From Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont: What we need in health care reform:

1. A strong public option.

2. Progressive funding with no taxes on health care benefits.

3. Expansion of primary health care.

4. Focus on disease prevention

5. Universality.

Seems simple enough. Notice he didn’t say “single payer”, but I suspect his aspirations will have trouble getting by the majority of Democrats, much less the whole senate.

Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington is saying that she will not vote for any bill that allows competition with private health insurance companies. She’s a Democrat, by the way. Her logic is a bullet-proof circularity – she says it won’t pass the senate, therefore she won’t support it. That’s not unlike Max Baucus saying he doesn’t support single payer because it can’t pass.

What is it with these Democrats? Why don’t they take leadership on issues and make things happen? Why the perpetual fingers to the wind?

We all know the answer to that. They don’t support these things in principle, and are lying about why they don’t support them.

And there’s this: Max Baucus might not be chair of the Senate Finance Committee much longer. It’s just a delicious rumor at this point, but apparently liberal Democrats (there are a few of them) are upset with his handling of health care, or as Richard Cohen puts it,

Some people simply do not care for this Max Baucus, with his lobbyist-whoring and foot-dragging and complete disregard for fellow Democrats when it comes to drafting acceptable health care reform legislation in his committee. So “these people” ( = his colleagues) have come up with a Plan to drive the ancient demon from his lair forever.

The following is from a Media Matters interview with Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal op-ed writer:

Q: My sense is that a significant percentage of wealthy and business interests have moved across the aisle over the past eight or ten years, so that the Democratic Party is a much more suitable party for business than the Republican Party.

Frank: That’s probably right. It’s partially opportunistic on their part … you’re asking me to go to the cynical side (and I will!). I found a funny description of the Democratic Party from some 19th century grouch – I forget who – but he said that the ruling class keeps and preserves the Democratic Party as a kind of lifeboat when they get in trouble with the other one.

Deep in my heart I know it has always been so. They probably had a strong business party and a weak me-too party back in the days of the Roman Empire too.

Finally, politicians lie. But when is a lie a necessary lie? For example, to maintain a coalition and stay in office, a politician necessarily has to lie to at least some, and probably all of his followers. I have no problem with that – it’s how I kept peace between my kids when they were growing up. I told them lies.

But what about deceiving the public (though not the Congress) about the need to invade Iraq? Was that kosher? What about Jon Tester saying that he would protect our roadless lands when running for office, and now working to give them away?

When is lying acceptable?

Leo Strauss put forth the idea of the “noble lie”, and I believe there is such a thing, as when I told my kids that I “loved them all the same.” They needed to hear that. Jack Nicholson put it better when he said “you can’t handle the truth!” Someone else said that if we like sausage, we should not ask how it’s made.

In the early 20th century, after implementation of the universal franchise, the idea of mass manipulation of public opinion through propaganda became the norm. Lying became accepted politics, as it was understood that there was simply nothing of value to gain by periodic consultations with voters.

Politicians lie. Tester lied during his campaign. Bush and the neocons lied about Iraq. LBJ lied about Tonkin, JFK about Cuba. Cantwell is lying about why she doesn’t support a public option. Baucus … well, Baucus lies too, but is just not very good at it.

Lies, lies and more lies. It’s all lies. But which of them are “noble” lies?

You tell me.

I thought I should get a letter in our local organ before moving on to Colorado.

Editor:

We Americans imagine ourselves more enlightened than others, even thinking ourselves justified in bombing other countries to make them “free.” But our own freedom is mere illusion.

Our two political parties are financed by the same concentrations of wealth. There are differences – big oil tends to favor Republicans, while trial lawyers have always had a particular affinity for Democrats. Wall Street finance houses have deep tentacles in both parties. But for the most part, money has no ideology, and shifts with the political winds.

Tea-baggers and “birthers” take the place of political dialogue. These same elements once screamed about Whitewater and Monica, and then were quiet for eight years. Now they’re back, crazy as ever. But they are a mere distraction. That’s not an exchange of ideas. That’s lunacy.

There is an important issue at the fore – reform of our health care system. The public by overwhelming margins wants real change. Democrats have enough power now to easily defeat the Republicans. But they won’t do it.

