Subsidies
There’s a lot I object to in Hendrik Hertzberg’s judgment of those opposed to the Senate health bill as “pathetic.” His entire piece revolves around the claim that bill critics are committing a pathetic fallacy: attributing to an inanimate object–Congress–animate actions–passing the bill.
The pathetic fallacy is a category mistake. It’s the false attribution of human feelings, thoughts, or intentions to inanimate objects, or to living entities that cannot possibly have such feelings, thoughts, or intentions—cruel seas, dancing leaves, hot air that “wants” to rise.
Yet most critics have been very specific about the people (Harry Reid for his inability to enforce party discipline, Rahm and others for prioritizing deals with the industry over cost containment, Joe Lieberman for being Joe Lieberman) who have made this bill what it is. It is Hertzberg’s fallacy, not critics’, to suggest that this bill got so bad because of an inanimate object called “the system.” Indeed, suggesting the end result of the actions of a small group of fully deliberate beings is not the product of human will serves as a neat excuse for those who want to obscure the process and decisions that resulted in this bill.
Hertzberg also curiously invokes the defeat of Kennedy’s Medicare efforts in the Senate (after which, two years later, the bill passed) to argue we are faced with a choice between the status quo or this bill. The history of prior reforms can and has been used as a double edged sword in this debate, so I’m not arguing that the lesson offers us any real insight into the fate of health care if we do or don’t pass this bill. But used as he is doing, doesn’t it suggest the possibility that, if this bill were to fail, it might not be several generations until we tried again, it might be passed in the near future? (Not that I necessarily believe this would get easier in two years, I just think it is a very inapt use of the example.)
But reading the piece finally got me to read another piece that bill champions have repeatedly pointed to to celebrate the bill: a post by University of Chicago Health Policy Professor Harold Pollack, comparing the subsidies included in this program with the subsidies offered in just about all other support for the poor.
By 2019 when the reforms are fully implemented, the Senate bill would provide about $196 billion per year down the income scale in subsidies to low-income and working Americans.
Even policy wonks have trouble getting their heads around such a big number. With due allowance for the back-of-the-envelope nature of this calculation, $196 billion exceeds the combined total of federal spending on Food Stamps and other nutrition assistance programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, TANF cash payments to single mothers and their children, all the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. (I admit to some uncertainty about that last one. We may have to leave HUD behind…)
(Pollack has a worthwhile, thoughtful expansion of his stance on the bill here.)
Now, I don’t contest Pollack’s numbers. Nor do I underestimate the magnitude of this amount of subsidies.
But there’s a flip side to that magnitude, one which, IMO, is not worth celebrating.
First, a significant number of the recipients of these very generous subsidies aren’t going to see them in tangible form. For those getting subsidized premiums, the biggest immediate benefit will be yearly check-ups, if they have access to a doctor (experts expect there will be access issues in the years after the subsidies start). If MA is any indication, though, many won’t actually be getting health care beyond that check-up; they still won’t be able to afford it. And for those who will go into debt before they get any out-of-pocket subsidies, I suspect those subsidies won’t feel all that generous.
Now compare that to the other tangible things the subsidies Pollack lists give people: real cash for single mothers, tax credits for the working poor, and food stamps that function as cash in many stores (which, shockingly, serve as the sole source of income for 6 million Americans). These other subsidies give people income, cash to spend on food, affordable housing. Real, tangible benefits. The thing they lack.
Shouldn’t the program be measured by what tangible benefits it provides–how many get health care–rather than how many subsidies the insurance companies get?
Then there’s the issue of scale that Pollack’s post displays. We are providing the poor food, shelter, and income. All for less money than it is taking to provide an admittedly much larger group of people insurance (but not necessarily care). Do we have our priorities in order? Doesn’t the sheer scale of these subsidies constitute a flashing warning sign about the relative cost of health insurance (but not care) that this reform institutionalizes?
And therein lies the real risk. As many many people have pointed out, subsidies–particularly subsidies to the poor–often fall prey to political pressure. Particularly given the number of conservative Democrats who are itching to cut back on other programs supporting the needy, should we really be crowing about the success of this program by how dependent it is on subsidies–by how big a target it establishes for deficit hawks to go after?
I’m sympathetic to both Hertzberg’s and Pollack’s argument that we have an opportunity to get millions care that they don’t have, even as they acknowledge the imperfections of the bill.
But isn’t it a sign of the bill’s problems that bill champions have to point to the subsidies the bill will provide, rather than the actual health care it gives?
Sausage makers and their pundits never like to admit that it is they who butcher, cut, select, grind, press, twist and slice what starts out as Elsie (or a thousand Elsies) and ends up as over-salted, chemically preserved, cholesterol-laden Jimmy Dean’s sausage.
As someone who grew up on good pork sausage in the mid-south, Jimmy Dean sausage is (charitably) the low end of one pound rolls of sausage.
That’s why I chose it. Any good butcher can make better sausage. (So can I.) To follow the analogy, Hertzberg is saying there are too many butchers in the room and the resulting spoilt broth-sausage is just offal.
Hey now. There’s just one official offal in the Senate.
Don’t crowd into Specter’s turf. He’s got dibs, you know.
Yea, but his has oatmeal in it. I think the Senate bill leaves that out; too healthy.
One offal…
A LOT of awful.
Sheesh. Reading this post, especially this:
The ‘process’ is absolutely dysfunctional, breeds prima donnaism (see also: HoJo, Snowe, B. Nelson…), and screws anyone with a simple, workable idea like Wyden’s exchange concept.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot problems with ‘the process’ when one single Senator who represents 1% of the nation’s population can screw the public option, along with many other good ideas.
I’m a third generation New Yorker reader, and this post really has my ire up.
Actually I think you’re somewhere between Hertzberg and I. He is saying the system is fucked. I’m saying there are people within that fucked system that still have a real influence over what happens in that system.
And I’m saying there are a whole lot of people who are benefitting from a whole lot of subsidies, tantrums, and HoJo being able to almost unilaterally knock out entire chunks of a national healthcare proposal who want to whine and complain about how hard it is to beat a filibuster, but that’s only blather.
They benefit from the asymmetries and they know it.
If they had balls, integrity, and determination they’d fix the damn mess.
And I don’t see Hertzberg pointing out how obscenely profitable, outrageous, and unstable letting 82 tails wag the dog is.
Not sustainable.
No wonder the center does not hold.
The people where I was living in west TX swore at Jimmy Dean – the plant there prtty much closed down overnight, and the owners left town leaving their bills behind. Made a lot of lasting friends. Not.
i think “jimmy dean ” was a stand in for ALL sousageous products in that comment.
Am I too late for the Best HCR Holiday Recipe contest?
I understand Michiganlanders replace Flying Monkeys with Wolverines, but regional tastes aside, no party should be without my Best HCR Holiday Recipe.
So “Congress” and the “System” are inanimate objects?
Why does that sound like a cop-out because the actual true arguments about the people who make up “Congress” and the “System” would force him to admit that those against the bill are correct?
Or am I just being my standard idiot self here?
No, you’re not being an idiot here. Congress was not designed to be an inanimate object (the Founding Fathers would cringe at the idea). The balance of powers doctrine depends on Congress NOT being inanimate. But the Bush-Cheney WhiteHouse did it’s best to make it one.
No time to finish the thought– gotta run.
Bob in AZ
Here’s the sum of what he said to justify his “pathetic fallacy” attack:
His logic escapes me. The system may be stubbornly resistant to improvement, but its legislation is still the outcome of decisions by individual politicians, each of which must stand for election. Can’t you just smell that InDecision 2010 campaigns have already been launched?
Right. Just the decision to deal with ALL industry partners as partners–even pressuring party members who otherwise support reimportation to vote against it–is a decision with very tangible consequences. It is a decision that Rahm and Obama made, that Harry Reid enforced, and that a bunch of people (including Levin) endorsed. But nevertheless, very tangible, intentional, decision.
Reminds me of a line from a Dustin Hoffman film, Outbreak. Contemplating fire bombing an entire California town to avoid spreading a plague virus, the fictional president’s COS tells the Cabinet that everyone will be onboard and ain’t nobody gonna Monday morning quarterback the president on this one.
I think this clown should go back to school and start over with first grade if this is his skill at analysis. I don’t think I could have come up with such a sophmoric piece even when I was a sophomore
Actually, to an outsider his point appears somewhat valid. It is the very structure which permits the likes of Joe Lieberman to have the influence he does. It has been a lesson to the folks here in the UK just how little power the President does have when not only his official adversaries but a significant number of his supposed alllies decide he shouldn’t have.
Our system is much simpler and more autocratic.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing. It is how Holy Tony Blair got us to follow the Shrub into the crusade in Iraq.
On healthcare, you should follow the way that our Conservatives consider that they will not get into power unless they support without serious reserve the very system that the Republicans so demonised, Forget “death lists” and so forth, our citizens just know it works. It is the greatest evidence I have ever seen of the vast gulf between the political mood between our supposedly similar countries. And yes it costs a great deal of tax Pounds.
And here’s another issue I didn’t put in my post.
Very few food outlets use 20% of their revenue for profit and marketing (indeed, food stamp recipients have increasing numbers of options for using them, including in farmers markets which puts all dollars to food and keeps teh $$ in the community). Section 8 housing–presumably the HUD program subsidized here–limits how much landlords can charge for the rent.
But these subsidies not only allow insurers to spend 20% on profit and marketing off the top, but they don’t put any other limits on how expensive subsidized insurance has to be.
No wonder they needed $200 billion in subsidies.
If I could insert a fine point, pls. Note that the amount Section 8 will pay is based on fair market value and not on whatever the landlord advertises. Whether the landlord will accept the fair market value arrangement is, of course, a whole ‘nother matter.
True. But there’s not guarantee that either doctors will accept Medicaid OR that patients will have access to a doctor. I know there are problems with Section 8 acceptance.
You are quite correct and p-l-e-a-s-e keep hitting those points. Toothy-smiling pols will be bragging forever about what they’ve done if/when “health care reform” passes, hoping nobody notices all the things they didn’t pass that would have guaranteed access to appropriate, effective medical care of best quality delivered as efficiently as possible and in the least restrictive setting. (You’d almost think I’d written such things hundreds of times. Chuckle.)
“Shouldn’t the program be measured by what tangible benefits it provides–how many get health care–rather than how many subsidies the insurance companies get?” Of course, but this process has not ever been about health care except for a small number of participants.
Another point of analysis to this ‘reform’ which is so vigorously opposed
by both industry and political opponents: Is this actually an acceptable endpoint, or even a pausing point on the path to an acceptable outcome?
On this Analysis I think the current proposal (and the final likely result the current proposal will lead to after the political deal making is complete between all players) fails, for reasons already well discussed.
When the opposition to the reform that one side wants openly states that failure for the opponent is the plan, and then participates in the process to plan the reform, then criticizes the final outcome ( as they will)…
Are you getting reform, or a disaster to be unveiled at some point not too far in the future.
I also take exception to the Ruskin quote Hertzberg uses to frame his criticism:
Ruskin is revealing his Victorian English roots there, but it is Hertzberg who is overlaying that perspective on modern critics. We are not all Teabaggers. Criticism of George Bush and Barack Obama has been vehement because of their actions, not because their critics were blinded by their emotions.
Hertzberg may find that meme useful in supporting the president. I would characterize it as a literary way to hide the vicious corporate priorities encompassed by the Senate’s health insurance bill, as it is of Obama’s constipated approach to reform in general.
The closing paragraph in Hertzberg’s piece in The New Yorker is:
“Two months later, Kennedy’s bill was defeated in the Senate. It took his assassination, a huge Democratic victory in 1964, and the legislative talents of President Lyndon Johnson to get Medicare enacted. The health-care bill now being kicked and prodded and bribed toward passage will not “do the job,” either—only part of it. Are Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress doing enough? No. But they are doing what’s possible. That may be pathetic, but it’s no fallacy. ♦”
They are doing what is possible.
Seems to imply that anything more was impossible.
Anything less was also possible, would that have been a fallacy?
The likelihood of a chain of events in the near future to rival 1964?
The political climate today differs from 1964, it is far more polarized. The opposition to reform will point to any shortcomings of the reform done now as reasons to dismantle the reform rather than as reasons to improve the reform.
That “impossible” line is consistent. It shields the president and every member of Congress, regardless of what each of them actually did to make it so. It disconnects action from consequence, a political and bureaucratic survival art. Like Jim DeMint claiming the president should be more pro-active in making airlines safer when he has a hold on the nominee to head the TSA – because he might agree to bargain with a union.
Hendrik Hertzberg is usually a good and insightful writer, but that article is nonsense.
I think that, although we are waaay overspending to get it, the expansion of care makes the bill worth doing. My reasoning is rather perverse. The bill is worth passing precisely because it does almost nothing to address cost containment. That will force the federal government to revisit the health care issue again. In the mean time, we need to start talking about the real issue behind the ridiculous cost of our health care system, the complexity of financing it. We effectively double the cost of health care by using crazy quilt financing methods. This bill doesn’t do anything about that (in fact it makes it ever so slightly marginally worse).
I agree with everything you say, but have difficulty with the results of passing this ‘reform’.
It seems to just blow the ‘healthcare bubble’ bigger, postponing the eventual bursting and making the inevitable bang even louder.
The current bill will place even more funds in the hands of those who lobby against meaningful healthcare reform.
The stock prices and business practices of the recipients of the subsidies will reflect this distortion, further increasing the inertia to preserve the current system.
$196 Billion will lead to even more employees reliant on the preservation of the current system, and redundant if true reform is ever enacted.
$196 Billion in subsidies will just make what is not working even worse.
I don’t think there is a ‘healthcare bubble’. The system is broken, but it’s not a bubble. Real people are going to be helped by this bill. Real people are going to be hurt by this bill. On the balance, I expect more people to be helped than hurt. The social gains from providing some form of access to health care, as minimal as it will be for many, outweighs the social costs. I could be wrong, but that’s the bottom line for me.
I don’t think the problem is how much money the insurance companies make, but the way they make it. Everybody in the system has the wrong incentives. Insurance companies make money by denying payment for health care already provided. Individuals save money by not seeking care. Doctors and other providers make money by over-providing care. The whole thing is just nuts.
All the industry interest groups will spend outrageous sums of money to prevent reform, no matter how much money they are making. It turns my stomach that the insurance companies will reap some benefit from this bill,for the non-service they provide, but that windfall is small potatoes compared to what national security contractors extract from us on a daily basis.
