Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Facing the Post-Recession Future

Paul Krugman’s NYT column today on the federal deficit should be required reading.  We are still mired in a slow, high-unemployment recovery from the meltdown of 2008, but the world’s governments have helped prevent another Great Depression by spending on enormous rescue efforts.  However inequitable, those efforts are basically all that stood between the public and the precipice of total economic chaos as the financial system in the United States unraveled last year.

Yes, we should have spent our money more wisely— on taking more equity in the financial giants that caused the chaos.  We would eventually have gotten most of that back.  We should undoubtedly have spent far less on shortsighted tax rebates that didn’t help anyone significantly— and didn’t pump jobs back into the economy.  And finally, we might have been blessed with a quicker end to the Paulson Administration and succeeded it without a Rubin Redux team that keeps many of the financial system’s problem children still intact and in the money.

 But despite all its problems, it is still a recovery we are entering, not the free fall we were experiencing during the winter of 2008-9.  The Obama Administration and to some extent, the Paulson Administration (at least the Bernanke part of it) deserves some credit for that.  We’ve been saved from the worst.  Instead of celebrating the government’s bold intervention, however, we keep hearing a whining chorus on the Right that warns us that the federal deficit from that intervention is the bigger problem.  Yes, bigger than total economic chaos!

 Those who are worried about current deficits should read Mr. Krugman’s assessment of the levels of debt we now carry at the federal level.  They are not historically dangerous, but require a long-term vision.  They should lead rational people to address those areas of our economy that need streamlining— like the growth of percentage of our GDP we spend on healthcare and its administration.  Reforming this system, over time, will contribute to a long-term change for the better in our economy.  We need to take a deep breath and begin to rebuild, not panic with the birthers, death panel hallucinators, and the reactionaries who helped bring us the catastrophe of 2008.

 Yet we as a nation still have little stomach to face down these reactionaries and turn the page on them.  There is still great danger that we will return to the comfortable belief that markets will always find the most efficient solutions, even in the face of the most horrific evidence that markets can become completely irrational.  As a nation, this is a moment that requires maturity and a willingness to grow.  

Can we?

(Bill cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics)

Public Option Flowchart

Nicholas Beaudrot at Donkeylicious has put together a flow chart, based on a visualization by Chris Hayes, that helps keep the basics of the public option in perspective for the 200+ million Americans whom it will not affect in the slightest.  Many of these people will be the same people who are shouting about it at Town Halls across the country.

 Here is Beaudrot’s chart:  

The Town Hall Crowd

I see no real need for explanation here.  Watch:

Lives of Military Families

Over the years, I’ve written frequently about the war in Iraq and, less frequently, about the war in Afghanistan.  The role of our soldiers in these places is often on my mind.  As we sit, nearly eight years since the attacks on the US, it’s been awhile since the blog noted their situation.  Our military personnel are often sent back to war zones they’ve deployed to once or more already.  What’s also occurring is that back home, we all hear less and less about them, even as our soldiers’ lives become more and more synonymous with these endless wars.

 The families of the soldiers are similarly neglected in our popular culture.  Perhaps due in part to the nature of the all volunteer military, the majority of Americans don’t feel the impact of soldiers’ continued deployments. This is not true of their families, who are now often beleaguered and many stretched thin financially as they endure long periods when their loved ones are at risk in far away places.

 I’d like to recommend two sources of information about families and the soldiers they support, as well as a piece of work that is still in-progress. The first is a blog, well written by two journalists who happen also to be the halves of a military couple.  Their blog, Here and Far, comes from a uniquely interesting perspective on the experience of soldiers and their loved ones.  The “far” part of the couple, Matt Mabe, is a West Point-educated soldier who went on to journalism school after two tours of duty in the Army, started his career as a reporter, and was recently called back to Afghanistan.  His partner, Molly Birnbaum, also a journalist, writes back from “near” here in New York City or wherever her work takes her.

I also suggest readers check out a wonderful documentary film called “The Way We Get By.”  It focuses on three aging greeters of the troops, who welcome them back from overseas at the airport in Bangor, ME, where an enormous number of the flights bound from Iraq and Afghanistan first arrive in the States.  The film doesn’t begin in the lives of the troops’ families, focusing instead on these three Bangor residents who take it upon themselves to get up at all hours to greet our soldiers with a smile, some treats, and the potential to make a free cell phone call to their families at home.  I won’t spoil the film for you, but it does convey a good idea of what military families go through. 

