Working Too Closely With Republicans Is Toxic For Obama's Plans To Reform Health Care-- And Unhealthy For Americans

This looks like such a nice headline, doesn't it?-- Daschle Pledges a Bipartisan Reform of Health Care System. It isn't; instead, taken on face value at least, it's a disaster. As Jane Hamsher pointed out in her savvy defense of the Sanjay Gupta appointment yesterday, you can't always take all this political stuff at face value. Gupta's appointment, she asserts, is primarily ceremonial and is a smart move if it will help sell Obama's health care plan and counteract the certain and well-funded "Harry and Louise" style campaign by the Insurance and HMO giants aimed at tanking it. Of course, that begs the more important question of what, exactly, Daschle and Obama will have Gupta selling.

And that brings us back to this bipartisan reform headline. Can Daschle and Obama take the kinds of withering, vicious attacks reactionary interest groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Party have prepared for them? Neither was ever much of a trench fighter and each just wants to be loved (my their mortal enemies) and would rather just give in on points that are life and death for defenseless working families than cause too many ripples from the vested interests that run their comfortable little world.

Obama and his peeps better realize that Republicans and Blue Dog type Democrats have very different goals-- and serve very different interests, diametrically opposed interests-- than they do. “I really want to work in a collaborative way,” said Daschle. In that case, give up completely on improving health care for American working families. Remember, who the hell you're dealing with-- a selfish, racist, greed-and-bribery-obsessed bunch who turned down health insurance for needy children over and over again in the last two years.

Daschle said conversations with ordinary citizens and with business leaders had driven home the depth of the problems related to health care. He said he had been struck by findings that General Motors spends more on health care than it does on steel, and that Starbucks spends more on health care than it does on coffee.

Cut the crap, Daschle, Big Insurance, the #7 biggest briber of federal elected officials since 1990, spends more on political "donations" ($309,549,407 since then, 63% of it to Republicans) than it does on many catastrophic events it should be covering. And who has Big Insurance lavished the most love on, now in positions to make sure their interests are protected?

John McCain (R-AZ) $2,799,156
Barack Obama (D-IL) $2,184,670
Chris Dodd (D-CT) $2,138,446
Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND) $1,735,356
Charlie Rangel (D-NY) $1,346,785
Ben Nelson (D-NE) $1,185,299
Max Baucus (D-MT) $1,171,363
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) $1,033,802
Arlen Specter (R-PA) $1,007,130
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) $943,400
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) $918,007

Notwithstanding the friendly atmosphere on Thursday, and assuming that Mr. Daschle is confirmed, heated debates are certain about one of the most contentious aspects of President-elect Obama’s domestic agenda: his call for a new public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

No other proposal so clearly defines the political and philosophical differences between Mr. Obama and Republicans, or provokes such deep disagreements.

Mr. Daschle, the point man for Mr. Obama’s campaign to revamp the health care system, supports the concept of “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare.” It would, he says, give consumers, especially the uninsured, an alternative to commercial insurance offered by companies like Aetna, Humana and WellPoint.

But the proposal is anathema to many insurers, employers and Republicans. They say the government plan would have unfair advantages, like the ability to impose lower fees, and could eventually attract so many customers that private insurers would be driven from the market.

“The public plan option is a terrible idea-- one of our top concerns in the health reform debate,” said James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The public plan, as conceived by Mr. Obama, would vie with private insurers to provide better benefits and better customer service at a lower cost. Without such competition, Democrats say, private insurers cannot be expected to control costs much better than they do now.

Jacob S. Hacker, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, said the new option was essential to the success of Mr. Obama’s effort to rein in costs and make coverage available to all Americans.

“Public insurance has a better track record than private insurance when it comes to reining in costs while preserving access to care,” Mr. Hacker said. “The public plan would set a standard against which private plans must compete.”

Yesterday Think Progress did yeoman's work debunking right wing lies and propaganda about health care reform. Pointing out that extremists and greedy corporations have already started their smears and scare campaigns to confuse turn voters and turn them against health care reform, they're take apart one GOP myth about reform after another. Here are some of the lies you'll be hearing for the rest of the year-- plus the appropriate answers:

GOP Lie: Heath care reform will limit patient choice.

REALITY: Progressive reforms would provide more choice, not less. Under progressive proposals, Americans will have the choice to keep the employer plan they currently have or buy an affordable plan from the national insurance exchange. Individuals and small businesses will be able to “compare private coverage options and a public plan and to purchase the policy that would work best for them.”

GOP Lie: Americans will lose their existing coverage.

REALITY: Progressive proposals strengthen the employer based system by spreading the risk and cost of insurance. An employer mandate on larger employers will encourage companies to continue providing coverage and will make the process of providing insurance more affordable by spreading the costs of insurance. A majority of large American employers would continue to provide coverage as a competitive benefit, while businesses with the fewest workers and the lowest wages would be exempt from the mandate and offered a new tax credit to purchase health insurance for their employees.

GOP Lie: The government will ration care.

REALITY: Progressive proposals will allow Mom and her doctor to choose the best treatment for her cancer. Research into the comparative effectiveness of treatments can identify the procedures that provide the best results at the lowest cost. Currently, at least one-third of medical procedures have questionable benefits, according to the Rand Corporation.

GOP Lie: Affordable health care reform will create a government monopoly over health care.

REALITY: Progressive proposals for a public plan would create real choice and real competition, with all health plans focused on delivering better care at lower costs. According to the Urban Institute, “the presence of a well-run public plan would constrain private spending, as the plans would have to compete on price.” In fact, private insurers who “offer a superior product through high levels of efficiency, satisfaction in consumer preferences and ease of access to quality medical services” will thrive in a reformed market. The presence of a well-run and effective public plan will incentivize innovation in cost containment and service delivery.

GOP Lie: A new public program will only drive up health care costs and increase premiums.

REALITY: A public plan will contain costs, lower premiums, and give Americans a choice of health plans — public and private. A recent analysis of the public option by the Institute for America’s Future, concluded that offering a new public insurance option to Americans who lack coverage would control health care costs and improve quality by providing an important benchmark for private insurance within a reformed health care framework. Universal coverage will reduce cost-shifting by getting everybody covered and contain costs through investment in prevention, management of chronic care, twenty-first century information technology and research on and adoption of effective treatments.

A report released today by the Commonwealth Fund makes it clear that health care reform is is not going to break the bank and that it's "possible to insure all Americans without significantly raising total health spending... While Americans pay more per person for care than any other industrialized country, many studies show they have poorer health, suffer more medical mistakes and are generally less happy with their medical care."

GOP Lie: Being uninsured is not a problem; it's people's own fault.

REALITY: Americans are uninsured because they can’t afford the high costs of insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), most Americans who lack health insurance “come from working families and have low incomes.” About two-thirds of the uninsured “are poor or near poor” and are “less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage.”

GOP Lie: Deregulating the health care industry will solve the health crisis.

REALITY: The current marketplace is broken; it has failed to keep costs down and increase access to care. Rather than competing on the value of care, insurance markets have “become dominated by a small number of large insurers” that don’t use their market power to drive bargains with providers. The marketplace has contributed to skyrocketing premiums, huge cost-shifts to families through higher deductibles and copayments, and has largely excluded individuals with pre-existing conditions from coverage.

If Obama and his team don't understand that the Republican reactionaries and their Blue Dog allies are the mortal enemies of viable health care reform and that it can only happen despite them, not with their aid, we are doomed and could have just as well elected John McCain.