Thanks for the link. That is a great read and dissertation worthy.
well that gets back to the idea that a “corporation” is a person fully invested within the bill o’ rights as an individual .. which imo is pure bullspit .. it gives those who own and control the corp’s TWO voices .. imo ..they get their individual right ..and then they get a second voice as an animal created by the state ..
and too ..when corporations kill people by their actions .. even illegal ones .. we don’t lock them up .. they get to close out by admitting no guilt and pay a fine ..
when we start holding corp’s responsible for their actions just as we do individuals ..then they get BOR privileges .. imo ..
i’ve never agreed with teh idea that corporations have 1st amendment rights .. or second amendment rights .. i think the whole theory is a crock … imo ..it’s bad law .. and as all bad laws do .. has led to bad consequences ..
and you ??
[be gentle .. IANAL .. ]
Oh, I agree with most of that. I don’t think you were around back when we were at The Next Hurrah, but we had a great discussion about the Santa Clara case and the existence of corporate personhood back then. I have threatened to run a group discussion post on just that again, but keep forgetting.
Can we get that non-decision overturned sometime? Or legislated into something less harmful to the country?
Please do so, bmaz.
I would really appreciate understanding how Chief Justice Waite and the court recorder brought this all about.
DW
I second this [or more? haven’t read all thru]. It’s not just the lawyers here who’d have lots to say on this – eg I’d envision a lot from jthomason.
Sorry for stepping on the tail, jkat. Third.
no harm no foul … LD .. it still works ..[swish ..swish ]
i’m sure i wasn’t around then bmaz .. and i’ll second the idea [#22] of you initiating that re-discussion .. my law experience is limited to the UCMJ and a short stint as an LEO ..and lots of b-law as it relates to specs and contracts ..[enforcing them ..not drawing them up]
my grandad was a county judge in texas .. i’ve always had an interest in “the law” ..
i’d certainly be interested in learning how an animal created by the state achieves personhood …
I hope you will teach us about this as well.
Should I look it up as the Santa Clara case in my nifty on-line law library?
bmaz,
Please do it. Corporation personhood is one of Chief Justice Roberts’s favorite fetishes. I believe the idea tracks back to a statement unsupported by authority in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1880s. The subject is timely and important today. I have little doubt that Obama is a believer with trouble in mind.
Again, what you said!
Let’s see;
A corporate “person” …
Feels no pain.
Suffers no doubt.
Cannot be put in prison.
And is potentially immortal.
“Personhood” must be limited to flesh and blood human beings.
And the story of how corporations were elevated to the status of being “persons” is more than passing strange.
DW
Don’t get ahead of yourself; it is such a good name.
I might yet have to ditch the moniker Jello Jay.
He richly deserves it. It’s hard to imagine him doing enough to ever make up for trashing the Fourth Amendment.
Once upon a time, 70 years ago, we had a president who walked what he talked:
http://findarticles.com/p/arti…..tBody;col1
I. THE NEW DEAL AND ANTITRUST
ANTITRUST LEGACY OF THURMAN ARNOLD
…IV. THE TEMPORAEY NATIONAL ECONOMIC COMMISSION
April 1938 brought the planning for Roosevelt’s antimonopoly message to Congress, with which Arnold, Cummings, and Jackson
assisted, along with Donald Richberg, the head of the NRA, and Ben Cohen, the author of the Utility Holding Company Act. It was a stark illustration of the balance of power between the planners and the advocates of competition. It was apparent to all that Roosevelt finally intended to make a real attack on the problem of monopoly. Predictably, only Richberg dissented from the plan.77
The message itself was symbolically important but rather mild in actual content. The President decried the “concentration of economic power” in the country and deplored the “concealed cartel system” and “the disappearance of price competition.”78 The President thundered: “[T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself . . . .”79
yeah, the Democratic Party has to reach pretty far back in history for examples of why it is worth voting for. FDR.
you may as well be talking about the Civil War era, to those who are not historically inclined.
LBJ worked to pass the current Medicare system, riding roughshod over opposition in Congress and sweeping the “yes, buts” along behind him, but then there was the small matter of Vietnam.
LBJ knew how to play hard ball and did it so well. He demanded and made it clear that those who didn’t follow would be punished. Wish the Dems would do that now.
You mean Harry and the Cream-Puffs? Pelosi at least keeps saying there will be a public option coming from the House. But, it surely seems like the only hard ball that’s been played recently is Rahm “Fucking Stupid” yelling and screaming at those pushing as hard as we can for the public option. Wonder what kind of ballet he studied, anyway.
I don’t WANT a public “option”. I have had enough of “options” trying to figure out Medicare Part D. I don’t WANT “Choice”. I want a well-run, single-payer, available-to-all, take-it-out-of-my-taxes Public Health. (See Congressional health care. See the Vets Admin.) (And then maybe small businesses could get going again. Not to mention bigger ones.)