But that’s the thing. This bill from the Senate will NOT provide access to health care. It will force people to buy crappy insurance policies that they can’t afford and won’t cover the basic health care items, forcing folks in to paying their deductibles and co-pays.
That has nothing to do with health care. It’s all about the Health insurance companies getting subsidized by the government on our backs. Rather like the banksters’ bail out. And the MIC contractors.
I’m sort of between you and WO on this point.
For a lot of people (I think it’s 15 million) they will get actual care: medicaid, or subsidies so generous they will be able to afford it. For the remainder of teh 30 million, they will get insurance.
Plus there are benefits for those not uninsured now–the confidence they won’t be kicked off insurance for costs (though they can still be kicked off for what the insurance companies claim is fraud). But there will also be problems, such as the way the Senate bill seems to push to stop employer provided health care without fixing affordability overall.
My problem is that I think this puts already powerful parties in a more unassailable position, and specifically prevents this country from addressing the way health care is killing our international competitiveness, both bc it recommits the country to maintaining HC as the percentage of our economy it currently is (actually makes it bigger) and bc it does nothing to bring down cost of health care to businesses–except at that point when it allows them to not provide it anymore.
Which is precisely the basis the carriers use for recission now. I have little confidence the bill really protects people the way the politicians claim. May make it a little better, but I don’t buy in the least it has eliminated, or even put a big dent in, this problem.
I agree that the WH’s preferred bill will make a powerful industry, with considerable legislative clout, into a more powerful, more legislatively and regulatorily dominant one.
Further improvements will be harder if the reform we get is written by this Senate. Meanwhile, the more powerful insuresters will game the system, thanks to their choice of working with 50 state regulators rather than a single federal one. And as you and Digby have said elsewhere, this team and the Peter Petersens of the world will keep working to reduce these benefits, as well as existing benefits under Social Security, etc. They will use the scam that they are fiscal conservatives, meaning ruthless and brutally selfish elites.
It’s a quandary. The only sure thing is that everyone inside the Beltway will blame the liberals and DFH, while they did everything possible to help.
As I understand it from health care experts that I respect, two things have to happen before health care is really aimed in the right direction in this country:
1. ‘Pay per service’ has to go. It’s a transactional model that feeds Wall Street, while failing to actually take a holistic approach to health care.
2. The focus of any decent health care system has to be on wellness, but you cannot provide a system that promotes ‘wellness’ via a ‘transactional’ for-profit health care model.
What the health care debate has highlighted, IMVHO, is how screwed up the Senate rules, the Senate committee structure, and the Senate seniority system is — then add on the filibuster rules and you have a formula for dysfunction that is simply not sustainable over time.
Let me put a face on this. Two weeks ago, our church hosted three homeless families for a week (we participate with other churches on a rotating basis). One of those evenings, my wife and I provided dinner for them. I want to tell you about one of those families, a single mom with four kids. The mom makes $10/hour (I didn’t ask, but I know the going rate for the job she does) with no health insurance. Her kids were covered by Medicaid (two of them had braces and poor kids in Texas only have braces if they’re on Medicaid), but she is not. In Texas, adults are only covered if they make less than 26% of the federal poverty level. She’s going to be covered by Medicaid under this legislation. The care she get won’t be great, but it will be much better than nothing.
But we could insure the full 133% who will get Medicaid for far, far less than the billions we’re paying. One option that we ought to be floating is to do the Medicaid with the Medicare fixes now, but then do the rest of it right.
I completely agree that we should be advocating for something like that, just not expecting that as an outcome. The current version has a momentum all it’s own. Eventually we’re faced with a choice of something slightly better (I hope) than the current Senate bill or the status quo. Forced to choose between those two awesomely sucky alternatives, I come down against the status quo. I can certainly see how a reasonable person could disagree.
I agree 100%, but it ain’t gonna happen, unless we have a Flutie “Hail Mary”…
I haven’t seen many miracles lately…
Please someone tell me what the cost of the “status quo” is?
Ask the Chinese; they are holding the markers on that.
The biggest problem with costing out the status quo is that we have yet to separate out costs currently incurred (most importantly the 45,000 who die every year from lack of health insurance) from what costs will remain (if 21% still can’t get health care, that’ll mean 68 million doing without necessary care).
And the costs on businesses remains the same.
I agree. Its not as the conservatives are screaming a TAX at all its really something far worse its an form of extortion. The fact that the Gov’t then subsidizes this extortion with tax $$ in some cases still doesn’t make it any less of an act of extortion. How about all those folks FORCED to buy Ins. that will get NO subsidize? Maybe, they don’t want Ins. because they are like Bruce Willis in that Movie where he can’t be hurt for some genetic reason. Whatever, it removes the RIGHT of every citizen to say no to in this case a Private product or service they’ve for their own reason decided they do not want. Now if we had a Nat’l Health system that we paid taxes into like SS that would be different. It would become a RIGHT every citizen would have NOT this Forced Extortion of our labor for the benefit of some Private monopoly. The so called FORCED MANDATE creates as entirely new relationship of Citizens to their Gov’t and its not a good one. Its a slippery slope that once gone down will IMO lead to many other possible FORCINGS for other designated products and services that our so called Reps. decide we most purchase form their political contributors , supporters or pals.
