Standing Up To Big Insurance

Blue America supported Eric Massa when he first ran against corrupt Bush crony Randy Kuhl in 2006. He nearly won and Blue America encouraged him to run again in 2008-- which he did. He won that race 51-49%, even though NY-29 only gave Obama 48% of it's vote at the same time, one of only 4 of New York's 29 congressional districts where McCain won. Some politicians would be frightened by that and kowtow to Republicans-- but Eric Massa isn't one of them. He's a man of great courage and character.

When I first started speaking with him in 2006 he seemed to have two very personal reasons he had decided to run for Congress against the odds in a pretty Republican district. One was to end the unjustifiable war in Iraq. The other-- because he had seen first hand the shortcomings of the health care system (having been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma)-- was to help pass single-payer universal health care. Today he reported to his constituents about a crowded health care town hall meeting he held on Thursday night in Honeoye Falls. The local newspaper compared him to -- Lincoln (Abe, not Blanche).

"Today I urge you, as I urged those 500+ people in Honeoye Falls-- we must come together and unite around a single payer, universal health care system. No longer can we stand to live in a country, where your economic status is the determining factor in the quality of health care that you receive. No longer can we stand to live in a country where innocent children are shut out of the system and prevented from receiving the care they need to live long and healthy lives. This is not the America that we envision for ourselves. We deserve better! Even in this heated political climate, my support for a single payer system remains steadfast."

Even though Massa is one of the GOP's top targets for the 2010 midterm elections, he hasn't bent on his committ-ment to real health care reform. As Politico pointed out this morning, "Massa is different than the average vulnerable Democrat in his unabashed support for a single-payer universal health care system. He campaigned on the issue, and one of the reasons he says he cannot support the current House health bill is that the public option is too weak after House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman struck a deal with several Blue Dogs to get the bill out of his committee... And when people complained-- more than once-- that members of Congress should have to enroll in whatever public health plan that would be created, Massa told them that he has refused to take the congressional health care package until the millions without insurance get coverage."

That would be the polar opposite of slimy congresscritters like Blanche Lincoln, who is happy with tax-payer subsidized health care for her and her family but had the unmitigated gall to write this week that "I do not support moving America to a nationalized single-payer or “government-run” health care system," bamboozling her constituents with Insurance Industry talking points written for Republicans to deliver on Fox TV.

Today HuffPo's LobbyBlog pointed out an interview with the Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry's top lobbying firm. Fanatically opposed to single payer-- or even the compromise public option-- the lobbyist threatened that if the "vilification" of her industry by the White House and top congressional Democrats continues, August will be a lost chance to persuade voters that health overhaul is needed." What she has in mind is a Republican proposal to force everyone into Big Insurance rip-off schemes that will further enrich the useless insurance companies while further impoverishing our country's health care system-- as well as ordinary working families.


Yesterday Paul Krugman answered Big Insurance and their shills' anti-"Big Government" screeds in a NY Times Op-Ed. "So," he wrote "it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government."

Probably the most important aspect of the government’s role in this crisis isn’t what it has done, but what it hasn’t done: unlike the private sector, the federal government hasn’t slashed spending as its income has fallen. (State and local governments are a different story.) Tax receipts are way down, but Social Security checks are still going out; Medicare is still covering hospital bills; federal employees, from judges to park rangers to soldiers, are still being paid.

All of this has helped support the economy in its time of need, in a way that didn’t happen back in 1930, when federal spending was a much smaller percentage of G.D.P. And yes, this means that budget deficits-- which are a bad thing in normal times-- are actually a good thing right now.

In addition to having this “automatic” stabilizing effect, the government has stepped in to rescue the financial sector. You can argue (and I would) that the bailouts of financial firms could and should have been handled better, that taxpayers have paid too much and received too little. Yet it’s possible to be dissatisfied, even angry, about the way the financial bailouts have worked while acknowledging that without these bailouts things would have been much worse.

The point is that this time, unlike in the 1930s, the government didn’t take a hands-off attitude while much of the banking system collapsed. And that’s another reason we’re not living through Great Depression II.

Last and probably least, but by no means trivial, have been the deliberate efforts of the government to pump up the economy. From the beginning, I argued that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, was too small.

Nonetheless, reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without that plan-- a number that will grow over time-- and that the stimulus has played a significant role in pulling the economy out of its free fall.

All in all, then, the government has played a crucial stabilizing role in this economic crisis. Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.

And aren’t you glad that right now the government is being run by people who don’t hate government?

We don’t know what the economic policies of a McCain-Palin administration would have been. We do know, however, what Republicans in opposition have been saying-- and it boils down to demanding that the government stop standing in the way of a possible depression.

I’m not just talking about opposition to the stimulus. Leading Republicans want to do away with automatic stabilizers, too. Back in March, John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that since families were suffering, "it’s time for government to tighten their belts and show the American people that we ‘get’ it." Fortunately, his advice was ignored.

Ignored by Obama and ignored by Congress and ignored by rational Americans. But the Paultards, racists, secessionists and their confused dupes who are running around disrupting health care forums and congressional town halls... thet're not ignoring Boehner or Pence or Ryan or Blunt or any of the America-must-fail-for-Obama-to-fail Republicans. Both the The White House and Ralph Nader have better answers:



Oh, and by the way, Congressman Massa has another town hall meeting tonight. This one is at the Prattsburgh High School, 2 Naples Hill Road, Prattsburgh, NY 14873. It starts at 5:30pm. And if you miss that, you can catch him on MSNBC tomorrow (Tuesday on The Ed Show) discussing health care reform and town hall meetings.