Political Commentary: Joan McCarter
Max Baucus’s Profile in Absolutely No Courage
By Joan McCarter, 9-12-09
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The Baucus debacle gets worse on a daily basis. Now that the parade has passed him by, he says he’s ready to mark up a bill the week of September 21, months behind his original deadline of April. He spent all these months getting played by the Republican members of the Baucus Caucus, and if you can believe Orrin Hatch, it’s all for naught, at least in terms of getting Republicans on board.
That never happened, but through some pretty tricky work by some of those Republicans, and Max’s buddies in industry, and with the apparent blessing of the White House, they got the insurance companies on board. Consider Wellpoint, which basically wrote the thing, along with Blue Dog Mike Ross’s amendment in the House Energy and Commerce committee. And this part is really rich--another key contributor to the legislation is another, current Wellpoint lobbyist, who used to work for Mike Enzi. The Republican who isn’t going to vote for the bill.
Here’s how Consumer Watchdog describes Enzi’s contribution to the Baucus debacle.
A “framework plan” released today by the so-called “Group of Six” Senators negotiating a health reform bill headed by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) would open the door to gutting state laws. The plan would result in a “race to the bottom” in health care regulation by allowing insurance companies that participate in “health care compacts” to choose the weakest state law to govern all their policies, regardless of which state the policies are sold in. Currently, insurance companies must abide by the state laws of any state where they sell insurance. The Baucus plan resembles an industry proposal carried by Mike Enzi (R-WY) in 2006....
** Loss of state benefit mandates would allow exclusion of preventive treatments and exams, prevent early diagnosis of disease and evade Patient Bill of Rights laws passed in nearly every state. Denying access to such basic preventive care makes treatment more costly to the policyholder and ultimately to taxpayers, who pick up the bill when individuals cannot pay outrageous out-of-pocket costs.
** State laws providing consumers the right to appeal a coverage denial to an independent panel of physicians, a right to a second opinion, and assistance from state regulators when coverage is denied would all be lost under the Enzi approach.
** Individual patients who currently have the ability to hold insurers financially accountable for injuries caused by the denial or delay of necessary care would lose those rights if they joined the Enzi co-op.
Cute trick for Enzi, completely gut the original Baucus plan so that there’s no danger of his insurance buddies having to face effective reform, and keep his Republican cred by not voting for the thing anyway. Of course, that couldn’t be done without Max Baucus’s willingly playing along.
There’s at least one encouraging aspect in all of this: the White House has clued into how bad the optics of this cozy industry Baucus debacle looks, if you can judge by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ remarks:
GIBBS: I was told that — that K Street had a copy of the Baucus plan, meaning, not surprisingly, the special interests have gotten a copy of the plan that I understand was given to committee members today.
Given that that’s not a surprise for the White House, let’s hope that they treat the resulting bill as what it is, a D- effort that not only is someone else’s work, but is utterly without principle. Nothing demonstrates that more than Baucus’s willingness not only to turn the bulk of the proposal over to industry, but to also capitulate in the face of the most egregious crazy, extremist Republican lies about healthcare reform.
Death panels? Check. Never mind that they don’t exist and never have, Baucus has pulled end of life counseling provisions from his bill. So millions of seniors and terminal patients and their families will continue to experience the pain and confusion of their last days, if Max gets his way.
And the latest ridiculousness: appeasing the right-wing crazy Congressman who is potentially facing censure in the House of Representatives for his egregious behavior. Oh, and who by the way was lying about that whole illegal immigrant thing. By all means, Max, let the right-wing fringe set policy in your bill.
Baucus, as David Waldman has so succinctly put it, isn’t a closer, and shouldn’t be given any other critical policy bill to mess up. But in the meantime, the big question now is what the White House and the real Senate Finance Committee is going to do with that hugely flawed piece of legislation he’s going to present.
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Comments
he could do a lot more damage than we can imagine in the next 41/2 years. think of the damage he has already done by rubber-stamping all of bush's proposals by giving tax credits and reductions to the wealthy and corporate entities in this country. back during the first six years of the bush administration max was bad enough, but now that he wields the gavel on most of the revenue and finance decisions in the senate, regular working people in this country are screwed.
our best hope is that the democratic leader in the senate, harry reid, censor max for egregiously dragging his feet on health care and for essentially allowing the industry we are trying to regulate write the bill for him. harry needs to take the gavel out of max's hand. give him a mop and a bucket instead to clean up the mess he has already done. but that won't happen because harry reid is almost or is equally compromised himself. it is a mess.
max is a disaster for this country's hope for change we can believe in. no-one believes in it anymore thanks to this criminal.
You can be a participant fighting to restore democratic principles, or a spectator, but not both.
We always hear about the private lobby, but there is a huge public lobby as well. In the free interchange between lobbying interests and public employment at the regulatory level, the private side, the electorate, is ignored and demeaned on a regular basis.
The Senate should be the great leveler in this debate, but the inability of the voters in "fly over" states to vote their interests in the power to change things, allows the hijinks and blather to run way too far into the night of this country's democratic existence. We can expect the corporate Senate we get from high population states, and the power of their public sector to sway voters. I believe I once read that the union for corrections employees in California was the leading political campaign contributor in that State in terms of dollars. That explains the plethora of prisons, and a state corrections staff of over 100,000, a sort of university system for teaching crime, a symbiotic relationship of the most byzantine kind.
The issue of far right crazies is only a reflection of personal opinion, as there are as many or more far left crazies in the Congress. In our immediate past the specter of a Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy, and now Robert Byrd as lifetime Senators with dubious mental and physical abilities to even serve, shows the dis-connect between voters, money, and elections.
Baucus is just another in a litany of entitled Senators who are about good times, money, influence, and if there is a benefit to Montana, so be it, and if not, he has people to convince you there were many. If you think Montana is not served by Baucus, remember his chief of staff was in integral part of the Obama election and Administration. Political incest is wonderful, and it is kept within the family. It is the results that hurt.
Despite all the good he has done for Montana and for the country (and he has done much), he's reluctance to stand firm on anything, ANYTHING!, on principle alone will forever define him as just another American politician, not a leader or consequential figure in American history.
... perhaps, in a representative democracy you could argue that his lack of conviction is a good thing. But the author is certainly correct, it is not a courageous one.
Health care like as many other issues from education to morals starts at home. The value and success of a health care system, as education depends on what occurs in our homes and is integrally related to personal responsibility.
To improve our health and health care system, we must have some skin in the game. Relying on insurance companies whose premiums are paid by our employers takes us out of the game. In as such, we have no voting rights. The solution is to get us all involved. Take the insurance away from the business and place it back to individual plans with the same tax benefits as a business. Develope community based self insurance plans that you can have a voice of what coverage is available. Keep the federal government out of it other than for a catastrophic plan that we "all and I mean all" participate in/pay for, that provides coverage for up to 2 million dollars lifetime coverage for those catastrophic events that even your community self insured program could not cover. In this way you not your employer are the consumer. You not only have a vote of what the insurance will cover by choosing the plan you desire. You can also receive the benefits from decreasing premiums if you yourself practice good health and preventative medicine principles.
And just to make some of you mad. If you are not willing to reach into your billfold an pay for the medical expenses of your neighbor, don't expect that they will be willing to do it for you. That happens to be insurance. It is not free, it's a way of sharing the expense and betting against yourself.