Democratic Leaders Have Blocked Real Healthcare Reform for Decades. Time to Give ‘Em Hell.

In 1948, Harry Truman pushed for a national nonprofit health insurance program in his successful, come-from-behind presidential campaign. When Truman’s plan was denounced as “socialized medicine” and “un-American” by the powerful American Medical Association, “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” stood his ground, defending his proposal as “simple Christianity.”

In 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson secured passage of Medicare (and Medicaid), he traveled to Missouri to formally sign it into law in Truman’s presence – declaring that “the real daddy of Medicare” was Truman. Medicare was federal health insurance for those 65 and older, but proponents hoped it was step one on the way to Medicare for all.’

In the 1970s, it remained the Democratic Party’s official position to support a federally-provided health insurance program for all (“single payer”) – and its strongest advocate was the chair of the Senate Health subcommittee, Ted Kennedy. Supported by unions and seniors, Kennedy introduced a Medicare for all proposal in 1971: the “Health Security Act.” Worried about the plan’s popularity, President Nixon countered with a supposed reform that would preserve for-profit, private insurance: the “Health Insurance Partnership Act.” Kennedy declared, “It’s really a partnership between the administration and insurance companies. It’s not a partnership between patients and doctors of this nation.”

In 1976, Jimmy Carter promised a national health insurance plan in his victorious campaign for the presidency. Kennedy later called it a “missing promise” – and their discord over healthcare continued through Kennedy’s failed challenge of Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.

As harsh neoliberal capitalism dawned in the Reagan ‘80s there was a sea change in the country and within the Democratic Party. Democratic leaders – calling themselves “New Democrats” – scarcely even pretended to resist greedy corporate interests. Those interests were invited into the party and into policy formulation.

Enter Bill Clinton.

By the 1990s, as day-to-day healthcare decision-making shifted from patients and their doctors to insurers and for-profit corporations, many physicians had joined the call for all Americans to get their insurance from a single federal plan.

But none of these physicians were invited to the table as the Clinton administration developed its “healthcare reform” policy under the leadership of first lady Hillary Clinton. The policy was largely created by corporate healthcare lobbyists and lawyers known as the Jackson Hole Study Group. The February 28, 1993 New York Times had a photo of the group beneath this headline: “Hillary Clinton’s Potent Brain Trust On Health Reform.”

In 1993, a Mother Jones writer accurately described the impossible task Hillary Clinton had been handed by the White House: Build a better, leaner, cheaper mousetrap (healthcare system) — but include a player piano (private insurance industry) in the middle of your contraption.
The goal of the Jackson Hole group was to devise a “reform” that kept the healthcare system in the hands of for-profit corporations. The plan that was ultimately developed – called “Managed Competition” – was so bureaucratic and complicated that the Clintons’ 1,342 page bill never got off the ground.

At the time, Norman Solomon and I were the only nationally-syndicated columnists critically examining the corporate greed and elite policy-making that was dooming “healthcare reform.” In onecolumn, we wrote: “The imprint of the insurance industry is all over the managed competition idea. The Jackson Hole study group that originated the scheme is made up of big insurance companies like Prudential, Metropolitan Life, Aetna and Cigna, plus hospital and pharmaceutical interests.”

We cited an article in which “Jackson Hole leaders bluntly argued that managed competition is the only way to avert a government takeover of ‘health care financing’ and the ‘elimination of a multiple-payer private insurance industry.’”

We complained that the Clinton administration and mainstream media were sidelining a nonprofit single-payer insurance bill “endorsed by 95 members of Congress – plus groups like Consumers Union and Public Citizen.” At the same time the Clinton bill went nowhere, the White House made sure that real reform – a streamlined plan not devised by Aetna, Cigna or Big Pharma – never got voted on.

What was true in 1993 is true today: Health insurance companies do not heal anyone. All they contribute to healthcare is excess bureaucracy for medical professionals, devious advertising, sales commissions – plus exorbitant profits ($10 billion in one quarter last year for the Big 8 insurers) and lavish executive salaries. Compensation for healthcare CEOs averaged $18 million in 2018.

Single payer doesn’t just cut costs by eliminating the waste caused by a multiplicity of for-profit insurers – but also because the purchasing power of a federal plan can rein in pharmaceutical and other exploding costs.

Jump forward from the Clinton to the Obama years, and we saw a similar dynamic from Democratic leaders. Powerful healthcare lobbyists made sure that cost-effective Medicare for All would not even be considered, while these same lobbyists were at the table helping to devise “reform.” Who was at the table explains why giant insurance and pharma companies have been so enriched in the last decade.

America: We are in the midst of an unprecedented movement to reform our criminal legal system to ensure fairness for black lives.

DNC Platform Committee: Nah, I’m good. https://t.co/EuJZ6llwuK

— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) July 28, 2020

Not that newspaper endorsements influence public opinion on elections, but…

I look forward to Markey crushing Kennedy. https://t.co/gLR37Mt4cK

— John Iadarola (@johniadarola) July 28, 2020

Masks save lives, period.

Today I am introducing legislation to provide high-quality, reusable masks to every person in this country free of charge.

This is a no-brainer. https://t.co/UeZYQvJyTt

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 28, 2020

The Cult of Selfishness

America’s response to the coronavirus has been a lose-lose proposition.

The Trump administration and governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis insisted that there was no trade-off between economic growth and controlling the disease, and they were right — but not in the way they expected.

Premature reopening led to a surge in infections: Adjusted for population, Americans are currently dying from Covid-19 at around 15 times the rate in the European Union or Canada. Yet the “rocket ship” recovery Donald Trump promised has crashed and burned: Job growth appears to have stalled or reversed, especially in states that were most aggressive about lifting social distancing mandates, and early indications are that the U.S. economy is lagging behind the economies of major European nations.

So we’re failing dismally on both the epidemiological and the economic fronts. But why?

On the face of it, the answer is that Trump and allies were so eager to see big jobs numbers that they ignored both infection risks and the way a resurgent pandemic would undermine the economy. As I and others have said, they failed the marshmallow test, sacrificing the future because they weren’t willing to show a little patience.

And there’s surely a lot to that explanation. But it isn’t the whole story.

For one thing, people truly focused on restarting the economy should have been big supporters of measures to limit infections without hurting business — above all, getting Americans to wear face masks. Instead, Trump ridiculed those in masks as “politically correct,” while Republican governors not only refused to mandate mask-wearing, but they prevented mayors from imposing local mask rules.

Also, politicians eager to see the economy bounce back should have wanted to sustain consumer purchasing power until wages recovered. Instead, Senate Republicans ignored the looming July 31 expiration of special unemployment benefits, which means that tens of millions of workers are about to see a huge hit to their incomes, damaging the economy as a whole.

So what was going on? Were our leaders just stupid? Well, maybe. But there’s a deeper explanation of the profoundly self-destructive behavior of Trump and his allies: They were all members of America’s cult of selfishness.

You see, the modern U.S. right is committed to the proposition that greed is good, that we’re all better off when individuals engage in the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest. In their vision, unrestricted profit maximization by businesses and unregulated consumer choice is the recipe for a good society.

Support for this proposition is, if anything, more emotional than intellectual. I’ve long been struck by the intensity of right-wing anger against relatively trivial regulations, like bans on phosphates in detergent and efficiency standards for light bulbs. It’s the principle of the thing: Many on the right are enraged at any suggestion that their actions should take other people’s welfare into account.

This rage is sometimes portrayed as love of freedom. But people who insist on the right to pollute are notably unbothered by, say, federal agents tear-gassing peaceful protesters. What they call “freedom” is actually absence of responsibility.

Rational policy in a pandemic, however, is all about taking responsibility. The main reason you shouldn’t go to a bar and should wear a mask isn’t self-protection, although that’s part of it; the point is that congregating in noisy, crowded spaces or exhaling droplets into shared air puts others at risk. And that’s the kind of thing America’s right just hates, hates to hear.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if right-wingers actually make a point of behaving irresponsibly. Remember how Senator Rand Paul, who was worried that he might have Covid-19 (he did), wandered around the Senate and even used the gym while waiting for his test results?

Anger at any suggestion of social responsibility also helps explain the looming fiscal catastrophe. It’s striking how emotional many Republicans get in their opposition to the temporary rise in unemployment benefits; for example, Senator Lindsey Graham declared that these benefits would be extended “over our dead bodies.” Why such hatred?

It’s not because the benefits are making workers unwilling to take jobs. There’s no evidence that this is happening — it’s just something Republicans want to believe. And in any case, economic arguments can’t explain the rage.

Again, it’s the principle. Aiding the unemployed, even if their joblessness isn’t their own fault, is a tacit admission that lucky Americans should help their less-fortunate fellow citizens. And that’s an admission the right doesn’t want to make.

It’s also an admission the blue dogs aren’t making either, and Krugman isn’t pointing this out. Not endorsing MfA as a policy is selfish.

Deutsche Bank to Stop Funding Drilling in the Arctic

In environmental news, Deutsche Bank is the latest major financial institution to say it will stop funding Arctic drilling projects. This comes as Siberia continues to battle wildfires and record-high temperatures, spurred by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

Speaking of greed…

Trump campaign ‘disguised’ and ‘laundered’ nearly $170 million worth of spending, watchdog group alleges in a new federal complaint

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center says the Trump campaign is violating federal election transparency rules by masking the true sources of campaign expenditures.

The Trump campaign says it ‘complies with all campaign finance laws’ and Federal Election Commission regulations.

Trump has previously declared himself ‘the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country.’

Don’t expect a quick ruling: The complaint is filed with the FEC, which does not have enough commissioners to enforce federal campaign finance laws.

Biden will lay out his plan to fight systemic racism

Mr. Biden on Tuesday plans to unveil the capstone to his sweeping economic recovery plan with a speech that outlines his vision to “advance racial economic equity in America,” according to his campaign.

Mr. Biden will deliver his address in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday afternoon, where he is expected to sketch out how fighting systemic racism is integral to a range of his economic proposals, from housing to infrastructure to supporting small businesses, senior campaign officials said during a morning briefing with the news media.

The moment offers Mr. Biden a chance to detail a clear, positive message on racial justice, and to cut another sharp contrast with his opponent, Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly taken incendiary actions on that issue at a moment of national crisis over racism and police violence.

In recent months, as the country has grappled with devastating public health and economic problems and a growing outcry over racial injustice, Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has increasingly called for ambitious measures to address the nation’s towering challenges, going far beyond the instincts toward relatively incremental change that guided him in the primary, at least compared to many of his Democratic opponents. As he seeks to unite his party around his candidacy, he has sought input from a broader range of experts and officials, including from a series of task forces assembled with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his progressive primary rival.

Ahead of the speech, the Biden campaign released a policy plan on racial equity that touches on a variety of issues. The plan emphasizes support for small business owners of color, promising that Mr. Biden will “leverage more than $150 billion in new capital and opportunities for small businesses that have been structurally excluded for generations,” including by increasing access to venture capital and low-interest business loans.

Mr. Biden’s plan sets a goal of increasing federal contracting with small disadvantaged businesses, and it says he will seek to improve the opportunity zone program that was enacted as part of the 2017 tax overhaul. The plan also calls for helping states improve their criminal justice data infrastructure so they can automatically seal criminal records for certain nonviolent offenders.

On the call with reporters, which was conducted on the condition of anonymity, a senior campaign official said in response to a question that Mr. Biden “doesn’t have a problem with the study” of reparations, but is focused on more immediate actions. Another official said that Mr. Biden was not ruling out support for a “baby bonds” program — a government-run savings program for children championed during the primary by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey — but favored a pilot first.

Mr. Biden’s plan is the fourth plank of his “Build Back Better” proposal, an economic agenda that also encompasses manufacturing, climate and infrastructure, and caregiving plans, and takes aim at Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the economy and his impact on working families.

In contrast to the plans Mr. Biden outlined in recent weeks, which focused on major changes to certain sectors of the American economy, the proposal he is set to unveil on Tuesday is a broader effort that aims to emphasize the idea that racial justice is core to his overall policy vision.

A number of the policies highlighted in his proposal were already announced as part of other plans, like a housing proposal that would provide a tax credit of up to $15,000 for first-time home buyers, or a goal that disadvantaged communities receive 40 percent of the benefits of spending on clean energy infrastructure.

House OKs bill protecting Mashpee Wampanoag’s land

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved legislation that would prevent the Trump administration from rescinding a tribe’s contested reservation in Massachusetts.

The amendment, included in a broader spending package passed by the Democratic-controlled chamber Friday, bars the Interior Department from revoking its 2015 decision to place some 300 acres of land into trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

The legislation also would prevent the agency from reversing a corresponding declaration of the lands as the tribe’s sovereign reservation, where it could legally build a casino under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

“In recent months, the Trump administration has used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to try to steal the Tribe’s land and define their people out of existence,” U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored the bill, said in a written statement. “This amendment will put an immediate stop to those dangerous efforts.”

Cedric Cromwell, the tribe’s chairman, said House passage of the bill, with votes of 224-189, moves the tribe one step closer to ensuring its homeland isn’t taken away. A similar proposal passed the House in 2019 but has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.

“The support we’ve received – locally, by our lawmakers in DC and across Turtle Island – has been tremendous. The threat of disestablishment was real, but the action taken today will help to ensure our ancestral homeland is forever protected,” Cromwell said in a statement.

(Previous story: Mashpee Wampanoag ruling a ‘win for all of Indian Country’)

U.S. Rep. William Keating, a Massachusetts Democrat who also sponsored the measure, said it will limit the administration’s “constant efforts to undermine the Tribe’s rights.” He said the issue is about “people, their rights, their health, their education, and their livelihoods.”

In March, the Trump administration moved to undo the 2015 decision, declaring that then-President Barack Obama’s administration had no authority to put land into trust for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe since it only became federally recognized relatively recently.

But the Cape Cod-based tribe, the tribe that encountered the pilgrims four centuries ago this year, challenged the decision. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., last month ordered the Interior Department to halt the revocation process, re-review the matter and issue new findings.

The tribe has more than 300 acres in the town of Mashpee and in Taunton near the Rhode Island state line.