As timely evidence of just that – via today’s DOJ news:
I think sometimes you have to put the long term benefit or consequences over short term comfort. I think it’s reactionary and emotional to help only a few at the cost of empowering the insurance industry that has blocked reform with it’s less powerful position as it stands.
I am a behavioralist…and in my humble opinion this rewards and reinforces the insurance companies in behaviors that hurt society over the long haul. To continue this facade on the idea that a few people will be helped…doesn’t seem worth the long term consequences. Doesn’t seem wise to me. We have to look at the long term picture and I cannot see how rewarding these companies and create a “need to purchase” without having passed any real caps or regulations…and structure to control their power over us….makes sense. Short term gain, long term pain.
(my bold)
That is the key observation and the central point of discussion.
Has anyone quantified the cost of the status quo (doing nothing).
It has to be somewhere, but I haven’t come across it…
Harold Pollack’s post linked above is titled “How big a number is $196 Billion?”
$196 Billion is certainly enough to do significant good if spent properly.
One way to do this was proposed in a Politico Ideas piece written By Sen Bernie Sanders and Rep James Clyburn on Jan 21, 2009.
The full article needs to be read to put $196 Billion into perspective.
LINK:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17704.html
A quote from that article:
“Our current $2 billion-per-year investment in community health centers provides comprehensive primary health care through 1,100 community-run, nonprofit organizations in every region of the country. The average cost in federal funds comes to about $125 per patient per year. By increasing funding to less than 0.5 percent of overall U.S. spending on medical care, we could provide primary health care to every American who needs it. In other words, for a total of $8.3 billion by the year 2015, we could have 4,800 health centers caring for 60 million more Americans in every area of the country that is designated medically underserved.”
Pick and choose, fiddle and argue about the numbers.
Double this, quadruple that.
Some portion of $196 Billion might be enough to really do some good, if it were not piled and burned by the current system.
Both bills do have significant funding for health care centers.
I’m sorry to say this, but Hertzberg is merely a snob, a snot and an elitist idiot.
He admits the wrongdoing of fallacious legislation, and he expects no consequences, but he faults us that we personalize the very human activity of a Baucus, a Lieberman, a Nelson.
He is an intellectual phoney with no stones to stand up to the cries: We were just taking orders. In his view, the generals should never have been prosecuted at Nuremberg.
william ockham @21
yours is a viewpoint i have come to think of as the most positive way to view this otherwise terrible piece of legislation – eventually the system being put in place will collapse of its own contradictions, but, maybe, by that time americans will have come to view adequate health insurance as a god-given right, as medicare is viewed today among the individual elderly from all parts of the political spectrum.
call it the obama admin’s ralph nader approach to health insurance politics.
a consequence, however, the democratic architects of this rube golberg machine – obama, emanuel, and many sorry democratic senators may end up with permanently tarnished political reputations.
is it not the case that no republican in the senate voted for the bill?
if so, then they can claim clean hands in 2010, -12, -14, as the provisions of the bill slowly come to life.
I firmly believe (and I have the data to back this up) that the Republican party is doomed to irrelevance, locked in a demographic death spiral. Nothing, especially not opposition to health care reform, can save them. I just wish they would go ahead and collapse so that they can be replaced by some party that the Nelson-Lieberman faction could go join.
Amen.
And I probably have different data than you do, but mine is also GOP=RIP.
They’re demographically and culturally doomed.
OT – FWIW, Peter Baker of the NYT has a 9 page NYT Magazine article which folks might want to read:
Inside Obama’s War on Terrorism
Along with his appearance on all this past Sunday’s Talking Head shows, this NYT article seems to be all of a piece for John Brennan’s “coming out” party.
Wash, rinse, and then repeat.
Yeah, I started a post on it and decided I had more pressing issues. Don’t miss EOH’s smackdown of it (which is really worthy of a Seminal diary).
Dang, I hadn’t quite got that far in reading today’s earlier posts and comments.
Earlofhuntingdon and Jason Leopold both took ’em to the mat.
True, it was a one-two punch.
At the end of the 9-page valentine, you also need to try a little brain bleach to recover.
Apologize for not having time to delve into all details highlighted in this post and its links, but here’s another point that Hertzberg seems to miss:
The 9 states with the greatest population have over 50% of the US population.
That equates to 18 senators representing roughly 150,000,000.
The other 82 senators combined represent the other half of America, or roughly 150,000,000.
But under Senate filibuster rules, there have to be ’60 votes’ to cut off a filibuster. Presumably, that is because there is supposed to be some kind of 60/40 ratio so that the ‘majority’ can’t tyrannize a minority.
So we could then ask, “how many Senators represent 60% of the US population?” Looking at the Wikipedia link for ‘US population by state’, we find that a mere 13 states contain 60% of the US population.
