Okay, this is the stupidest damn decision. Luckily, no one will get killed as a result.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Oh wait, this is the stupidest damn decision.
Well, how about that! A squirrel that’s afraid of ACORNs.
Make up your mind. There can only be one stupidest damn decision.
I dunno, I am sure I can find more of them.
Not true. Ties are possible.
And the dumbing down of America continues.
Is there NOTHING a person can do to be considered unqualified to hold a government job?
Apparently not.
nalbar
This was a better decision. Made me wish I was there.
I told you that this was Bush’s third term.
Meanwhile, on the insurance front, we got our new 2010 Group Plan brochures. Let’s see: Co-payments are up 50% to $30. Deductible stays at $300, but co-pays and drug co-pays no longer apply to it. Out-of-pocket maximum goes up 40% to $7,000 and deductible and co-pays no longer apply to it. Premiums are up 20% to $288 a month. Next year, when I’m 65, they will deduct the amount Medicare part B would have paid, if I had Medicare part B, so It will cost me $220 more per month. Retirees have to pay $400 a month for this insurance, so If I retire, 100% of my estimated $600 pension will go for Health Insurance. I still have to pay income tax on the $600. Plan B is to keep working until I drop dead on the shop floor.
Meanwhile, since this is a Cadillac plan with a total premium (employer and employee) of $14,588 per year and out-pocket is below $10,000, Max Baucus wants to tax me for having it. I want to stick a pipe wrench up Max Baucus’s ass and see how far it will go.
Today, I met a man from Germany at Central DuPage Hospital. He told me in Germany, I would have to pay 2% of my income for health insurance and nothing to the doctor or hospital. Mmmm. Glad I don’t have that Socialist German plan where I would be paying $1,100 a year instead of $6,096 a year plus co-pays, deductible and co-insurance. Way to go Obama. These new health care plans are really Real Change. Glad we’re sticking with Free Enterprise instead of getting something like the Canadian Plan that wouldn’t suit America. Certainly, we wouldn’t want anything like those Socialist Brits or Germans, would we?
after witnessing this Congress in action you are still blaming Obama for not getting a single-payer plan?
Yes, indeed. The President is supposed to lead! Johnson got the Civil Rights Law, Medicare, and yes, even the giant Vietnam buildup. Nixon got revenue sharing. Reagan got a wholesale retreat from the New Deal. Clinton got Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and two wide ranging trade treaties. Bush got dictatorial powers to shred the Constitution, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and perpetual war. What has Obama got to compare? Max Baucus couldn’t push his crap if the White House twisted arms and kneed groins. Look at the stimulus goodies. Obama should have made health care and withdrawal from Iraq the price of getting the stimulus dough for each district/state. Even after the bill was passed, the executive branch has massive powers to delay and deny funds. I know, I used to work there and even low level civil servants like me could delay and obsfucate. Rahm Emanuel knows this game like he knows his golf score. Obama should have learned it in Chicago. I suspect that he does and that’s how he got trillions for Wall Street. That and his war in Afghanistan are his real priorities.
Obama has said that he just wants a bill. He would like to see various things, but announced in advance that he would abandon them. This new program may ban abortion, but it itself will be an abortion.
I actually wish that I had voted for Hillary.
You can lead but you can’t perform magic tricks. FDR and LBJ combined couldn’t pass single-payer in this country.
Yes, LBJ got the Civil Rights Laws, but remember those laws could and should have been passed DECADES earlier.
LBJ served 12 years in both the (1937-49) House and the Senate (1949-61). The first civil rights bill LBJ voted for was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which was a watered down version of what was to come seven years later. How did he go so long without voting in favor of these laws, which of course, passed the House but died in the Senate?
The only reason LBJ didn’t sign the Southern Manifesto in 1956 (reaction after Brown v. Board) was because as Majority Leader, he was not asked to sign it.
Yes, he finally signed a real civil rights bill, but 1) it was after JFK’s assassination and 2) even in the wake of a president’s assassination, he still had to muscle it through. And I say this as an admirer of LBJ’s skill. (Master of the Senate is one of the best, most meticulously researched books I’ve ever read.)
I’m not arguing that Obama shouldn’t lead. I am saying that he’s not going to change things by the snap of his fingers, and that the achievements won by previous presidents largely didn’t happen in the span of 10 months.
The changes I’d like to see don’t just include correcting and improving from the last eight disastrous years, but from the last 30. Attitudes and language that have become ingrained must change–and that’s not even the half of it. It’s not going to happen overnight.
For the record, I wish to God that it could.
Erm, if we accept the Wyden Amendment and eventually have a national price setting mechanism, this plan would look pretty damn close to Germany :
The most important reform, come to think of it, would be national pricing. If you input Canada’s prices into our procedures, costs are cut by approximately 50%.
Germany’s too. However, according to Forbes, which actually wrote a glowing account of Germany’s system, the root cause is lower payments to providers. They claim that primary care physicians are paid $160K in the USA and $89K in Germany. Generic drugs are mandatory and the government uses it’s monopsonic power to negotiate prices to the bone, so drugs cost well under half what they do in the USA. I think the figure was 25%. The guy I was talking to today said they won’t approve a heart bypass if you’re 85, but mainly because the success rate is so low.
Yeah, exactly right. This is why I’m not understanding why the main focus has been on attacking insurance companies. While they’re not angels, certainly not, they’re not the driving factor in cost. A national price setting mechanism, as Medicare has (although Medicare’s is far too generous), would likely be the key to lowering costs.
The other obvious input to this “puzzle” is having the government negotiate rates directly, or change the way we encourage R&D.