I agree with you 100%. I’m guilty of using the term du jour and I know bettah. Thnx for reminding me.
“Medicare for All,” is the only one for me.
amen
Yes!
Seconding, selise @70
DW
You’d like that until it was the progressives who got punished in favor of a corporatist Blue Dog program.
Bob in AZ (was: HI)
Yeah, that’s the Rahm approach.
I’ve told this story before on FDL, but it is pertinent. Once, my wife and I met former congressman Ray Roberts (now deceased) and spent quite a while with him. He had worked on the staffs of both Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson before WWII, and later served in the House when LBJ was President. He said that LBJ, who he called “Chief,” called him and told him he expected him to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Roberts said that he told Johnson, “Chief, you know I can’t do that. In my district, I’d be through.”
Johnson said, “Well you remember I was able to get you your VA hospital in McKinney.”
Roberts said, “I know that Chief, but if that’s the price, I just can’t pay it,” and after a few more times maintaining the position, the conversation ended.
Roberts told us that the Civil Rights Act passed on July 2, 1964, and the McKinney VA hospital closed something like a month later. He still had great admiration for LBJ.
Zirkel-what? (Gotta cut down on those “Coupling” episodes …)
(If ‘Zirkel’ means ‘circle’ and ‘bach’ means ‘brook’, how does the brook keep flowing? Isn’t that perpetual motion? Oh. Right. He’s a lobbyist. Or something. That’s how he talks: perpetually.)
(It’s late. I’m punchy. G’night, all. Thanks for another great week.)
Jay is just trying to get some street cred by not having the Senate be blindsided by whatever it is Waxman might uncover.
given jello’s jay’s history, this is probably kabuki
what exactly does he mean “shift the focus”?
that IS the focus and THERE lies the solution
Shift the focus squarely on the crux of the problem and away from the hocus-pocus they’re using to conceal it? Heavens! Next thing you know they’ll be calling us socialistic or worse.
JJay’s the Chair of the Subcmte on Health Care. Shouldn’t the man have had more than a passing interest in the premium breakdown — and all things health insurance — all along, but which he’s inquiring about only NOW? He’s STILL Jello.
Thanks for all you do, ew.
Santa Clara County vs the Southern Pacific Railroad?
Wait a minute.
Are insurance companies persons?
Will they be included in the mandate that all persons have insurance? *g*
Heh..
Tax preparers have to explain to people why they had $900 taken out of their tax return. You see, they are too poor to buy insurance so they owe the government $900 in Massachusetts.
Recently heard of a man with Medicare and BCBS to cover what Medicare doesn’t. The State took the money anyway and the guy has to have his tax preparer try to get his money back!
Romney is touting that he made it work in Massachusetts?
There should be a huge pushback on this when he starts his run.
Apparently, insurance companies have the A$$URANCE that they shall be able to continue on in the manner to which they were “born”, Jim.
DW
Not exactly. They don’t see anything when they look in mirrors, and they only come out at night.
I might yet have to ditch the moniker Jello Jay.
maybe you should, at least until FISA comes up again.
You think Rockefeller writing one little pissant letter removes the Jello Jay moniker? Yes, I guess we ought to just build him a freaking monument. I suggest said monument be constructed out of a suitable material to honor him. Like Jello.
You know that there are several ways to skin the health-care cat. One is by treating health insurance as a public utility, and regulating it appropriate. Uwe Reinhardt has made this point. Several European countries do it, and it works. I doubt it would work in the United States, because the republicans are so dead set against any regulation of business, and if they were to come back to power, they would undo it. They can’t undo a public option. But the principle is still there. The goal is not public health care, it is good affordable health. There are different ways of doing this. In the US context, a public option is probably the only one that would presently work.
I think where Obama’s team missed the point was by not pushing harder on the outcome, and making it clear that the input to that outcome is endogenous to the goal. I.e., the administration want to get the best possible deal for the American people. This would have required, as Lakof notes, running down the private insurers for having failed the American people, rather than treating them like stakeholders. Waxman and Rockefeller are not taking that road, but it’s late in the day.
Without reform, health insurance rates to nearly double in 11 years
Source: The Raw Story
Insurance rates will rise 94 percent by 2020 if cost-saving reforms to the US health care system aren’t enacted, a new study from the Commonwealth Institute finds.
The 90-year-old non-profit health care charity released an analysis of health care costs and forecasts that says employer-sponsored family plans will rise from an average cost of $12,298 in 2008 to $23,842 in 2020.
By contrast, the same coverage would have cost around $9,200 in 2003.
“Across the United States, middle-income individuals and families have been losing ground as the cost of health insurance continues to rise at a faster rate than incomes,” the report states. “Rising employer insurance premiums have forced many working families to trade off increases in their wages just to hold onto their health benefits. The expanding share of health insurance premiums paid b
Read more: http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..es-… /
I’m reading Santa Clara vs the Southern Pacific Railroad
and it gets me to the Fourteenth Amendment
and I come upon this:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Read more: http://law.jrank.org/pages/699…..z0P19otxOw
And I am amazed.