Our own senator, Max Baucus, is the leading anti-reformer. He supposedly represents the “liberal” side of our spectrum, but is more like a right winger himself, frustrating attempts at real reform.

And this is the nature of our “two party” system. Lacking any real mechanisms by which we can translate public will into public policy, our precious freedom is a mere illusion. Our parties are bought – the one representing “hope” and “change” merely covering the other’s back.

We have nothing to teach other countries. We need our own regime change. (Perhaps we should bomb ourselves?) We legally bribe our public officials. Because of our campaign finance system, real reforms in other areas are not possible.

Before we will see health care reform, we must fix campaign finance. Nothing changes before that.

We are on our way to Boulder today, and won’t return here until we have found a place to live down there. Boulder has its own vocabulary. Words like “spacious” and “open” do not mean there what they mean here. We are going to rent for a year and then buy something, and that year of renting will likely put us in a townhouse or condo, squished and compressed.

Something occurred to me as I was trying to answer some very legitimate questions over at Electric City Weblog. I have mentioned before that one of the reasons private insurance seems to work in the workplace is that employers tend to hire healthy people, so that workers are “pre-cherry-picked”, and the insurance companies’ job is done for them.

Then it dawned on me – every injury that might happen in the workplace is covered by Workers Compensation, so that insurance companies have even less exposure than they would otherwise have.

So health insurance companies have two reasons to cover the workplace: 1) pre-cherry-picking, and 2) shared risk.

What a deal!

The concept of insurance, as a college professor once told us, originated in ancient China. Each year the farmers and craftsmen who lived inland had to load their goods onto boats and take them to markets on the coast via the Yangtze River. Each year some boats were lost, and a few lost everything. They decided among themselves to spread their goods over many boats, so that if one or two were lost, each would lose a little, but none would be devastated.

We had an interesting discussion yesterday over at Gregg’s Electric City Weblog, and I learned quite a bit from a guy calling himself Wolfpack. I observed that the concept of for-profit insurance did not seem to work in health care, and should be run on a non-profit basis. He asked me

Mark T. said, that one thing that other countries have done is to outlaw for-profit insurance, which is colossally counterproductive. Mark- Are you opposed to “for-profit” car and home insurance also?

It’s a good question. Why does for-profit insurance work in some areas but not others? For example, in many rural areas private fire fighters respond when a house catches on fire. But the homeowner has to pay a premium for this service, and if he has not, the fire department will simply watch the house burn. A better solution is to make fire fighting a government service funded by tax dollars. That way everyone has coverage and no one has to watch a house burn while fire fighters sip coffee.

The private protection model does not work well in that mode, but does for fire “insurance” – reimbursement for loss after-the-fact. It also works well for personal liability and for automobiles. There are many companies who provide that kind of insurance, and they compete for our business. They respond to that competition by providing adequate protection and prompt claim settlement (There are exceptions, of course, and insurance companies have to protect us from abusers. They are diligent about claim service when there is suspicious activity surrounding a loss.)

I have driven cars for 43 years, and have never caused an auto accident. Most of us will pass through life without an incident. Only a few of us are so unfortunate. But with health care, sickness is a virtual certainty. As we age, it becomes more so (which is why for-profit insurers refuse to cover old people). It is here that the Chinese boat example works. Among ourselves we can agree to share our risks, each of us absorbing some the cost to protect those who are currently suffering. When our turn comes, others will take care of us.

Because suffering and sickness are universal, we don’t need an insurance company in the middle of the process trying to extract profit by avoiding the sick. We need government to collect taxes and provide the insurance. It’s broad insurance with universal risk and huge costs which will affect all of us in our lifetimes. We don’t need the money people mucking it up. We simply need to manage the system for ourselves, using our government to do so.

It is our right as citizens to boot the for-profit insurers out of the system. By its very nature, for-profit insurance has to avoid sick people and avoid paying claims. It’s not a match.

The problems with our health care system are caused by right wingers and conservatives who are convinced that some people taking more out of the system than they put in is a moral hazard. Not so. Health care should be a right. We can help each other in our mutual suffering by any means we choose, including our government. Screw capitalism.