In other words, a mere 26 senators represent 60% of the population.
Yet the minimum number of senate votes needed to stop a filibuster is 60 votes.
Now to quote this:
A system where, in order to fight off any filibuster, you need 34 votes in addition to your ‘base’ 26 — those 26 votes that represent 60% of the population — is dysfunctional.
It is ‘asymmetrical’ in the extreme.
It is a system where minority (Alabama) after minority (Idaho) after minority (Utah) after minority (Maine) after minority (Nebraska) after minority (Connecticut)… you get the idea — all these low-population states get to hold everyone else hostage and throw tantrums if they don’t get the pork, the subsidies, and the healthCo subsidies they want.
This is lunacy.
Hertzberg really needs to recognize that fact and stop calling the rest of us ‘pathetic’.
It’s ‘pathetic’ when a New Yorker Talk of the Town editor can’t look up Wikipedia and see for himself how asymmetrical, screwed up, and dysfunctional this whole system is.
So many small interests have so much inflated voting weight that we have no chance of looking at subsidies realistically until we stop letting 82 tails wag the dog.
Wo @38
I’m happy to stipulate the R party may die of attrition,
But it ain’t dead yet.
39 republicans voted against the insurance reform bill in our senate.
Here’s the key implication of that –
Lieberman and nelson had the “power” they had because no two or four R’s out of 40 would support the bill.
Not even 10%, not even 5% of R’s would support the bill.
Just a very few R’s would have defanged joe Lie and bad Bill.
Think of the billions set aside for health insurance as payments to the robber barons of the corporate castles of the drug, insurance, and hospital industries –
The enforcement of which payments to these very wealthy nobles has been assigned to extremely well-paid lobbying, public relations, and advertising mercenaries.
Hey, hedrich
How do you like them metaphors.
(I have a hunch hedrich don’t like metaphors, most especially those running counter to his political preferences.
The reason the focus needs to be on “the health care it gives.”
Jeebus. Why is WYO second in that list? It WAS doing really well comparatively.
That’s a bit of a laugh as an explanation for the dramatic increase in bankruptcy filings. The 2005 bankruptcy reforms, fondly known as the No Credit Card Company Left Behind Act, revised established bankruptcy laws dramatically in favor of credit card companies. Credit card debt, the principal consumer debt (along with mortgages and auto loans), was elevated in priority. It took precedence, in some cases, over child and spousal support. It was made hard to write off, forcing most debtors to repay large amounts over five years.
Debtors and lawyers were given about a year to get ready for it, and there was rush of year-end filings in 2005 to qualify under the old rules.
The 2005 Act was a bipartisan effort, which must have pleased Mr. Obama. It made a mockery of the traditional bankruptcy principle of allowing debtors a “fresh start”. Advocates for credit card companies complained that their clients were being abused by consumers – grab your barf bag – and needed protection from them. Har har.
Revising the bankruptcy rules to reinstate the pre-2005 law, and to allow bankruptcy courts to cram down first mortgage loans, ought to have been among the first things a Democratic WH and Congress should have tended to. Haven’t heard a peep from any of them. We just have more bankruptcies, which means people are even more desperate than ever. Mr. Obama, are you listening?
The article link actually makes that point about the 2005 Act.
And I agree, revising the 2005 Act should have been a first priority.
I had forgotten all about that travesty, earlofhuntingdon, and now I don’t feel so good all over again.
This was a long term project of Sen Grassley.
Here is a statement from him dated December 7, 2006
http://grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=9560
Some typical Grassley quotes within:
“Based merely on these decreased filing rates, I think that it’s fair to say that bankruptcy reform has been a success for our economy.”…..
” In addition, I’ve seen more than one instance of bankruptcy judges criticizing the new law in very inappropriate ways. This is extremely disappointing. This does not comport with my understanding of proper judicial behavior. “….
“All in all, Mr. Chairman, I think that the new law is working well. We need to be vigilant here in Congress as the law is implemented, and to make sure that people who don’t want to follow the law’s mandates and good reforms are not undermining the law or integrity of the bankruptcy system, or shirking their responsibilities to enforce the law. So, I’ll keep a watchful eye on developments in the future. “
Quite a few defenders of the so-call reform apparently believed that by making bankruptcy even more onerous than it was at the time, people would have virtually no choice but to remain debt slaves. The rising bankruptcies since the bill took effect shows that it simply forced debtors to forestall bankruptcy until only the really bad options were available. Once in trouble the only course of action available has been to put debtors on a path towards maximum fail. Now when the debtor hits bankruptcy even the banks get take greater losses because there is little left to fight over.
The reform was passed in conjunction with other reforms that allowed banks to come up with innovative ideas like subprime loans because it was thought that the debt slave rules would keep people paying even when they had no chance of escaping and if they did escape the debt would still be worth more than the original loan. The reform was instrumental in building the housing bubble. The drop in the housing market ruined the scheme by making it impossible to easily profit from the borrowers loss.