 Finally, I’d like to make a plug for a friend’s film-in-progress, “Flat Daddy.”  This documentary will be expressly about military families.   It takes its name from the life-size two dimensional photographic images of the same name that have become popular avatars for the daddy (or mommy) who is serving abroad.  Using the visual theme of the images with which these families fill the void left by a loved one’s deployment, this film is studying the lasting impact of the wars on their lives.  There is a trailer on the film’s website.  Anyone wishing to follow the film’s progress or to make a contribution to its non-profit sponsor can do so as well.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Buck Naked Politics.)

Healthcare Reform Now

I’m a little tired of the stories about the righteous indignation of conservative America regarding healthcare reform and the “socialist takeover” of the country.  I can only conclude that these folks have been sleepwalking through the last year and have somehow been miraculously reanimated by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich as zombies for the health insurance industry.  The indignation thing ought to be the territory of the rest of us, who’ve been ripped off by conservative leaders and their corporate backers for years and left to fend for ourselves when we’re ill, uncovered, or changing jobs.

 A “socialist takeover” is the farthest thing from what’s going on.  The healthcare reform now under consideration is a mild form of universal care, which would neither fix all the problems of healthcare in America nor break the health insurance industry’s hold on our dollars.  We deserve better, but at minimum we need the public option pivotal to most current reform bills.  Apparently, that’s too much government for the insurance industry and the conservatives who cater to their needs, but the public option is about the only thing that will give many Americans without health coverage a chance to increase their access to care.

 A public option is also the only thing that will prevent the 14,000 people currently losing their health insurance every day in America from losing their access to good medical care.  Those of us who are woefully undercovered by high-deductable plans would also be helped by a public option, allowing us better benefits for our limited dollars.  The public option might also help spur more competition within the private insurance market, since companies now providing coverage would have to make their products attractive to consumers able to stack their benefits up against an plan that would not be looking to constantly increase profits.

 The other benefit of a public option would be its lack of incentive to disqualify customers for specious reasons.  One of the ways private insurers increase their profits is by denying coverage dollars to individuals for the most mercenary and small violations of the insurance contract or dragging decisions out to dissuade the individual from seeking an expensive procedure, putting themselves between the patient and her doctor.  A public insurer without incentive to deny benefits would be attractive to many and might be matched by health insurers wishing to remain competitive with it.  They might need to find new ways to show their policies actually are more worthwhile when the consumer really needs them!

 Another possible development in the wake of a public option’s advent might be to encourage the founding of more non-profit healthcare clinics.  Preventive public health care, now less available than it should be, would be much more cost-effective for poor families. This care is far less than expensive than untimely emergency room visits, which the poor often use for health crises left untreated for too long.  If coverage was not an issue for many Americans strapped for cash, we would be far more likely to seek out preventive medicine.  The increase in preventive care would also make hospital emergency room waiting times somewhat less onerous and allow for better emergency care.

 While the private market may be able to innovate and provide new ways of approaching coverage to make the average person healthier and less healthcare-poor, there is little incentive for insurers to do so now.  The healthcare system is broken for too many; we need more basic guarantees.  Americans want to stop making employment decisions and career plans based on health coverage.  We need to join the rest of the developed world in decoupling healthcare from specific jobs and employment— and make our best plans portable and continuous.

 In short, we need major progress.  Let’s let our legislators know that we aren’t part of the blind rage of the televised Right-Wing Town Hall mobs.  We elected a new President in part because he promised to reform healthcare, not in spite of that promise.  We voted for change last year.  Now it’s time to demand that we get some when it counts.

Heathcare Astroturf Uncovered on CNN- Watch

Rick Scott, the former chairman of Columbia Hospital Corporation, a for-profit chain of hospitals, is the founder of an organization called “Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.”  CPR (cute, huh?) is now funding protests like the ones we see at health care reform town hall meetings across the country—  at which Congresspeople are being shouted down, scuffles started, and people routinely intimidated by mobs of frightened birther/wingnuts.

 His campaign is coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the same PR firm that masterminded the 2004 Swift Boat campaign against presidential candidate John Kerry.  What’s more interesting, Scott’s own personal history in the healthcare industry shows how the current system can be gamed by those who would bilk the public.  Scott was forced out of the Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1997 by its board after being identified with massive overbilling and kickbacks for which the company ended up paying the $1.7 billion in fines.

 Here’s an encounter Scott perhaps didn’t expect with CNN’s Rick Sanchez yesterday.  Unfortunately for Scott, Sanchez had actually done his homework and uncovered the unpleasant facts behind Scott’s accumulated millions in the healthcare business.  Watch: