Add this counsel from Natasha Chart and Bob Reich to yesterday's from Drew Westen, and the health care battle might be winnable

If not for the references to "the Clinton plan," and the fact that it's in black and white, a reader might well think this Tom Tomorrow strip dates from last week rather than 1994. (It's the usual drill: Click to enlarge.)

"The health insurance executives need to be forced to stop killing people for money, and their Senate accomplices must be held accountable for abandoning their constituents so they can play at being gang members. It's pathetic. It's disgusting. It's just got to stop."

-- Natasha Chart, "Stop Killing People for Money" (see below)

"Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine. . . . If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon."

-- Robert Reich, "Memo to the President" (see below)

by Ken

My fear regarding the health care reform "debate," as I wrote yesterday, is that the whole case has been mismessaged. Drew Westen's eloquent Washington Post op-ed yesterday, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Health Care," left me worrying "that the case for health care reform has been sent over the heads of the American people."


I. CONFRONTING THE INSURANCE COMPANIES

Part of the problem is President Obama's apparently constitutional unwillingness to acknowledge that there are adversaries to his policies, with adversarial positions, and they need to be dealt with. I closed with what I still think is a dazzling indictment of the greedy and indeed murderous irresponsibility of the insurance companies, who are investing so heavily in bludgeoning any "reform" bill to their liking.

In an update to that post, I chronicled my own shabby messaging with regard to the authorship of the "mystery quote," and promised to rectify the omission this morning. As I noted, by publication time the author had actually OK-ed my publishing the quote, and also willingly owned up to its authorship. I just let the ball drop.

Even better, Natasha directed me to this spectacular post on the subject she'd published on Open Left. I think it would do reform advocates a world of good to include an awareness of her argument in their messaging (for the numerous links, click through to the version on Open Left):

Stop Killing People For Money
by: Natasha Chart
Sat Jun 20, 2009 at 08:00

Not so very long ago, mortgage cramdown legislation failed. I was angry about that and I thought, 'Great. Congress likes the lying thieves who almost destroyed the world economy better than homeowners. *ssholes.'

Adam Green suggested that there'd needed to be more mass mobilization before that vote. Maybe that's true, but those congresscritters still failed as human beings in that vote. Now, nauseating deja vu all over again.

The Senate is bending over backwards for their new best friends, the health insurance industry. Over at DailyKos, nyceve has described the abuses of the medical insurance racket as Murder by Spreadsheet, and lately, as a Reign of Terror.

Maybe that sounds hyperbolic to some, but the fact of the matter is that health insurance companies market defective products that kill people for money.

The Senate likes them better than us.

They make money by denying coverage to dying premium payers who might be cured, knowing that this means those people will in most cases be denied care by doctors who won't treat people for free.

When that coverage is denied in time sensitive cases, like the need for an organ transplant, or at a point in cancer care where a delay may mean the difference between months and years of life, they know what that means. The dead cost nothing, as they say.

The Senate still likes them better than us.

Every damn time one of these fights comes up, there's the usual question on the minds of progressives, about whether the Democrats are incompetent or greedy. I hope I don't have to hear that any more. Isn't it obvious that the conservative Dems, much like their kin across the aisle, are just broken, ramrod-propped, shambling husks of humanity, utterly devoid of compassion and empathy?

They like the company of thieves and contract killers. Not in a ministering to lost souls kind of way, either. No. They like those thieves and killers just the way they are and routinely ask them for advice about how the government can make it easier for them to steal from people or kill them.

Maybe we should have known when it seemed like every time we turned around, they were forming a new gang. Gang of eight. Gang of 11. We should be checking their offices for butterfly knives and spray paint by now.

I joke.

But not about this: a failure to make healthcare universal and affordable is certain to kill thousands of Americans in the coming year and everybody in the Senate knows it. They can secure health care for their constituents or be accomplices to their negligent homicides.

Some of them are trying to do the right thing. Some of them don't care. Some of them are trying to look like they're doing the right thing even as they destroy our chances for an affordable public option, and that shouldn't be allowed to stand.

The health insurance executives need to be forced to stop killing people for money, and their Senate accomplices must be held accountable for abandoning their constituents so they can play at being gang members. It's pathetic. It's disgusting. It's just got to stop.

At the risk of embarrassing Natasha -- and for the record I have written this very thing to her -- if I were the editor of Time or Newsweek, I would throw money at her (though perhaps only a modest amount; it's terrible how substantial even fairly pathetic sums can seem to dedicated progressive writers) to write a regular column, for the obvious reason that she writes not just with such rigorously grounded intelligence but with such flair and eloquence and sheer "grabbability" that she would be an automatic attention-getter. I'll bet she would actually sell a fair number of magazines.

The only hitch is that I'm not the editor of Time or Newsweek, and there seems little prospect of that situation changing anytime soon.


II. BOB REICH COUNSELS THE PRESIDENT

As I also noted in last night's update, it didn't make a lot of sense to cite only the somewhat problematic final recommendation made by former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich in what I described as a "mostly terrific post for TPM." (Again, for the internal links, click through to the official version on TPM.)

Memo to the President: What You Must Do To Save Universal Health Care
June 19, 2009, 6:39PM

Mr. President:

Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine.

But, as you know, the worst news came days ago when the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with awful projections about how much the leading healthcare plans would cost and how many Americans would still be left out in the cold. Yet these projections didn't include the savings that a public option would generate by negotiating lower drug prices, doctor fees, and hospital costs, and forcing private insurers to be more competitive. Projecting the future costs of universal health care without including the public option is like predicting the number of people who will get sunburns this summer if nobody is allowed to buy sun lotion. Of course the costs of universal health care will be huge if the most important way of controlling them is left out of the calculation.

If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon:

1. Go to the nation. You must build public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal health care. But the vast majority don't know what's happening on the Hill, don't know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they're about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don't be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They've decided to fight you. You must fight them.

2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted despite their cries of "socialized medicine" because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you're not on the road, you need to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.

3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal health care can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight year ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with health care.

4. Insist on a real public option. It's the lynchpin of universal health care. Don't accept Kent Conrad's ersatz public option masquerading as a "healthcare cooperative." Cooperatives won't have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest.

5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care. At the rate healthcare costs are rising, not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make health care affordable to most American families in years to come. So you'll need to tax the wealthy. Don't back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided health care can be provided tax free. (Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this.) These are the only two big pots of money.

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

You have to win this.

Your obedient servant, RBR

Now if Bob and Natasha and Drew were masterminding the health care reform campaign, I'd feel a lot more optimistic. Dare I say they could even whip Arkansas's antipopulist DINO Sen. Blanche Lincoln into line?

SPEAKING OF SENATOR BLANCHE, WE REMIND YOU

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN FOR HEALTH CARE CHOICE

We're eagerly awaiting a postable version of the first TV spot produced by Blue America and Brave New Films for placement on the senator's home-state air waves -- written by Digby, you'll recall. (Again, if I were the editor of Time or Newsweek, whichever my opposite number didn't beat me to, Natasha or Digby, I'd snap up the other.)

For more about the project, and an opportunity to contribute even a modest amount to our war chest, visit the Campaign for Health Care Choice ActBlue page.)

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