At this point even people that don’t like the idea that normal people should to be able to go bankrupt in a way that offers a road to compromise recognize this approach has been a failure. But like everything else the Bush administration bequeathed to us, the government of change refuses to act. My guess is this lack of action is based upon a lack of lobbyist cash to get the ball rolling.
Excellent analysis!
I don’t think anyone thought America would implode so fast. I still don’t think they’re getting it on Mt Olympus…or, they don’t care because they don’t need us anymore.
It’s like America has been taken over by aliens with a taste for human flesh
Great job at balancing the real world effects of these subsidies. I think you’re one of the most intellectually honest critics of the bills.
Just got an email solicitation from OFA and I lit them up pretty good!
Category Mistake nice use of language somebody thinks they are Elite. Congress a group made up of people who put together a system to serve the people Democracy or government by the people.
I don’t think the founding Fathers wanted an inanimate government, government either responds to the people or we change it.
The only thing Pathetic about this Fallacy is the claim thats its a Fallacy.
I also am not convinced that the republicans are going down. I fear that this bill will give them a handle that will bring them some much needed help. I can’t tell you how many smart folks I talk to (smart…meaning folks who have some grad school education) who buy into the talking points about the insurance. That it’s unconstitutional…that it’s socialized medicine…that Nelson was fighting for what he believed in and used the pro life stance as an excuse to try to hinder this bad bill. Smart people are confused and I think it will get worse if this bill is passed. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk that the repugs are dead and I think they will get some mileage over this bill.
The American government has its human aspects—it is staffed by human beings, mostly—but its atomized, at-odds-with-itself legislative structure (House and Senate, each with its arcane rules, its semi-feudal committee chairs, and its independently elected members, none of whom are accountable or fully responsible for outcomes) makes it more like an inanimate object.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/01/11/100111taco_talk_hertzberg#ixzz0bkTDH1oK
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/01/11/100111taco_talk_hertzberg
My bold Hendrik people much like government are constantly at odds with themselves have you not heard of the ID, Ego and Super Ego google this guy named Freude you might like to hear his new fangle theories.
Next Congress unlike inanimate objects can cause Things to Happen thats we Lefties hold them responsible for Things Coming Undone…like my temper and my threshold for stupidity the New Yorker will let Anyone write for them these days huh Dude?
Hendrik Hertzberg is a gifted and thoughtful writer. He is very much worth paying attention to.
You don’t have to agree with him, but you should consider what he has to say seriously.
Ok if you vouch for him. Everyone has an off day.
I agree with you that Hertzberg is a fine writer with good ideas – or used to be. That he is writing such drivel as this makes me very sad. It is not even close to his usual standard. Bringing up the pathetic fallacy is a pretty sophomoric ploy and has little relevance in this context.
He says [edited by moderator to remove character that could be confused with html]
“The critics’ indignation would be better directed at what an earlier generation of malcontents called “the system”—starting, perhaps, with the Senate’s filibuster rule, an inanimate object if there ever was one.”
This isn’t even logical. Though the rule is inanimate, it is the creation of beings, and fury against the rule is really – and properly – fury directed at its creators. If the senate rules are arcane and its structure is unworkable, the responsibility to recognize this and fix it lies with human beings. Most progressive criticism I’ve seen does address systemic or structural problems like the senate rules and the stranglehold corporate paymasters have on our political system. But if it’s clear to outside observers how dysfunctional the system is, it must be (and is) clear to many in congress, too. That so few congress members have seriously tried to address these problems adds up to a fair amount of perfidy on the part of those who just go along with the flow. And what shall we say about a president who campaigned on Change and who has done so little to change anything?
Calling a democratic body an object against which it is useless to complain is outrageous. It completely undercuts basic democratic principles. His argument reminds me of accusations against the left of Bush bashing, as Bush apologists sought to deflect attention away from the substance of criticism – they’re just semihysterical Bush bashers.
It’s simply not true, as Hertzberg claims, that Obama and congressional Democrats have done what is possible – that they’ve done all they possibly could. And that truly is pathetic.
I’m quite sick of the Hobson’s choice that’s always promulgated by politicians and pundits; the concept that it’s either this or nothing, and that doing nothing is the worst possible outcome.
It bugs the shit out of me. First, it’s literally never the case that this is the only option. It’s the thing we have in front of our face right now, but the idea that its the only option is completely self-imposed by an utterly dysfunctional democracy. Second, the idea that the status quo is the worst possible condition. I don’t oppose the current reform efforts (House and Senate) because they’re not as good as I’d like them to be. I oppose them because in total they’re a worse condition than the status quo. Currently the route of taking nothing would be an improvement over accepting this.
It’s entirely possible to do worse than the status quo, and the evidence of that are the House and Senate reform bills.
This bugs the shit out of me too. I firmly believe (without evidence) that insurance and drug companies provided the big push behind doing “reform” now. Waiting just a year or two more would have probably made it obvious to even more people that a single-payer system, or at least a public option would be required to fix health care delivery. Implementing something like the Senate bill is the best way for the industry to maximize earnings… until the failings of that legislation bring us to the next crisis — at which time you can be sure the same players will be out front offering us the fix they need.