In how many ways have the Bush Administration and Congress engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution?
Good question, Boston1775. BTW, here is a link for more on the Santa Clara-Southern Pacific phenomenon (don’t know what else to call it) and even a non-lawyer such as yrs truly can understand it.
How about Michele Bachmann and Jim Demint.
Excerpt,”Our Hidden History of Corporations”, Reclaim Democracy.org
One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886
Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood,” thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a “natural person.”
From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional “personhood.” Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these “rights,” corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law.
A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, “The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power….”
Many U.S.-based corporations are now transnational, but the corrupted charter remains the legal basis for their existence. At ReclaimDemocracy.org, we believe citizens can reassert the convictions of our nation’s founders who struggled successfully to free us from corporate rule in the past. These changes must occur at the most fundamental level — the U.S. Constitution.
Thanks to our friends at the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) for their permission to use excerpts of their research for this article.
Please visit our Corporate Personhood page for a huge library of articles exploring this topic more deeply. You might also be interested to read our proposed Constitutional Amendments to revoke illegitimate corporate power, erode the power of money over elections, and establish an affirmative constitutional right to vote.
About ReclaimDemocracy.org
Gitcheegumee, could you provide the link to the “Our Hidden History of Corporations”? I couldn’t find it over at reclaimdemocracy.org. I’d surely appreciate it.
Reclaim Democracy! Revoke Corporate Corruption of American DemocracyReclaimDemocracy.org is committed to revoking corporate power and reviving grassroots democracy.
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/ – Cached – Similar
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About Us
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How about a contest for a new Jello Jay moniker?
The first thing that came to my mind was Jurassic Jay, but that isn’t too nice either.
Joltin’ Jay
Jammin’ Jay
Jou betta get outta my way Jay
Beef Jerky Jay (nice contrast to Jello here, no?)
May I offer a friendly amendment?
Jerky Jay.
Healthcare around the world
Page last updated at 15:10 GMT, Friday, 14 August 2009 16:10 UK
Succinct article comparing US-UK-France-Sigapore on a few health-care variables. The Brits are really stepping up their efforts to push “our” gubmint forward on this issue, aren’t they?
@48
History of Corporations (United States)Reclaim Democracy – Restoring Citizen Authority Over Corporations … Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States …
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/̷…..ns_us.html – Cached – Similar
[PDF] Our Hidden Corporate HistoryFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View
OUR HIDDEN HISTORY. #1. #1 in a series of primers on corporations and democracy from ReclaimDemocracy.org. Other leaders in the movement to restore …
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I’m getting a 404 error message, but don’t spend more of your time on this. I’ll get there, and you’ve got other things to do. Many thnx.
Speaking of nicknames . . .
I rather like
Rahm-Obama-Bing-Bang.
Shades of one of the greatest rock songs ever: Witch Doctor.
With all due respect to Purple People Eater and Surfin Bird, of course.
I know I am late to the party on this thread… but the first thing that occurs to me is…
They are just thinking of this NOW?
What the fuck? Healthcare reform has been underway for 8 mos and I guess they just tip-toed around the subject for all this time?
All they have to do is watch Moyers’ journal interview with Wendell Potter to get their answers… it is not exactly like this is a secret.
Fuckers.
True, they need to appeal to the guy w/ Moyers, not just the mind.
I meant gut
One of Obama’s big problems is that he [and Rahm] went off to craft “solutions” [in secret] before spending time with the public defining the problems.
If Obama had spent a few good months at the beginning developing a list of the biggest problems with our current system, from cost, to pre-existing conditions, to lose-it-when-you-lose-your-job and so on, THEN he would have created a framework against which to measure all the “solutions.”
But no. Supersmart [self-identified] Rahm thought it would be SO much better to hole up behind closed doors with the Big Donors [and Big Problem-creators], the drug and insurance industries, and fashion a “solution” that didn’t infringe on their goodies. I.e., no solution at all.
Thus we’ve got this mushy “well, health care sucks and there are problems” coupled with a “I dunno exactly what our solution will be, but you Dems should get out there and support it [and the President]” kabuki.
This is no way to run a country.
jkat,
” we should at least put a 100% tax on lobbying expenses by for-profits if they spend over a certain percentage”
Let’s just make them pay the SAME amount of extra taxes as they spend lobbying. That they get tax breaks for advertising is sickening enough! So much for decrying welfare.
(Since we ALL hopefully believe they should be denied constitutional “rights”).
Btw,
Anyone wonder why companies get tax-breaks for provided health insurance, but individuals don’t get the same?
…Wouldn’t it be swell if anyone availing themselves of COBRA would get the same tax deductibility as businesses gets for providing the benefits…?
ew:
hmm.
can you connect j.j’s behavior with your previous column on rockefeller owing obama?
this might mean there has been a sea change re health insurance.