While costs are extremely important to this debate, I think getting as many people covered as possible is the most important thing right now. Once costs get even higher than they already are, Congress will be forced to deal with costs whether they like the answers or not. And while they’re just dying to cut Medicare and SS, as that’s always what they mean when they talk about our exploding debt, I don’t think they have the balls to risk your voting group. Maybe they do; I can imagine Democrats not capitalizing on it if they did go through with it…
Medical R&D should be a government program like NASA. And contractors should not be able to patent the drugs and tests that they develop on the government’s dime as a work for hire. I think you can blame Ronnie for that one.
I’m not sure that I would go to Medical School for $80K a year. But I don’t like Medicine. I was perfectly happy working for $80K in Physics and Software Engineering. Maybe we could get doctors for $80K a year. They would be fewer, but they would be doctors that love Medicine more than a Mercedes. That would be good. What utility do we get from “Masters of the Universe” who create paper wealth for the equivalent of the average American’s pay for millennia? They are actually a detriment to society.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the majority of the R&D for actual important medical breakthroughs done by universities and researchers through the NIH already? I don’t mind the patent system, so long as the government negotiates the rates directly. Dean Baker’s alternative is prizes, which Stiglitz also seems attracted to. The corporate overlords aren’t ready to give it up yet; they can barely deal with a meager public option that would cover what? A few million people in 10 years? Disgusting.
As an engineer myself in the aerospace industry, or rather, student in aerospace engineering, I don’t even know why I bother with this damned country anymore; I should just leave. I just wanna give up. Then again, the other half of me would rather go into activism and say screw the engineering degree that I’ll receive next May. It’s just gotten to the point that I can’t even be in the same room with Republicans anymore; it doesn’t help that I live in Virginia and will be governed by a theocrat next year.
Anyway, long tangent rant aside, I just hope that during the next election cycle we’ll get right back to reforming this reform. It never ends…
Yes, but that research is patented by the Universitys and then the patents sold to Pharma, even though the work was done under an NIH grant.
I fully understand how you feel. When I was a young man, I was told that the future would be better. We had just won a great crusade against Fascism coming out of the Great Depression. The Nifty Fifty was where to put your money because the American Industrial Colossus was superior to anyone else in the world. Japan made cheap plastic junk and Cadillac was the standard of the world. Only godless Russia could stop us, but our gallant FBI and Air Force would stop them. The American Way of Life would triumph over Communism as it had over Fascism. I don’t know how to really express the tone of the Eisenhower Years. Then came JFK and we were soaring ever higher. American Technology was unchallenged and would take us to the Moon and beyond. Biological breakthroughs would soon conquer cancer and lead even to immortality, or at least a 150 year lifespan. By 1999, every house would have a computer. I’d say that was the only prediction that came true, but no one would ever guess that the components would be made in China, a backward country of shoeless peasants with water buffaloes and laughable backyard iron smelters.
Then JFK was shot in Dallas and a downward spiral began that culminated in Bush/Cheney. I say culminated, but I believe the death spiral is still going on.
So, what to say to a young man about to graduate? That it took me many
yearsdecades to discover that the American Way of Life is graft, corruption, cheating and dishonor? That the future is black indeed, more like 500 A.D. than 1950? I don’t know. How much is being 64 instead of 14 or 24?So let me just offer this advice from when I was your age, that I still believe in. “If it feels good, do it!” If you love engineering, if you don’t feel truly alive unless you are designing something, then don’t give up. If you can’t get a job in engineering then find the aerospace equivalent of Open Source. Live your dream. Find a good woman (or man if that’s your orientation) and build a life with her/him. Two against the world beats one. If you’ve got guts and determination try to change the world. The odds are that forty years from now you’ll be a bitter old man too, but there’s a chance you’ll succeed. A slim chance, but a chance. And remember, it really is true that the best part of life is the journey, not the end.
Booman,
“By law, no more than four members shall be from the same political party.”
Walter Isaacson will chair it. They also wouldn’t want to give up someone from their own communications staff, and as an added bonus they get her off of FOX News.
Can someone confirm this?
Yup.
Skip down to Sec. 6203(b)(3), “Composition of Board.”
Still sucks, though. Besides, I thought they didn’t “do” federal employment.
Here’s another stupid decision..but it doesn’t count because a republican made it..
http://www.kmbc.com/politics/21657077/detail.html
Another C street member and a sex scandal..
I think Dana Perino’s probably a good choice for the appointment. Since it has to be a Republican and the organization is one that oversees our foreign propaganda operations, it’s totally appropriate. In fact, I’m surprised she’d take the job since her current gig at that domestic propaganda outfit she’s currently working at probably pays alot better than this guv’mint job.
If anyone missed the Daily Show tonight, it was one of those must-see nights. John Oliver did a great segment on Sarah Palin’s book and the big guest of the evening was Lou Dobbs-post-CNN-firing. I was going to include links to the clips, but their links are f’d up tonight. Go to Daily Show Website. They’re at the top of the list of clips.
Obama has been co-opting any reasonable or moderate (or pragmatic) Republicans he can into his Administration — I think it’s more of his long-term transformational strategy, to break down the partisan divide where ideology trumps consensus. It’s too soon to tell how successful that will be — it really is a long-term strategic move. It’s a very different approach than the personal loyalty test that the previous Administration used for vetting their officials, say, for those put in charge of large rebuilding projects in Iraq.
And if she’s working for the Obama Administration, she probably isn’t as likely to provide FOX News with the usual talking point garbage on demand from a perceived credible source.
Umm, yeah.