New post up top…
Unfortunately, aid to the poor by middle class taxpayers is sold to us as a charitable action or moral obligation.
If we insisted that our public officials enacted policies that provided jobs for all capable of working and those jobs paid real wages, there would be very little need for most social programs.
Instead, we are subsidizing employers. They pay $8 an hour and it takes $15 a hour to support a family, then the public makes up the difference with various subsidies and payments. The corporations are not paying many of us a living wage, and the politicians are just making up the difference.
More people on Medicaid will only allow more companies to pay less and not offer health insurance. It’s called corporate welfare, and the recipients are humiliated, the taxpayers are raped, and the elite laugh. – fwdpost.com
Hertzberg is just another figure like vanden Heuvel being trotted out to tell those of us on the left why we should love us some healthcare bill no matter how bad that bill is.
The pathetic fallacy is well pathetic. It is like saying the US military was not responsible for Abu Ghraib because 1)institutions can’t have feelings of responsibility and 2)a place (Abu Ghraib) can’t be tortured. It is as I have remarked in the past an argument too powerful for its intended purpose. You accept something like it here and you can basically kiss off any kind of discussion on anything because it can be applied not just where Hertzberg wants to but almost everywhere else as well. In other words, it does not add to clarity in argument but rather erects roadblocks to it.
At the same time, the reverse argument is equally faulty. We often say the Obama did this or that, as in for example he sold out to the insurance, medical, and drug companies. But Obama didn’t actually do this. For the most part, those around him did. And not just those who work in the White House but in Congress and the veal pen, etc. But even this example has embedded in it a pathetic fallacy. For how can a company really be sold out to? It is a thing. Obama who is not Obama but rather Obama and those who work with and for him at the White House and in the Congress sold out to the CEOs of healthcare and insurance companies, their staffs, and investors.
It is silly but it also masks a more important point. We see all the time the construction of false narratives and how they are used to push and justify bad policy. When someone like Hertzberg takes legitimate discourse and starts tarring it with unserious suggestions of fallacy, he puts it on the same level as these dishonest varieties. It does not make these more legitimate. It just muddies the waters equating and confounding good and bad together.
I agree, especially with respect to Hertzberg and attempts to suggest that large groups or institutions somehow always come up with optimal solutions and therefore the outcomes should be accepted on that basis alone.
While it is true that it is not necessarily the case that we can say Obama did various things attributed to his administration that does not suggest that criticism is unjustified. Referring to Obama or his administration is a bit more useful in a normal conversation than trying to identify all of the various actors. There are times when details can lead to information overload which in turn can lead to people loosing sight of the forest by looking at the trees.
Hertzberg never suggested “institutions somehow always come up with optimal solutions.” He said something very close to the opposite.
I believe that he said institutions do not come up with perfect solutions. Optimal isn’t perfect.
I guess one of my major beefs with this whole thing is that these “people” will be long out of office before the blowback to this horrible bill becomes apparent.
But the insurance corporations will continue to do what the credit card sharks are doing now with the generous allowance of a whole year to raise rates before they are “frozen”. they and the PhRMA folks will raise, raise raise the premiums and drug costs.
I KNOW this is true as the drug for my particular condition just went up by nearly 100% for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile, programs like Medicaid and Medicare will be phased out so everyone will be forced to buy insurance. Then, there’s Social Security which Bernanke wants to get his grubby paws on “because that’s where the rest of our money is.” People didn’t get a COLA this year and won;t be getting it next year and nobody has made a peep about it.
I thought 2014 was way late for anything to be implemented, now Marcy is saying it will be 2019 before this mess is fully functioning. The USA may not even exist by then.
It’s predatory at best, murder at worst.
Smell the condescending whiff of David Brooks or Dana Millbank?
Actually, that’s Hertzberg attempting a hat trick in marginalizing Obama’s critics, the left, and the Internet in a single sentence. Where does he think they all come from, another country or Main Street America. Even the unemployed who still have a place to sleep and access to a library computer aren’t necessarily less credible voices than pundits for NYC magazines. They might be more well informed, and have more skin in the game than he does.
To me also the reason the subsidies are a bad idea in addition to the fact that they are not to actually obtain care is the distortion the subsides will have on the market for insurance.
Rather than lower the cost overall, I think by subsidizing people you prop up the prices for the rest of us by making the exorbitant premiums seem reasonable.
I think our money would be much better spent on health clinics that were low cost for people. We had this for years in Louisiana with success. The “Charity” hospital system is much maligned but it worked. People got care. People who had money or insurance paid for their care there. The poor paid less or not at all.
How has government subsidies for rent worked out. I think in my city New Orleans it has artificially kept rents higher. In the case of student loans I think they have also allowed universities to jack up tuition several times the rate of inflation. I think subsides for insurance that no one will use works out great for insurance companies.