Kuttner Calls It "Political Malpractice"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/a-wake-up-call_b_426467.html

Robert Kuttner on the present, messy status of Obamacare:

How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more.

Kuttner lays out what Obama's and Rahm's sweetheart-dealmaking with the corporations has done to the career of, ironically, one of the more liberal senators:

It has already brought down Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a fighter for health care and other reforms far more progressive than President Obama's. Dorgan championed Americans' right to re-import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, a popular provision that the White House blocked. Dorgan, who is one of the Senate's great populists, began the year more than twenty points ahead in the polls of his most likely challenger, North Dakota Governor John Hoeven. By the time he decided to call it a day, Dorgan was running more than twenty points behind. The difference was the health bill, which North Dakotans oppose by nearly two to one. The fact that Dorgan's own views were much better than the Administration's cut little ice. He was fatally associated with an unpopular bill.

Kuttner goes on to explain how Rahm Emanuel took Clinton insurance failure to heart to such a degree that he took away 3 ferocious and it has turned out very destructive rules from that experience:

First, get it done early (Clinton's task force had dithered.) Second, leave the details to Congress (Clinton had presented Congress with a fully-baked cake.) Third, don't get on the wrong side of the insurance and drug industries (The insurers' fictitious couple, Harry and Louise, had cleaned Clinton's clock.)

Kuttner believes Obama should have waited, focused on the economy and gotten his "sea legs". Obama over-deferred to Congress, and pre-emptively compromised with the big boy insurance and pharma companies. Obama gave away all fiscally beneficial government bargaining power and potential long term citizen-protective reform structures like Medicare for All or a public option. Again, early on and secretively, Obama surrendered any government bargain-leveraging for cheaper drugs.

Kuttner points out Obama now wants to tax premiums of all those with decent insurance and divert Medicare money. He has terrified seniors who now have efficient Medicare that they will lose it. He has also alienated the strongest Democratic constituency, the trade unionists.

Kuttner claims the bill will help 2/3 of America’s uninsured, but will do nothing for 85% of Americans with insurance who find insurance costlier and more “unreliable by the day.”

So Ben Nelson gets anti-abortion language and a super sweetheart Medicaid deal for his Blue Dog vote for the health care reform bill. But now Nelson is running scared by his unpopularity polls. Kuttner writes:

Nelson began running TV spots assuring Nebraska voters that the Obama health plan is "not run by the government." That's one hell of a slogan for a party that relies on democratically elected government to offset the insecurity, inequality and insanity generated by private commercial forces. If not-run-by-government is the Democrats' credo, why bother?

So we went from a politics in which government is necessary to provide secure health insurance -- because the private insurance industry skims off outrageous middlemen fees and discriminates against sick people -- to a politics in which Democrats, as a matter of survival, feel they have to apologize for government. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel.

What Kuttner has been encouraging Obama to do all along is focus on providing jobs for the citizenry. That impulse has been thwarted by his “deficit hawks” Orszag, Summers and Geithner. Instead of putting his leadership into solving the jobs crisis, Obama is desperately trying to round up the last votes for his legitimately distrusted health care bill.

Kuttner:

The budget-obsessives around Obama also insisted that most of the bill not take effect until 2013, so that all of the scary stuff gets three years to fester before most people see any benefit. Call it political malpractice.

As a resident of Massachusetts, in the last two days I've gotten robo calls from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Martha Coakley, and Angela Menino, the wife of Boston's mayor -- everyone but the sainted Ted Kennedy. In Obama's call, he advised me that he needed Martha Coakley in the Senate, "because I'm fighting to curb the abuses of a health insurance industry that routinely denies care." Let's see, would that be the same insurance industry that Rahm was cutting inside deals with all spring and summer? The same insurance industry that spent tens of millions on TV spots backing Obama's bill as sensible reform

If voters are wondering which side this guy is on, he has given them good reason.

Kuttner reviews the possibilities. If Coakley loses, Obama and the House leadership may simply pass the Senate-approved bill (with assurances there will be changes to be made later) and get it to the President's desk for quick signing. But the House has a lot of objections to the Senate bill and, as is, the bill would become even more toxic politically. Republicans would then enjoy an even greater opportunity for criticism and their faux-hysteria.

And finally, Kuttner:

Alternatively, let's say Coakley narrowly wins, the Democrats have a near death experience, and the House and Senate stop squabbling and pass the damned bill.

Either way, the Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.

To God's and Obama's ears, Mr. Kuttner.

[cross-posted: http://www.correntewire.com/kuttner_calls_it_political_malpractice ]